Troubled waters

I still feel like this song writing project has gone downhill, and it's not gettign better yet. I have to admit that I think I'm totally blocked. On Saturday I had the afternoon free, and I thought I could work on some stuff and get caught up before heading out of town again - work on the tune I skipped, get an accompaniment for the lyrics I wrote last week down, and maybe get a good start on this week's song. Unfortunately, writing has become such a chore that I actually spent the afternoon doing chores (laundry, cleaning the apartment, etc.) to avoid my hobby.

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I did a little bit of recording Sunday evening after the Steelers game, and feffed about last night and this morning before work so hopefully I'll get a tune out this week and not fall further behind, but I'm just so unmotivated right now. I can't say precisely why that is, but I think this is exactly why I never wanted to go into music as a profession. It seems that once there are deadlines and it becomes work, the joy of making music is destroyed for me. Would I love to just follow my own whim and have that be enough to support myself? Sure, but it doesn't work that way.

A few years ago, in weighing the pros and cons of which direction to head with my life, I determined that if I were to try and make a career of music, I'd need to devote a lot of time to things outside of writing music. Beyond the basics like touring and performing which were never my favorite things, and which would have put a lot of strain on my then just-budding relationship, I saw the way the world was turning with the advent of the internet. I knew that musicians would need to be more disciplined than ever and spend more and more of their time promoting themselves. Labels were being marginalized and while the advantage was that anyone could release thier own music, the tough part was that there'd be no funding or promotion and that would all have to come from the artist as well as the music. That just didn't appeal to me.

I decided I'd rather keep it a hobby, something to enjoy and do when the spirit moves me, and if the internet lets me put it out there to share with others, that's great, but I'm not going to go pushing it and draining my energy away from the fun parts to chase some pipe dream that would ultimately kill the fun. That just didn't make sense to me. I don't want to be famous or anything, and the music business seemed to have become obsessed with fame over everything else. This shouldn't be surprising - it's not just music, but our entire culture. In a world of reality TV where everyone thinks they're entitled to 15 minutes, who is there to truly appreciate music for music sake anymore?

So I decided on a regular 9-5 life with music as my passion on the side. A hobby that stays a hobby to keep it authentic to me, to keep it from becoming corrupted or something. And maybe that's the wall I've hit with this yearlong project. If this project has confirmed anything, it's that I made a good decision when I went into library work instead of trying to make a career in music. Because lately just thinking about having to write a song makes me sick, and if this were my job, my life support, well, that would be very sad indeed.

Don't get me wrong - there are times that I can't stand my job, and I wish I could just quit and write songs full time. But ultimately that's not what I want because I think that would just ruin my realtionship with music. Maybe someday I'll figure out a way to perform my songs live by myself, or I'll finally put together a group to do it, or maybe even get someone else to play my music, but it will always be for the fun of the music, and the moment things get in the way of that, I know myself well enough to know that I'll lose interest.

I have friends who are committed to creating something bigger, and while I admire what they do and their ambitions, I know that it's not for me. I couldn't take getting bogged down in running a band, lining up gigs, managing personnel, doing finances. I suppose I've known that since Some People (a trio I played with in college that lasted less than a year), and it factored into my losing interest in the group. There were certain personality conflicts and arguments over the direction of the music, but what prevented me from getting back into it was that I just wanted to practice and jam more than anything else. And recording was fun, but only for the sake of experimenting with the possibilities, not as an means to getting gigs or whatever.

I loved the spontaneaity of creating music, but I wasn't interested in exporting it in any way. Gigging just seems to complicate things. Turning improvisation into a show, having the limits of playing in a certain place and time, up on a stage in front of people instead of getting down with people - it's just not me I guess. I don't want to entertain anybody; I'd rather commune with them.

I've thought about this a lot, and my ideal live show would have the entire audience playing music while I try to organize the chaos. I'd have some kind of MIDI controller like these placed in the crowd (preferably wireless versions though). They'd be synced to my loops and affet the loops in different ways, and I'd exhort the audience to use them to make noise while I try to take what they're doing and reign it in to some kind of communal music. Who knows? If the audience got good enough, I could just jump in and enjoy it with them. There'd be no one on stage, but the entire audience, we'd all be making the sounds and enjoying it together without the need for musical training. I'd rather be a facilitator for music than a performer I guess.

Anyway, I've gotten off topic. What I'm really saying is that at the moment, the blog is not moving forward. I'm trying to tread water as best I can. I don't want this idea to fall short and be incomplete. But at the moment, it's just not happening, and I'm not sure I can force it. Sometimes these things just need to work themselves out.


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