Category: Life

Make Without a Map

Photo by Kerimli Temkin from Pexels

Saw this today from ‘That which is unique, breaks,’ via @hundredrabbits.

If you commoditize toys, you remove the toymaker. If you remove the toymaker, the toy is only an object of consumption. It ceases to be an object of wonder.

When tasked in 2009 to “fill up the search engines,” during my time at AOL Music, we published 20+ posts a day. Anything that people might search for, let’s have something written and published.

Here we had a stable of competent, knowledgeable writers – all uniquely qualified individuals – cranking out SEO-friendly “content” to be read and indexed by machines.

As an editor this pained me.

Throw away posts about band members getting arrested got more traffic than finely written interviews with notable artists.

Therefore, feed the machine. Find the drama. Find the bleeding story in the ocean of content, attract the swarm of sharks.

At this point, the inmates run the asylum. The child screams for a cookie, so feed them cookies.

“That which is unique, breaks.”

A unique offering, built with editorial discernment, breaks.

I do not need to spoil your view with visions of this architecture, I only wonder, what have their creators ever repaired?

Who has turned the ship around? Rebuilt the damaged hull? Fixed a site? Started from scratch?

As Seth Godin says, “If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.”

Showing Up is the Secret

From one of my recent emails from The Soft Run:

As I approached this house a kid (maybe 10 or 11) came running around a corner today, and yelled, asking to use my phone.

Then as I got closer, I realized he wasn’t wearing socks or shoes!

Just another day, just another run, right? Nope. One run out of almost 300 this year, and never once did I see a jeep set-up like the one above, nor did I help a kid get back into his house after being locked out in the middle of winter with no shoes or socks. BRRR.

I keep getting lost in the binary thinking of success, of making it. Either you’re a popular YouTube star with a million subscribers, or you’ve only got 13 and it feels like a waste of time.

You want to be this “thing,” but you don’t have the “social evidence” that you are the thing.

Are you a musician if no one buys your music? Are you a writer if no one replies to your pitches? Are you a photographer if you’re images aren’t on magazine covers?

Again, permission. Waiting for permission is the killer.

I am 44 years old – what right do I have to wear gaudy purple sneakers and tights and a cool jacket and run around the backroads here?

I work in music – what right do I have to make “dark ambient” mixes? What, do I think I’m going to MAKE IT?!?!

Wait, I thought I made dark ambient mixes – why am I making smooth chill jams with funky stock video footage?

Because I choose to.

Am I now locked into that identity? Must I now maintain a weekly music mix? Set up a live stream? Do a daily tune and post on every social network?

Well, if I choose to, sure.

Just go be everything you want to be. Doesn’t matter if it looks right, sounds right, has the right presentation – just make a little bit of magic each day.

This post partially inspired by Seth Godin’s ‘The Practice: Ship creative work‘ book.

First Big Snowy Day of Fall

Crawling back into bed would have been more cozy. I had some tea, which was nice bit of warmth in the morning, but for some reason I threw on my jacket and shoveled our walk paths. It was nice to stop, take a breather, and enjoy a scene like you see above.

Later in the day I got in my daily run. This was day #25, at least a mile a day since November 23rd. The roads were trashed still, so todays run wasn’t a breeze, but if running has taught me anything it’s that crummy conditions don’t last forever. In a few days this crummy run won’t even register, but getting it done was still a piece of the foundation to where I wanna go in 2021.

Start Your Own Thing and Do It Soon

Randomly discovered this video with bassist Juan Alderete from a recent email blast from Abelton (for this post). Jaun played in The Mars Volta, and started a website at one point called Pedals and Effects, because he hated pedal review websites.

He just… made his own.

He bought a domain name and started doing it like he wanted.

Such a theme in life, right?

Don’t like your job, find a new one.
Don’t like the music you hear, start a band.
Don’t like podcasts that are out there, go make one.

You don’t need permission.

“Do you think people would like this sort of music?
“Should I start this podcast about weird horror movies?”
“If I made more of these, do you think people would buy them?”

Stop asking for permission and make your shit.

Can you walk around like Jaun here everyday and hang out with the dude from Nine Inch Nails? No, but I’m sure 20 years ago neither could Jaun.

