Am I Doomed?
Sep 10, 2004 myMusicShare/Save
About four days ago, I started learning Csound, basically a programming language for sound synthesis. Two days ago, I ordered Producing In The Home Studio with Pro Tools on half.com. Later in the day, I put in a call to a guitarist I found on Craigslist who was supposed to give me guitar lessons in exchange for piano. This morning, I picked up Grout and Palisca’s A History of Western Music and thunked it into my backpack.
I’m not trying to pat myself on the back here – far from it. I’m taking a look at what underlies this behavior. Now, some of you may know that I fancy myself a musician of some sort. I sang in choirs all my life, I majored in music in college, I play piano in Freestyle Love Supreme, I put down some hip-hop classics with Lin-Manuel, I try to play jazz, I try to write songs, sometimes I try to make drum and bass, I gush about the musical flavor of the season (it’s Prince right now, in case you hadn’t noticed), I sing R&B style nonsense hooks, I identify with pretty much everyone and everybody.
And what the hell do you do with that? The first time I played with Freestyle Love Supreme, I had to be coerced because I said, You know Lin, I’m not really a piano player. But I went down there, and I did it, and you know what, 9 months later, I’m still not a piano player. But I’m getting pretty decent at whatever it is I do down there.
That first night, before I walked onto the stage, Two-Touch took one look at me and said “Arthur the Geniuses,” a name that has stuck with me ever since. But I tend to view it as a sort of ironic name. As a sort of mockery of itself. Not that it was by any means intended this way, but to me it signifies my status as a musical jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.
Here’s what it boils down to for me: common wisdom dictates that when you have a natural talent for something that you really enjoy doing, you should do it. I’m on board so far. Doin’ the music thing, somehow someway. But what happens when that thing forks off into a thousand different roads? How the hell do you know which way to go? If on Monday, I want to be Keith Jarrett, Tuesday I want to be Squarepusher, Wednesday I want to be Prince, Thursday Rufus Wainwright, and Friday Gustav fucking Mahler, when I get up in the morning on Saturday and sit down to make music, where on earth do I start? When in the afternoon I decide it’s time to practice, well, what the hell do I practice? Where does one begin?
How do you make these decisions? How do people know, when faced with many viable options, which one to choose? Or do you just take them all?
I mentioned to Carlos the other day that, at the rate I’m going, it would have to be at least a good 5 years before I’d have enough of an understanding of all the things I’d like to understand musically to be truly proud of the music I’m making. Rationally, I suppose I can accept that. Emotionally, I absolutely cannot. So what does a person do? Choose one – pigeonhole oneself into an instrument or a category and focus on that to the exclusion of all else? Continue spidering and just never really feel ownership of anything? I just find it hard to envision a day when someone says “So what kind of music do you make?,” and I’ll actually be able to give them an answer. I suppose I’d prefer to give them a CD. But how will I know what to put on it?
Now before you all say, just quit your whining and do it, whatever needs to comes out will come out, or other such stuff, I have to say that it’s just not that easy. Sometimes what wants to come out is a string quartet – once I hit a musical wall, I’ve got to work on my string-writing; or if I hit a technical wall, I’ve got to learn more about my sampler. Sometimes it’s a series of beeps, drum noises, and whistling sounds. Gotta figure out how to make those. More and more often recently, it’s been very guitar-oriented stuff – gotta learn to play the guitar better, at least well enough to play the lines I want to get down. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Something is clearly wrong-headed in my thinking here. But what? Anyone have brilliant advice to tear down everything I’ve just said? Anyone?
September 10th, 2004 at 2:58 pm
So, on Monday, you want to be Keith Jarrett, Tuesday you want to be Squarepusher, Wednesday you want to be Prince, Thursday Rufus Wainwright, and Friday Gustav fucking Mahler?
Maybe every day you should be Arthur Lewis.
September 10th, 2004 at 2:58 pm
Okay, now that I’ve posted my catchy bumper sticker style answer, let me expand on it.
I have to say I completely identify with your plight. Be thankful that your thousand different roads fall into the same general category. There was a time during which I found myself trying to decide whether I should pursue my passions for architecture, theater, graphic arts, interactive design, animation, or various aspects of filmmaking. The seemingly endless options left me immobile. I felt as if pursuing one of these avenues would close off the rest of them forever. At a certain point, though, I had to decide that pursuing none of them would be leagues worse than pursuing one.
