Category Archives: creativity

Oaklandia

“Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?” -Alex/A Clockwork Orange

There are so many topics to write about here. Collaboration. Anxiety. Taking on a plethora of music projects. Learning to work with other artists on a daily basis. I’m sure I will cover all of these topics in the upcoming weeks. I took a hiatus from the last posted entry on April 8, due to suddenly being consumed with activities music and writing related.

My life isn’t much different from the other musicians I am surrounded by in Oakland. Most of us are in two or more bands. Most of us have a calendar clogged with work and shows and practices. Most of us spend a significant portion of our time crammed into tiny practice spaces.

Yesterday, I was chilling in the sun out on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland with a bunch of peers, all of who are musicians. Our conversation was like an episode of Portlandia.

“Soft Cell only has one good song. Tainted Love.”
“What? Soft Cell has the best lyrics ever! Tainted Love is their worst song!”

“Have you heard of The Monks?”
“Yea, I introduced them to you, remember?”
“I thought that was your roommate who introduced them to me.”
“No! He’s always stealing my musical taste and pawning it off as his own.”

“There’s a point where you just get oversaturated with Depeche Mode.”
“What? There’s no such thing as too much Depeche Mode!”

“All I listen to is Krautrock.”
“Krautrock! I love Can!”
“I like Ammon Duul and Neu!”
“I’m into proto-kraut. Haha, just kidding, does such a thing exist?”

***
It’s ironic that a few years ago I was begging to be surrounded by artists and musicians, back in an urban hub. Now that I am, I’m grateful, but also kind of inured to the over abundance of artists I am surrounded by. Add to that the fact that most of us are sensitive and neurotic and slightly psycho and you’ve got a basket full of booby traps at times.

I wouldn’t go back to where I was a year ago for the world. Sometimes, I get down. Focusing so much on music and art and work makes me feel like I might be missing out on something, like family or relationships or love. But…I don’t know. It’s good to be free.

I’ve been practicing with one of my bands, the Krautrock-influenced experimental band, for an upcoming show at the Oakland Metro. Sometimes, our practices feel like Real World: Band Practice, especially when we were trying to determine who the core players in the band were, and had different musicians at every practice. But…I’m sure that’s true of most band practices. Most bands never get off the ground due to not having enough players or personality conflicts. Artistic people tend to be a bit odd. It’s not just a cliche. Sometimes the most creative and interesting people are just…weird. OK, most of the time. Myself included. I know I’m totally sensitive and psychotic and weird and over intelligent and every other thing you can pin on a musician/writer nutcase who came from a musician/artist nutcase family.

So there you go. Busy. Still trying to find the meaning of life, balance frugal living with working on art, doing music constantly and working a day job to fund it. Balking at the dynamics of single people in my age group–ugh. Insanity anyone? Modern life is just wack.

So what is the meaning of life? What you make of it, I suppose. And the only thing I’ve found to assuage my existential angst and anxiety so far is music. The more projects I’m involved in, the more projects I get asked to be involved in. The more I play out, the more musicians I meet and more I am asked to play out. So. All is well. Pretty much.

Out Here in Limbo Land

I’m in an odd state of limbo. Waiting to get over a hump. My life is kind of hanging in the balance. Musicwise, relationshipwise, workwise.

Right now, my band mates are driving to South by Southwest for their other band project. The other keyboardist in my band got hooked up as synth player and dancer for the other band our other mates are in, and so she’s out having a blast with them. It’s OK. I’ve got stuff to do here. Work, basically. I’m supposed to be writing a melody for a song for this band, and I’ve got two ideas but I don’t know if either is the right direction, so I’m waiting to share them until my band mates get back. Then we’re supposed to put our noses to the grindstone. I talked to my boss today about switching to a sub position where I have flexibility and control over what shifts I pick up around the county. No health insurance, but, well. Don’t we all struggle with that dilemma these days as artists? Permanency and health insurance or flexibility and no health insurance.

