THOUGHTS ON STARTING OVER IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS AFTER A DECADE OF DISABILITY CONCERNS and —
Hi friends.
At this point, most of you reading this are old friends and, maybe some of you, fans from old days. I don’t pretend I’m so interesting that everyone out there should be listening to the details of my journey and my reflections on myself. But I think I know you, so I’m going to share some things and thoughts about starting over in my 40s and what I’m trying to do. I’ll do my damndest not to come off like a 90’s blog-diary, even though I think that’s kind of what this little missive is.
ON STARTING OVER
Taking 10 years off and coming back into music without really playing live makes for a real story of starting over and, to a degree, coming from behind. There is a small but notably larger audience that knew me before; my (old/real) name was, well, out there. People heard about me and I was invited to perform at New West Fest, where more people I didn’t know heard me, etc. 10 years was ultimately really beneficial for the music I am putting out now! It was pretty effective at wiping the success-slate of my career clean, too.
Last fall I took medical leave from teaching, and started recording a project I’d put on hold for ten years—the upcoming greedy pushy needy (which I’m so excited for you to hear! which I’m so proud of!). When my job directing music at a church ended on Christmas (church mergers are rough!), I decided to step into the fear-void and embrace the opportunity of time. Time to devote to my own creative endeavors, with severance funding the spring semester’s recording. (Severance is all gone now. Now I’m supported by the fear-void, which is not the same as money, though my somatic therapy and Buddhist practices remind me how rich an energy it is.)
As I try to make this music into any kind of sustainable goal, economically and energetically, I'm wading into the life of a social media manager and a publicist. To be honest, it's hard to get my footing at those jobs. Sometimes I find creating such content imaginative and creative and engaging, sometimes I feel I've made some strides. Sometimes I’m excited about it. But they are two things I never wanted to do and am intermittently quite bad at. Often, I feel like I've felt most of my life as a human (particulary a neurodivergent one): I'm not sure what it is people expect from me but I must not be doing it and also what exactly is it that people expect from me?
ON PEOPLE-PLEASING TRAUMA RESPONSES AND PUBLIC ART
It sucks to be a public-facing artist whose career depends on pleasing enough people to get attention to get more attention to get income, and to also have deep and lasting people-pleasing trauma responses. The cognitive dissonance is high. The Buddhist opportunity for awakening is similarly high. Also pleasing an algorithm is somehow just as confusing as pleasing a person? Also have you watched Mrs. Davis?
ON POSSIBLE VENUE CHANGES
A large part of my creative and professional life has been devoted to the art of writing. One thought I had was to move from Mailchimp over to Substack, which is a little like Patreon for writers (there’s no requirement to pay at Substack, but there is an option; if you’re already on the email list you don’t have to do anything). Maybe continuous output of short form videos is not my ideal genre? Maybe people out there might be interested in my thinking?
Are the people who would spend time reading what I write the same as those who would listen to the music I record? \_(:/)_/ I hope there’s some overlap. Also, do you remember emoticons. Because I am still here for their text-based little selves.
I think back to my teacher training, and the redefinition of what it means to teach from your strengths. A strength, according to an actual book we studied, isn’t what we’re good at but what energizes us. Feeding off that energy, we can learn to get good at something, we can be propelled into action again and again, as opposed to being drained and discouraged. It’s been long enough I can’t make any pronouncements about the sophistication of this book’s ideas, but I can tell you I think about this redefinition of strength regularly. (If not as regularly as would be helpful.) (As a teacher of young writers who really don’t feel that writing is this kind of strength, the cognitive dissonance can also be high.)
I also think about starting a Patreon, but when I think about what it means to make that content, I’m more stressed than I am about social media! Maybe when I have a larger audience.
MYSTIFIED AND INTERESTED — A Q 4 U
So, here are some (optional) questions for you, because I’m genuinely curious—not just to clarify what it is I’m doing, but because I really want to know how people engage in art. I am mystified and interested!
IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY
please check out the first single which will soon be available across streaming platforms (and the next single is on its way!)
WHAT I’LL BE DOING ON SUBSTACK
Hell if I know. But it does seem that if Substack had predated Instagram, I’d’ve been digging these trenches long ago. Or some other not-so-war-time metaphor.
For real, Substack is a very cool platform that allows you to pay artists for their work, and, I do not currently know how I’ll be using it or how often—it might only be a better option than my previous newsletter distributor, and, it might be a modality I can just swim in automatically. Which, I confess, sounds really appealing.