So I took a long look at my passions. I had talent for all of them, but for which did I really excel? Which was the most enjoyable? And, most importantly, which did I find myself getting sick of less easily than any of the others? I was lucky in that I found a definite answer to all three of these questions: Film editing. That was the decision that led me to enroll in the six week course at The Edit Center and that led to me packing up and moving here permanently. Now I’m battling the twin roadblocks of complacency with a stable job and fear of supporting myself by freelancing. Fun, fun.
Meanwhile, it turns out that despite having decided to focus on one passion, I was still able to dabble in some others. While creating “The Sexual Deviants of New York City,” for instance, I also designed an animated logo for a few bucks. I’ve honed my web design skills, done some interesting graphic design, and while I haven’t done anything related to theater, really, there’s certainly no reason why I couldn’t dabble if I wanted to. I suppose I will never, ever design a building, but I still find time to passionately talk about architecture and architecture history.
Shall I attempt to sum up what I said? I guess if I’m giving you any specific advice it would be to remember the following: If you decide there’s one style of music (or combination thereof) you want to master quickly, focus on it. You will still be able to improve your skill in other areas, just more slowly. You might one day look back in astonishment at how good you got at so many different things.
September 10th, 2004 at 3:01 pm
Oh, and one last thought: There is something kind of cool about having someone say “what kind of music do you play?” and the answer being “uh, you’d really have to hear it.”
September 10th, 2004 at 3:52 pm
Oh jack of all, master of none: I agree with much that sir swill says, such soft-spoken song. You gotta focus in on one talent, but then when you need a break, try something else. It’s great that you’re not JUST a pianist, because if you got sick of playing piano, you’d have NOTHING.
Right now, it seems like focussing on guitar will be a good thing for you.. that’ll help many other elements fall into place– then try some piano.. go around, it’s good to do a bit of everything.
As for myself, in 2004, I have done my own shows, performed with other people in their shows, booked other shows, been booked, recorded myself and other people, played violin, piano, sang, rapped, danced, expanded my websites, blogs, read a lot, created my own flash music video, promoted my album to the point that there are over 6 reviews of it out there, taught myself to rollerblade, improved my computer programming, chilled w/ a bunch of friends, beaten a lot of video games– Suffice to say a whole lotta stuff happened, and it ain’t even done yet.
Have I done enough? No. Could I have done a better job of motivating? Yes. But point being I’m mainly quite happy with what I’ve done, and I’m happy that I’ve done so many different things, instead of just grabbing a whole lot of just one egg. I can’t imagine if all I ever did was simply rap at shows, or only just make flash music videos. Or only produce other performers. That would have been LAMEO. But instead, I live a life of diverse excitement, slowly getting somewhere and trying to enjoy the ride.
Post-Script. Official US law says that when someone asks you, “How would you describe your music?” You gotta say, “It’s a cross between _____ and _____.” So I don’t know, try , “Prince and Martin Sexton”, or “Mozart and duck fart sounds”.. or something like that, whatever works for you.
love, soess
September 10th, 2004 at 3:58 pm
To Ken, because Soce commented while I was still writing this reponse: First off, they don’t fall into the same category by any means. I still find myself spending days at a time forgetting about music entirely and researching Unix and robotics and number theory. It was not too long ago that I had my mind set on getting a master’s degree in Computer Science. I had to whittle down the same as you to the thing I had the most passion for and work from there.
I’ve talked to Etan and Lin about this already today, and it’s becoming clear to me that, literally sick and tired as I was at the time of post, I wasn’t really clear at all.
In a nutshell, what I meant to say was:
AAAAAGGHGHH!
By which I mean, how can you make a decision on something when your opinion seems to change from one day to the next? When every day you find that what you love about making music is something different? When the things you hear in your head are always changing, how can you catch up to them, and figure out how to get them down? How do you know what techniques to learn, which direction to turn in?
This runs very deep for me, into questions I’ve always had about truth, opinion, and identity, and how one can define those things for oneself. And it’s clearly also an ADD thing – I’ve been without Ritalin for almost 3 weeks now, and it’s definitely showing.
