In your head
It is such a time of contemplation for me and many of those around me. Currently being at the "ripe old age" of thirty is yet another factor contributing to my philosophical state of mind.
I realize that so much of a person's perspective comes from within their own mind; the way they see things, regard other individuals, and the assumptions they make whether consciously or not.
I'll use myself for an example. Throughout most of my life, at least from grade 5 on, I was always pretending that I was in a band, or imagining what it would like if I would one day be a pop star, to the point that I would draw album covers, create track listings for albums, even imagine entire scenarios and fantasies involving the bands I had dreamed up in my mind.
I continued this until finally, when I was in college, my brother and I somehow convinced each other that it would be a good idea to form a band. My brother knew this young fellow, Joe, from his high school cross country team who was quite the guitar player. I had a friend, Mike, who was fond of a lot of interesting music and wanted something fun to do. So with Mike on Bass, Joe on guitar, Brandon on lead vocals/guitar and me on synth drums/keys, we formed a band called "Singe".
Now in Singe, I could continue to create album covers and dream up our whole career, and because I was employed in an office at the time I could actually use the Xerox machine and supplies to make better fake album covers and show fliers. Of course in reality we never released an album, and only played a handful of live shows. But it was a progression.
In 2000, I moved to LA and met Amy Crosby and Von Edwards. They had written some songs together and I convinced them that they should let me join as a keyboard player. Before our first rehearsal, we were getting ready to go to club Cherry and Amy's cat Arthur was attempting to eat a strand from my silver tinsel wig. Our friend Jen warned us not to let Arthur eat it, or he would be Shitting Glitter for days.
Over the past six years, I have actually gotten to design album covers for Shitting Glitter that have been released worldwide. It's an interesting step, but an outsider may not realize it's something I've been doing my whole life. I meet other musicians and when speaking with them, it becomes abundantly clear that most of us musicians have been imagining our careers, the ups and downs, the thrills and the disappointments, our entire lives. It's hard to be objective with something that is so precious to you, yet if one has paid enough attention to the music industry, it's easier to feel secure in one's artistry. Of course there are days that I feel like I tried my best, but no superstar dreams were realized; no platinum sales were achieved, no Billboard charts topped. Then you look at some of those who have achieved that kind of success, and it again becomes clear that there is often no logic or reason behind fame and success, it doesn't come the candidate with the most talent, creativity, or perseverance. Investing in those attributes can help bring you closer but ultimately it's down to luck and being in the right place at the right time. I rest assured, knowing that if I am ever in the right place at the right time, and am blessed with a stroke of luck, I am ready for whatever the next level is and proud of all that I have accomplished up to now. If it never happens, I am still proud and the bottom line is, I make music because I can't imagine what life would be like if I didn't. I started writing songs in my head before I could understand what a record company was. I have my own internal iTunes that lulls me to sleep every night. Often, I even wake up from a dream with a new song so fresh in my mind that I can actually write out most of the lyrics.
The funny thing is, that so much of this stays in my head, or at best, scrawled out in some notebook or partially recorded onto a computer. I'm sure with most artists, or people in general, so many ideas never leave the brain of their owner. In my mind I'm an accomplished singer/songwriter with probably hundreds of completed works floating around my brain; some accessible to me, others lost in the far corners of my mind but surely still there, somewhere. The process of giving birth to an artistic creation is another thing entirely. It can be scary, traumatic, and can ultimately fail - either in terms of how the realization failed to live up to the potential of the idea, or the impact that it failed to have on anyone other than it's creator. However, it can also be the most rewarding thing in the world just to make the leap from imagined to existing. It usually is for me, and yet it's still so difficult.
Anyway, applying this knowledge and experience to the rest of the world, I realize that when dealing with people it helps to try and consider what is going on in their heads. Where are they coming from? What do they dream of? Where would they rather be? Why do they react in the way they do? Getting to know a little more about a person's frame of mind can be an enormous insight; making assumptions about them based on your own perceptions however is deadly. It can spew forth venomous untruths and affect outcomes unknown in the supposed "butterfly effect." I try to avoid this at all costs. I'd rather get to know a person, to listen to them. I'd rather judge a person on their words, the words they have chosen to represent themselves with, than ignore them and make my own determinations based on their body language, clothing, associates, etc.
One last thought. It amazes me the impact that parents can have on their children, or the influence that any authority figure or idol can have on a young mind. Some decisions we make seem so firmly rooted in our psyche, so in line with those before us. What parts of the mind are melded through experience and what parts, like instinct, are just there from the beginning?
While so many decisions I've made and so many aspects of my own personality and my own being seem to come directly from my own mind, the older I grow the more I yearn for things that seem to not come from my own mind, but rather from my DNA. To have a child, to live from the earth, to have wide open space around me; these all seem so contradictory to what I am about. Yet the urges are so primal and natural and burgeoning. I thought my 20's were a time when I was unsure and naive; now it looks like my 20's may have been the time I was most sure of who I was and what I wanted. My thirties may be a ten year question mark. I see my forties as being more stable; the product of decades of trying things on and eliminating the answers that didn't make sense.
