Tag Archives: depression

Connection

I don’t know if other musicians feel like they’re always reaching to become who they know they are but can’t quite seem to manifest, but it’s a constant struggle for me.

Aside from the fact that I struggle with things like chronic emptiness and depression and it’s always been more of a struggle for me to follow my passion than many I know, there’s this sense inside of being always in embryo, not quite good enough.

If I measure my progress back to when I was 13 years old, learning Courtney Love, Nirvana and Beatles songs in my bedroom, I can say without a doubt I have improved considerably.

But I always wonder. Is it me, or the world keeping from moving to more of a situation where I’m getting out there with my music? Am I too picky with the people I choose to work with? Are there more venues I could play out in? Could I be dedicating more time to my craft?

The answer is yes, I do think. Always yes.

There have been a handful of musicians I’ve had the honor of meeting in my life who I aspire to be like. And it’s not that I feel like I couldn’t offer at least a quotient of what they offer, it’s that they are that much more skilled at owning it and working on the craft aspect of their trade.

So much of what I do is in the dark, as is what a lot of us do, without outside validation. We have to validate ourselves, constantly. I have to dig deep and give myself credit.

Often I feel like I’m a tree in the woods and if I were to fall, no one would even hear or notice. That could be depression talking, or it could be the fact that we are all eternally alone. I think it’s a little of both. Other people are sometimes passengers on our bus trip across life, but they come and go–they each have their own destinations.

When I’m writing my songs, tweaking them, working on lyrics/melodies/chords/transitions, it’s a solo process for me. Listening to them and honing them is also a personal process. When I’m “done” I can then run them by people (pending there are people I trust to work with at the moment) and open them up to feedback.

It all takes so long…

And to what end? So that I can listen to them and go, “Hey, I just captured perfectly what I was feeling, that was amazing.” Or so I can play them at an open mic and get a compliment or two. Or so I can play them at a coffee shop while everyone is eating. Or so I can play them at a larger venue and get lots of positive feedback. I’ve done all of these things.

It’s crazy, to have so much intensity and passion towards one art form and to always feel like you come up short no matter what you do, to have your own sense of “what’s the point” always kicking you in the ass, trying to keep you from moving forward. And at that point it’s a matter of, oh, it seems like THAT person has so much more (insert blank).

I don’t know. I’m behind skin, blood and bones. I can’t really comprehend what connection means, or if we can ever transcend the barriers to connection–if it’s all just chemical and illusion–but I’ve got this drive and I can’t stifle it no matter how hard I’ve tried. So I have to trust that if I have the talent and the drive and work hard, I will succeed at connecting in some nebulous way, I just have to pay attention so I don’t miss when I do.

Musicians and Depression

(photo credit: bleu man)

An article in the Guardian put it best: “Often, what makes an artist great is the fact that they’re born with a skin too few.” Many artistic people are born with too little protective barrier between them and the world. Depression, whether in passing or ongoing, is a problem for many.

When I was around 23, I had just gotten out of a dark period of my life. I stopped playing music, not knowing where to go with it anymore. I gave up for a few years, as I worked at a call center for a legal company, earning and spending money, getting through the days one at a time.

When I started playing again in my apartment in the Inner Richmond of San Francisco, I literally played my guitar in the closet, so that the neighbors wouldn’t hear me. Sometimes I just played a little piece of a song I was writing over and over again, some three-chord progression coupled with a wistful lament.

As time went on, I got back to playing in much of my spare time, but I still didn’t play for many other people in person. I couldn’t stand sharing what I was writing about live, in front of someone who might judge me, or worse, talk over.

I kept thinking about sitting in the park with a group of ruffian friends when I was 15. I decided to break out my guitar. “I’m going to play a few songs,” I said. “She plays guitar?” they said. And when I played, they kept talking. It’s funny how a trivial event like this can become your excuse to not ever try. I did play for other people in the years up until I was 20, giving people demos and playing at house parties, coffee shops and in music classes at a college I attended. But at some point, I just gave up.

You can say I have a thin skin. Sometimes I think I’m just a bundle of raw nerves walking around.

Pretty soon, after starting to play in my closet, my husband came home from work and saw our neighbor sitting on the steps in the hallway, listening.

“I love your wife’s music,” he said. “What kind of music is she playing?” My husband was flummoxed. He hadn’t even known I wrote music. He knew my dad was a pianist, that I had dated some musician once. He knew I had a couple of guitars. We had been married for over a year, and I had simply excised one of the most important parts of who I was from my personality and failed to share it with him. Before the dark times, music had been my very modus operandi. Now it was something I did in the closet.

I still struggle with depression when it comes to music in the form of where am I going to go with it. The music industry is definitely changed, and something new is emerging, but I’m not sure where I fit in the scheme, or if I have to create something new myself.

I set up some studio time, for two weeks from now, and I’m going to record four songs I’ve been working on.

Mental Health counselor, Deborah Legge, PhD, said in Digital Music News, “Depression is not uncommon to those who are drawn to work in the arts, and then the lifestyle contributes to it.” When I think of all of the musicians who offed themselves because the lifestyle that came with the music (drugs, touring, sycophants, lack of money, too much money) was just too much, I get bummed too.

What I love is recording. I love to give my music to other people to listen to in their own quiet moments, on headphones or in the car. That’s where I listen to music. Alone.

