Am I a nobody?
Will you vote for Nobody?
The thought keeps me up late at night sometimes, especially when, like now, I’ve been burning through the limited supply of energy my body doles out to me, when all I want to do is crawl into bed and not write anymore, not fight to make money, not try to rise above my circumstances…
I think many people who do creative work feel this way at times. They pour their heart into something, or do it for the sheer enjoyment of the process, and then the doubt starts eating away at them, the “brain rats” as someone so astutely put it a while back.
My guitar. No. My guitar. No, you're no good at guitar, mine!
“Why am I doing this?” the voices say. “What’s the point? I’m not good. I’ll never amount to anything. What if I die and all I did was this thing, and I didn’t even succeed in making it be what I wanted it to be?”
I was talking yesterday about how it’s so hard to manifest what is in our heads in tangible reality. In a recent speech, Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (one of my favorite movies) and Being John Malkovich (not one of my favorite movies), said that for writers, writing is very hard. (The speech is here, I can’t embed it. Check it out, the guy is speaking truth.)
I take what he says for musicians as well. In the studio, I had some malfunctions. Good thing this is all a learning experience and I’m not taking myself too seriously, right? But my guitar wouldn’t stay in tune because, “dur,” I had restrung it mere days earlier due to life getting too busy. And because it kept going out of tune, I stopped being able to hear what in tune sounds like.
I’ve been playing guitar since I was 13 years old. I know how to tune a guitar. But for some reason, when I’m under pressure and I’ve been tuning for a long period of time, I stop hearing the notes. I fall into this tone deaf vortex. It used to happen to me when I was trying to learn to tune pianos. My dad would tune by listening to the warble of the note in the air and I couldn’t hear shit. A piano has three strings for each key. After an octave, I would give up. Give me tuning a guitar over a piano any day.
At one point, the engineer, Jack Douglas, who was teaching the class at the college where my friend gave me studio time, helped me tune my guitar. My friend poked his head in the door, “most expensive tuner you’ll ever get.”
Douglas was super patient. I was frazzled, and yet, he stood there for ten minutes, helping me tweak each note on my Fender, determined that I’d get it right.
Earlier in the day, the drummer who I paid to help out was helping me tune my guitar, too. And the guitar tracks turned out terrible in spite of my friend Jafar also helping me at various points throughout the day.
I’m the girl who can’t tune her guitar. How…cute. (Grimace)
***
Kaufman also said in his recent speech that we have to stop pretending we know everything. We’re afraid to make mistakes, to mess up.
Being afraid to make mistakes kept me from progressing outside the bedroom with my songs. Don’t get me wrong, I still wrote songs, I still practiced, but not with a mission. Of the songs I am working on now, most came about in the last year or two–the ones I really love.
But I still feel I am floundering, often, like I falling down an endless rabbit hole with no bottom, like I don’t know what I am doing.
I’m caught in a wheel, in the grind, I’m spinning my wheels, and I’m working on music regardless, with no particular direction except that I want to finish this EP and have something tangible I can show people when they ask, “Can I hear your music.”
And I’d like to play out. And I’d like to do some touring, small venues is fine. But one thing at a time. First, the EP.
I was looking back through my facebook music page the other day. About a year ago, I posted that I was wanting to record four songs, with bass and drums, and I had no idea how to do that.
It’s a year later. I’ve auditioned for bands, I’ve worked with a number of musicians, and now I’ve settled on working with one friend, who has been helping me learn through this process, and I’m totally grateful. It’s odd, out of all the people I auditioned for music, I ended up working with someone I was friends with when I was going to high school in Walnut Creek. Small world.
***
I’ve come a long way in the past few years. I’ve overcome many obstacles. I have a long way to go to be where I want to be with my music, to have my songs sound like I hear them in my head, and that freaks me out, but I’m trying to remember that this is supposed to be something I love, not something I have a gun to my head to do.
I feel often as if I have a gun to my head, and I need, urgently, to do this now. I hear voices in my head, people I knew from a past life saying, “You’ll never go anywhere with your music.”
I hear myself going, “You’re too old to do anything now, success in music is for the young and the pretty. Soon, you won’t be pretty, and you’re not really even young anymore.”
I’ve got some mean, stupid brain rats in there.
I’m not letting them stop me though, like they did in the past. If there’s one thing I’m doing better than I ever did before, it’s allowing myself to make mistakes so that I can improve. There’s no improving without making mistakes. No musician or writer exists in a vacuum always simply advancing with practice. No, there are back steps and forward steps.
