Line Out

This is something I wrote on April 8, 2004

The problem with making art
is trying to force it out.
What an exhausting concept,
drilling yourself for inspiration,
convincing yourself to stick with it
even though the creative well is dry.
You know you will get nowhere
until you let go again,
until you give up,
let time pass without concern.

Sometimes perceived years pass
with no output, no progress, no product.
You go through the motions,
procrastinate,
or simply pass time with your head in your hands.
The more frustrated you get,
the more frustrated you get!

Next time,
work hard and then give up right away.
(Unless frustration feeds you,
stimulates you.
Myself, I cannot stand it,
It is like eternal constipation,
with no end in sight.)

In Santa Fe

While living in Santa Fe, I felt disappointed with the amount of music that I had made there. Intellectually, I desired to make an album of music, a collection of full-blown songs. The ideal was to have 60 solid minutes of music. Realistically, I managed to massage a few songs into a state that I considered listenable, and was left with a mess of unfinished music.

As I was deciding to leave for Hawaii, I had the following options:1) Leave in November, leaving my music unfinished, but having money to live on for a couple months and 2) Stop work in November, but stay in Santa Fe until February, leaving me three months to come up with a presentable batch of music in the Santa Fe Studio.

I chose to leave earlier, knowing that I would go nuts if I arrived in Hawaii needing to find work right away, and already going nuts with my situation in Santa Fe. At the last minute before I left, I tossed together the half-finished songs that I had worked on and gave them to people. I was disappointed in myself, embarrassed that I spent over 2 years in Santa Fe and didnt have much to show for it.

In Hawaii

Living in Hawaii during the last seven months has changed the music that I write. Voice emerged as a primary element, and I began writing songs and song fragments of piano/voice and guitar/voice. My morning routine expanded from 30 minutes of piano playing in the morning to an average of 2 hours of music making that preceded any other activity during the day. After a few months, I ended up with dozens of fragments, and a sizable handful of full songs, some of which I recorded.

I was happy to be in what seemed to be prolific territory, excited to have the challenge of getting my voice in shape and exploring with it. The songs were coming in an organic way - I rarely felt like I had to sit down and write music…I would just sit down, start playing, and at some point I would realize that I was playing a new song.

I recorded a couple of these songs, but felt no strong need to arrange them too intricately. I simply enjoyed playing them. Before I had roommates, I would walk into the empty master bedroom (which was tiled), sit on a stool and sing for the enjoyment of singing. It felt natural. After I got roommates, I would hide in my makeshift studio and sing and play piano until 10pm or climb upstairs and sing with my acoustic guitar.

Part of the reason I moved to Hawaii was to focus on what I consider to be one of my life’s biggest hurdles - my love for depression. I was intent on rooting out the causes, finding a healthier lifestyle, learning how to stop myself from spiraling down and becoming a pathetic shell of a human. Not needing to work for the first couple months gave me the room to confront myself. Having a 3 year relationship end upon my move to Hawaii gave me every reason to sink nice and deeply into it.

I am happy with my level of attention to my mental and emotional states during those first few months. As expected, I sank into relatively deep levels of depression where the only reason I would get up from crying and feeling sorry for myself on the couch would be to go cry and feel sorry for myself upstairs. However, during these periods, I maintained awareness of how I was feeling and the actions I was taking and whether they resulted in becoming more or less depressed. I wrote these down, I performed experiments with myself, I walked around thinking about thinking about myself.

A lot of the songs I wrote were either about being sad, the things I was sad about, or about breaking away from being sad. I often felt like the songs were empowering me - If I was in a particular mood that I had already written a song about, I would play that song and the mood would dissipate much more quickly. If I was in a new type of mood, I would sit down and confront it and end up with a new song. After I recorded some of the songs, I was able to listen to the recordings, identify and participate with the mood, and it would dissipate. After more time passed, I was able to simply remember that I had written and recorded a song about that particular mood, and it would dissipate. In this way, music became an integral component of my self-therapy.

At some point, my critical mind began to take my music over. It asked: “What are you doing with these songs?” I answered that I was just playing them. It probed: “Why the hell are you writing these really basic songs, when you should be creating masterpieces?” It demanded: “Well, if this is what you are going to be doing, at least make something tangible out of it.”

If my critical mind were a person, I would not be friends with it.

In March, I found out that I would be going to Europe in July. This was going to be great. Despite loving Hawaii, I was already feeling restless. When my critical mind found out about Europe, it began to get specific: “What are you going to do about that, exactly?” It began to push: “You should really think about finishing some of these songs.” After a month or two of thinking along these lines, the bottom line was exposed: “Well, if you are going to get anywhere musically in life, you should show up in Europe with something on CD”

I am acutely aware of my terrible ability to create goals in the Land Of Ideal that have no correlation in the Land Of Reality. To combat this, in May, I drew out a calendar, detailing how I would arrive in Europe with a product I would be proud of. It is June 26th today. On this calendar, I am at the end of the mixing process. On the last day of the month, I have a circle that says “Find a Studio to A/B in.” I have a date set for this Tuesday at a local Studio.

