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Say I Ain't Old
The other day I heard “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer on the radio twice. It’s a song that I never skip over when it comes on; I very distinctly remember getting the Blue Album as a kid—it was the first thing I bought after I upgraded to a boombox with a CD player in it.
That was 20 years ago. That figure by itself is crazy to me, only because I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since I was in sixth grade. But it got me to thinking about a much more interesting fact regarding the history of rock music.
Why I Play Guitar
Guitar was not my first choice of instruments. It wasn't even my second. But it became clear that it was the right choice for me.
A Risky Life
I’ve had many conversations with creative friends regarding the life we have chosen to live, a life that seems unnatural compared to what is widely accepted as “normal” and which provides no shortage of discomfort, uncertainty and risk. The fact is that many people who have the artistic itch willingly and knowingly enter into a life path that causes a great deal of stress. Stress from not knowing when your next paycheck will be. Stress from sickness and injury when you have poor insurance coverage, or none at all. Stress from not feeling capable of leading the life modern society has bred most of us to believe we are supposed to live, or from not even wanting to live that life in the first place and possibly feeling slightly alienated or even ostracized from a social structure that finds that to be odd.
No One Cares, and That's OK
Look: I know there are people who are genuinely interested and excited when I come out with new music, a new comic or a new blog post. Most of them are friends and family, but no matter who they are, I’m delighted that someone out there can enjoy the things I love to make.
You’re Doing It Wrong: Do What You Love
We’ve all seen our fair share of reality singing competitions over the past ten years or so, for better or for worse. There are many different personality types on these shows, but there’s one in particular that started bothering me: the person who truly believes that the world owes it to them to make them famous, because their voice is a golden gift that everyone on Earth deserves to hear since it will change life as we know it for the better. The audition is life-or-death, because music is what they love most in the world and they couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Making Art for Art's Sake or: How I Learned to Give Up the Agenda
When my band broke up last year, I found myself in an uncomfortable but interesting place. I’d been in bands for almost my entire life starting shortly after I first picked up the guitar (six months after, to be exact). From that time in 1996 through 2011, the longest stretch of time when I wasn’t in at least one band was no longer than a few months. It’s always been something that felt right to me, that feeling of being an important part of a small, tight-knit group of like-minded musicians creating new and exciting things. But here I was after a six and a half year run with Shaimus: bandless, lost and exhausted.
On Perfection
Perfection is what you get when you stop expecting it of yourself. I didn’t always think this, though. Until recently, I spent most of my life fancying myself a perfectionist. I took pride in my opinion that over the course of one short life, the only way to truly reach your full potential was to strive for nothing less than perfection in everything you can possibly control. There was just no point in living any other way.
Committing to a Mistake
Now Is All That Matters
I was staring irrelevance straight in the face, and I didn’t like it. The conversation began innocently enough: We’re in an interesting time musically, I was explaining to a friend, because popular music as we know it was created at a time that has allowed us to see an amazing amount of creative innovation, but recently enough that we don’t have to be completely overwhelmed with the amount of music we could potentially explore as listeners and performers. (Though sometimes I still do feel overwhelmed when trying to cover enough musical ground to feel as though my grasp of music history is reasonably comprehensive.)
Is Art For the Artist or the Consumer?
During a recent recording session, I had a conversation about creating music and art for yourself vs. creating it for others. In some ways you create art for yourself, because it is a fulfilling thing that expresses a part of you. In other ways, the moment you have created something, it is no longer yours and suddenly becomes the emotional property of someone else.
So which is it? How can art be both for ourselves and for others’ enjoyment?
Persistence and Rejection
So much of how successful we are is determined by our ratio of persistence to rejection. Everything worth doing requires persistence, and everything done well requires the ability to handle rejection. The key to being successful (among other important things such as talent and intuition) is making sure your persistence outweighs your tolerance for rejection.
Every person who is successful, whether in a professional or personal capacity, has failed far more times than not. But I think most of us know that already. If you couldn’t take failure, you probably wouldn’t be at the point in your life where reading a blog post like this would even interest you. You’d already have resigned yourself to another life pursuit. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, I might add.
