Katabasis

I've always been obsessed with the journey into the underworld—katabasis. There's even a word for it in Greek, this descent into death's domain to retrieve what was lost. Growing up on Greek and Roman mythology, I loved these stories of mortals challenging the gods, crossing the thin veil between life and death. The hubris. The love so powerful it makes you believe you can break the rules of the cosmos itself.

Katabasis is my gender-swapped musical retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, where she makes the journey to retrieve him. I can see every scene as I wrote it—a woman standing in a hospital room refusing to accept death, challenging the gods themselves, descending into the underworld with righteous fury and unshakeable certainty. My dream would be to turn this into an animated musical like Corpse Bride or Coco, films that understood death doesn't have to be the end of love.

The musical style was inspired by Cirque du Soleil's Alegría—my absolute favorite performance and a spectacle of sound and visuals like no other. I saw it as a kid and never forgot that carnival magic, that operatic grandeur. This album opens like street cabaret, introducing the ancient tale to prepare the audience. Then we meet Thanatos, the oft-ignored god of death reimagined as a guide tasked with a job he doesn't choose. He doesn't decide which souls must go—he simply escorts them when their time arrives.

But at its heart, this is a story about grief. In a meta-narrative way, her physical journey into the underworld mirrors the emotional journey through loss—denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance. This continues from Glittering Gothic (about transcending death through immortality and Faustian bargains) to explore what comes after: learning to let go, to live again, so our memories can keep those we love alive. Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.” We need to live to carry the names of those we love forward, to keep them alive in memory.

This album needed to sound like Cirque du Soleil—French carnival waltz meets ethereal operatic electronic. Accordion flourishes and circus brass in the opening track, establishing we're watching a theatrical performance of ancient myth. Music box interludes throughout, reminding us this is a story being told, a show being performed.

But then the production shifts as she descends—Byzantine chants and Baroque harpsichord for Hades' regal pronouncements on cosmic order. Theremin wails and orchestral thunderstorms for Divine Fury where she challenges heaven itself. Hypnotic dark waltzes with church organ for crossing the River Styx. Glass-like percussion and crystalline bells for The Backward Glance—that critical moment of doubt that dooms everything.

The tempos range from 72 BPM intimate piano ballads to 155 BPM aggressive symphonic metal, matching the emotional journey through grief. Vocal styles shift from soaring soprano to haunting whispers to fierce declarations, from male ringmaster introducing the tale to female protagonist and male love's ethereal echoes to chorus of souls offering wisdom. This is operatic storytelling—mythological grandeur applied to the universal human experience of learning to live after loss.