There was a time, year or so ago, when all I wanted was to be surrounded by artists. I got my wish, and now I have an arsenal of people to talk to. When I was trying to figure out what to do about my, “I might have to tour,” dilemma, I talked with a couple of people who do music as a living, or did music as a living and they were like, “Yea, go for it,” and they helped me talk about options. Everyone was like, “I think you should do it.” Which isn’t even a question for me. I was trying to figure out how, and now I have an option, I’m just waiting to find out if/when we are actually touring in a few months, or if it will be later.

I also found a really cool guitar player for my own band project, the one that’s more a casual project where we might play a show sometime in the future and have about 8 songs we’re working on right now. So that’s good. Just slow.

And tomorrow I have practice with my girl friend, we started a band called SO WHAT?!? that’s like an avante-garde project. Covers, punk songs, screaming, fun. Everyone we get involved is super stoked about it.

I’m such an excitement junkie, I want to be doing performing, touring, recording and practicing ALL THE TIME. I’m a born performer. Born for excitement and hard work towards music goals.

I’m sure I will get my wish, soon. I’m trying to tip the scales so that’s the deal, instead of music still being something in the gaps. I need outside impetus, like tours coming up or an album to record or a show to play to keep me motivated. It looks like all of this is in the process of happening or I am working towards it happening, whether with these projects I’m currently doing or others.

It’s all learning.

It’s the waiting that kills me. And all the stuff I have to deal with in the interim. Trying to work hard to be the artist I want to be and not be distracted by drama or boys or whatnot.

But I kind of love the drama.

My friend Kirsten reminded me the other day to remember to do my daily practice so I don’t get the freefalling feeling I’ve been getting. Usually, I wake up every morning and write a page, write in my journal, meditate and do tarot. Then I make sure I hike once or twice a week, do strength training twice a week and fit in some yoga or bike riding. I also have to remember to eat three meals a day, stay away from too much caffeine or nicotine and not get too caught up in anyone else’s needs or wants.

Ha. I’ve had people come to me for help recently, with addiction problems, relationship problems, you name it. And these are important things too. I write this blog and I share my experiences with people so that I can help them. My journey here has been rough at times. If I can help someone else get through the rough times, like others have helped me, well, life is meaningful.

Plus, I have to remember to not drive myself into the ground, to actually have some fun. Milkshakes and the like.

I was talking to another friend outside of one of my favorite coffee shops to frequent, and he was talking about having to write some stuff coming up and being blocked. I moaned about having to write a song and a column and do some readings coming up.

Why are we whining? We’re doing everything we want to do. It’s slow, but we’re moving towards our goals. Everything is OK. There are many days with no excitement, and then there’s a ton of excitement. And then many days of no excitement.

That’s life?

Doing the Daily Routine Thing

routine

I think a lot of people have the misconception that for artistic people, creations just fly out without any forethought, planning or daily routine. Maybe if you are Billy Childish (a prolific musician, poet, writer), but not so much for the rest of us.

I know a lot of writers, musicians and artists. The Bay Area, especially Oakland and San Francisco, is a magnet for us. Of the ones I know who are successful, there is a daily routine, whether it’s sitting down every morning to write a number of pages, or getting into a practice space alone or with a band to work on music.

I think we get this idea that creating music, writing or art is something that just POW happens. I assure you, it’s not. Sure, I’ve had many moments where I’m on a long road trip and some tiny little line comes into my head, for example, today as I was walking to my car to go to work I was thinking about how punk in Oakland has become this glam thing all around (what happened to cutting your own hair and sewing on your own patches? When did all the punks become fashion models?) and I thought, “Well, fashion punk is not dead.”

Inspiration comes in random bits. And the bits are what we make of them. If I scribble stuff down when it pops into my head, I can pore through all my scraps of paper later and maybe cobble together a song or poem.

But in the interim, I have to do things like wake up every morning, meditate, throw some tarot cards and write a page in my writing notebook. That way, I have a center, and a notebook filling with writing. A page a day doesn’t seem like much, but at the end of the year, that’s 365 pages to choose from. Two pages a day is 730 pages.