When I had gotten out of reform school in Jamaica, I was climbing Mt. Diablo, behind my parents house. I was around 18 years old. I was at the top of this very steep hill, and I started sliding down, down, down, all the way to the bottom. I had been at the top a few seconds ago, now I was not. I had no idea in that moment how to get back up. Great, I thought. Now I’m stuck out here and nobody knows where I am (I had gotten deep into the foothills, there were no cell phones on my person at that time, we didn’t use them like we do now.)
I noticed that the whole side of the foothill was tiny little rocks that slid when you tried to climb up them. I started climbing, and had to experiment with footing. Eventually, I realized that if I took tiny little steps, one foot, the other foot, one hand, the other hand, I could get up, slowly, without all of the rocks sliding out from under me. There was no firm footing, just these baby steps.
I remember thinking that this was a lot like life. Look at what’s in front of you. One step at a time. Keep climbing, even if you slide back below where you started (which I have done, many, many times). Life is not a linear path.
Once in a while it is nice to get a little push though, as long as it’s up the mountain, and not into a gully.
Mike
Seriously!
I think one of the the hardest part of success is learning that you have to enjoy the process (journey) too. It’s learning to enjoy the moments you have to spend tuning the guitar to get to the right sound. It’s being frustrated that you can’t get the piece you’re working on just right, it’s almost giving up for a month, and then going back to it later only to get it just the way you wanted. Or not going back to something for years, only to realize you finally know exactly where you want to go with it.
It’s learning that what you wanted yesterday has no bearing on what you want today sometimes.
In my experience, when things come too easy, they mean nothing. We become suspicious of them, we don’t trust their intrinsic value. We don’t give them a place within us like we give to the things we struggle for.
I remember when Dad gave us that lesson in postponement of pleasure, we were told we could double every year (until 18) the value of what we saved from the original money awarded. I saved the max allowed. When I was 18, it was supposed to have amounted to 5 or 6k. Having the satisfaction of surpassing the expectation (I remember Dad didn’t expect us to actually save any of it really.) I didn’t really mind when Mom, unable to come up with the money, bargained favors instead of money. For some short time, I felt a little irritated with being shorted, but as the years went on, I realized I didn’t really care because it had been money easy to come by.
I was out in Death Valley camping a short while ago, and the first night we were there, the winds got to about 30-40mph. The air was freezing. (I didn’t have a thermostat, but it was pretty chilly. We stayed up late drinking, sitting on crappy foldout chairs and staring at the vibrant stars talking about the differences between reality and virtual constructs.
The weather only got worse throughout the week I spent there, setting up the tent was a pain, most nights we didn’t even have energy to do much more than crawl inside and pass out. As hard as it was though, I haven’t had so much fun in decades.
I slept about five to six hours every night and woke up feeling both great and exhausted. It took me a week to recover from the trip, but I still want to go back and do it again.
Next time I imagine we’ll have it so that set up and tear down is a lot easier, faster, but it will be because of the hard experience we had this time. How much time do we spend nostalgic about the easy things that come to us? Isn’t it more frequent that we recall the trials it took us to get through something?
I think we as a society put too much value in the end result. Shouldn’t we enjoy what we’re doing? I get frustrated as hell with my work, and spend at least as much time stressing through the process as I do actually being productive, but I can’t remember a single time I felt satisfied with the easier jobs I’ve done (Like the Barnes and Noble Cafe, the work was easy, but terribly unsatisfying.)
Ask yourself why you’re doing what you do, what you gain from it, and if you still want to do it despite the risks or hardship, if a part of you enjoys it, needs it, no matter the cost, then the outcome shouldn’t matter so much.
You are doing something that is important to you, and at the end of the day, it’s not what you have that’s important, but what you’ve done. No one can take your experiences away from you.
Of course, it’s also possible that I’m just a lazy masochist.
I’m enjoying my life though I’m poor as hell, and don’t really progress anywhere as far as society is concerned.
Nice points there, sibring.
I’m very focused on the end product. Don’t know why.
Same with this stupid memoir I’m working on, though I’m stuck on this one chapter I’m not wanting to go back and edit.
I give up!
Plus, I’m broke, too. I’m wearing clothes that don’t fit, and my manager at my part-time job keeps commenting on the fact that I only wear black. Whatever, though, right? Does it matter? There are people who have less clothes than I, eat less food than I do. Work harder…
I grew up with thrift store clothes and church storehouse food. I guess I thought I’d figured out a way out of that, it’s not necessarily what I wanted.
