Tiny Love

[Anna-is-golden]

Yes, i did’t noticed that the photo was very old, and surely not made just 20 years ago😅😅he could be photoshopped with his ancestors (maybe to symbolize that part of his family that Mika told he had never knew and firstly “met” in the Savannah cemetery), or that could be just someone that looks similar to him...

[mellody]

Some more info on the song, from a Mexican interview: 

 

On 11/18/2019 at 2:55 AM, Kumazzz said:

What is the theme “Tiny Love” about?

"The song" Tiny Love "tries to put value on yourself, the opposite of feeling useless. I call it "The philosophy of tiny love." Your relationship with a family member, friend or partner is the most important thing you have in the world, but nobody else is interested. Who cares? Isn't it great? Because it means that it only belongs to you. Shouldn't that be a source of power? The fact that nobody knows it's there. It's so small that nobody can see it, but big enough to change your whole life. ”

 

Every time he says new things about the song in an interview, I start questioning again whether I have actually understood the meaning of the song. Thought I had, and then he says things like that, and I'm confused again.  

[TinyLove_CJ]

Is there any other artwork that Mika has done regarding Tiny Love other than this image? I'm planning a personal art piece relating to the song, I already have the separate images of the hands, planets and nebula but I just want to make sure there isn't anything else. Also I'd like to know people's interpretation of the geese. For me they represent freedom and being able to let yourself go.

Thanks 😊👍

[Kumazzz]

@TinyLove_CJ

 

Have you read these posts before ?

 

On 8/22/2019 at 5:51 PM, Anna Ko Kolkowska said:

Maybe that sounds stupid but 10 minutes ago my friend (not Mika fan) sent me a poem.

Here it is. Anybody heard about it (in Mika context)?

 

Mary Oliver
Wild Geese

 

 

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

 

On 8/24/2019 at 12:33 AM, Kumazzz said:

 

finding another goose image of Mika' stage

 

A flying goose on the screen at Any Other World Live PdP in 2008.

 

 

 

 

[TinyLove_CJ]

@Kumazzz That's an interesting poem thank you! I wasn't 100% sure whether to add the geese to my artwork but I think I will now! 

[mellody]

6 hours ago, TinyLove_CJ said:

@Kumazzz That's an interesting poem thank you! I wasn't 100% sure whether to add the geese to my artwork but I think I will now! 

 

Mika wanted to be a migratory bird when he was a child, I think that's what the geese are about.

[Kumazzz]

Paris Match

 

Mika talks

"Florence, London, Paris, Los Angeles ... you remember looking at the pond in Kensington Square, you dreamed of turning into a duck, a migratory bird that can fly and swim."

 

On 9/28/2019 at 1:19 AM, crazyaboutmika said:

So I fixed google translation

 

Mika by Mika

MIKA PHOTOS BY: FRANÇOIS ROELANTS

     

In full triumphal tour of the United States, the singer releases his new album in France on October 4th. Exclusively for "Le Figaro Magazine", he has engaged in a sincere and original self-portraitl.

Your name is Michael Holbrook Penniman Jr., you were born in 1983 in Beirut.  A childhood in transit between a blood red Lebanon, a gilded Paris and a neon black London.  My name is Mika, I was born in 2006 in Miami.  Four songs sent to record labels with colored boxes, worldwide. You're this strange boy who wanders sleepwalking at night in the streets of the sixteenth arrondissement. This mute boy,  the scapegoat of a sadistic teacher, who runs away.  I'm this mischievous character who thrives in a beautiful and warm brothel. This cheerful character who dreams to the rhythm of tap dancing in the living room transformed into a silky sewing workshop. Younger, I hated being called Michael.  At the same time, I never really lost sight of you ...  Life in Cartoon Motion was me, it was you already.  To me the pop rhythms acid as the chewing gum from our childhood. These gums perfumed the handbag of our grandmother. To you the words about the violent transition from adolescence to adulthood.

     

You always thought there was a certain beauty in sadness, a certain elegance in oriental spleen.  I have always struggled against this intimate melancholy, this anxiety which often gnaws at me.  Excessively, chronically dissatisfied, I do not want to disappoint you Michael.  When I recorded the last album in the spring, I even lost my voice.  After signing for my first album, I suffered mumps.  Side effects of the challenges that soothe me and danger that strikes me.  Am I up to it?  Will I be understood?  Will I succeed again in seducing my imaginary judges?  What am I punishing myself for?  Even in the dark, there is fun.  If you're about to cry, I say  "dance".

