Silence is not static, it demands impermanence. And there is a kind of scream that is not born from fear. It is born when something inside us finally refuses to remain silent.
For that is precisely what Anna Figueiredo’s article (linked in the sources at the end) is about the music video “Everybody Scream” by Florence + The Machine.
For centuries, it was enough for a woman to escape her expected role for her to become suspicious. Widows, midwives, women who inherited property, who lived alone, or who simply spoke too much could be accused of witchcraft.
It is within this context that Florence Welch’s music video enters. Director Autumn de Wilde took all this symbolism of oppression and subverted it in a scene where the witches are the ones who liberate.
One of the most striking scenes in the video happens when Florence spits out a pansy. Coincidentally, I embroidered a pansy during a Clube do Bordado meeting this year.
The pansy has been associated with thought since the French tradition. Its name there is pensée, a word that means precisely “thought” or “remembrance.” For centuries, offering this flower meant saying: “I am thinking of you.”
Thus, the scene involving the appearance of the flower seems to transform repressed thought into visible matter.
The screams cease to represent possession or suffering. They become a collective ritual of liberation and it is not just one woman screaming, but an entire chorus.
As I watched the video, I realized that this idea also runs through the writing of this blog.
When the song brings together witchcraft, medicine, harvest, and needle, I feel as if several threads of this very blog meet at the same point. For months I have been writing about plants, cycles, healing, and embroidery. Perhaps I never realized that all these paths led exactly here.
“The witchcraft, the medicine, the spells and the injections
The harvest, the needle protect me from evil”
This work reminds us that the voice can also be a form of magic. And that some wounds only begin to heal after they finally find sound.
- DE ALMEIDA FIGUEIREDO, A. F. O poder do grito e a liberação da raiva feminina: a estética do monstruoso e do grotesco presente em Everybody Scream de Florence + The Machine. Sacrilegens, [S. l.], v. 22, n. 3, p. 58–79, 2026. (Suggested reading here)
- Hutton, R. (2017). The witch: A history of fear, from ancient times to the present. Yale University Press. (Suggested book here)
- Welch, F. (2018). Useless magic: Lyrics and poetry. Crown Archetype. (Suggested book here)
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