Same goes for music. Right now, I practice music once a week with other people, and work on songs in whatever spaces I have, usually late at night from midnight until 2am. For the once a week practice, that’s 52 days of practicing songs with other musicians. Twice a week is 104. And on it goes.

So, even if those morning pages or that band practice is shitty on that day, you are showing up on a routine basis for the muse to strike when ready, and while you’re not looking, you’re getting better at your craft. If you have a routine, you don’t have to stress the fuck out all of the time, because you know every morning, (or night for you night owls) you can go back to whatever you’re working on, pick up where you left off. It becomes a habit, and if people ask, “So, what have you been doing lately with your art?” you can validly say, “Oh, just writing (practicing music, painting, etc) every morning.” It also makes that crazy passion and intensity a bit less like a firework waiting to explode.

And now, when you look back in a few months or years, there’s actually going to be something to draw from. Of course, you still have to make sense of what you created, but…it’s a start. It’s harder for random life stuff to knock you off balance when you’re strong in your own center of gravity, and that strength can come from something as basic as showing up for yourself in a simple routine.

I’ve been doing real good with a morning routine in general the past eight months, but the past few weeks I got sick and then in desperation to get out of the house I went out to shows and to the city and did social shit, which kind of knocked me off my routine because I drank coffee and stayed up late and got all manic from interacting with dozens of people, and then couldn’t sleep because I had to process all the interaction. Another routine I got out of because of being sick is hiking and kettlebell, both which serve to calm my mind dooooown. So, as much as I hate anything seemingly stagnant or, god forbid, boring, I cannot wait until I am feeling well enough to kick some hiking and strength training ass and get back on some sort of stable routine in other regards.

2012 on The Stifled Artist

Well folks, it’s the end of 2012. Today is the very last day of this year. It’s hard not to be at the end of a year without reflecting on where one has been and what one has been doing during the past 365 days.

A year ago, I was very driven, in reflection. I had spent the previous year sending out poetry and stories to be published in small indie publications and I had pitched articles for big magazines, retail magazines and small regional magazines. I got more published in the past two years than I had in my entire life. Dozens of poems, stories and articles. I was also writing for a local newspaper and had my own column. I started a kickstarter project so that I could start recording some songs I’d been working on for the previous few years. I was auditioning for bands as lead singer. I was also training heavily for the Russian kettlebell sport.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t be a star freelance writer, non-fiction writer, musician and kettlebell athlete all at once. The people around me whom I admired usually had one focus in their lives. If they were writers, they did writing. If they were musicians, they did music. If they were kettlebell athletes, kettlebell was what they focused on.

I had my foot in so many worlds. It was fun for a while, but then I got super burnt out. I spent the early part of 2012 traveling to kettlebell competitions, working heavily on a music project where the goal was a ten-song album, and trying to market myself as a writer in order to procure more writing work, all while working at the library twenty hours a week or more.

Then, after a freelance assignment in Seattle and Portland, my marriage ended, based on a mutual decision between me and my husband of nine years.

In the aftermath, I played more shows than I ever had before. I immersed myself in a community of writers, artists and musicians, moved back to Oakland, reduced my stress load, started living completely within my means on a very limited budget so I didn’t have to work more than the minimum for someone else.

I dropped the kettlebell competitions and pitching any freelance writing articles in lieu of focusing on my transition from married to single. I also decided I needed to pick one art form for the time being to be favored: Music. Writing would remain an outlet, but without the pressure of immediate publication.

***

Sometimes, I wonder what the hell I’m doing. I want to travel, I want to work with more musicians until my songs sound like I hear them in my head, I want to go on small tours with a band and eventually, I want to work entirely for myself.

I’ve managed to create a life that is more conducive to my happiness. I climbed up through years of misery working 9 to 5′s and focusing on money, money, money, so I don’t need to explore that anymore, though I do have some student loan debts hanging over my head. I’d rather have less money and more time. I’ve always been that way. The pressure from society to slave away for future happiness is out of control.

I’m not really sure what I’m doing now, aside from just working towards more. More music, more solid positive friendships, more acceptance and enjoyment of every day life, more peace and space.