And, holy shit, in digging more into this, Jaun was in a serious bicycle accident back in January 2020 and had to learn to fucking walk again.

Time is short, life is fleeting, start your shit now. Today.

Buy that domain name, shoot your first episode, upload your three song demo to Bandcamp today – tomorrow ain’t a promise.

God Chose You So Let’s Do This

https://twitter.com/AoctaviusW/status/1337432994596982787

I fucking love this:

The first thing I said when I contacted Porche was ”hey I’m the photographer on assignment to photograph you for TIME and I truly understand if you want a Black woman photographing you” She stopped me and said, ”Baby, God chose you so let’s do this” ⁣

@AoctaviusW

Putting this here, linking to it, filing it here because it hit me today, this Tweet. This block of photography and text, flowing through my time line.

In our work, where we’re at, our circles, our circumstances – yeah, I don’t believe it’s an almighty fatherly figure who held me in his hands and dropped me off in Pennsylvania 44 years ago, but…

I’m here. You’re here. Let’s do this.

It’s so easy to forget the art and the magic and the grace and the power we have in each day, every interaction, every email, everything. I look at the circumstances I’m in, we’re all in, and realize while there’s so much further I want to go, I must remain grateful with where I’m at.

Let’s do this.

My to-do list is long, there’s incomplete projects, things unfinished; let’s do this. Maybe not just out of obligation, but perhaps it’s these foundational moments that are seemingly trivial are going to lead to great things.

I had no idea learning how to play bass in 1991 would get me here, today. That a hobby I took up 29 years ago would land me the clients I have, the career that I have, the everything that I have. It’s good, it’s bad, it’s ugly, but it’s where I’m at.

“Baby, God chose you, so let’s do this.”

That Tweet is from Adrian Octavius Walker.

Choosing is a Choice

The final fight scene from the third Matrix popped into my head while on my run today, the part where Agent Smith asks Neo, “why go on? why keep fighting?”

Which sort of aligns with running, right? Why keep this pace? Why head out the door? Why go down the road to hit three miles when home is up ahead? There’s cake at home!

Why go on? Why do anything?

“I choose to,” replies Neo.

Choice, the big theme in The Matrix. It all comes down to choice.

Staying home and watching movies and eating snacks in a choice.
Heading out for a run is a choice.
Starting a podcast is a choice.
Ending a project is a choice.

I’ve been writing in public (as my buddy Dino puts it) since the early 90s. Like, coming up on 30 years or something. Zines, blogs, newsletters, social media – so much writing, spread out so many different places.

Some of that writing got me jobs, adventures, friendships, heart ache, whatever. Writing in public got me here. What I did is partly why I’m here.

So why write? Because it can lead somewhere.

Why run? Because it can lead somewhere.

Inaction is needed, rest is vital. To reinvigorate, grow, and expand. There’s a season for rest, and a season to move.

Objects in motion stay in motion.

Creating The Holidays

Christmas was always my favorite – the sights, sounds, smells.

What I realize now is there’s so much nostalgia, and seeing now how so much of that was crafted for me.

My parents bought the tree, played the Christmas music, bought the presents (SPOILER), put up the lights.

Young Seth was just along for the ride.

Even a few years back, when living in NYC, driving home for the holidays was something I went into knowing that mom would have candy dishes filled with Christmas candy, and lights would be up, and there’d be a big tree.

I walked into those settings, like the perfect movie set, every year.

Unless I craft them for myself, they don’t happen now, which is sort of a metaphor for life.

Don’t hang around all the athletic friends I did like in my high school days, which means I don’t do as many athletic things. I gotta start them… on my own.

Don’t hang around all the musician friends like I used to, so I’m not operating on the same wavelength anymore, feeling motivated to keep up with my peers and keep crafting. I have to start that each day on my own.

These days I gotta put up my own Christmas lights, buy some holiday-scented candles, put on some Christmas music.

Nostalgia is a wild thing. I don’t want to let go of those memories, and it’s impossible to know if currently, in 2020, I’m doing anything worth remembering in 10 years, but I if do nothing, the answer is pretty evident.

A Simple Man Making His Way Through the Galaxy

*** MANDALORIAN SPOILER ALERT ***

This part in the new episode (Season 2, Episode 6, ‘The Tragedy’) gave me all sorts of feels.

