Old Love 🌸 Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers (Official Music Video) | A Samurai Love Story - 2025

🌸 “Old Love” is a story of forbidden devotion — a tragic tale of two samurai, torn by war yet bound by love.

Set in a world inspired by the Japanese folktale *The Chrysanthemum Pledge*, this song and music video explore the beauty that can emerge from sorrow and the timeless power of a promise kept, even beyond death. The song is approaching nearing 20 million streams across Spotify and Apple Music!

📲 Text Joe & Caleb (ask us anything, we’ll probably respond before 4am):
⭐️ 248-609-3487 ⭐️

Amid the aftermath of a brutal battle, two warriors from opposing factions meet and fall deeply in love. In their fragile truce, they discover humanity and tenderness. They pledge to return to each other once the chrysanthemums bloom again. But fate intervenes. War pulls them apart — and when the bloom comes, one takes their life in anguished solitude. Upon entering the afterlife, he’s reunited with his lover, who made the same sacrifice. A tragic, eternal vow fulfilled.

✨ Directed and animated by Portland-based artist *Paul Zito**, this video was created using more than **15,000 hand-cut paper pieces* and took nearly *four months* of painstaking stop-motion work to complete. Paul’s attention to detail and emotional sensitivity turned “Old Love” into more than a song — it became a cinematic poem.

🎧 STREAM “OLD LOVE”:
→ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3UEliw...
→ Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/old-...
→ Bandcamp: https://joehertler.bandcamp.com/track...
→ Full Album (*Terra Incognita*): https://biglink.to/pluto

🌀 TOUR DATES, MERCH & EXTRAS:
→ https://joehertler.com

🎥 More Rainbow Seekers Music Videos:
→ https://fanlink.to/jhvids

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🎙️ A NOTE FROM JOE:

When I wrote “Old Love,” I was thinking about the kind of love that survives everything — war, duty, even death. It’s rooted in *The Chrysanthemum Pledge*, a folktale that I found beautiful and haunting in its subtlety. I wanted to write a song that honored both the tragedy and the deep humanity at its core — that love, even when it's forbidden or doomed, can be tender, sacred, and true.

Working with Paul Zito was an absolute dream. His creative process blew me away. He took this story and infused it with emotional nuance, using a medium that’s rare and deeply personal: handmade stop-motion. He made every frame by hand — no AI, no CGI shortcuts — just paper, light, and grit. You can feel the soul in his work.


--LYRICS--

we met on the battlefield
drank from the ladle by the moon
the blood expanded cross the field
like chrysanthemums in bloom
is there really so much to fear
when we’re all just taking sides
work it out, seek it out,
work it out, uh oh

a promise is a promise
will you finish what you started
i was born to believe, that the change of leaves
could really mean anything, love
i’d cross the mountains and the ocean for ya
just to see ya

i need that old love
and i’m swimming in the dark
i need that cold love
and i'm frozen from the start

i strained my eyes to see
but it was too dark inside and out
how i long to hear you breath
how i long to hear you sound
i so wish to understand
these pangs of solitude
maybe my sword will be peace
will it place me next to you

a promise is a promise
will you finish what you started
i was born to believe, that the change of leaves
could really mean anything, love
i’d cross the mountains and the ocean for ya
just to see you

oh i fear what i have become
lord will they forgive me
all i got left is love
lord with they forget me
i’ll go to the forest with a samurai sword
and I'll spill out all of my love

i strained my eyes to see
but it was too dark inside and out
how i long to hear you breath
how i long to hear you sound
i so wish to understand
these pangs of solitude
maybe my sword will bring me peace
will it place me next to you

small rose blooms turned in the water
as my body fell to the side, but i fell deeper
into the silt of your love, silently waiting
for your infinite embrace, and there i floated
with your arms around me, closing on the distance
eternity is in us now that you're by my side
each sensation is a memory from our lives?

---

Directed and Animated by Paul Zito (http://paulthomaszito.com)
Written by Joe Hertler and Paul Zito

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