Latvia LATVIA 2024 - Dons - Hollow

[ESC United Mod Team]

 

[Lance Esgard]

Although I didn't connect with part of the staging (Jamala's tree of life turned into a background GIF on repeat), there was something very relatable to me about Don's performance. To me, at least, there was something refreshingly authentic about how he came across as more down-to-earth. Both in terms of the lyrics but also in terms of how he carried himself on stage.

 

[toinou03]

Obviously, happy that managed to qualify... for the third time in 15 years...
Solid song, solid singer, commanding the stage. Well done !

 

[Celka]

I did not connect with the staging at all, the gigantic prop is barely used and the costume is clashing with the tone of the song and the purple lights.
However, the singing was spot-on and this is a powerful song.

 

[Lumina]

Even if people don’t like to hear it:
the staging from what I’ve heard was an important solidarity sign to Israel.

Dons' hometown was Latvia‘s biggest community of Jews (who were slaughtered there in WW2) and Dons is religious; he shared a picture of that church there hanging in Latvian museum on his IG.

Eden‘s father is Latvian and Dons used the same blue hearts in each of his posts as Israelis use in theirs as blue (and white) are their national colors.

On his IG he‘s seen wearing a Tshirt with a tree that can be found in Israel‘s desert and he used the Tree of Life (garden Eden) as his background.

The butterfly shape of Latvia that he was talking about in the press conference was possibly referring the national butterfly of the State of Israel in 2023.

Wonder why Dons used purple in his staging as well as Tali and Eden‘s hair and fingernails? Because in Tel Aviv there is purple lighting / lamps in town.

Israel got points from the Latvian jury in the GF (one of the few juries who awarded points to Israel) and Latvia was placed next to Israel.

Dons wrote on his IG (because Eden was not in his video) that he would have loved to show when he hugged her but his camera girl was not with him at that moment (because most artists were strictly separated from Eden and it shouldn’t be shown to the public to prevent artists from getting hate).

I told you, most artists were in friendly terms with Eden and Israel, it was just not shown because of the strict policies to keep Israel away from anybody. I have insider infos that may come up one day.

 

[Celka]

Even if I did feel like solidarity to Israel is a good thing (which honestly I don't)....
That staging was just subpar. The facts that there might be easter eggs does not raise its quality. A well-designed performance should be possible to appreciate without extra reading.

 

[Lumina]

I think that tree was awesome! Dons is a very calm, super nice, unbiased guy. The way he asked for peace was beautiful even though people thought he was talking about Palestine only (he said "country“ and Latvia does not recognize Palestine as a country). To me he was trying to say with "free“ that Israel can finally be let alone and live in a country where Jews are welcomed, that they can live freely from their oppressors around them. He said that in the nicest way to piss nobody off. He‘s a good heart. And I believe that he wants Palestinians to live in peace too. That peace tree symbol was a great move.

 

[mauve]

Even if people don’t like to hear it:
the staging from what I’ve heard was an important solidarity sign to Israel.

Dons' hometown was Latvia‘s biggest community of Jews (who were slaughtered there in WW2) and Dons is religious; he shared a picture of that church there hanging in Latvian museum on his IG.

Eden‘s father is Latvian and Dons used the same blue hearts in each of his posts as Israelis use in theirs as blue (and white) are their national colors.

On his IG he‘s seen wearing a Tshirt with a tree that can be found in Israel‘s desert and he used the Tree of Life (garden Eden) as his background.

The butterfly shape of Latvia that he was talking about in the press conference was possibly referring the national butterfly of the State of Israel in 2023.

Wonder why Dons used purple in his staging as well as Tali and Eden‘s hair and fingernails? Because in Tel Aviv there is purple lighting / lamps in town.

Israel got points from the Latvian jury in the GF (one of the few juries who awarded points to Israel) and Latvia was placed next to Israel.

Dons wrote on his IG (because Eden was not in his video) that he would have loved to show when he hugged her but his camera girl was not with him at that moment (because most artists were strictly separated from Eden and it shouldn’t be shown to the public to prevent artists from getting hate).

I told you, most artists were in friendly terms with Eden and Israel, it was just not shown because of the strict policies to keep Israel away from anybody. I have insider infos that may come up one day.

I thought you wanted to stop writing on this forum? Can you please stop this political nonsense? Can you look for another place where you can discuss these things?

Just to let you know - for the first time I reported someone. Enough is enough.

 

[Celka]

I took the time to look a little bit at some of your “Easter eggs” to see if I should discredit your whole argumentation.

Blue is just the colour he chose to use to represent himself and that song (as early as beginning of September).

And the tree of life is just a general archetype that exists in a lot of the world’s mythologies and religions (Yggdrasil in Norse cosmology for exemple).

Looks to me that you are just reshaping elements to fit into your political agenda.

On another note: what do you people think about the Latvian version of the song?

 

[Alevender]

tl;dr

Honey, most of it is nothing but your fantasy. It is what you want it to be but in reality it is not. As a Latvian I can confirm that almost nothing that you mentioned in your post is true and it is once again you being desperate

By the way the sky is also blue today

 

[BernadetteCydonia]

I personally think that we're gonna have to keep qualifying Baltic states until all of them have a song in their native language in the finals.

2009 was close for us all to have entries in native language in general because the songs in native language ended up winning (for Lithuania it was more important to have a song in Lithuanian winning because of our anniversary apparently), however only one remained in native language (Estonia's) while Lithuania and Latvia changed their languages to English/Russian and Russian respectively. GG guys...

And @ symbolism; y'all people find anything vaguely connected to what you think represents what and yell "OMG IT REPRESENTS MY FAVOURITE THING!!!", well let me ask you, do you think "Ramonda" is secretly a pro-Israeli message song too just because ramondas are purple? Yeah no, that's what I thought.

 

[Milos-BC]

A decent result for a song that I was really glad to listen to once more in the final. I wish Dons the best of luck in his career, he looks like such a wonderful person.