The idea for this experiment first came to me when I was 13 years old. I had a blog on Tumblr, which at the time was the hipster basement of the internet — full of underground indie music, aesthetic dreamworlds, bad poetry, and a secret solidarity club of misunderstood teenage girls. 

The anonymous ask box feature soon became my best friend. One day, on a whim, I posted: “Give me a story, I’ll give you a song.”

Little did I know that this little challenge of creating songs from the anonymous stories of strangers would become a catalyst for my own self-expression that would follow me into my late twenties, nearly fifteen years later.

I went on to study music in college and graduate school, before dropping out of my M.F.A. program at NYU during the onset of the pandemic. In between countless odd jobs, a battle with mental health, and a long creative drought, Project Muse sat on the shelf, waiting until now.

After a five-year hiatus, I’m returning to music with same intention: to become a vessel for the music that lives within us all. My hope is that we may draw inspiration from the raw beauty of our ordinary lives and become a muse for each other.

Thank you for this collaboration.

-Elyse

Hi, my name is Elyse

Writer | Composer | Creator of Project Muse