Like one of the new songs on the B-52's album 'Funplex', it's just too much to think about!
I realize that so much of a person's perspective comes from within their own mind; the way they see things, regard other individuals, and the assumptions they make whether consciously or not.
I'll use myself for an example. Throughout most of my life, at least from grade 5 on, I was always pretending that I was in a band, or imagining what it would like if I would one day be a pop star, to the point that I would draw album covers, create track listings for albums, even imagine entire scenarios and fantasies involving the bands I had dreamed up in my mind.
I continued this until finally, when I was in college, my brother and I somehow convinced each other that it would be a good idea to form a band. My brother knew this young fellow, Joe, from his high school cross country team who was quite the guitar player. I had a friend, Mike, who was fond of a lot of interesting music and wanted something fun to do. So with Mike on Bass, Joe on guitar, Brandon on lead vocals/guitar and me on synth drums/keys, we formed a band called "Singe".
Now in Singe, I could continue to create album covers and dream up our whole career, and because I was employed in an office at the time I could actually use the Xerox machine and supplies to make better fake album covers and show fliers. Of course in reality we never released an album, and only played a handful of live shows. But it was a progression.
In 2000, I moved to LA and met Amy Crosby and Von Edwards. They had written some songs together and I convinced them that they should let me join as a keyboard player. Before our first rehearsal, we were getting ready to go to club Cherry and Amy's cat Arthur was attempting to eat a strand from my silver tinsel wig. Our friend Jen warned us not to let Arthur eat it, or he would be Shitting Glitter for days.
Over the past six years, I have actually gotten to design album covers for Shitting Glitter that have been released worldwide. It's an interesting step, but an outsider may not realize it's something I've been doing my whole life. I meet other musicians and when speaking with them, it becomes abundantly clear that most of us musicians have been imagining our careers, the ups and downs, the thrills and the disappointments, our entire lives. It's hard to be objective with something that is so precious to you, yet if one has paid enough attention to the music industry, it's easier to feel secure in one's artistry. Of course there are days that I feel like I tried my best, but no superstar dreams were realized; no platinum sales were achieved, no Billboard charts topped. Then you look at some of those who have achieved that kind of success, and it again becomes clear that there is often no logic or reason behind fame and success, it doesn't come the candidate with the most talent, creativity, or perseverance. Investing in those attributes can help bring you closer but ultimately it's down to luck and being in the right place at the right time. I rest assured, knowing that if I am ever in the right place at the right time, and am blessed with a stroke of luck, I am ready for whatever the next level is and proud of all that I have accomplished up to now. If it never happens, I am still proud and the bottom line is, I make music because I can't imagine what life would be like if I didn't. I started writing songs in my head before I could understand what a record company was. I have my own internal iTunes that lulls me to sleep every night. Often, I even wake up from a dream with a new song so fresh in my mind that I can actually write out most of the lyrics.
The funny thing is, that so much of this stays in my head, or at best, scrawled out in some notebook or partially recorded onto a computer. I'm sure with most artists, or people in general, so many ideas never leave the brain of their owner. In my mind I'm an accomplished singer/songwriter with probably hundreds of completed works floating around my brain; some accessible to me, others lost in the far corners of my mind but surely still there, somewhere. The process of giving birth to an artistic creation is another thing entirely. It can be scary, traumatic, and can ultimately fail - either in terms of how the realization failed to live up to the potential of the idea, or the impact that it failed to have on anyone other than it's creator. However, it can also be the most rewarding thing in the world just to make the leap from imagined to existing. It usually is for me, and yet it's still so difficult.
Anyway, applying this knowledge and experience to the rest of the world, I realize that when dealing with people it helps to try and consider what is going on in their heads. Where are they coming from? What do they dream of? Where would they rather be? Why do they react in the way they do? Getting to know a little more about a person's frame of mind can be an enormous insight; making assumptions about them based on your own perceptions however is deadly. It can spew forth venomous untruths and affect outcomes unknown in the supposed "butterfly effect." I try to avoid this at all costs. I'd rather get to know a person, to listen to them. I'd rather judge a person on their words, the words they have chosen to represent themselves with, than ignore them and make my own determinations based on their body language, clothing, associates, etc.
One last thought. It amazes me the impact that parents can have on their children, or the influence that any authority figure or idol can have on a young mind. Some decisions we make seem so firmly rooted in our psyche, so in line with those before us. What parts of the mind are melded through experience and what parts, like instinct, are just there from the beginning?
While so many decisions I've made and so many aspects of my own personality and my own being seem to come directly from my own mind, the older I grow the more I yearn for things that seem to not come from my own mind, but rather from my DNA. To have a child, to live from the earth, to have wide open space around me; these all seem so contradictory to what I am about. Yet the urges are so primal and natural and burgeoning. I thought my 20's were a time when I was unsure and naive; now it looks like my 20's may have been the time I was most sure of who I was and what I wanted. My thirties may be a ten year question mark. I see my forties as being more stable; the product of decades of trying things on and eliminating the answers that didn't make sense.
Like one of the new songs on the B-52's album 'Funplex', it's just too much to think about!
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