Winded shoot “Double Memoir” video alone on a phone during a Miami lunar eclipseOn the night of March 2nd, Thrin Vianale sat on their couch in Miami as the total lunar eclipse in Virgo approached. They bit a corner off a magic mushroom chocolate, picked up their phone, and went outside to make a music video.
The result is the visual for “Double Memoir,” a stand-alone Winded single released May 13 on Hot Stuff Records‘ “Severe Weather” compilation. Vianale (they/them), who started Winded in 2016 as a solo project in a Florida State University dorm room before expanding into a full band by 2018, shot and edited the entire thing themselves between 11pm and 2:30am.
“I was reading that this eclipse in particular, which was in the sign of Virgo, was an eclipse that signified a release of outdated habits, a shedding of perfectionism, and a ‘karmic shift’ of sorts,” Vianale says. “I thought that trying to make something that embraced breaking away, imperfection, and doing the best you can with what you have would be a nice homage to the moment.”
Vianale’s townhouse complex in Miami, perpetually under construction and full of friendly cats, became the set. They ran between buildings and around the parking lot capturing their own shadow, hiding behind corners every time the security guard’s golf cart whizzed past. The cat that appears in the video showed up at the end of the shoot. Vianale hung out with him afterward instead of finishing up immediately. They had never seen that cat before and haven’t seen him since.
The whole shoot ran about 90 minutes. Editing went until 2:30am, and Vianale tried to stay awake for the actual total eclipse at 6:30am but gave up.
Lyrically, “Double Memoir” is about finding chosen family when your biological family rejects you. It’s the first time Vianale has addressed the subject through music. “Writing Double Memoir was my reminder to myself that I can be the loving parent to myself that I always needed,” they say. “It’s my hope that it can be an empowering message that in demoting the opinions and influences of a toxic family, you can create yourself to be whoever you want to be.”
“The shadow felt like a decent companion to this song, as it is something you can’t necessarily run away from,” Vianale says. “The experiences I’ve had of neglect and abuse feel like something that, at times, casts a long shadow over me. Things that follow me around that I have no control over. Something that is kind of always with me. I guess the only control you have over your shadow is to stay in darkness, which while being a great setting to listen to Sacrament by Lamb of God, isn’t a great place to stay forever.”
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Sacrament by Lamb of God was on repeat the days leading up to the shoot. Vianale grew up in a religious household, and the band helped them process some of the religious trauma from that period. Around the same time, they were reading Dostoyevsky’s “The Double,” a novel about a man encountering his doppelganger and being driven into madness as the double becomes a better version of him and replaces him.
“The song isn’t really about a doppelganger, but more how we relate to parts of ourselves, and the challenge of separating oneself from one’s history,” Vianale explains.
“I have always been very interested in the idea of ‘doubles’, double meanings, double yolks in an egg, that kind of thing. The ‘double’ of Double Memoir might be the version of myself that I am now and the version I would have been if I hadn’t endured certain experiences. This is a topic that I’ve talked to a lot of people about over the years, that question of ‘what would I have been if x hadn’t happened?’ I haven’t found that line of inquiry to be very helpful personally, but I do think it’s something that a lot of people feel a sense of grief or confusion about. And I don’t think we acknowledge that very much.”
One sequence got cut. Vianale had filmed their eyeball moving back and forth, planning to overlay it on other shots, but dropped it. “I didn’t want my face in the video at all; I felt like it made it too tangible. And it made me nauseous. I wanted the video to have a sense of being behind a veil, in a liminal space sort of, because for me that’s where I go sometimes when I try to make sense of traumatic past experiences.”
The mirror effect at the end of the video, which splits the shots in half, was the closest the visuals came to a literal reading of the song. “The idea of the double or divided self is something that made a lot of sense to me when I was editing the video,” Vianale says.
The choice to truly DIY the project, no director, no editor, no help, tracked with what the song was about. Vianale points to the final lyrics:
Let me put it plainly
I always turn back toward myself
I couldn’t lean on you,
I always turn back toward myself
“Double Memoir” sits adjacent to where Winded are heading. LP3, currently in progress, is heavier, faster, and more rhythm-driven than anything the band has released so far. “I kind of wish Double Memoir was on it,” Vianale says.
Their discography so far includes 2018 debut “Schwartz Goes to Heaven,” recorded with David Settle (Ex-Breathers, The Fragiles), and 2022’s “Schwartz Provides,” recorded with Dan Maddalone and largely self-tracked by Vianale. In 2024 they released the “Double Single” (tracks “Wish on the Mezzanine” and “Mercy 27”), recorded with Jonathan Nuñez (Torche, Shitstorm) at Sound Artillery Studio. Dan Goldin at Post-Trash wrote that the band “bring a dense fuzz and muscular resolve to the enormous melodic hooks” of those tracks, “as sugary and sweet as they are crushing and distorted.”
Between recording sessions Winded have played SXSW, Community Records Block Party, and The Fest.
On the song itself, Vianale says: “This song is the first time that I have ever addressed this topic through music, and it is a relief to release it to the world with the hopes that I can empower someone who has been or is in a similar situation. Keep going <3.”
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