A few extra variables were thrown in: My sister and a friend decided to come visit the week before I leave for Europe. All the utility companies began to mention that I had not paid them in a few months, meaning that the money I thought I would take to Europe was no longer there. My responsibilities suddenly exploded at my day job - a stockpile of work that had to be completed before I leave was handed to me.

Now

For the first time since living here, I have been really stressed out. My sleeping patterns have become especially odd- despite all efforts, I cannot fall asleep before 4-6am, despite needing to be up in the mornings for work or even for surfing. I feel extremely unsatisfied with my days. I have kindled an odd tendency to scratch myself until I bleed, a habit that I have had in the past, but not at this intensity level. Currently, my chest and back are covered in an array of small swollen scratches and my ankles have big fresh wounds that I have reopened again and again over the last month.

In short, I don’t seem to be happy.

Tonight, I confronted this. I was ’supposed’ to be working on a couple of songs in particular to have them ready by the Studio date on Tuesday. I already escaped to go surfing earlier in the day, and now it was time to really get to work. I walked down the line of items that were top of the list. I started just by singing and playing piano, to warm up my voice (and to see if perhaps this other song felt like writing itself so I could add that to the growing list.) I felt uninspired, played for 30 minutes and gave up. I went to the computer and opened up a song that needs guitar on it, worked for about an hour and a half and got nowhere. I tried opening another project on the computer, and as I listened to it, I thought “I have NO desire to be doing this right now.” I moved to a music-related task and went domain shopping for the music magazine website, trying out all sorts of silly words and phrases. For a minute, it looked like “Ambition.com” was available, and I got very excited. It turned out I was incorrect and would have to settle for “AuralAmbition.com” which wasn’t worth the energy. I gave up on that when the website stopped responding .

I thought maybe the problem was that I did not meditate this morning. I watched the way I was moving around the house as I took a break and saw that it was frantic. I wondered how frantic it was, and how long I had been like this. At this point, the clash occurred between my critical mind and my emotional reality: If I kept pushing myself like this, I would turn into a wreck. I AM turning into a wreck.

I sat down asked myself a handful of questions. It became clear that I *could* choose to keep pushing, but that I would lose touch with my sanity, and totally annihilate the progress I have made personally over the last half a year. I thought briefly about the last few weeks, and admitted that I felt a little more nuts than usual. I thought about my sleeping patterns and my scratching. I thought about the kitten that we just got. I haven’t been treating him very nicely, throwing it off of my lap when it clamors for attention while I work. I thought about my horoscope last week, and how it said I was trying to move a mountain, and that I would learn much from it, but that it was still a mountain. I thought about my sister coming, and me trying to work during the day on work and at night on music. Could I be a good, sane person and get this done?

I had to give it up.

I cried on the floor for a while, feeling like a failure, then felt like getting out of the house. I drove down the hill, momentarily wishing I was in a city where I could go hang out someplace public at 11pm on a Sunday and write in my book. I ended up at the grocery store and got in line with beer and a box of sugar-filled cereal. My bank card was declined three times. I apologized to the lady at the checkout. I knew I had no money, but I was almost certain the bank wouldn’t know until the work week started.

I came home and erased my music to-do list on my white board and wrote “Pay attention to how you treat the cat.”

Ben and I speak on the phone fairly often. Our conversations end in the same way each call: Invariably one of us starts on the rant of ‘working hard: it is the only thing you can do.’

Tonight, I ran out of my house to get away from all hand-temptations (carpal-alert is medium high), and ended up at a fancy honolulu bar. I struck up a conversation with a friend of a friend - I had never met him before - and somehow we landed on the topic of ‘making it’ as an artist. Though he didn’t mention if he had any artistic endeavors in particular, he pointed at a nearby person eating dinner and said:

“Everyone is an artist! I am, you are, even this random guy eating dinner over there; he is an artist, even if he doesn’t know it”

I agreed with him and he went on to tell me that he sees work as a means of making money to be able to do what he wants in his free time. I told him I try and feel that way, but often still get angry that I appear to be wasting my life away working on things I do not care about. He continued, saying that the people who ‘make it’ in art are the people who do not give up, who come home from an 8 hour day and work on their art.

He continued along these lines in a particularily nice way:

“The number of people who want to do art for a living is this big,” and he stretched his arms out wide. “Over time, the number of people who stick with it gets smaller and smaller until it is this big.” He brought his hands close together. “Eventually, everyone is weeded out except for very few, and those people are the people who make it: the people who stuck with it the longest and worked the hardest. Look at LA for an example - I lived there for 5 years. People would move there from Ohio, from Iowa, from bumfuck middle of nowhere, thinking they are going to be the next Brad Pitt - but they wont be. It is the perfect example. Everyone moves there thinking they are going to make it, but it is only the very few who do not give up who make it. I mean look at Brad Pitt. He spent the first ten years in LA working for El Pollo Loco wearing a chicken suit, waving a sign. El Pollo Fucking Loco for 10 years before he got his first soap opera gig”

You are Mark
Be Mark
You are not person xyz.

