Melissa Auf Der Maur Is Hunting For Heart

OOOM.

No, that's not the sound of a mispronounced Buddhist chant. OOOM is the acronym for Out Of Our Minds, the title of Melissa Auf Der Maur's new multimedia project that's part novel, part album and part film and is out March 30.

"I went to F.A.C.E. School, Fine Arts Core Education. I then went to M.I.N.D. high school, Moving In New Directions. Someone recently pointed out I really like those acronyms," Auf Der Maur says.

Any PR or advertising person will tell you if you can come up with a good acronym, you'll have an easier time selling your product. And it's unlikely anyone will forget an acronym like "OOOM," which might be why Auf Der Maur — who's using the acronym MADM to promote her record — says they're "fast and to the point."

"It's the language and symbolism used the same way I love Vikings for what they are; they are a symbol of pagan warriors and not necessarily the specific," Auf Der Maur says.

"I like that OOOM invokes a concept without it being to literal but then behind OOOM is Out Of Our Minds which effectively 'means don't be so literal.' It's helpful to be able to break things down to more symbolic terms."

Out Of Our Minds is the culmination of three years of work, and it's not surprising that Auf Der Maur brings up pagan warriors and Vikings. Out Of Our Minds is a project that's rooted in fantasy.

But before you go thinking it's full of Orcs, Middle Earth and elves, it's got as much to do with the make-believe as it does with what Auf Der Maur calls an "eternal female force."

The Tony Stone-directed film portion of Out Of Our Minds was recently screened with an exhibit of works by J.W. Waterhouse at Montreal's Museum Of Fine Arts. Auf Der Maur says there's a clear connection between Waterhouse's work and her own.

"This whole project, OOOM, becoming this multimedia experience has a lot to do with me as a musician returning to my visual arts roots, and it's a natural extension of where I was at at 19 in my art history class understanding the Pre-Raphaelites movement; understanding the language and the aesthetic they were using to explore magic, women, archetypes, knights, there's an aesthetic similarity and the theme of the new woman.

"Waterhouse was obsessed with the idea of what was the new woman in magic and in real-life at the turn of the century, and he was fascinated with the power of women. And OOOM — if you really want to know and I don't know how much you can fit in this — the root of it, the film and the storyline, is about an eternal female force on the hunt for the heart — meaning the hunt for magic, the hunt for love, the hunt for whatever you think the heart is.

"The theme of the film is about one woman who travels through time to all these different places, and Waterhouse's stories always feature a woman as the centrepiece."

Auf Der Maur will soon travel to many different places herself when she takes OOOM on tour this spring. You can see her here:

March 12 Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern (CHARTattack/Horseshoe Canadian Music Week showcase)
March 17 Austin, TX @ Austin Music Hall (South By Southwest Music Festival)
March 18 Austin, TX @ Austin Conference Center (South By Southwest Music Festival)
March 30 Los Angeles, CA @ Viper Room
April 11 Paris, France @ Fleche D'Or
April 13 Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg
April 15 Helsinki, Finland @ Virgin Oil
April 16 Oslo, Norway @ Mono
April 17 London, England @ Cargo