"You'll end up in jail or famous," repeated our mother. Sometimes the two are similar, so to release you, I create.  Artist and craftsman. Creating like breathing, eating, drinking.  A commedia dell'arte to myself.  Shake this giant snow globe with music, turbulent mistress, colorful costumes and absurd sets.  A cabinet of curiosities whose origin is in these cases full of cassette tapes you classify by emotion and by color or those model theaters you passionately collected.  Create to cultivate difference, maintain joy and keep the demons in the dark. Michael sitting on the red couch saw bailiffs empty our large apartment. Michael with his bow tie and pink shorts received cans and stones on his head.  Create to keep away from gaze of the crowd the man you are. These eyes on you, on the stage of the Royal Opera of London when you sang in Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten. Those sweaty bodies screaming my name when I sang Grace Kelly at Parc des Princes.  I gave him a share of your privacy in this crowd.  I learned to trust him.  From the beginning, bit by bit in my songs while defending myself. "I don't want to be labelled, only my music counts" was my response when the curious questioned me about your sexuality.  Their insistence on sticking an immutable identity to me revolted me. Gradually, I agreed to give them your laughter, your tears, your commitments.  Our only identity is culture. The cultural bastard, like our parents said, has evolved into an eclectic aesthete.  Painting, classical music, literature, fashion hide you.

I feed on you Michael but I will protect you.  Our tribe protects us.  Strong women ... Our fighter mother sent you to the park and entrusted you to a Russian opera singer.  In English, growing up is used for both a man and a flower. Growing up, blooming with Joannie. Our fusion sisters.

     

Miraculous Paloma, who you nearly lost one night in 2010. She makes the impossible possible.

     

Yasmine,  essential illustrator of songs who enters your mind to put my imagination on paper.

Zuleika, as precious as the stones she polishes for her delicate jewelry.

     

Faithful men ...

     

Our father, present in all the key moments of life, who taught freedom.

Michael, the former hostage you called by his first name on his return from Kuwait because he was not really himself anymore.

     

Our brother who looks like you so much, Fortuné, architect born by whims of fate.

     

Finally our companion, Andy, modest, who gives me constancy despite the dangers.

All are the Archangel Gabriel meeting the Virgin in the Annunciation by Fra Angelico, on the walls of the convent of San Marco in Florence.

     

Florence, London, Paris, Los Angeles ... you remember looking at the pond in Kensington Square, you dreamed of turning into a duck, a migratory bird that can fly and swim.  Today I live from town to town,  from continent to continent. Planes have replaced the parents' white Toyota Previa.. You don't need to trick hotels anymore in order to sleep seven in one room.  I tend to be alone in a suite where the whole family and friends would be able to celebrate until dawn.  But if tomorrow everything stops, if tomorrow everything disappears, I'll recreate myself, an entertainer as comfortable in the palaces as in the slums.  I'm 36, I like the imprint of time on your skin, the traces of pain on your face. The future does not frighten you because I'm always eager.

 

With this new album bearing your name, I leave you a huge place, I go back on your steps.  I start from scratch, similar and different at the same time. For two years, I didn't write anything.  I was in my bubble, moving, on the lookout but silent.  The records, touring, promo, TV here and elsewhere, I let the pop star Mika take too much space in your life.  I had lost the spark.  The flame was rekindled again when the light was rare ... It was the white light of surgeries for my mother.  It was the dark light of farewell ceremonies. First the death of Odette , our grandmother we called mother because at 34, she considered herself too young to have grandchildren.

Finally, time won.  It also caught Bella who watched over our family in London.  My Name is Michael Holbrook was born from this period of introspection and demise.   My texts are your memories, your feelings.  My melodies are your old Polaroids that inhabit the attic.  Life will change as a transparent projected landscape behind the windows of a stationary car in a technicolor film ... Grace Kelly's blonde hair in the wind ... the volume of the car radio turned up to maximum.

     

So I took the road to the Southern United States.  Father grew up there without borders, the son of a diplomat.   Mom woke them at the end of an American dream shattered one day by the stock market crash.  In the paths of the Bonaventure cemetery in Savannah, I found all these Michael Holbrook Pennimans etched in stone.  Michael, first name written in the civil register, by paternal tradition ... Mika, first name some hours after your birth by maternal love.  We get mixed like the colors of ice cream scoops in the intense heat of the sun.  So, the enfant terrible asks the free man: "Please, remain strange. "■

     

    MICHAEL HOLBROOK PENNIMAN JR./MIKA

 

  

 

[mellody]

Another quote (English translation by Google) from a Mexian interview about Tiny Love:

 

On 11/25/2019 at 3:08 PM, Kumazzz said:

You sing “It's not a love that finds sti pleasure after pain” in “Tiny Love”. How do you come up with that line?

In any loving relationship we cause pain to appreciate the serenity and is a destructive cycle. My intention with this song was to attack the cliché of the letters of love. Suddenly, you can be with someone for a long time and you're not happy. Make you feel s**t all the time but the minute you fall, you are there to pick you up, then you replanteas everything and you're still out there even though it hurts. I always say: “don't make me seem like someone who needs to be " saved”.