And this futility feels like reality. This is where I’ve come. Nowhere and somewhere.
Don’t compare yourself to others! Compare yourself to you!
Saying “There are people worse off than me” is depressing, plus it makes you think about all the people that have it better too.
When I started drawing everyone was better than me. There are still a whole load of people who are both better and worse, the numbers don’t really change.
I find it’s easier (emotionally) to look at someone’s work and say “How did they do that?” and “How would I do it different?”
Black is an awfully practical color. Plus it’s slimming!
The only reason not to wear black is if you’re out in the sun all day. Ow, ow, ow.
I think you just have a hard time figuring out what you want in life. I have it easy, I want everything, I just don’t really care about what order or when.
Editing things is hard. I used to write stories and never read through them until I was done. Then I made the mistake of trying to proofread every time I add a chapter. I just stopped writing a story that way, because by the time I started editing it, I was a different person, and I didn’t like a single thing about it. Hard to finish a story you hate.
Now I read through the ‘entire’ story I’ve written, and add like, one paragraph before I’m worn out for the day. I’ve been working on one piece since 2008, I’ve only written 25 pages (13327 words) and it’s a fanfiction. I’m not supposed to take those things so seriously!
I feel frustrated for not finishing my last one though, so I think I read through it every time to make sure I still like it, and haven’t made anything glaringly inconsistent or stupid. The problem with being a critical reader, is that it’s stupidly hard to write anything when you’re fully aware of all the (inconsequential) mistakes even published works have.
I’m glad I have things I enjoy doing that I don’t really have to think about.
Two words: Genetic pessimism.
If its any consolation, visual artists get this feeling too. Pouring our hearts out into our work, spending hours on one sketch. Lucky to get a handful of likes. This is after drawing and painting every day of our lives over the past 15 years, at the expense of having a life. Oh well.
One thing I like better about visual arts over being a musican is no one knows or cares what we look like. Particularly for females, we’re judged very harshly on what we look like. Over the internet, only what our art looks like counts.
Thank you for your comment, Susan. I agree–music is hard because of the appearance issue. Writing and art
at least allow you to be anonymous, though it would be interesting to create music and put it out there with nobody having a clue what you look like…
I remember listening to Simon and Garfunkel growing up. I was little and I thought for sure they were totally hot.
Boy, was I surprised when I saw them on TV. I remember it being a strong lesson in artists not looking like
what they sounds like, but still being great, regardless.
I’ve always thought art should be displayed without artist’s names, titles, blurbs, or anything else. Just the art itself.
And, as far a looks being an issue. When I posted a photo for my Etsy avatar (http://www.etsy.com/people/destructivetesting?ref=ls_profile) I chose one that is about 20 years old, just because I like it, and as I told my wife, Etsy isn’t a dating site. And, the photo shows me as I feel most of the time. I didn’t really think about it at the time.
But, after a while, I realized that everyone is judged by their looks. I do it too! And, when I see some old fart with white hair (which more or less describes me, I react in a different way than when I see some virile young guy. Especially after finding out that about 95% of the buyers and sellers on Etsy are female.
Mike
The back and forth between you and your sister about people being worse off than you, etc reminded me of an old Arlo Guthrie song. He’s singing about how there is always someone who is worse off ……. “But, What about the last guy?” And, how there is nobody who is worse off than that last guy!
Mike
lol. That’s funny. Yea, me and my sister…hehehe. Same family, same tortured upbringing, different manifestations of art.
Kyrsten, One thing I was wondering after going to that ‘Chick Singer’ thing the other night. The woman who put it together here in Milwaukee (that article I copied to you) was a very good singer, but it seems that most of her fame, and I assume money, comes from her songwriting. Is that something you have ever considered?
Is it so vitally important to you to also be the one that records the songs you write? I’m not trying to convince you one way of the other, just wondering.
Some of my favorite singers (Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits) couldn’t really ‘sing’, but it didn’t matter. It was their words, their poetry. Of course, I still can’t imagine anyone else singing their songs better than them.
Mike
I love all three of them…
Especially for their lyrics.
And even Bob Dylan, who was a horrible singer.
I don’t know! I love singing and writing songs, and recording my own songs, but am exploring my options in this wide open world.
One thing I’d consider doing would be singing on other people’s projects, in fact, collaboration is super fun for me.
That’s great. I’ll be ‘following’ you.
Mike
Does Appearance Really Matter in Music? | Thestifledartist's Blog