Culture
Watch the debut of Corduroy Brown’s video for “Who I Am For Now”
By: Emily Votaw
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Earlier this year, Huntington, WV-based musician Alan “Corduroy” Brown gave us “Let Me Know,” a powerful, life-affirming album released only months after Brown had a close encounter with death that forever shifted his perspective on life.
Severe complications from COVID-19 left Brown in the ICU early this year on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a last resort life support option that externally oxygenates a critically ill patient’s blood – giving their heart and lungs a chance to rally. Against all odds, Brown recovered.
“We get this one life to figure this out. We get one life to violently pursue everything that we want to do with ourselves and with our friends and people who love us. You learn a lot when you’re laying in a hospital bed, not sure if you’re going to be able to do the things that you want to do anymore. (…) We don’t have as much figured out as we might think we do,” he told WOUB Culture for a feature highlighting the album.
Today, WOUB Culture premieres the video for “Who I Am For Now,” one of the strongest tracks on the album, and the one Brown says is his favorite.
The video, directed by Kadin Tooley, illustrates the uplifting, yet often difficult to internalize premise at the heart of the song: one cannot live a happy, healthy life without accepting the constantly shifting nature of their experience. You are, very truly, not the same from day to day — and as “Who I Am For Now” expresses — nor should you try to be.
“Every day, we’re a different person,” said Brown. “We’re not meant to stay who we were in the past, good or bad. It’s so easy to get caught on the mistakes we made instead of creating new habits to be a better version of yourself every day.
Keep tabs on Corduroy Brown at corduroy-brown.com, on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Apple Music.