It is so hard not to compare myself to others more driven, like I was last year, and people who don’t struggle with some of the mental shit I struggle with, like depression and anxiety, weird nervous system issues, etc., but overall, I’m strong and talented and capable, just very impatient. I get anxious I’ll die tomorrow without achieving the basic goals I’ve been working on for years, but am finally learning to focus instead of bemoaning what I don’t have.

If I’ve learned anything this past year, it’s that I can take small steps to change my circumstances once I’ve made up my mind, and that I can succeed in my goals if I have goals to begin with, and am patient.

***

How has your past year been artistic endeavor wise? What are you struggling with? What have you achieved? What are your goals in the New Year for your art?

What We Believe is What We See

“So it is better to speak
Remembering
We were never meant to survive.”

-Audre Lorde “A Litany For Survival”

I saw this quote today in one of those literary tattoos people are getting these days. I’m sure in the context of the poem it’s meant to say, “Speak up, because we’ve survived things we weren’t meant to escape from.” The way I interpret it, however, disembodied from it’s larger context, is to mean literally, “Speak up. Life is one hundred percent fatal.”

There are times I regret being so open and vocal and expressive, reflecting my own inner world in my writing for random people to peruse and assimilate or desecrate according to their whims.

There are times I also regret not speaking my truth. Because life is short. And I’ve worked so hard for so long to even be where I am now. My path is different from your path. Your path is different than another person’s path.

A lot of times, we exist behind our own blinders of should’s and shouldnt’s. I grew up believing I could never in this life be perfect, was always wrong, was fallen from grace and would never until the second coming obtain anything like glory.

My father taught me growing up that imperfection is perfect in its own weird way. Because the world keeps going on, regardless. And we are each on our own individual paths. And somehow it all works out even though we bumble along, making mistakes. But is there really any such thing as a mistake? We all have to learn our own lessons for ourselves, by ourselves.

When I was growing up, I was taught I had to teach people by example, that I should be a good example, which meant following a prescribed code of conduct given to me by an external fear-motivated system of a religious institution. Everything in black and white lines.

I’ve come to the conclusion lately that nothing at all is black and white. Society exists as it does because we’ve agreed as a community up to this point that a lot of the things we do to keep it functioning work. When things break down, we overthrow it, usually, and try something new, whether it works or not. When I make a decision, it’s usually based on the person I am at the moment and the lessons I’ve assimilated up to that point.

I am not better than another person because of the choices I make. There is nothing saying that I am a teacher if I follow a certain path. People teach me all the time, people doing things that I’ve been told were bad or wrong or only lead to heartache, things that I myself have chosen not to do based on them not working for me in my life. What’s good for one isn’t necessarily good for another. One belief system doesn’t fit all.

So you tell me, who is teaching who here? In all our glorious imperfections, in all our madness, we are still moving along trying our hardest to each eke out a margin of space for ourselves in this world, a place where we belong. Battles are fought over time. Slowly. Each step moving us towards or away from our current conquests.

I am striving in my life to speak up and not hide things anymore. Not in the sense of confessing like religions tell you you must do in order to be a decent person. I mean more that I want to tell the people I love how I feel about them while they and I are still here. I want to share my creations with other people more than I have up until this point. I want to keep learning to not protect others from my truth, even if it is different from theirs.

Because life is short. I could die tomorrow. I want the people I love to know I love them, I want the music I made to be heard, and I want the words I’ve written to mean something to someone. But first, I have to put it all out there, no matter how difficult and raw and nerve wracking it is.

I think one meaning of life really is simply to become our own selves. And who that is is buried underneath conventions and instructions and condescension and should-have could-have would-haves we’ve been indoctrinated with our whole lives through family, friends, systems, churches, advertising, etc.

Another meaning of life, if we choose it, is to be happy. And happiness is often an internal job. External circumstances inevitably change. People change. Places change. Things break or fall apart. Money comes and goes. But striving to see past our own internal belief systems, seeing the beauty in the little things every single day, whether our life is currently where we want it to be or not…these are things I’m noticing help with the anxiety of not knowing about what our art means or how it will connect with those around us. Everything starts within us and branches out.

