Muscle Memory: Channeling the Inner High Priestess
If you’ve been following along with all my single releases and accompanying essays over the last several months, first let me thank you for taking this journey with me and for taking the time listen and read. Secondly, you may have noticed the threads I’m trying to weave together with the songs and artwork. With the upcoming release of Muscle Memory, it finally feels like enough of the pieces are fitting together that you can get a sense of the whole picture.
Both the songs and cards chosen tell a story of personal development, a progression from naiveté and self-doubt to empowerment and self-actualization. All the cards were chosen from the Fools Journey cycle with the help of Kiki Dombrowski and most of the songs were written as I processed the end of an emotionally abusive relationship and the exciting but frightening process of falling in love again. Musically, I also tied many of the songs together with repeated rhythmic themes (although I suspect this is one of those super subtle, obsessive details no one but myself will notice). Muscle Memory, the High Priestess card, and the accompanying artwork feel more unified than any of the preceding releases.
Muscle Memory marks a turning point, a moment of clarity as the protagonist steps out of the fog of grief and emotional abuse. Any breakup involves a cycle of grief; even in a healthy relationship, we develop habits that are shaped by our partner, whether that’s pouring two cups of coffee in the morning or leaving space for their keys on hook by the door. At the end of my four year relationship, I had a lot of habits to break, many that were more internalized self-talk than physical practices.
This became extremely apparent to me one night when my former neighbor posted on Facebook about their basement flooding due to heavy rain. The basement of the home I shared with my ex had flooded previously during heavy rain and I - knowing that he was out of town and I had obviously moved out - started to panic. No one was there to deal with it, nor had I been there to wash all the towels and sheets so who knew if there were enough of those nor had I been restocking the paper towels, and last time I had been the one to figure out the wet vac rental and…
I texted my friend Laura who would regularly petsit for us to ask if she’d been by the place recently and she shut me down. She calmly reminded me that none of this was my problem or my business anymore. I lay awake worrying about all of it for a while, but eventually fell asleep with Laura’s words repeating in my head like a mantra.
After this, I started more actively shedding the habits and thought patterns I had developed in my relationship. Letting go of that baggage gave me space for other things: anger, rediscovering my identity, pursuing my art without someone telling me how pointless it was or how insignificant my progress was - and more anger when I realized I’d allowed someone to treat me that way or so long.
The chorus came easily, but “I no longer care if your basement floods” and “I’m booking a bunch of Pagan festivals so fuck you” don’t sing well and I had to turn to my bag of writing tricks to transform this particular experience into a song. One of my favorite techniques - especially when I already have a title, theme, or chorus - is to do a couple rounds of word association. I made a list of habits couples might develop: two coffee cups in the morning, sleeping on one side of the bed, buying certain things at the grocery store. I picked the ones that rang the most true to my experience (and were easy to rhyme). It did take me a while to embrace starfishing all over the mattress; I didn’t have clothes my ex disapproved of but it did take a while for me to feel attractive after months of put-downs.
There’s something particularly cathartic and empowering about singing about your experience. Maybe it’s the magic of reducing something as big as an emotion to a three-minute song, much like how my mother would have me “shrink the monsters” until they were small enough to squish when I was little and having nightmares. Maybe the sense of completion at the end of a song slowly grows to a sense of completion in real life. Who knows! But it felt great to sing.
I stepped into the studio with a lot of opinions about how I wanted this song to sound. Luckily for me, producer Nick is both patient and imminently creative. With the added talents of Aaron Shafer-Haiss on drums, Keenan-Keaton Payne on bass, and Greg Herndon on keys/organ; Nick brought my stacked-vocal pop dream to fruition and then lapped my expectations a thousand times over. It’s the sparkly, summery, 80’s-inspired bop I always hoped it would be - and then some!
As for the art; with the help of Kiki Dombrowski, I settled on the High Priestess card as the (frankly, perfect) pairing for this song. The High Priestess - or La Papesse - brings some strong divine feminine energy and represents intuition, the subconscious mind, and sacred knowledge. Often, relearning to trust our intuition is part of the moving-on process after a breakup - especially if there was emotional abuse in the relationship.
The song lyric only touches on the surface level of what “muscle memory” means after a relationship; the examples of habits I include are benign and fairly generic. The High Priestess and evening color palette deepens the meaning. She asks us to unlearn the muscle memory we may have developed to ignore our feelings, to constantly second guess ourselves; she reminds us to pay attention to which parts of our self-talk are coming from ourselves and which parts are an unfortunate parting gift from a past partner.
Before I close, I want to acknowledge that the discussion around this song and the next one may be kind of… heavy, but I think it’s an important discussion to have. Over the last couple of years, I’ve encountered a lot of people - primarily women - who have experienced almost identical treatment from a partner. If you find yourself in a similar situation, I want you to know that you’re not alone and that you neither deserve nor have to tolerate that treatment. No partner should make you feel less-than. No partner should tell you you’re worthless. No partner should make you feel crazy, or cause you to second-guess every thought or emotion you have. That is not a healthy, loving relationship. You deserve to be treated with respect and love. If you are struggling to find resources to leave or feel unsafe, start here: https://www.thehotline.org They have excellent resources and have safe guards in place if you’re concerned that your partner may monitor your internet usage or retaliate if you seek help.
With that said, I hope you enjoy this deceptively boppy song when it releases on Friday, September 25!
Love yourself, love those around you, trust yourself (but also science so wear a damn mask, y’all). Be the love you want to see in the world.
Melanie