Moth Wings: Time + Distance = Nostalgia

Performing as a singer-songwriter often means I share my most personal moments with a crowd of strangers, whether that’s through a song or stage banter. Don’t get me wrong, I fictionalize plenty (never let the truth get in the way of a good story, as they say in the writer’s rooms of Nashville), but there’s a thread of truth in every lyric. Over the years, I’ve found the songs that feel the most personal, the most like I’ve poured my soul directly onto the page, tend to be the ones that go over like a lead balloon on stage. Moth Wings is the exception that proves the rule.

Despite having lived in Nashville for six years now, it has never quite felt like home. I had a surprising amount of culture shock when I first moved to the South and continue to have moments of feeling wildly out of place all these years later. At least no one’s calling me a “papist” anymore (mostly because I’ve learned not to identify myself as Catholic rather than Pagan because apparently Catholics are Pagans anyway [insert sarcasm here]).

Italian food was the default where I grew up; I kind of assumed it was “American food”. Here in Tennessee, it’s a struggle find the ingredients I’m familiar with and when I do they’re limited, expensive, and lumped in with the “Latin American food,” which is how they label all international food at my neighborhood Kroger. (Yes, ramen is Latin American food according to my local grocer.) I hadn’t expected moving to a different region to feel so much like moving to a different country, and - while this feeling has faded significantly - I recognize that I’ll always be a stranger in a strange land while living in Tennessee.

Here’s some vintage ‘90’s Melanie for you.

This feeling of un-belonging waxes and wanes, but there’s always a dull hollowness where a part of my heart should be, a sense that part of myself is lost 1,500 miles away. Two years ago, this feeling of loss and distance hit its peak. I was nearing the end of a toxic relationship that had become increasingly isolating. He didn’t like my friends, I constantly had to run interference between him and my family, he disliked both my Unitarian church community and my Druid grove, and didn’t want to go out and do anything with me but resented me for going out without him. I’m not sure if he intended to isolate me, but it was the end result.

This general malaise is what birthed Moth Wings. Sitting on the couch a thousand mile away from the place and people that shaped me in the house I shared with someone whose verbal abuse was slowly chipping away at my identity, self-confidence, and relationships, I wrote this song. I usually need to put something down and come back to it, but Moth Wings just fell out of the guitar in one sitting.

At the time, I assumed it was a cathartic throw-away song. After all, who would want to hear about coloring with my childhood friend Emily (who I was convinced was somehow my cousin until we were about 10 years old) while her grandmother Mary made her signature baked lasagna in the kitchen with the little pass-through window? Who would care about playing make-believe games inspired by whichever fantasy series my friend Caroline was reading at the time? Or playing in the woods with my other friend, conveniently also named Caroline? And how could something I wrote in 20 minutes be good enough?

It turns out, those experiences and the feeling of loss as I drift farther away from them in time and space is more universal than I could have imagined. So many of us live hundreds if not thousands of miles from the places we grew up and - despite the supposed magic of social media - it’s only slightly less difficult to stay in touch with the people we leave behind than it was in the age of landlines and snail-mail. All of us experience loss and sometimes a feeling of lost identity as the older people in our lives pass on. All of us grow up and some of us are lucky enough to look back longingly at our childhoods.

Some vintage travel with Dad.

Now more than ever, as the world teeters on the cusp of monumental change - a renewed fight for racial equity, a push for economic justice, a pandemic, apocalyptic climate change, and a terrifying turn towards fascism here in the United States - I suspect many of us find ourselves making the occasional retreat into nostalgia. I fluctuate between hope towards a dramatic change for the better and fear that we’ll finally fall off the edge of the proverbial cliff. The future feels so uncertain that my escapism often leads me to reminiscing.

I hope this song - and the artwork - touches something in you. I didn’t directly model the figures off the folks mentioned in the song, but I leaned into the grandmotherly-vibes of The Empress. With the help of my incredibly talented, witchy friend Kiki Dombrowski, we chose the nurturing, feminine energies of the Empress as a perfect pairing for Moth Wings. The color palette is pulled from a photo of a beach at sunset, symbolizing the narrator’s journey into their inner world and personal development, and the muted jewel tones felt perfect for a song about memory and reflection.

Even more important than the art is the creativity contributed by the musicians who played on the track (I’m looking at you Aaron Schafer-Haiss, Keenan-Keaton Payne, and Greg Herndon) and producer Nick Bullock. This is one of those songs that Nick truly worked his magic on. I know some of the parts are my voice, but I don’t remember singing them. He truly transformed the song in a way I could have never expected or imagined and I love it.

And I hope you love it too! You can check it out this weekend and hear it played live during my fundraising stream (this time we’ll be supporting BLM), this Saturday at 3PM CST.

Stay safe, stay well, be good to yourselves and your neighbors!

Love,
Melanie