And in terms of the last question, I think it’s more than just “kind of cool” – it’s somewhat of a necessity. It seems to me that if your music can be summed up in words, (unless those words have been created specifically to describe your music) you need to try a little harder, don’t you think?
September 10th, 2004 at 4:20 pm
And now for Soce:
It seems that everyone is defining “a lot of different things” differently. When I look at the different things you’ve done, I see that they’re mostly centered around the fact that you’ve defined yourself as a hip-hop artist. Now I know you did that Suzuki shit growing up, and I know you sang a cappella for a spell, and you do all other kinds of shit, but you made yourself a choice to become a hip-hop artist – an MC/producer – and you are filling and expanding those roles in a variety of ways. That’s the step I’m unable to make. Right now, I’m on this total Squarepusher-Aphex Twin-beep-boop-clap-kick. By the time I figure out how to make some of those sounds, my wandering brain will have passed on to Indian classical music (do you remember sophomore year, how I was dead set on going to India the following summer to study Indian classical singing and tabla, or how junior year I was dead set on going to Paris for the summer to study the music of the “French masters”?). So what I’m trying to figure out is how to get myself to a place where I can entertain those whims quickly enough to actually produce something, or something else I haven’t thought of yet. I’ve been enjoying the ride for a long time, and I always seem to be on the verge, but never actually doing it.
I think maybe if I could focus on each individual thing long enough, I might catch it before it goes away. But I can barely focus on talking.
I don’t know – what am I talking about? I’m gonna go take a shower, learn some Csound in bed, maybe play piano if I can muster up the energy, and go back to being sick.
September 10th, 2004 at 4:51 pm
First of all, let me say that I think there’s a name for what you’re experiencing and it’s being in your twenties. I was joking with my Dad the other day about these very same problems in my life and he said, “Don’t worry. Soon you’ll get to the point where you realize its all hopeless anyway.” Ha! I guess its the mark of the quarter life as opposed to the mid-life crisis.
But that’s not a fun or helpful answer. I think this problem is not unrelated to the question of whether its better to have sex with lots of different people or be in a long relationship with one person. These are both valid approaches, but you can’t do both at the same time. It just doesn’t work. If you feel pulled to attain greater mastery and authority in something (or to be with a particular person), you have to realize that it comes at a price, and the price is all the other things you might have done, and all the other lives you might have lived. And the crazy, fucked-up thing is that I think it is pretty arbitrary. How crazy is that?! You have to commit to certain pursuits or people even though there are probably fifty equally compelling options. What’s even crazier is that you have to know in advance that it is going to disappoint you and not satisfy you sometimes. This still makes me mad, and sad, and jealous of people who believe in reincarnation. I think there’s a lot of mourning involved in accepting the arbitrary nature of things, even though there’s a certain melancholy beauty to it. At least for me there is.
But it doesn’t have to totally arbitrary. Personally, I am searching for a certain feeling. It’s the feeling I get when I realize how complex and neverending a particular pursuit is, and this realization doesn’t turn me off, but instead attracts me to no end. When I applied this standard to my many interests, a couple of them clearly stood out. For example, I really love music, but when I was honest with myself, I realized that I couldn’t commit to the process of it, to being a beginner forever at it (because I think that when you go deeper and deeper into something, you always feel like a beginner at it, even as you gain more and more understanding). But with poems, or understanding the human body, every step of the process, every possible permutation I could envision excited me. Sometimes I think to myself, “Why doesn’t EVERYONE want to understand the endocrine system better?!! Crazy fools!” I have to remind myself that everyone has their own infinite black holes of curiosity.
I realize that you are talking about specific skills, not disciplines in general, so the question is not exactly the same. But I guess you have to ask yourself, not what do I want to be doing in five years, but what do I want to be doing tomorrow. I think you have to love the doing of the thing as much as the image of what you’ll get when you’re done. And the process of it will certainly take longer than five years. If music is what you want to do and is your mission, as you say, then it will take the rest of your long life, no? And if a particular stage of it takes a year or two, what of it? If you don’t feel this way about the thing you are doing, chances are that it is not going to hold your attention long enough for you to attain the mastery you seek anyway.
