14 December 2022 - 0 Comments

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.

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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.

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