I Don't Need to Be Brilliant
I put a lot of pressure on myself. I am my own worst critic. I cut myself less slack than anyone else possibly could. If I don’t, I might create something that sucks. I might make myself vulnerable to legitimate criticism. I could cut off the bad stuff at the source and let only the most brilliant, genius, groundbreaking material get out into the public. That would be such a relief. Then I’d know everything I create will be wonderful, because I’ve already given myself so much shit and demanded I be great from the start.
If only it worked that way.
Do What You Hate
In my last post, I talked about doing what you love no matter how good you are at it. But it’s also important to do what you hate—as long as you know when to stop.
That might sound counterintuitive, but the fact is, using life to figure out what you don’t want is far easier than just picking the things you think you will want. By process of elimination, it’s the best path to finding what you should do with your life.
Don't Stick to What You're Good At
I was listening to an album of solo acoustic guitar music played by a virtuoso of the instrument, when suddenly it came to a track where he started singing. My first gut reaction to his less-than-stellar vocal ability was to say, “Whoa dude, stop. Stick to what you’re good at.”
But then I realized that’s complete bullshit.
Artistic Naiveté
For anyone who’s living a life of creative pursuits, being realistic about our chances of making it to the next level isn’t something that we generally take into account. Like I said in my post about the romance of the ideal a few months ago, most of us tend to live life with our heads in the clouds, and maybe one or two toes scraping the ground for good measure. After talking with a friend about the inevitable umbrella of naiveté that we musicians have to live under, I realized a few things.
There are two kinds of artistic naiveté. One is good, and one is bad.
To be fair, it could be argued that both are bad, but nobody who has devoted their life to pursuing near-impossible goals like musicians and artists is going to lock horns with me on this one. We’ll leave that to the folks who are always wondering when we’ll grow up and get real jobs. Anyway, the good naiveté is that which we use to ignore the odds of turning art into real income. I’ve been playing in bands since I was a teenager, and I’ve been spending the better part of my last five years working on developing my current band. As much as I believe in the music we’re making, as good a band as I think we are, the simple fact is that the law of averages is against us. For every band that makes a living from their music, there are hundreds that never even came close. Maybe even thousands. And being good is no more a guarantee to your success than being lucky. Being smart about your music career is a must, but that’s a topic for another day.
There's Always Someone Better
Everyone has known that one person who seems to be good at everything; specifically, the person that is better than you at everything. It even seems like the things that you’re especially good at are the things they are especially better at. If you don’t know that person now, you probably did when you were a kid, and it probably brought a whole host of emotions out of you.
When I was younger, I used to get angry and jealous of that person.
I loved drawing cartoons as a kid, and I was sort of good at it. Good enough to get noticed for it, anyway. Then I made friends with a kid who was particularly advanced at art. I was OK at copying a drawing from a comic book, but he could conjure up his own images that looked ready to be printed by Marvel. When he was around, I felt like he stole my thunder. I felt like he took away the one thing that made me stand out. Although I certainly admired his natural skill, I was also jealous.
Hard Knocks and No Regrets
As I was sitting in the Shaimus tour van in the middle of an all-day drive, I was tired both physically and mentally. I felt like a human blob–motionless all day and wondering if I was watching a small part of my young life slip away, a casualty of the road. Touring, I should mention, is often a time of extremes: the highs are incredible, and the lows can be pretty rough. I love being on the road and the tour was going quite well, but having all that time to think sometimes leads to a little nagging sensation that you may be wasting precious minutes.
We Are All Artists
Usually when I talk to people about my pursuit of a career in music, I stress that I’ve never really felt as though I was pursuing a dream so much as fulfilling a basic need. Music is something that’s always been there and, much like eating and sleeping, will always be around just begging for my attention every day. I hesitate to use terms as dramatic as “life force” when describing it, but despite the lameness, it is pretty accurate when describing creative and artistic pursuits in my life. I thrive on creating and otherwise being involved in artistic endeavors, whether it be music, drawing or writing. Even humor is a creative aspect of my personality that is stubbornly embedded into my being. Art isn’t something that I do, it’s something that I am–it happens naturally and necessarily.