And let me just say, though this posting is long already, that I think mastery/authority of voice is where it’s at, where “it” is the ability to express yourself, be seen and taken seriously by others, and interact with other people who do what you do on a high level. It is better than doing lots of things not so well. I’m convinced of that.
So I would say: Sit down and be very honest with yourself. Then pick two things. Three at most. Spend a given amount of time giving everything you’ve got to them (not less than six months). Then revisit. I guarantee that even if you decide to do other things, you will have gained a lot of knowledge about yourself in the process, not least of which will be the skill of differentiating between the background of the mind, where things like sushi chefing in Japan and being a salsa dancer (my background, of course, not yours) can have a rich but distant life, and the foreground of the mind, where most of your waking hours are spent. The background can inform the foreground, like spices, ornaments, what have you, and sometimes you go back there and spend some extended time, for sure, and maybe some things even migrate between the two. But at any given time, I think you can’t have more than two or three things in the foreground.
Ok, enough of whatever this is. Hope it helps.
September 10th, 2004 at 5:02 pm
I think you’ve already discovered the answer: more drugs. If you really have just gone off your meds, there’s no soul-searching required. Just let the little yellow pills work their magic.
September 10th, 2004 at 5:18 pm
Har. Evan, two things for you: 1. They are little white pills. In fact, I started writing a song called “Little White Pill” about this very phenomenon a couple months ago that, in my desperation, I had just returned to, minutes before reading your comment.
Anyway, the pills provide localized lucidity, but perhaps not high-level clarity. I seem to get things done when I’m on them, but never realize anything important until I’m off. I think. Who can say?
Blah blah blah blah blah.
September 11th, 2004 at 9:23 am
Ok, on to you, Miriam. Sorry not to respond earlier, but I was in the middle of writing music. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?
Yeah, the old quarter-life crisis. Well documented in Avenue Q and other such works. All tied up with the whole college/graduate school dilemma. The problem with it is that it recurs. I had that shit last year!
I agree with you completely in terms of the arbitrary nature of these things, and the mourning and disappointment.
I just find it very hard to pick anything for that foreground. I mean, you’ve seen me with a cappella groups and bands and gospel choirs and everything else – I choose something and a couple months I decide it’s not my thing, get upset about it, and fling it away in childish frustration. It’s not pretty, and I’m not proud of it. But it’s what I do – which is why I’m so reluctant to ally myself with one musical camp or another.
But, interestingly enough, over the course of today, while talking to all you guys about this, things started loosening up in my head, and I sat down with Pro Tools and the keyboards and whatnot, and I got a decent amount of writing and tracking done tonight. And it sounds something like this phantom style I’m trying to create – it’s not nowhere near there yet, but the hurdles that seemed so difficult last time I sat down were not so bad now, and the new hurdles were just a little more advanced, giving me more leeway to actually get things done for a change.
I think the answer for me might be not to focus on a particular style or method of doing things, but to focus on, as Lin suggested to me this morning, on the idea itself. If every time I sit down to write I’m inspired by something different, I should let that new thing each time be the arbiter of how I work. And there will be things I don’t know how to do, but I can notate them somehow or sing them in or just describe them in some way, so that I don’t lose the flow of what I’m doing, but I can stil revisit.
Again blah blah blah. I’m not sure I can trust anything I’m saying, so I’m going to stop talking now. Thanks for all your advisements, whether posted here or proferred elsewhere. I like getting peeks inside all your heads – it’s one of my favorite things about having this blog: I get to hear all my best friends from different walks of life digging deep into life’s big questions. And they’re my life’s big questions – even better!
September 13th, 2004 at 9:05 am
I’m single-minded. We both know that. People ask me what I want to do with myself; I tell them. People ask me where I’ve been; I know. I stop to consider what I’m doing now; it’s where I should be. But then I think about the things that I’ve left behind. I’m not sacrificing other passions and pursuits in order to increase my “success” in the things that give me the most voice, but time and brain-power only permit for so much, even where love (or talent) clamor to press on.
