For some years now I’ve been a student of human behavior, studying interactions, perceptions, consumption and patterns therein. I’ve been what society calls a ‘creative’ since my memories began to take hold. I remember being no older than four or five and picking out the same pattern repeatedly on a little three-quarter size guitar. It was my first song. It was one of my first (quite personal) creations. It was also the first time I looked around to see if anyone was listening.
That day, I happened to be sitting in my front yard and consequently, there was no audience. I sought one out. It was my mother, and the concert I performed for her that day would be the first of many that she would so eloquently sit through. I played my song, she smiled, “very nice Andrew”, and the interaction was complete. Maybe to her it was complete…but to me it was a bit of a let down. This wonderful creation that I had just painstakingly scrutinized for several hours in my front yard, was perfected, and now had been performed. Furthermore – I was proud of it, so proud of it. It was magical to me. But my mom – I understood in that moment that this event was one of many like it that she encountered daily from her two boys. She probably had more important matters to attend to. After all, my song consisted of a mere three notes, all on open strings. Hardly what one could call exciting but to me, I had just discovered the world was round.
It was that period of my life in which I started to understand my connection to creativity, and my need to share it with others. As a kid, I played every instrument put into my hands. My father had a sweet workshop and I spent lots of time making things. Anything. Things out of wood, metal, whatever was in the garage that day. “Look what I made!” was somewhat of a regular thing to hear out of my mouth. It wasn’t long before what I thought of as sharing started to be perceived by others as bragging. I’m not the bragging type and I remember being accused of showing off something I’d made, and replying simply “I’m not showing off, you can do it too!” I meant it. I was so young I’m not sure I understood that not everyone was like me. Over the years I’d learn that not everyone was happy about that, and often times my creations would lead to jealousy and confrontation.
At present, I’m 35 years old and I work for a well respected advertising agency. My creations still bring me joy, life, sustenance and overall well being. They also still bring along jealousy and confrontation. I face these issues at work constantly as a multimedia designer. When I make things, be it a video, a song, a site, whatever, I often do so in a blurry rush. Several hours later I’ve made something. Occasionally I really hit the mark, and its at those times that a clash is heard. Its the clash of pure creative energy and output hitting a wall of insecurity, pride and commonplace. That’s the agency. For all its efforts and good intentions, my agency still likes to make me work the way they’re used to having people work. The first words I usually hear at the start of a project are “…now Andy, don’t go running off and do xyz…we need to plan, plan, plan…”. These days I get shut down before I even get started. Its ironically sad really, as these people hired me to drive yet won’t let me in the car! Life is about give and take, balance. I see the merit and value in approaching things systematically, hell – I’m a programmer too after all. But the planners need to recognize the possibility of spontaneous creation as being every bit as valid as a well planned production. Maybe not all the time, because if you let go of control its easy to miss the mark. But when the mark is hit…ahhh, that’s the cheese. (note: my agency and the people I work with are some of the best; I’m breaking things down here, not calling things out)
Of course at an advertising agency there is constant demand for new and cool stuff, in all of the disciplines that I work in. But even at the agency I feel the tug on egos. Here at the place where I’ve been hired to make things, and get paid to reach my full creative potential, I’m once again wearing out the “look what I made!” mentality. I don’t mean to, its just me. I’ve always made things, I always will. Now well into my adult life, I realize that I myself have been worn out by these interactions. Always having to prop up other people’s work, even if I think mine is better (which honestly, is not that often…my default has always been preferring the work of others; it is only recently developed a rhythm for accepting my own accomplishments as ‘better’ in cases). I’m always having to be conscious that I’m not going too far, doing too much, stepping on the toes of others. In my life I’ve not met many people that make things like I do, as fast and as often as I do. Is it my fault? I came out of the womb this way, and haven’t spent any time on perfecting my creative output. I’ve never had any formal training in any creative discipline (but I do have a marketing degree!). But in my life, I occasionally dial myself back so others won’t feel insignificant (the perceived arrogance in that statement is not lost on me, its grossing me out). Mind you – I don’t usually think others or their works are insignificant, they do. Personally, I think every human has tremendous untapped potential (me too) and often have a much higher opinion of people then they have of themselves. Yet still, I’m constantly aware of how my creative output affects others, and have over the years attempted to restrain my creative output for the benefit of others. As it turns out, that really doesn’t work for me. I must have a creative outlet to maintain good mental health. If I go for even a few days without making music, art, something, I start to implode.
