As a musician, one of the things I’ve wrestled with (well, argued with all those internal voices about, at least) is the ‘value’ of the music I create. Over the years I have put a lot of time into creating music. Writing, practicing, recording, performing. I want it to be valuable. I want it to be more than just a personal pursuit, for my own enjoyment.
In recent years, I have also been challenged by a need to shift my perspective on my aspirations for music. As I’m getting older, it is getting less and less likely I’ll ‘make it’ in the music biz, as an artist alone.
But… music doesn’t feel like a ‘hobby’ to me. I studied music (my first Bachelor degree), I have spent decades honing my craft, writing, performing and all the rest of it. People are surprised by the quality—and dare I say ‘calibre’—of the work I put out when they hear it for the first time.
While technically, right now the way I engage with music creation probably fits the description of being a ‘hobby’, it’s so much more than that—in my heart, in my mind’s eye… There’s a sense of spiritual connection to it. There’s a sense of it being about my wellbeing, a way of untangling my feelings around and within tough situations. I have the capability to render works at a ‘high resolution’ and quality—that is, to take them to the point of being releasable. Professionally finished. Polished. In all these ways, it feels like more than a hobby…
Ironically, this sense of needing it to be more gets in the way of my actually doing it. In my earlier years, while I was doing my ‘10,000 hours,’ I would just do it. It was a calling. I was drawn to it. If I had a moment before leaving for work in the morning, I’d play something. Or before I went to bed, I’d doodle down some lyrics.
As my skills in creating have improved, a sense has crept in that I have to get everything to a polished, finished state. That even early explorations need to be perfect. Finished. It’s not enough just to play to myself for an hour, and see where that leads. To develop my playing, my voice. To see where the in-between ‘jamming’ might take me.
But, thankfully, this has been shifting recently.
I have been working on some new material. One song has been gestating for some time, a response to my Mum’s passing. And a second song that has emerged over the recent holiday break.
I was journaling the other day, reflecting on this fresh creative process, and the following passages popped out… (Hopefully this makes sense, given I was kinda ‘talking to myself.’)
I’m enjoying this process. Where it’s coming from. How it’s unfolding. My awareness of it. Allowing it space.
It feels like I’m getting ‘back in the game.’ It came from allowing time to just play, and experiment. I like that. A reminder that new ideas just require one input: time.
And also I feel like it’s a re-opening of my entire self. After so long feeling ‘locked down’. Living someone else’s life. Dealing with the other ‘heavy shit’ going on.
Through music, I’m opening myself up again. Allowing music to be a voice. A way of processing. An ‘outlet’—literally. A way to let that internal, heavy energy dissipate, transform, become something else. From anger, from grief, into art.
This helps me. And when shared, hopefully makes the world a slightly better place for others. To change the vibration and frequency of these emotions—so they play a more constructive, positive, beautiful, role in the world.
In this reflection, I was drawing on a couple of recent experiences, and reading that I have been doing.
The first is related to this idea of ‘transformation of energy.’ I have been reading and listening to some of Alan Watts’ works—especially The Book: On the taboo against knowing who you are. There was a section within that book (well, probably more than one!) that made me realise that creating music—the physicality of plucking a string to create a sound wave—is literally creating new energy and bringing it into the world. Essentially from nothing, something.
As I was reflecting on the process of sharing music in my journal, this idea of ‘transformation of energy’ really sunk in. To take something that, when inside us feels so negative—grief, anger, resentment—and transform it into something positive, even beautiful.
My goal has long been to ‘pay it forward’ in my work. To share my own personal experiences and perspectives in the hope that it resonates with others. In much the way that my favourite artists have helped me to navigate the world—helping me to deal with tough times, to tap into and express my emotions, to just see the world differently.
Even when the music may come across as melancholy or sad, or heavy and aggressive, it’s helping me process my emotions and come into right balance with the world.
While I love what instrumental music can do, for me the combined power of words (lyrics) that engage the intellect, and the emotive force of the sound itself, which engages us emotionally and physically—in the form of dancing or moving to music—is an even more potent force than just the music alone.
I have been reading, and very much enjoying, Faith, Hope and Carnage—a new book by Nick Cave with Sean O’Hagan in conversation. I have been inspired by Nick’s sharing of his creative process, and its relationship to his connection to spirit—whether you call it God, faith, spirituality, or something else.
A lot of what Nick has shared has really resonated with me. There are so many passages I could quote that are relevant to this phase of my spiritual/musical/personal journey… However, I think this sense I have, about the power of music, is beautifully articulated in this statement from Nick:
I think music, especially live music, has the ability to lift us up to our higher selves. In the collective moment of a performance, people are united by the music. That, in itself, has a moral force. It can have a supremely positive influence on a person and their relation to other people. Our better selves are made up of a collection of transitory experiences that have elevated us spiritually, music being potentially the most transcendent and necessary of these shared experiences. If we are deprived of transcendent experiences, we grow smaller, harder, less tolerant.
—Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage (p. 183)
This sense is something I’ve had for a long time. I really started to engage it when I started songwriting in earnest, in my early 20s. But what I’ve only just realised is how important it has been for me personally, as well. Having not been really engaging with music over the past few years, my head and heart are now full of a bunch of gunk, that I’m having to work through with professional support. I think music has helped me process a lot of that in the past. And its relative absence is really showing. That I am growing ‘smaller, harder, less tolerant,’ in some way.
Again, I think Nick Cave articulates this beautifully in the book:
Music, of all the creative forms, best repairs the heart. This may be its actual purpose. It is within music that the ameliorating spirit is most vibrant, and it can be accessed by literally anybody. I know this because it has restored me and been my salvation. Music as a form radiates love and makes things better. It is important to me that there is a practical and positive utility to music—that it improves matters.
—Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage (p. 243)
I was heartened to hear that someone as accomplished as Nick Cave also has these feelings about finding ‘practical and positive utility to music.’ I’m not alone.
But it’s interesting to feel and acknowledge these things starting to emerge again, as a force within my world. An expansion of the role that music plays from purely being about my ‘inner work’ or pleasure, to contributing to something greater than myself. It’s no longer just about me, but also how this might make it’s way into the world to create an even deeper transformation. Even if it’s just for one person.
I find this quite liberating and inspiring. Rather than it just being about personal enjoyment or pursuit, or trying to make it fit within a broader view of trying to ‘change the world.’ A simplicity of purpose beyond my immediate self.
Which is why I was delighted with this comment from a friend, who I met while participating in the Know Thyself course run by my partner. She was responding to reading the lyrics of Love Them Hard, my latest single:
I got goosebumps the first time I heard your song but I wasn’t sure of all the lyrics and have been meaning to ask you. But i did understand this part clearly tho as I relate very much to it.. ‘you figure if you run, you’ll be the only one who can let you down’.
That was such a touching reflection, especially as I know this person thinks and feels deeply about the world. I love that it connects the physical/emotional connection of getting ‘goosebumps,’ with the intellectual connection to a lyric—‘I did understand this part clearly…I relate very much to it.’
In this short quote, my simple hope for sharing my music fulfilled… What a blessing…