In my younger days, while still finding my home in various barracks, berthings, and temp lodgings that the USMC had vacancy in, I existed in a pattern. Work hard, play harder, lather, rinse, repeat. Most of my early songs will focus on the play hard part of my life, because I believe it may have been the most transformative part to what I am today. Songs about looking for love in all the wrong places are nothing new, but my contribution to the musical tapestry is steeped in scumbaggery, and has a unique twist in not quite finding a happy ending.
Her Memory Dances in my Head exists because there used to be a day where the solution to any problem was to go out with my friends, often to places of ill repute, and attempt to find solace in the neon lights, booze, and women. I say “attempt” because looking back, there were far more failures than conquests, and I am 100% ok with looking back and laughing about it now.
Verse 1 describes me as the clumsy protagonist who becomes infatuated with a woman at a venue, and is ready to lose his mind, values, and religion in order to get a shot. Suspend all your judgement as I reveal the next part. I may, or may not be talking about a gentlemen's club in South Texas, or Deja Vu in Seattle, or Meow Meows in Mexicali. It may have occurred more than once. Who really knows. For the sake of the song, we will just call it a nightclub, and the woman was jut a random girl on the dance floor. In Spanish the word for the phenomenon is known as “empelotado.” In english, infatuation with whats inform of my very eyes.
If my heart still beats, and there is a breath in my lungs, I can still see the image of this figure dancing in my head. Have you seen from Dusk Till Dawn? Picture Salma Hayek before she goes Nosferatu on that ass. It is glorious! With so many lingering emotions from previous failed relationships and hopes for a future, even for a second with the girl of my dreams, her memory dances in my head.
Verse 2 introduces the character of a good friend that we all have. The one that teaches you a method for getting over a heartbreak. Sometimes helpful guides to betterment and self improvement, or in my case, let’s drink until we are numb. Then we get back out there an meet someone new. My dumbass would eventually find a way to deviate from the codes and plans, and end up doing the same old thing.
In the bridge I include a classic literary reference. Dante’s Inferno describes the 2nd circle of hell as a place where the condemned should are violently tossed around by the strong winds of violent storms, without rest. This symbolizes the power of lust to blow needlessly and aimlessly: "as the lovers drifted into self-indulgence and were carried away by their passions, so now they drift for ever. The bright, voluptuous sin is now seen as it is – a howling darkness of helpless discomfort”. A bit extreme, but fitting given that for various stints in my life, I was just going for excess.
My heart is still beating, my lungs are still breathing, the song is repeating, and her memory dances in my head. Now it serves as a reminder of one of the most futile and spectacular wastes of my time. Although I have very fond memories of the events and friendships during these failed expeditions, in my head there is a burned image symbolic of the elusive white rabbit I was chasing, to no avail, all along.