“We agreed in exchange for the return of my armor, we will ensure the safety of the child.”

“The child’s gone.”

“Until he is retuned to you safely we are in your debt.”

First off, Boba Fett. Here’s a character that I saw when I was a kid in the 80s. I had the action figure. Yeah yeah, that was technically Jango Fett, but still.

I even endured the horrible prequels to understand a bit more of the back story, but here we are.

It’s now 2020, and Boba Jango Fett is a menacing fighter, and a man of his word. Maybe it’s the state of the world we live in now, but seeing the culmination of decades of lore and mystery, it’s just refreshing to have a character not be a total shit bag.

Mounting the Mountains

“It never ends.”

That’s the thing that hit me a few days ago.

At the moment I got lost in the minutia of my work, in that it never ends (something I’ve know about working in and around music since 2001). It never stops.

I think that’s in parallel to life right now; the uncertainty, the mess, the chaos, the death…. it never ends.

Or at least, I don’t see how it ever gets back on track. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be in another basement show in the middle of summer, surrounded by sweaty shirtless dudes, in a room with zero air flow. Like, how?

When will I get back on packed bus bound for NYC, and sit shoulder to shoulder with absolute strangers again?

All of the normal things we’ve done, thing we did for DECADES… every day it’s further away, being stripped away. It never ends.

March feels like seven years ago, just as this morning feels like it happened last week.

As I write this, I just got off a video call with (technically) with clients, but really they’re fantastic friends, and I’m glad I got to share a bit of that on a Friday night.

I also wrestled with a flow of never ending work stuff a few hours ago, where it felt impossible to keep up.

But I also watched the new episode of the Madalorian.

And ran five miles.

A lot of these things used to be mundane, expected, nothing special, but now they’re like mile-markers, big events, in a life now void of major movements.

Thankful for the here and now. No idea how many chapters this weekend will have, but planning on accepting every second.

I Don’t Want to Be a Rock Star Anymore

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a mega star in a rock band. I mean, the B-roll of the members of Guns N’ Roses walking in midtown Manhattan and going to Manny’s Music, all loose and carefree – that’s the life for me!

Some of my earliest memories are watching my dad play guitar in a country-rock band at the ski-resorts in the summer time, the smell of Genesee cream-ale in the air.

I played my first show when I was about 17, and told the sound-man “fuck you” at one point (lesson learned). I’ve played shows in several states, alongside young riff-raff like me who went on to be just a handful of notable names in music.

If you would have told me in those teen years that someday I’d have the ability to record digitally, in pristine CD-quality sound, with nearly an unlimited number of tracks, midi-instruments, and effects, I would have fainted.

Here I am now, in the year 2020, in my 44th year on this planet, and that spirit, the craving for music making just comes and goes.

I know I’m supposed to respect the muse (see Steve Pressfield’s ‘Turning Pro‘), which is what I did today. The bass line in the clip above came to me as I was making coffee, as they do every morning I make coffee, or do the dishes, take out the compost, or whatever. Little droplets of music fall into my dumb head, I sing them to myself a little bit, laugh at myself, and then go on with my day.

Today, though, I was like, “what if I just do something with this?”

It’s not a complete song. It’s not a master piece. There’s no hook, chorus, or bridge. It’s a loop, some drums, some midi notes arranged to be a passable piano “ditty.” Nothing more.

But nothing is complete.

I had a few phone calls this week, and most were unplanned. They came, magic filled the void, and then on with the day. None were complete, there was no agenda, no planning, just… riffing.

So I don’t want to ever discount those random bits of magic, so I need to stop discounting random bits of music I make, too. We all do, even if your thing isn’t music, but maybe it’s photography, yoga, or whatever else that brings you joy.

Just because something isn’t complete, or a full-fledged album roll out, doesn’t mean it should stay hidden on my hard drive, never to be heard from.

Our ideas don’t need to be final, our blog posts don’t need to be perfect, our videos can be rough, our audio low quality, and our conversations all over the place, and that’s what makes us human. We don’t exist to be perfect, we imperfectly exist, make it through today and hope tomorrow is tolerable.