"Velveteen", the third single off Miriam's forthcoming LP Black Heart,
New album Black Heart out 20 January 2023
"Velveteen" is a musically rich track, dense with layers of instrumentation and vocal crescendo; lyrically, it delves into heavy terrain, exposing the emotional fragility of the years of childhood abuse that Miriam suffered. This song is Miriam reckoning with trauma, exposing us to the fine line that separates recovery from falling into the abyss. Yet Miriam has risen, a phoenix from the ashes, refusing to be consumed by a bleak existence.
To arrive at the doorstep of "Velveteen" was a process. Miriam says, "I ripped my heart out and put it in a song. This is the weight of Complex-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it's a shit gift that keeps on giving and its hard, tiring work. So many people live like this and often they sail under the radar, but saying "I see the light underneath your door" is stating the precious obvious, for many are we. And I want to believe that I can live in splendor, wrapped in the beauty and security of velveteen. That it's close -I can feel it coming.
"I wrote this song crying into the keys of an old jazz-bar piano in our apartment in Queens, far away from Aotearoa New Zealand as I began a reckoning with my childhood abuse, neglect and mishandling by the authorities. All while attempting to throw water on the wildfire of justified anger burning in me.
"It is a tightrope walk, leaning on a mystery shoulder of faith just to tame that hunt for vengeance and to try to find a way through the valley. I had on loop the refrain "I'm living in splendor, I'm living in velveteen" ... hoping to believe it, fake it til I make it. I wrote this into Velveteen and my own manifesto that I may have been let down and abandoned - but I won't do that, I will break the chain. I might be a human torch blazing an endless raging flame, but I will break the chain.
Miriam recorded "Velveteen" with her band in their Brooklyn studio, drawing from the heyday of 90's female alt-pop songwriters. Musically, it was important for her to keep the feminine thread strong in contrast to the grunge of the droning middle 8 over the semi-industrial beat, and under the syncopated piano. Miriam says, "I'm stoked with the result. They were all the best guys to have around me when feeling fragile getting this song in the can."
Velveteen: The video
Armed with a huge recently-acquired file from the Wellington Police headquarters - after plummeting a hundred times over I decided to use this triggering trail of tears as an IRL art piece to pull the thorn out of my heart and to lean into the rage which all my life I had been conditioned to believe is undesirable and inappropriate. In this video, you see 20+ pages of evidence, reports and statements on a wall, in an old Pennsylvanian railway yard where old train parts are stashed. On the wall is a hand-drawn map of a house which I drew many years ago for my original statement to the cops when they asked me to show where some of the assault happened.
At odds with the stark industrial wasteland - the beautiful pink piano is my safe space, my waka - the vessel that carried me, for music has indeed saved me - it gave me a portal of hope, a door to walk through when it all hurt too much. The words on the wall hang large and invade my view of life with its bollocks 'logic', gendered victim-shaming, and overall big-man bias. So with my trusty sledgehammer I do what needs to be done for myself - and for those after me. Because I am a woman and this is the crossing.
Miriam's closing statement to this press release, and a message to the Police, and to greater New Zealand society are words written by her lawyer at Shine Australia/New Zealand to the Independent Police Complaints Authority: "it is unclear how a minor's complaint of such a serious nature could get so botched... Police owe it to the children who are brave enough to come forward with sexual assault claims to investigate them to the best of their ability."