I don’t think we even realize the power we have to connect and affect people through our creations. If we knew, we might hide under a rock. That shit’s kind of scary to think about. I’ve talked to people who’ve had the same experience as me: Hearing some music they loved and seeking it out to the point they ended up working with the people who created it. Fantasizing about something and finding it’s suddenly become reality. This stuff happens every day. What we believe is what we see.

Deleting The Facebooks

I’d thought about it for some time, threatening to carry out Facebook deactivation/deletion here and there.

My friend Josh had done it and survived.

When I asked him about it, he said he didn’t even miss it, while I adopted the look of Moonies who can’t believe you can survive without a fearless third party leader prompting you to self-express, like, or re-share multiple times a day.

My sister had done it and survived on google+ alone without ever looking back. I often missed her on my Facebook, but her action made it so that I had to actually use the phone if I wanted to contact her.

Neither of these two people disappeared when they deleted their Facebooks.

Meanwhile, my days were increasingly regulated by thoughts in my head I thought might make good status updates, events that were transpiring in my life I thought I needed to take pictures of in order to validate they actually had happened by posting them and thus receiving “likes”–the bulk of which came from passive friends who never actually contacted me outside of Facebook.

The Facebook was also causing me a great deal of anxiety. I added people I didn’t know well because I wanted to be more involved in their lives, only to find we never interacted on Facebook, either, yet now they could know a lot about my world without making any effort at all: Who my friends were, who my family was, what food I ate/liked, who I’d been married to, who I’d been hanging out with.

I also worried late at night about things I had posted and pictures I had put up. I wasn’t positive any of the filters I’d erected to separate religious folk from athiest folk from family folk from work acquaintances from core friends from sober friends from drinking friends from political friends and non-political friends were even working. Also, people were using my Facebook to spy on me and my activities throughout the week. At first, I thought this was quaint. Then, it started to terrify me.

“I could tell you were OK because you were hanging out with so and so.”

“I stopped reading your status updates because they were too depressing.”

“I saw that picture you put up from when you were 14, you’ve not changed a bit.”

“I heard you went to that show last weekend…”

“I know everything you do and think.”

Here were about 300 people, all of whom I knew personally, but out of whom maybe two dozen were every day friends I actively engaged with outside the Internet, some from literary worlds, music worlds, junior high school, extended family, etc, and I was trying to share with them all the same things I would really only tell a few close friends in the past?

I was also getting distracted by the clutter on Facebook. Ads, random updates about groceries and shopping, pictures of everyone’s lovers and babies and Black Friday purchases.

Make it stop! My brain screamed, yet I found myself compelled to click

And click

And click my life away.

***

It’s been about a week since I deactivated.

Nobody even noticed. Not. One. Person.

I had to tell my closest friends and family, just so they wouldn’t look for me there, though most of them don’t anyhow.

I had put all this time into a third party application that acted as an intermediary between my friends and I, and in the end, was just like an abusive boyfriend who moved on without a care in the world after causing me many sleepless nights of nail-biting anxiety.

***

I had also started to notice while using Facebook, I didn’t feel so hot.

Chemicals would rush through my body when I saw a guy I had a crush on loving on another girl in a picture or flirty back and forth banter, an ex talking about their new whatever, a friend who hadn’t contacted me in weeks chumming it up with a mutual pal four consecutive nights in a row: BFF FOREVA!! Parties attended, concerts seen, expensive foods eaten, places traveled…

These things I could process on a daily basis when seen here and there, but in the numbers occurring seemed to be causing me physical pain. It can’t be healthy to get a negative chemical rush multiple times a day in anticipation of “likes” or “no likes” translated as social acceptance vs being invisible, constantly comparing numbers and situations and only seeing the most socially acceptable and positive of people’s lives day in and day out held up against your uncut and unfiltered every day existence.

It seemed others were having more fun, more connection, more excitement, better jobs, more likes, more acceptance. I stopped seeing all of what I had. And beyond that, it started to feel like a crap shoot. I never knew who would post or see or like what. It was like playing whack a mole at Chuckie Cheese, only there seemed to be more holes than moles.

