emo
so for those of you playing at home, the deal with the crying dawsons and the youtube wall of loneliness is basically that i haven’t been feeling very well lately. in an effort to break the silence on this blog – its not like i’ve got nothing to talk about, i just haven’t felt like talking – i’m writing an emo blog post, in the tradition of desperate livejournalers and suicidal myspacers. back to normal after this Ok.
sooo i’ve been in a bit of a low patch, creatively emotionally et cetera, and most of it is just due to frustration and a hint of desperation regarding working on the next faux pas album… things just aren’t going well with it right now. i’ve turned to some good friends for counsel in the last few days – i think its helping to crystallise a few things in my mind tank, and i thought i’d get them down as a means of maybe moving this blog past this uncharacteristic – may i say, first (and last?) – official emo blog patch and get back to the important things like posting youtube clips of robert palmer and talking about zork.
for better or worse, when i got home from overseas last year and started working on this album, i decided that i should try really hard to make the next album… you know…. “really good.” for my first album i threw a lot of sounds at the wall, some stuff stuck together, and i put it on a shiny disc. the album was started and finished (i mean, pressed onto discs) in a couple of months, which is pretty quick. almost 2 years later i can look back at that album and say honestly that i’m proud of it, it documents something. but its not a great album. so i decided this time around i would try really hard, make myself keep going until i made something great.
so — this is, like, way harder than it looks! first, you have to define great. i think some people make music because they have stories or messages or whatever that they just desperately need to express – the process of making a record for them is just about getting it down, accurately and with candor, getting it across. so “great” is kind of tied maybe to some kind of authenticity, being true to yourself or true to your vision or stories. this is especially true for twee dudes who write songs about girls, or something. it all sounds so noble. you strive to achieve your vision. or stay true to your heart. or tell that story about your grandpa, you know the one where he was in the war and people died and shit. meaningful shit! so therefore to make your music great – and that is, lets be clear, to satisfy your own desires, to make music yoou think is great, not other people – is really just about knowing yourself and having a clear vision. fucking noble.
for me its waay more coarse and obvious – and problematic – because i think i struggle not judge my own musics by the same standards that i judge the music that i love. back that up, what i mean is.. i want to love my own music the way i love my favourite music. is this even possible? do only conceited pricks love themselves? or on the other hand is it possible – no, mandatory – that you strive to make art that you can love, be so deeply proud of, fight for. but to set those standards by comparing yourself to your idols (really didn’t want to drop that word but can’t think of anything more appropriate)… well this is self-hating 101: set yourself unachieveable goals, fall short, hate yourself. fuck!
i should be inspired by great music, right?. at the moment, i’m paralysed by awe. i can’t help this feeling sneaking up on me that.. whats the point of even bothering when there is so much great music already out there? i listen to an album i love and it should inspire me… but often it just humiliates me. i read this blog post a while back.. it quotes a max tundra interview where he says:
“There is music everywhere that is very, very similar to music that already exists… making records and CD’s from an environmental perspective, there’s all this new plastic in the world, which is so wasteful. That’s such a responsibility, that you have to justify the existence of that product in the world. And if it’s really similar to something that already exists then you’re just messing the world up really, you’re polluting it.”
you have to justify the existence of that product in the world. shit! i have to justify the existence of my music, and its got to be more than just “it exists because i had some spare time and i made it”? damn. that is cold. and hard. also from that blog post:
“if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.â€
fuck you charles bukowski looking into my soul! i got doubts enough to deal with without you giving me this extra layer of compelling shit! at the moment it is not bursting out of me. has it ever? bukowski you literary bastard!
so anyway what seems like deep shit is at most just some emo bullshit by a whiney guy who just needs to deal with the fact that he is not a special flower. this is not a nuclear crisis or anything. we are not at defcon one. security alert was beige at best. the problem here is – to paraphrase someone that i spoke to today – one of the dangers with trying to take your music or your art or whatever seriously is that you can begin to tie in your ideas of self-worth directly to how you feel you are doing creatively. what i mean is – on this stupid trip of making the “great” album, when things are going well i feel ecstatic. when things go badly, if i’m a bit uninspired or have a few bad days in a row, it kind of inevitably leads to despair. which doesn’t help the music any. if it sounds stupid that someone can be driven to existential crisis because he’s having trouble making a song sound right, its because it is.
the fact that having a sustained bad time working on my album can lead to a more general existential funk obviously says more about my personality than it does about anything else. people have different ways of dealing with stress, and i suppose some people see success and failure as binary while others are more generous with how they measure themselves.
so yeah what now? just finish the stupid music, put it out there, and try not to think about whether i think its “great”? or keep going with my ‘chinese democracy’ style approach of continually deconstructing and reconstructing my music because its ‘not quite there yet’… chasing some idea of greatness which i probably cannot get to, whether it be through lack of skill or because i’ve purposefully set myself an unachievable task in order to give myself a reason to hate myself. how am i not myself, bitches!? at the end of the day it is really just about knowing yourself.
countdown to return of normal programming commencing… might have a couple more emo posts in me but i will exorcise the demons and then get back to the usual shit