Focus on joy when writing, performing

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Empirically, yes. If an artist writes a song and no one is around to hear it, is it still meaningful? Absolutely yes, regardless of the follower count, the monthly listeners on streaming services or unanswered emails sent that month.

If there’s a burning feeling deep in your guts to create, it must be expressed to the world. The negative energy tethered to earthly forces, both malicious and benign, will crash into us like tidal waves.

It’s the job of the artist to sail full force into rough seas during high tide. As Jack Black said in his motivational speech in “School Of Rock,” “If we fall, we will fall with dignity. With a guitar in our hands and rock in our hearts.”

Living a creative life in 2023 is spent surrounded by illusion. Lyrical instruction manuals like “Once in a Lifetime,” penned by Talking Heads, illustrate that most of the dreams and desires pushed by society are falsely advertised.

It’s the “same as it ever was,” just like the famous line from the song notes. However, illusion has become the metric for our new reality in stunning 8K ultra-high definition.

At the basic framework, our lives become grafted with technology, our dreams and nightmares become more realized every day. Millions of dollars are invested into, and generated by, a glorified popularity contest with fewer guidelines than a Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Championship.

We try to convince all, friend or foe, stranger and

simpatico, that our mirage is the most realistic.

In the digital swamps we’ve dumped our social lives into, we’re at the mercy of an algorithm changing on a whim.

In the big picture, it’s no secret that social media is causing significant damage to our collective mental health.

According to the National Library of Medicine in 2020, there’s increasing evidence that social media has a direct correlation with adolescent suicide and depression.

Simultaneously, multiple studies have linked musicians and artists to having a significantly higher rate of mental illness compared to the average person.

In 2019, before the pandemic lockdowns, the Swedish music distributing platform Record Union conducted a study of 1,489 independent music makers.

Seventy-three percent of those surveyed experience symptoms of mental illness.

In 2021, the Journal of Psychiatric Research published a peer reviewed report titled “Mental health issues among international touring professionals in the music industry.”

The results found “greatly elevated” rates of clinical depression and stress in comparison to the general population and levels of suicide that are five times the average rate of the US population.

To really build an audience in our modern era, artists must maintain some form of involvement on various social media platforms. This sticky, poisonous sap creeps into everyone’s work and perspective.

If allowed, it brings out the beast in us by feeding our jealousy, envy and insecurities. Creativity and passion dies along the road to chasing acceptance.

It’s the perfect opportunity for cynicism to spread into, divide and multiply within our work. We must protect the love we have for music against these forces. Without animosity, we must practice gratitude and focus on the people who resonate with us.

Rebuilding what was lost in the haze of COVID-19, it’s a fool’s errand to wait for any one person or organization to save us.

With our collective bandwidth being oversaturated by a fast food and a “quantity over quality” mentality, we must strive to be the opposite for our own survival.

Through the mindless scrolling and swiping in our lives lived online, we must practice mindfulness, while realizing the gift of having breath in our lungs and a beat in our hearts.

We must march to that beat while we develop, practice and share our craft with others.

To all those who are struggling to create, stay the course. It’s a delicate balance to remain open while protecting the light within us from those who attempt to extinguish it.

With love and our drive to create, a candle of an idea can become a beacon guiding lost ships back to the shore. Will the voice of naysayers or inner wisdom that will guide our hand.

Focus on the joy derived from writing and performing. Before we know it, our last lyric will be penned and our final song will be sung.

We may as well enjoy ourselves while we play them.