Metal
Who better than Devin Townsend himself to explain what it’s about.
So, this is the film for «The Puzzle», a multimedia project created during lockdown.
It’s pretty abstract, but underneath the surface, the theme is fairly simple: it’s a visualisation of an inner dialogue and the resulting acknowledgment of that dialogue.
The story centres on a protagonist (in this case that was me, simply because I couldn’t hire an actor at the time) and how every decision we make is informed by a lifetime of unconsciously internalising events from our past. The internal dialogue is always chattering away. Breaking that cycle is how the puzzle gets solved.
It’s in two halves… after the chaos of «The Puzzle», the second part is the companion piece «Snuggles», and it exists afterwards (in a way, «outside of time») and, as such, it’s more of a «meditation» than an active film.
It was a really important moment for me, so I wanted to share it online, since very few people got the chance to see it when it first came out. It was definitely a big undertaking.
I’ll be getting into other things that were created around it, including the various albums, graphic novels, novels, boxsets and toys. It was quite an ambitious project, but it was something I felt very compelled to do for myself. This one was definitely «for me», so thank you for the ability to do something like this.
In equal parts «artistic» and «fartsy»… «The Puzzle» was one of my favourite things I’ve ever gotten to put out, and I loved making it. I hope some of you enjoy it too.
Watch: «The Puzzle».