 

I'd interpret that bit being about his relationship with Andy, I have in mind the picture of the TOOL artwork of Mika falling into Andy's hand, and the 2 versions of "Make You Happy".

How that connects to the other things he said about Tiny Love, no idea, I'm too confused these days to do much interpreting - but I'm adding it here as a piece of the puzzle.

 

Edit: btw I've decided meanwhile to ignore his pointing at gigs re. the meaning of a song, as that seems to be just out of a random mood - he also points at fans for "The origin is you", and that song clearly is about Andy.

[mellody]

This is a quote from the pride source interview from October, which I just re-read:

 

I went back home and I wrote this song called “Tiny Love.” It sums up the project in a good way. It’s like, I might be Michael Holbrook, born in 1983, but I can be so much more when I allow myself to be, and if I allow myself to dream to be whatever I want to be.

 

In another question of this interview, he talks about self-worth and how this is related to the people he loves - I think this makes what he said about TL in the Mexican interviews a bit clearer:

 

Has this album been cathartic for you? 

It’s an extremely cathartic piece of work for me. And it’s also a kind of provocation to myself where I realize that this idea that we spend most of our lives building our foundations on people that we love and we rely on, there comes a point when that version of your foundation starts to change or shift or disappear, and you have to do it in a different way and the only way you can do it is by knowing where you come from, by being at peace with yourself and celebrating, also, all the people around you who you love. Feeling that sense of self-worth is the only way you can have a chance of figuring out where the hell you’re going to end up. We don’t really know who we are, and anyone who says, “I know who I am” … you’re never gonna fucking know really who you are. 

 

 

[Hero]

This song is a masterpiece. That's really all I can say about it - an incredible, intriguing, challenging, referential, inclusive, magnificent, intimate masterpiece. I love it. One of his best. Bravo Mika. ❤️👏

[Mikasister]

2 hours ago, Hero said:

This song is a masterpiece. That's really all I can say about it - an incredible, intriguing, challenging, referential, inclusive, magnificent, intimate masterpiece. I love it. One of his best. Bravo Mika. ❤️👏

 

His particular Bohemian Rhapsody 

[BeccaStardust]

I really like this Song and idk what it is is but Mika singing his own name is perfect to me 

[Kumazzz]

VIMEO

 

MIKA - Tiny Love (Director’s Cut)

 

Digital media
Colour
Running time: 4mins 8secs
___________________________________________________________________
‘The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death’ -Oscar Wilde
___________________________________________________________________
Cast: Michael Holbrook, Ronke Arogundade
___________________________________________________________________
Shoot Date: Tuesday 30th July 2019
Location: 13 Dehavilland Studios, 20 Theydon Road, Hackney, London Town, E5 9NY
___________________________________________________________________
Director: WIZ
Writer: Pierre Angeligue
___________________________________________________________________
Production Company: My Accomplice Films
Exec Producer: Imogen Harrison
Directors agent: Alexa Haywood
Producer: Fred Bonham-Carter
Production Manager: Ellie Phipps
Directors Assistant: Angie Avgeri
1st Ad: Cordelia Hardy
Runner: Anniston Lewis-Rodriquez
___________________________________________________________________
Director Of Photography: Denzil Armour-Brown
1st Assistant Camera: Oleg Poupko
2nd Assistant Camera: Angela Garcia
Camera Trianee: Oscar Healey
Dit: Ashley Hicks
Grip: Sid Jones
Gaffer: Bruce Magahy
Electrician: Niall Higgins
Electrician: Andy Laenen
Electrician: Jonny Boomer
Electrician: Dave Allen

Addition Photography: DoP: Ken Eakins
___________________________________________________________________
Movement Coach: Ally Green
___________________________________________________________________
Production Designer: Lucie Red
Buyer: Lydia Hicks
Art Dept Assist: Terry Palamara
___________________________________________________________________
Costume Designer: Leonie Hartard
Costume Assist: Leena Mistry
___________________________________________________________________
Make-Up: Tracy Ejuetami
Hair: Alero Ejuteami
Artist Hair & Make Up: Geraldine Fougerat
Artist Stylist: Paloma & Yasmine
___________________________________________________________________
Stills: Ali Tollervey
___________________________________________________________________
Editor: Ed Hanbury @ Trim
___________________________________________________________________
Colourist: George Kyriacou
Post Supervisor: Guy Lubin @ Black Kite
Post Producer: Tamara Mennell
___________________________________________________________________
Camera Equipment: C/O Movietech
Contact: Jeremy Sassen

Lighting Equipment: C/O Panalux
Contact: Chris Cowan

Catering: C/O Jones & Sons