I am also afraid of success. I don’t like putting myself out there, in person, in front of people, whether through my writing or through my music. I’m still getting used to this part. When I get up on stage these days, just me, no drugs, no barriers, I have these odd quirks that happen. Suddenly I can’t tune my guitar, though I’ve been doing it for 17 years. Then my leg starts twitching. My voice gets wonky. I mean, what the hell?

On the flip side, though, if there is anything that I feel like I am here to do with this life, music is one of those things. When I create music, I am in the moment. Everything else fades away and I feel like maybe I do have a purpose. It’s the semantics of getting my music out there that makes me balk. Collaborating with other musicians freaks me out, based on past experience.

In “Janis Joplin: Rise up Singing,” Sam Andrew of Big Brother and the Holding Company said, “Janis was one of the most powerful people I have ever known, and yet she was completely insecure at the same time. She was the Queen of the Scene and the chambermaid, simultaneously.”

He goes on to describe how she constantly questioned whether she was good or not after performances, wondered always if people liked her, if he liked her, even. “From a person as talented as Janis was, such questions could be unnerving. Her talent was so obvious, but often she couldn’t see it herself.”

And then he says what I feel is the most important part, “People discount what they do best, because they think, ‘Well hey, this is easy, anybody can do this, so what’s so special?’ Janis made me realize that what we do best, all of us, is natural to us, and easy to take for granted. This is completely understandable, and yet it is important for each of us to appreciate our natural gifts, and take pride in them.”

That inspires me. I think I’m alright. I like what I’m doing. I subscribe to a happiness-is-where-you-are mentality, knowing full well that the mountain I am climbing now is probably no better than the mountain I will be climbing later. Something else, something better, never really comes. Everyone, everywhere, is just where they are.

Said Brad Warner in his book “Hardcore Zen: “Every single human being in the world thinks that ‘if only’ this or that one of our conditions could be met than we’d be happy. ‘If only I had a girlfriend/boyfriend/million bucks, then I’d be happy,’ … An old Chinese Zen master once said, ‘From birth to death, it’s just like this!’ Wherever you go in the world, it’s pretty much the same. Only the details are different … We always want to believe that somewhere there’s a perfect situation, if only we weren’t barred from it. But that’s not the reality.”

The reality is that we can always look back and say, “It was better then.” We can always look ahead and say, “It will be better when I’m more successful with my music/writing/relationships etc.” But in the end, what you do right now is probably the most important thing thing you’ll ever do, whether it’s cooking dinner or playing your guitar for your friends.

Whether depression comes with the turf or not, I’ll take it for what it is. It’s definitely not going to stop me from enjoying creating music and learning to share it more with others, even to the point of collaboration. It may just be part and parcel. With great blessings come greater responsibilities. Facing my giant bunny fears, one by one.

Writers and Depression: Writing When You Don’t Feel Like it

Recently in a post on one of my favorite blogs, The Renegade Writer, Linda Formachelli interviewed a writer who struggles with depression in a post titled The Depressed Writer: An Interview with Julie Fast, Author of Get it Done When You’re Depressed.

There is one part of the interview that resonated with me most, because I’ve found it to be true in my own experience.

“Well, one thing that I learned is that when you’re depressed, you are never ever going to feel like doing anything. …I spent many years in front of the TV or in bed, or not being able to work, and one day, I just said, “Wait a minute. I have never felt like working when I am depressed. Never.”

For years, I fed into the idea that when I was depressed, it helped to stew in it. I dropped the ball on things I was working on, or just didn’t try.

After going through a number of struggles in my life, I learned that writing and music are what keep me sober, happy and feeling like my life has meaning. So I adopted a Zen Buddhist outlook on it, mixed with some self-help-ism’s and advice from wise people in my life. Do something. Make a step. Fast says, “Depression is never going to let you feel good, so you have to work anyway. That concept changed my life.”

It seems that many writers and musicians struggle with depression. For me, it’s a sense of futility on certain days (well, a lot of days).

I’ve often found that taking the steps to get things done in spite of feeling poorly results in a sense of accomplishment when I’m feeling better. It breaks the cycle. And it can be done. When I get depressed, tired or existential, I make lists. Then I put one foot in front of the other and go through each thing on the list one by one. I act as if I feel OK and end up getting things done. Perhaps only a smaller scale and with a lot more effort than usual, but enough to feel like I am moving along and not falling backwards.

It also helps me to take my mind off of me and my problems when I get immersed in working on what really motivates me.

Instead of feeling depressed that I didn’t get anything done when I start to feel better, I have a list of the things I accomplished. I keep my lists in a small calendar. I usually buy the calendar in January when it’s 50% off and I can get a pretty leather-bound one to keep in my purse. I can look back at any time and see the things I did even though I didn’t feel like it. It keeps me from despairing, and as a bonus, I feel proud that even though I felt like crap, I accomplished things anyways.

I have found also that there are certain days of the month where I am more productive than others. I speed ahead quickly during certain weeks, taking on project after project. Then suddenly I hit that week or two where it feels like I’m wading through quicksand. Everything takes immense effort. I don’t know whether to blame my exuberance of the weeks before, the moon or just something in my DNA.

Working for myself part-time or full-time (depending on where I am at in my life) seems to help. It’s more flexible and I can work late into the night or push things back a day if I need to.

What helps you get through your down times? Is it a struggle to work around them?