***

Shit was basically getting old.

I needed to close that portal so that no one could slurk through it without my permission.

***

Since I deactivated, I’ve been filling the space I would have spent passively scrolling through my useless babble of a news feed where who sees what, when, is seemingly based on random arbitrary algorithms only slightly manipulated by alterations made by the user. Instead, I’m actually making phone calls, working more on music, sharing specific things with specific people I know would want to hear them instead of bludgeoning 300 people with those things (and visa versa), painting my nails, reading, meditating, hiking, being appreciative of all I am and have and…gasp…actually being alone with my thoughts and my thoughts alone.

I don’t worry what my acquaintances and family think of my pictures and my activities, whose going to what show or hanging out with what person.  I don’t have people knowing things I didn’t personally tell them, unless it’s something I share here, after a greater deal of reflection and censure.

I’m not as anxious. I’m not down about my life. I share things that matter to me with one or two people a day who I know will care, rather than spewing my thoughts, feelings and beliefs out to 300+ people who could likely give a fuck, and often used these things against me when I bumped into them in person.

It’s a privilege to know all about me and enter my life, as it is for someone to know about you, reader, and enter your life. Privacy is underrated. I’ve realized lately, or accepted, that being a sensitive artistic person makes every interaction that much more special and worthy of being processed, reflected on and archived in the sanctity of my inner world, not in public open all the time like a psycho-data stream for hundreds of people to see and judge. I can’t handle it. I need a great deal of alone time in order to create.

Facebook also took up a lot of mind space, 24/7. As a human being, I’m drawn to engage in addictive behaviors. Facebook became an addiction, and started causing me negative consequences. So I quit cold turkey.

The less brain clutter from web babble and religious groups and popularity validation contests, the better. The more genuine one on one friendships, the better.

If people want to communicate with me, they know my number, they know my email, the closest know where I live.

I will no longer engage passively with people and let them participate in my life without making an effort to actually participate in my life. It’s too damn short. I value quality over quantity in relationships. I don’t need a hundred likes. I need one or two genuine likes, a handful of dedicated readers who actually comment, like I already have.

I don’t need a third party monitoring all of my activities and thoughts and photographs, archiving them, deciding who sees what, when. Seems to me a great way to keep people plugged in all the time, not listening to their own inner worlds, but always looking outwards. Not to say it’s all malicious, but anything can be used as a malicious tool…especially words.

Bye bye Facebook. Hello quality of life.

I Enjoy Myself (Happy Wanksgiving)

The best way to find out how to learn to let go is to make plans dependent on other people. Today is Thanksgiving, and I have been sitting in my pajamas all morning. I rolled out of bed at oh, 11:30am, made myself a cup of coffee and some leftover crepes with Nutella, and then got back on my bed. It’s fucking rad. I love this week.

Oh, sure, I had other plans. I was going to drive to Henderson, Nevada to see my aunt and uncle and grandma and cousins, and to do a freelance music column I have due by January 15, but then I changed my plans because I wanted to go with a girlfriend of mine. But then my freelance check didn’t come and my girlfriend had different days off than me and I couldn’t get Saturday off due to working for the county and all, so we didn’t go. But then we were going to go up to a cabin in the woods, which I was pretty stoked about, and two of my oldest friends were staying nearby with family so I was going to say, “Hi,” but. That didn’t happen either.

Lest this sound too much like a journal entry, I’ll get to my point. All of my plans fell through, but instead of being bummed about every single thing like I have in the past, I am grateful that I got to spend the past couple of days with myself. I really, really (maybe almost too much) like spending time alone. Since I separated from my ex-husband, I’ve been more social than I have been in years, and it’s fun, but exhausting. I have so many friends in this new urban terrain I can’t even remember who said what on what day, or what I said to who at what hour. It’s a bit freaky.

Writers tend to like to spend time alone. A lot of them, at least. The more reflective ones. When I do spend time alone I realize that a) I can totally depend on myself and b) I can totally process whatever has been going in my life recently. Also, c) I can clear my head for once. It gets pretty cluttered in there.

