LNOYL

This is the second installment in this series of posts that pull pieces from the book I’m working. They’ll be new segments posted weekly. I still don’t have a title for it as yet, but since it’s inspired and in part based on current events, it’s really coming along. I’ve got some idea’s for the images that will complete the manuscript, and I think Dareck is going to be the illustrator. The images might have a similar feel to the graphic novel, which will create additional linearity between the two books.

There is folklore, romanticism, and some actual fact all rolled into a single montage that filters one’s understanding of what it is you are supposed to do with your time if you wish to create great music. Furthermore, if you have the inclination to become recognized for what you create, in order to make a living from such work, then your mind can’t help but go overtime, creating intense sequences of hope, fate, anxiety, and faith that fill the empty space between the patchwork. For many people, including myself, it feels like these sequences are born from some type of stereotypical mold that was generated straight out of a mishmash of stories from the seventies, eighties and nineties (pick whatever decade you were a teenager in). Take an excursion to the music isle of your local bookseller, and peruse one of the popular recording artist biographies – perhaps someone that held your attention during your early formative years. When I read the books that I pick up, it says that twenty years ago, I should have been doing nothing but practising and playing my guitar in my early years. Check. Did that. It went sort of like this. I’d meet Marty in the hallway of our high school, that was located way out nowhere, get into his K-Car (he was one of the few kids that drove to school, which meant he was one of the few kids that could escape), and then we’d skip the day to go jam at his place. On the many days we could not skip, I’d bring my guitar to school, with this little mini amp. I sit out on the steps, and play (If I screwed up what I was playing and made mistakes, I’d occasionally hear about it from people sitting in their classrooms).

In the mornings, my bus would get to school really really early, before most kid’s would show up, thus giving me some time to kill before classes started. Of course, having no friends at the time, those empty hallway early mornings were a type of social bottomless pit. There was no noise or backdrop of random people to blend in with. Me, myself and the wall, looking at other early risers with their friends. I figured that I could spend that time away in the library. While awaiting for the library to open, sitting adjacent to the door, there would be another 3 or 4 kids waiting there – presumably all in the same boat; no friends, nothing to do. You’d think we’d band together, or at least talk, but it was eyes towards the ground. No breakfast club scenes for us. Inside the library, I’d sit in a cubicle, listening to Hendrix or Slash lick’s, or if I had my guitar that day, I would play in one of the “study rooms” (which is how I met Dareck, for the very first time – he sat down and starting singing a melody along with my guitar). I didn’t care about song writing back then – I was mostly into improvising, jamming and tones, so it was cool to have someone to play with that had an ear for song structure. When school was finished for the summers, I’d try to find a job, but they were hard to come by, so I mostly hung out in my basement bedroom, or Marties basement, and played guitars. It was a total obsession.

Im back reading that biography at the bookstore. It now says that 15 years ago, I should have dropped out of whatever else I was doing, moved to a larger city, and paid some dues. Then, I could create a titlewave of focused attention on the music I was making, at the expensive of everything else. If I did that, and I was lucky, then the record label gatekeepers, who were in total control of the scene, might listen, make me a deal, and then I got to throw my hat in the ring. There are many variations on this theme, and it is the stuff that the stereotypical mold is made of.

The thing is, your life might not fit the mold of how it is all supposed to work. What if your path is not linear and to a specific point, but feels more like an array? Does that mean that you’ve disqualified yourself? Life is diverse. What if I’m not the blue whale, but instead the plankton? It means I drift with the ocean currents and can swim short distances up and down. But in doing so, I can understanding the fluid motions of the sea. There is immense value to that. I’ve refused to believe it was just one good thing you could do, with everything else delegated to hobby status. I’ll never be that person, so I need to believe otherwise. That is my bias. How does one reconcile that within a world that traditionally favours a linear march towards its end?

Well, as it turns out, when you are perpetually working on disparate things all the time, what you are actually pursuing is something that would be called an “interdisciplinary education”, should it be carried out within the walls of a school. For some vocations, the comparative approach you experience by working this way creates a unique richness in skill. If you combine your talent with those skills, you have a platform to create inspired work. The thing is, this interdisciplinary education actually became the new mold. Unpredictably and unannounced to anyone it seemed, the gatekeepers of the music industry, or any other creative factory have had the rug pulled out from under their feet. All of a sudden, these contrasting skills we scraped up all those years, that seemed only of use to us as individuals, are now relevant to creating the right conditions for our art to develop and grow publicly. Our society has changed, and we function increasingly within an economy of ideas. The skills and attitude we’ve acquired can be tweaked to form the required acumen for getting a start in an industry that we previously have had no real experience with. Chances are, the stuff you’ve been obsessively focusing on, as an interdisciplinary, independent artist, can be understood and tweaked in the very same way, giving you the same authority over your stereotypical mold. Montages are overrated.