I’m not sure whether I can offer advice, per se, but I should tell you that I’m so awed by your ability to pursue mentally so many paths. The walls that your hitting are a consequence of the necessities of daily living: you have to eat, sleep, and go to work. It’s recommended that you shower and find social time and pay your taxes. All of those daily activities “take away” from the number of things that you can get done, and so passion gets snagged in life’s fabric. That’s rough and it’s never going to change. But I know this about you: when something grabs you (a lyric, a rhythm, a melody, a line of code), you grab it back and create. Sometimes you don’t sleep for a few days, and things happen. What you end up giving out to the world (your Life CD, if you will) is whatever you can put down. Just be comfortable with smiling while you hand it over to our eager hands and say, “This is a work in progress.”
(The complete work will come. I promise, Get things out there first and the ones that germinate will grow. Unplanted seeds do not sweet flowers make.)
Oh, and a little note to Mister Swill (if he’s out there): I like you. You’re good people.
September 14th, 2004 at 11:32 pm
I was going to start this by saying “as a piano player myself”.. but that would be somewhat ironic of a statement. I have no desire to play piano professionally, nor do I desire to play at every moment of the day. The few musical moments I do have are wonderful; usually I’m surrounded by people shouting “play world 1-2!” or by some sexy lady singing some jazz standards.. and everyone’s having a grand old time.
I hate to say this, but watch out for other things that may catch your eye – people in their twenties are often in danger of switching careers suddenly if they’re looking for an industry to latch on to. What was supposed to be sage advice from a fellow musician has turned into a “abandon hope all ye who enter” your 20’s.
In short, just let things flow. You don’t have to try to BE anything.. life tends to work things out for itself.
September 14th, 2004 at 11:36 pm
Well said, Mark. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that, but things do tend to work themselves out.
September 15th, 2004 at 2:48 am
Mark is right.
If you’re self-consciously trying to BE something, it’s probably just an indication of an ‘off moment’, a moment or a brief period when the natural flow of your innate genius is blocked. Circumspection is both the gift and the curse of intelligence, so when you’re not producing shit, you turn to self-questioning. I’m the same way. If I have writers’ block or if I produce a crappy paper, thoughts about whether or not I’ve picked the right profession start rushing in. That is, they’re thoughts about exactly what I should BE. It always takes advice from friends and family to show me more or less what Mark said. Don’t freak out, just let it flow. And when it doesn’t, trust yourself enough to know that it’ll be clicking again before you know it. And when you’re back in the groove, who cares which pigeonhole you’re in? Sly Stone said “you can’t figure out the bag I’m in” and that’s how it should be.
September 15th, 2004 at 10:13 pm
Fuck you, Arthur, where’s my five dollars? Fuck you.
September 20th, 2004 at 12:12 pm
Ah man, Dave’s brilliance always astounds me. I love it!
Umm.. I haven’t written new verses since forever.. garrhh– I lack the patience to let the verses magically flow out of me all of a sudden.. my latest verse musing beginning is about always having bloodshot eyes. Sexy, no?
September 20th, 2004 at 8:26 pm
Alright, you got your money. Stop pissing in our well. Fucker.
It’s less of a question of what to be, because that’s a useless question, than a question of what to do. Literally of, when I’m done typing this sentence, what I should do next.
Perhaps write another one.
September 20th, 2004 at 8:37 pm
God damn, won the contest, and STILL ingratitude. That’s the last time I take a $10 bribe to win a $5 contest. SHIT!
September 21st, 2004 at 4:04 pm
I don’t know what to do after I type this sentence either. But I arn’t having me no worries, lad. Me only care is that I missed me own holiday.
September 21st, 2004 at 4:07 pm
By the way, just to prime the ol’ pump, I wanted to let you guys know that with Evan’s help I’m starting a little blog of my own. Look for a big fatty e-mail with all the details today or tomorrow.
i’m invading your world of punditry…mwahahaha.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I’m not sure if you are going to go back and read this but screw it…. yes it will be awhile before you understand what you are doing musically BUT heres the thing: thats what a musician does! tinkers with music, trys again and again, experiments with other artists(Baked to a crisp track)…i mean it is hard emotionally but in your latest post you say that once its all over you will remember the times you spent pouring heart and soul over a certain hook and think it was all for the best…mira, you must wait for the storm to be over…then maybe in the aftermath you will find the thing you are waiting for..the perfect moment…something beautiful…but as you known and have known for awhile, it takes patience and time.