So today, on this wanker holiday where we are all forced to say what we are grateful for in honor of what we did to the people who were on this terrain before our Puritanical asses arrived by getting together with people to gorge on overstuffed force fed turkeys, I am truly grateful for my self, my beautiful self. And you all, for reading this. And for a cheap-as-hell room in Oakland, a part-time job at the library, musical projects coming together, all of the new people I have met in the past six months, my old friends who have showed up for me, for my car, for being back in an urban area, for my bicycle, for the Bay Area, for a visit to Portland, for having so many astounding soul friends who go back years and years. I am grateful for my wacko family, for all of the music I love, for the fact that I had enough grinds for a strong cup of coffee this morning, for my guitars and my voice and my love of writing.

I am going to try and get out of my pajamas and off my ass to go hiking, then maybe watch Wesley Snipes movies all day with a friend on his projector for “Snipesgiving.” If I leave my bed, that is. I’m having a lot of fun here. Don’t really want to. It’s been so long since I let myself just sit and do absolutely almost nothing for a few days in a row, totally enjoying my own company.

To Work For “Nothing”

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“To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture in clay, to know one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions.

But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.”

-Camus

Whenever I’m feeling a little existential and bummed, I look up quotes and essays by philosophers and thinkers. It actually helps. I tend to relate to people who spent in inordinate amount of time pondering their navels. I spend an insane amount of time pondering life and the meaning of the universe.

My mother took me out to lunch the other day, and sitting across from me said, “You’ve been fundamentally the same since you were a small child.”

John Lennon said something once about how he would love to be able to be something like a fisherman, that it kinda sucks to always be pondering and questioning everything as an artist and thinker.

I don’t think it sucks to ponder and question, but it does get tiring. It singles one out in this game of life. So many can just accept what is, and who knows, they are probably happier.

George Bernard Shaw said, “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

Back to Camus’ quote about art.

A lot of us who create music and write operate in the dark with little to no outside validation. This process can be baffling at times, mostly because we live in a reward based society and are used to having yardsticks to measure our progress. When I spent a good deal of time alone in a practice space recently, working on music every free minute I got, the only feedback I got was from myself. I progressed, but I had only my own work from before to compare to.

I came to the conclusion that in that time, my work had served as a way to process some dark shit I had lurking inside. I poured every emotion I was experiencing into my music and in the process, wrestled phantoms and immortalized them in songs.

This process doesn’t make a lot of sense when I try to explain it, but I remember so many years of slaving away on songs with no particular goal, only the general desire to create good music I liked, and then listening to those songs years later and realizing they captured perfectly whatever I had been grappling with at the time, usually things applicable to the human condition, emotions such as love, power, jealousy, fear, longing, hate, etc. Things we all grapple with.

I can’t really tell you the meaning of any one individual person’s art, it’s a highly personal thing, but what keeps me going is that music and the act of creating in general help me tune in to a higher consciousness, something I think we are all connected to. It takes me out of myself, and because so much is done in the dark and alone, the meaning I’ve ascribed to it is that it’s important for what Camus was saying–it may be “meaningless” in the larger picture, like toiling in a field day in and day out for no apparent reason you can immediately see or comprehend, but in the end, the point of it all is what the work you are doing means to you personally, how it helps you to know and find yourself that makes it meaningful in my opinion. It’s the battle for your own soul, for awareness, for meaning and reason. It’s what we make of it, and how we use it to connect with ourselves and others.

When You Find Your Muse in the Corner

(This is a blog from about a year ago, November 2011. I thought I would recycle it. Regurgitate it. What-have-you.)

Write what you want to read. Be your own damn self.

Think about what you are, everyone you’ve loved and known in your life, every desire you’ve had, every dream you’ve made manifest, and decide for once and for all which things move you.

Hold those parts. Scribble them on scraps of paper, in notebooks, on envelopes of bills you never plan on paying. Pile your scraps of paper up until something sticks, then run with it.

If it’s not fun, writing and music, what’s the point? Tell me.

