a quick update & thoughts on staking claim

siri, how do i tell myself i'm "still doing the music thing"?

I felt strange making a garden
Claiming space had always been hard enough
Maybe it always will
But we're growing
We are climbing into view

sometimes a verse of a song really resonates. i’ve been rotating this EP quite frequently in the past month or so, and i think it’s because of this set of words in particular — it soundtracked a big step i’ve just taken in my current project.

this is as good a time as any to announce: earlier this week, i sent out the finished sequence for my fourth little batch of songs, ready for mastering! all of the transitions between tracks still can take me on something of a journey— and that’s a good good sign. i’m quite proud of the work i’ve done, with a number of collaborators (will certainly be gushing about them after the fact), and i’m eager to start tackling the visual element. release strategy can be daunting, but it means that DB4 will be out in the world sometime in the foreseeable future!

out in the world… so why am i getting stuck on this notion of “claiming space”?

well, oddly enough, i think that with any big dent you make in a creative endeavor, there’s actually almost a “mourning” process that happens. and maybe that’s a pretentious choice of words, but a.) i can’t think of anything better, in the midst of this semi-freewrite and b.) i think it’s kinda sorta true.

say you’ve just spent all this time, money, energy, and money on an abstract, intangible…thing-project-thing…that doesn’t really need to exist, for any other reason than you simply liked making it. and say—to make matters more complicated—you’ve done stuff like this for the better part of your twenties; it’s helped give your sense of identity and community some shape. but (here’s the kicker) you haven’t exactly made a “Career” out of it. and you haven’t tried to, in earnest, because that can be exhausting, disappointing, and it takes some of the magic out of it…

so, is it still you? what next? should you be claiming more space for this kind of thing in the future? where should your priorities lie when you’re staring down the barrel of thirty?

that’s sort of what i mean by “mourning”: each time you finish something big, there’s always this nagging thought that maybe you should move on. punctuate. so you mourn a little bit.

now, this is not fishing. i’m not waiting around for someone to come save me from a kind of self-conscious spiral. i still get excited about the ideas i’m having, and there’s certainly some irons i’ve already started putting into the fire (see: my running list post, something that’s always, well, running). being compelled to create stuff will always be a big part of who i am. but i also think it’s important to acknowledge doubts one might have; it’s a totally normal part of any creative process. (i hope).

in times like these, i take comfort in my favorite creations and creators. i jam out to sarah weddle EPs.

but another go-to has been jeff tweedy’s 2020 musings, titled How to write one song. his band, wilco, has been there for me during several landmarks in my life. it’s only fitting that tweedy’s book would be published in such a tumultuous year. this was probably the most wholesome thing to come out of the pandemic, and it served as such a point of solace for a great number of people, i’m sure.

at any rate, i really vibe with the first chapter of How to write one song especially, a chapter just called “Why?”

here’s a great quote, that i just stumbled on by re-reading the first ten dang pages this evening:

The truth is that as I got older, the answer to “What do you want to be?” became much more difficult to say out loud. Even though I always had a pretty good idea that I wanted to write poems and songs and play music, I always had a hard time telling people that I wanted to be a poet or a songwriter or an artist. It still feels wrong sometimes to label myself as something so grand in my estimation. Why? …

…I think the disconnect is more related to the idea of “being” anything when it’s the “doing” that’s the most rewarding. Being something isn’t real in the same way that doing something can be real.

this becomes the beating heart and soul of the rest of the book. there were certainly some other choice quotes i found at later dog-ears, but it all comes back to the creative act itself. so i guess there really IS something to being present, being mindful, etc.

outside of mental health and mediation gurus, artists have arrived at similar conclusions! take it from mac demarco (“doing is the cool thing”):

now, there is a small but cynical part of me that stops and thinks: “easy for YOU to say, mac-goddamn-demarco. people call you the ‘prince of indie’ for crying out loud! easy for you to say JEFF… you wrote Yankee hotel foxtrot and Summerteeth and like half a dozen other masterpiece classics…”

but really all of that melts away when you just get lost in the process. you ever pick up a guitar and dink around for a minute, and somehow it becomes an hour? it’s a treat! it’s a joy. ever stare down some fridge poetry and lose yourself for a moment? remember just the aimless doodling you would do, when you were actually probably too young to remember?? maybe for you, getting lost in the sauce is as easy as kicking on some good tunes and whipping up a batch of your mom’s proprietary chili, or letting your imagination run wild with a really good read that just blows by…

that’s the magic, that’s the thing i like to chase. i’m sure i’ll be getting back to that space, soon after i get this new project out in the open after a little while. i just have to stake my claim. difficult, but worth it.

-dizzy/sjg/etc