Today I find myself creating at as high of a level as I ever have. What has changed are my habits when it comes to sharing. I do share, but really, I don’t. I have a web site of course, and have had it for over ten years. All of my music has always been available for free. This week I released the eleventh version of my site which houses all 100+ of the songs I’ve written, performed and recorded, and a bunch of my video and web work. For this version of my site I went the extra mile and created a video introduction to my site (”Me Against Me, will it ever be enough?”) to try and make the point clear and bold – “I make lots of stuff and it never stops, sorry, can’t help it!”. All of my music ends up on the site on my music page, my web work usually makes it up there too, and videos etc. The site is my closure, as in, I’ve made something, I’ve put it here, I’m done, next.
The kicker: virtually no one ever sees or hears anything I do! At least not in recent years. I know this for a fact, because I use Google Analytics on all of my sites. I can see daily how much traffic I get, where it comes from, what pages they visit, and how long they spend on the pages they visit. So there’s really no question, the pages of limitedwave.com barely get in the double digits on visits each month. And rarely does anyone spend more than two or three minutes total on my site (most of my songs are longer than that, and often don’t reveal the best parts until after two or three minutes!) I used to send mass emails announcing things, and a few years ago I got a fair amount of traffic. These days I only announce new songs, videos and site releases via my Facebook profile – no personal emails. Everyone I know, knows I continually add things to my site. Often people are surprised when I reply ‘yes’ to the question of ‘do you still have a site?’.
Yet still no one is listening, so to speak. In my 35 year old cynical mindset I’m convinced I don’t really mind. In a world where even the slightest trace of raw talent is sought after and exploited like gold, my situation brings a smile to my face. I know I have a gift that I don’t necessarily deserve and didn’t ask for. But its mine. My responsibility. I take comfort in knowing that I not only use my gift every day, but go to great lengths to let my gift evolve and present itself exactly as it wants to (the true opposite of exploitation). At this point, we start getting into some less-than-basic ideas about how creative people create things, and how I apply that paradigm to my life. We won’t go there today though, no worries. The point is – I know I’m still that five year old sitting in the grass with a guitar looking for an audience. The irony – as I age and get better at everything, my audience is vanishing. And the cause is me. Trippy.
People paid attention for a time when I was little and could play guitar well, and by age 15-16 they were tired of my musical skills. People paid attention when I taught myself to design things and started putting out interactive work and web sites, but within a few years they were tired of hearing about or seeing my next creation. People paid attention when I had 30-40 songs available on my site, and now after topping 100 songs they seem numb to news of a new song. It seems like I’m wearing out my welcome, again.
I often ask myself what makes a person decide to consume a work of art? What factors lead to their liking or disliking it? These questions are of course impossible to answer. Take Facebook for example. I can put a few photos up on my profile and within minutes have a dozen personal comments and a few ‘thumbs ups’. It seems its acceptable with photography for a consumer to connect intimately and instantly with a photo, regardless of my status or accreditation as a photographer. No one is immune to this. Music however, is not the same. With music, it seems that we listen to accepted sources of music with a tendency to like and connect to it. If the source is unique, or independent, we are automatically inclined to think it is ’sub-par’ music. I myself am guilty of this. There are of course, lots of people that are into independent music and I give them props. But it is deep within this unique sect of listeners that you might find someone who is completely unbiased by the source of music, influenced only by the music itself. That person is my target audience.
I have to point out the irony again, in this situation. People easily connect entirely with a photograph, enough so that they will comment publicly on them (with personal comments). Music, not so much. I’m sure people (like say, photographers) can argue the limitless artistic input that can go into just one photograph. I’m a very realistic person and have practiced photography for many years. I can say with confidence that there is a lot more going into one of my songs than goes into one of my photographs. Even when I go out to a location for specific shots, arranging entire shoots and the like – even that doesn’t compare to what I put into a song. So the irony to me is that people have no apprehension to connecting with photography which, of the two mediums, conveys (on average) less emotional energy, less time, less everything. However music like you’ll find in my library, gives the listener a direct look into everything about me, possibly a reflection of themselves. A direct look at at the creative process. Raw, pure, creative energy. Free for all, consumed by few.