Continue reading →

Validation

Most of my successes are silent, seen only by me. Nobody sees me tweak a song all day, edit a story until it’s done, listen to my music until 2am in the morning trying to figure out if it’s cohesive, go through my old notebooks finding lyrics, poetry, material to work with…

Seeking outside validation is a crap shoot and bound for failure if that’s the only driving mechanism. It’s faulty and based on unpredictable and uncontrollable outside things, namely people. And each person in this world has their own goal, a priority of themselves first above all else.

Because I grew up with a father who was a local musician, admired in many circles, I always felt like I was living in shadows of someone more talented and bigger than myself. I started playing music when I was very young, and picked up the guitar at 13, knowing full well music was something I wanted to pursue, but somehow, I didn’t learn how to validate myself, because I always felt like someone was better. After my dad, there was a guy friend who was amazingly hot and talented at the guitar who I felt always criticized me. I wanted him to appreciate and respect my songs so badly, just like I maybe wanted my dad to look at me and say, “Damn, my daughter is super talented.”

After that boy, there was a string of other men I let become my harsh internal critic, and I constantly sought out their approval, in an endless empty desire to fill myself with someone else’s validation. I spent years searching for that better-than-me musician or writer who would make me real, like the velveteen rabbit, just begging for someone to consider me as an item worth handling.

I don’t know, maybe the Velveteen Rabbit story is another in a string of societal myths of outside validation making you real that set me up to be endlessly disappointed and searching for something more. I’ll have to take a look at that.

At 31 years old, I think I’m finally aware of the pattern enough to realize that I can only seek validation from my self, anything else is icing on the cake. I can connect with people, I can share what I’m doing with them, but I can’t expect them to make me feel better about my work or what I do. They can’t make me real. I am real, but I need to see it before I can even accept that anyone else can see it.

I’m not sure what it is that separates those who are majorly successful in the worlds eyes from those who are mildly successful, seems to me the talent is often there in both cases, but sometimes, those that are more successful simply believe in their work to a level that allows them to never back down. They don’t hide their art under a rock as soon as they perceive the slightest rejection.

One of my biggest lessons in life has been learning to accept myself and my own art, and not look to people who I admire or look up to to tell me I “have it” or don’t. It’s hard, it’s like drugs. I crave attention and connection and understanding, and I get so tired of trying to give it to myself all the time. It’s like living in the middle of a desert, patting yourself on the back for managing to bleed cactuses for water so you don’t die of thirst. It gets old, congratulating yourself for simply being able to survive.

“Knowledge, ultimately, means perspective. There’s knowing something and then knowing it. Another Taoist saying is that “you have to not know you know anymore.” That’s the hardest part. Because you can get real real smart. If you get stoned or high on a spring morning, or you’re fucking or in love–whatever it is that does it for you–it’s, ‘Ah, I know! There it is!.’ But it’s a bubble. It bursts. And when the bubble bursts, you’re right back where you were with your habit and your weaknesses and your fears and your loneliness and your lies and your stupidities and all the rest of it, stumbling through life and not really knowing what the fuck is going on…“

–Marco Vassi

“I thought I would stand myself a little dinner. I hadn’t quite enough sense to know what I really wanted was human companions. There aren’t such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease–that of thinking.“

–Diary of a Drug Fiend/Aleister Crowley

Seems that’s the eternal equation. We need to validate ourselves, but we want outside validation. So we have to go ahead and validate ourselves in spite of our wants. Because being human means wanting, and wanting is a disease in and of itself. I know I have an endless want monster inside. I get a little bit of validation and attention and suddenly I want more. I stop taking care of myself as soon as I realize I can get a balm from someone else, but then I always come back to me again and find that I need to get my own damn balm, even though it’s harder and it’s seemingly thankless and it takes longer and it gets so tiring taking care of myself all of the time because frankly, I’m a lot to handle, and I spread myself thin just trying to manage my own moods and desires and abilities all of the time.

But hey, that’s life.

So the moral of this story is: Validate your own damn self, because you know how to do that better than anyone else, and if you don’t validate yourself, you won’t even be able to accept anyone else’s validation to begin with.