************

Balance Between
* Creating
* Practicing

which results in the Decision:

* Make do with what you have?
* Learn more
* Work on the rough spots

Thinking about Doing
vs.
Doing

* At least 2x a day
* Tone
* Long Phrases

* Holding individual notes
– Da Du De Do Di
– La Lu Le Lo Li
– Paying attention to Decay
– Diff Volumes
* Walking up and down the chromatic scale
* Intervals

What I worked on the last two months:

Guitar
Got my chops back up in March
Working with singing and playing guitar, esp fingerpicking

Voice
Working through two partial sight-singing books, fousing primarily on intervals
Sight singing phrases without piano accompianment
Focus on Tone: singing one note many times in a row on different syllables and at different lengths
Singing up and down the chromatic scale and matching pitches with piano after each run
Singing with the piano

Piano
Song writing
Playing along with voice

Computer
Complete rebuild of music installation, software upgrade

…and here is what was erased today

Reality In Progress:
What I have learned
- How to make music regardless of external circumstances
- How to reduce time spent on other work
What I have not learned
- To be ok with what I am doing it the face of society and other around me

Are you not into it?
Or do you just need practice?
Or are you harshly judging your abilities?
Or do you need a break?

From an email sent to my boss, kevin:

I grew up struggling (and still do) with two opposites:

1) I learned how to work, how to become absorbed in your work, how to be passionate and dedicated to it. How to become like my father…
2) I learned that work can eat you alive, exhaust your humanity, leave you as an empty shell, and that one can use it to hide from dealing with life, being balanced, and most importantly from achieving the very goals you set out to achieve. How to not become like my father…

I am changing my outlook on productivity. I am leaning more to the Buddhist perspective these days- we spend much of our lives trying to get somewhere, trying to create or discover something - perhaps if we gave up more often, the desired results would come. This crops up in western society - we romanticize scientists and mathematicians who sweat day and night on a problem - often it is not until they let go of the problem that a solution comes. In this sense, ‘giving up’ or ‘relaxing’ seems essential to the creative process. Google - the biggest name on the net (and one of the most creative and successful) stipulates that every employee spend 1 day a week away from their usual work and can choose what to do in that time. The majority of their new services have been developed during this “20% time.” Creative artists often hit blocks where they cannot produce, despite their brain screaming at them to be prolific - They are miserable unless they ‘ride it out’ and learn to accept it as part of the creative territory.

This subject is dear to me. I am 24 years old and my hands have given out. The past 4 years I have worked full time jobs and come home (or to my studio) and worked on music late until the night. When my hands gave out, I had to look hard at my life - if my body is crying out that I am working it too hard, what about my brain, or my self as a whole? I moved to Hawaii knowing that the environment would be forgiving, it would encourage relaxation and balance. Now, I am confused - I still tend to work night and day (mostly on music), but I am learning to insert balance. I am afraid of the general attitude of ease and laziness here in Hawaii, but at the same time notice it offsetting my naturally insane work ethic. I am in limbo - I monitor my life with an obsessive flair, judging my output, where I spend my time, how my body is feeling, what is going through my mind. I imagine I will get tired of this soon (but hopefully it will become a background process).

There is a young guy across the street who fixes up old hot-rods. During my day I will look out my window at his garage, wondering if he is hard at work. Most of the time he is there, during the day and late into the night. Often he has friends over, who are either helping him or just having a beer and keeping him company.

Due to carpal tunnel, there are only so many hours in the day that I can work, either on music or on the computer. Lately, I have been learning how to take more frequent breaks, primarily to stretch my hands. It is a difficult thing to do without losing focus, especially when I am in the middle of something that I care about completing. Often, I will find myself in the kitchen wondering how I got there, what I was doing before I arrived in the kitchen, and what it was that I promised myself I would do after leaving the kitchen.

To ensure mental stability and physical health (especially my hands), a few weeks ago I sat myself down and said “Mark, you need to do things that will make you happy in the present, as well as provide for a happy future. At the same time, you need to be aware of your physical and mental state and take time out to concentrate on those things.” I decided to take a break from playing piano in the mornings and instead pick up the guitar, which I had been neglecting. I told myself that if I was moody, I didn’t have to sit and force myself to sing intervals. Instead I could go to the beach and forget about my requirements and give my hands a needed break.

Again, the problem of motivation arises. With no concrete deadline, I am not working on completing music. I should not complain, as I am actively developing several songs on any given day. However, it seems to be next to impossible to judge my productivity without looking at whether or not I have completed songs. If I look back at the 4 months I have been in Hawaii, I can say several things:

1. I have a couple demos of songs, most of which are partial themselves
2. I have created about 10-12 full songs, most of them do not exist except in my fingers and mind
3. I have created another 10 song fragments which are on active duty (I play them), but refuse to progress.
4. I have made _some_ progress singing, how much I cannot say