So I can take along a camera on a trip for example, snap a few photos, stick ‘em on Facebook and have a bunch of people connect and maybe comment or pass along a photo or two, often times people just love this. Or, I can spend 5 hours dumping my soul into a full-on symphony based song with live drums, arpeggiated Moogs, huge guitars and four part vocals lasting five minutes, stick it on Facebook and have no one even click on the link.
I assume based upon how fast people notice and comment on photos, that people must crave this interaction, this connection. Even if they don’t know it. Its seem plausible to me that they could achieve this same connection, and to a greater degree, through music from their peers in the exact same fashion. Yet as a whole, we don’t give our minds the opportunity to connect to music that can’t be found on iTunes. As I said before, I too suffer from this. (btw – I do have two records on iTunes, one decent and then my worst sounding one ever: not sure if a single copy has ever sold!)
I should say at this point as I reference Facebook repeatedly, that I generally don’t ’share’ my stuff. That is – I don’t push my stuff on anyone. I’ve always felt that as soon as I personally start pushing my stuff on others, I’m selling it. At that point I’m losing what makes my music special to me, which is that it comes to life on its own. That said, there’s always been a small number of people (less than 10) who liked getting a note if I’d put up something new. So when Facebook emerged, and all of my friends were on it I started to just post notices once, on Facebook. I’ll always have a site at limitedwave.com, and I’ll always share my music freely. Since Facebook is there and is so easy, I’ll post links to new songs…and that’s about it. Anyhow, this is why you don’t hear me talking about any other social media outlets like MySpace. I had my stuff on there too by the way, and it didn’t get any traffic there either!
“If you don’t promote your stuff, at all, why do you care?” Good question. I’m still the little kid looking for audience, plain and simple. I don’t really even like this fact about me but I’m discovering its just the way it is. Moreso and cognitively, I know that myself and probably a lot of people will find and connect with music from places like iTunes without a second thought – often bragging about the gem just found. But music like mine – just from a dude on his site – comes usually with some sort of disclaimer. Its inescapable.
At this point, you’re probably thinking ‘dude – isn’t it obvious? You’re sh*t sucks!’ Sometimes, I couldn’t agree more. Seriously. But often I hear someone else’s independent music and then I hear commercial music and I think about the quality. When it comes to quality of sound, my material is much closer to good commercial studios than it is to your typical ‘demo’. That leads me to songwriting, and that’s purely subjective. What I do know, is that I’ve never sat with a person and played them some of my music and had it leave them indifferent. Obviously, no one would say you suck to your face(!) but like I said earlier, I’m a student of human behavior. I know when someone’s being genuine or blowing smoke up my ass. So does my stuff suck? You’d have to be the judge of that yourself. My current theory is that my music is of equal quality to a large quantity of commercially produced music, but is unaccessible to the majority of consumers because of its origin.
Its really easy to get lost in vanity, and lucky for me I’m too self aware and hyper-critical to allow such an indulgence. Its natural for me to analyze things and examine a big picture scenario and how social patterns flow out from stimuli. The combination of these tendencies within my personality compel me to follow trains of thought like the one you’re reading now. Ironies in life always catch my interest, and breaking my existence down and oversimplifying it is almost comical to me. Imagine:
Most people we know do one or two, maybe three things really well. If lucky, you’re born with some sort if talent – most often manifested in a creative talent (art, music etc). But still – most people have ‘their thing’. A lot of people would give anything to be able to play an instrument, or to understand the creative process. Me, I’ve been given a gift and I’ve focused 30 years of living on nurturing that gift. If a person wants to see what happens to energy when a creative like me turns it into a work of art, without letting my own preferences or needs interfere – that person can experience that on my site. Its unique. How many people do you know that write songs without thinking about them? I’m guessing not many. Check out my song #105, Skimpy. I didn’t actually write any of that song. Its 100% improvised, as in, sat down and hit record and figured it out from there. So its unique, and ironically its invisible.
The great irony that has become my life is that the more I create, the better I get, the farther I go – the more invisible I become. That’s my irony. The irony for the world around me is that the more invisible I become, the happier I seem to be thereby lessening any chance of me ever pushing my creations past where they are now.
*harp
