The Creative Funk

As Andy has been going through his 100 Day Music Challenge, he has been learning a lot about himself and rethinking how he approaches music and art in general.  He's been excited in sharing some of the reflections with me, and I have been excited to hear them, though at the same time, I wear a very particular smile.  He tells me that his channel has been seeing a lot more views now that he's been putting out a lot of content--I've been telling him that for a while.  Andy reports that when he's in a steady practice of making music that he finds he wants to continue to do so and even that it comes more readily to him--I've also been telling him this for a while.  The idea that art does not needs to be perfect before it can be shared was also a "new" thought for him.  I've talked to my brothers about new things they've learned about life, and I've had the thought in my head "well, yes, I've told you that."  But these are lessons that no matter how many times I would have told them would not have been absorbed, not in the way that they have now internalized them.  So I've learned to squelch the "I told you so" and/or "I could have told you that" and instead smile and congratulate them for learning something new about themselves and the world.  I know that there are still some things today that I similarly haven't discovered for myself, while patient friends and family wear that same smile and shake their head.  We all learn differently and at our own pace.  

Now in making art, Andy and I have been involved in creative practices of some kind or another for a significant portion of our lives, but I have better discipline and, in some senses, more experience (objectively, a degree in Creative Writing).  As such, there are a few ways that I'm more "mature."  Andy has been working on some different projects now in music, including working through an a cappella version of a song from a favored band of ours, Structural Disorder (check out them out here or on Spotify), called "Peace of Mind."  For this project, Andy had about 38 different tracks of himself that he was layering.  And it was and still is an ambitious project.  He reached a point recently where he was ready to throw his hands up, that everything he was doing was making it worse and he was beginning to lose faith in his ability to do the project.  This is a critical point in making art, when to keep tweaking and when to leave well-enough alone.  And there is also the point of feeling down in your own process.  

In part of my due diligence in being a good support system and cheerleader for Andy, I did have to break that silence and try to impart some of what I've learned about the creative process.  Specifically, there is a common point in the creative process where one is certain that EVERYTHING they have done is absolute garbage.  The following graphic actually sums it up quite well.  

Andy was solidly in the 3 and 4 camp.  I've done that whole cycle I don't know how many times.  And even the old stuff that is decidedly not "awesome" still has merit and good points in being part of my growing process or as an experimentation of some kind, to make the words work better in the future.  Additionally, it's hard to find a working metric--I'm not as successful as X and I don't have as many followers as Y and my writing doesn't sound like Z--and, no, I don't think I'm going to write the next great American novel; but what I can do is continue to express things in my own unique voice and work better to improve against my older self.  Creative anxiety doesn't go away, but it can be borne more easily in time.  It's a particular kind of worry.  Art--whether it's a drawing, a sculpture, singing a song, a play, inane blog posts--requires revealing a part of yourself, being vulnerable in some unique ways, whether the work is something deeply biographical or simply showing what it is you can do.  That's scary work.  It is risky, but then it has a different kind of reward, too. There have been many blog posts that I have scrapped or delayed at least until I could turn them into something a little more polished.  Sometimes, these become my favorites and sometimes they limp along anyway as they are and it's time to look at the next gathering of thoughts instead.  

Holistically, I'm pretty damn proud of the body of work that is this blog.  There are some overbearingly pedantic posts, some absurd components, a couple genuinely bad posts, a few moments of real truth,  and a few things in between.  There are days when I'm certain that this is a waste of time all the same, hitting the low point of that cycle.  I don't tend to linger there as long as I used to.  This blog has led to many interesting discussions with different people.  It has helped me process through a lot of different things.  This blog has helped me learn how to ask for empathy that I need.  It has merit to me, and I treasure those discussions where someone else identifies with its contents or has a good laugh.  

Thank you for being a part of it.  I hope that you, as either a silent lurker or vocal reader, can learn from my experiences or see some of your own in a different light, think about things differently and find your own voice.  To come back to the beginning of this post, I imagine that hearing things will still be different from actualizing them for yourself, but there is joy in sharing these together.  It helps to have an audience--even the silent parts of it--and it helps to have feedback.  ...And I have now rewritten this paragraph enough times that it's time to leave it be, too.  

I am asking this next component plainly:  Andy could use some encouragement.  He has a harder time pulling himself out of that funk.  Please check out THIS LINK and watch/like/comment, all of the above.  There are many, many other videos to see here, too.  Right now, that kind of encouragement would mean a lot to him and consequently to me.  Thank you in advance.