(This isn't about music)
Since recovering from my infection/injury in March, I've been struggling to find my footing and get back in the groove creatively. The brain is collection of habits- neurons stimulating neurons in patterns that you you. I'm beginning to realize that the forced-restful state that I was in while I was sick (and recovering) has lead to some bad habits, and undesirable patterns in my head. Some, simply time-wasting- too many games, too much sitting and being comfortably bored. Others, a bit more worrisome...
I've been having night terrors? or anxiety attacks? or something else? Each day when the sun starts to set, I start to feel this terrible feeling creep back into my mind and take over. I worry about lots of spiraling and awful ideas. I feel like I cannot trust my own body to heal anymore (but maybe that's just part of getting older) I worry that I haven't accomplished enough or made enough out of my life so far. I get terrified of the unrelenting nothingness I expect in death, and I remember being sick in a bed for a month, spending every day worrying (or distracting myself from worrying) while doing everything I can to get better. Perhaps that's the worst of it. I start to realize that more than likely I will die like that someday- sick, in a bed, doing everything I can to get better- but instead of getting better, I will not. This will happen, sooner or later- it's a fact as certain as life itself- there can be no life without end. (It is probably one of the earliest, most consistent, and inevitably binary distinctions that a creature can comprehend.)
Each thing in the universe that humans can name must be distinct from something else. We name things in relation to other things- with the intention to call them together, or push them apart.
In music and art, we call this dynamic range. It's the relative distance between the two most extreme points- How dis-similar is brightest color from the darkest, ect...- How loud is the loudest moment compared to the quietest, etc... Some pieces are subtle and lovely, keeping their biggest moments no more than a whisper more intense than their quietest. Hushed secrets, and vague impressions- suggesting ideas without fully committing. Some pieces are loud and busy, constantly ramping between two extremes, forcing together/apart moments of silence and noise and figure and ground. Declarative statements that shout at you across the room and force your attention.
It's easy to say the loudest thing is the better thing because it's simply easier to see. But, in truth, the loudest thing in the universe cannot be defined without referencing the quietest thing. So which thing is more impressive?- The loudest thing certainly requires more energy, but if the world is full of other very loud things, then it doesn't stand out as much as the quiet thing? But just by the nature of perception, how likely are any of us to see the quietest thing? (however lovely it may be...)
How can we measure the qualities of a life? If art is like life, perhaps the dynamic range of life can be found by comparing a moment when you are "most alive" with the moment when you return to the earth.
If all endings are the same grave return to silence, then the loudest, busiest, most chaotic life certainly has the biggest dynamic range. I has many chapters- it is able to enunciate the widest variety of experiences. (The brain is great at categorizing and separating distinct experiences.) You can remember each unusual moment from a chapter of your life much more vividly than a span of time in which mostly similar things happened.
But that distinction, too, relies on personal context. In fact is, the human brain will store chapters and distinctions in a seemingly monochromatic span of time, too. Though the apparent dynamic contrast is less- the brain creates/identifies moments as being distinctive from one another. A quiet thing still has a rich, exquisite pallet of subtle variations.
So which piece is better- One with more dynamic range, or one with less?... It depends entirely on what it means to you. One cannot exist without the other (even in the context of this hypothetical question). The evaluation of a lifetime's work is done by the people who interacted with it, not by the work itself. In art, we generally talk about a piece being more successful if it connects deeply with a sizable portion of its intended audience... Perhaps it's true that a life is ultimately measured in both depth and breadth of relationships with the people in your world.
Maybe the painting dies each time we look away. Our direct experience of it has ceased, yet our feelings about it (whatever ideas it gave you) remain. The piece is given context by you, and your observation of it. It's not up to the piece to decide what it means, it's up to all of us who look at it.
What I think I am doing, and what I am actually doing, and what I think I wish I were doing is irrelevant, to some extent.
When a human life ends, the the capacity for that human to generate new experiences for/ with other people ends. But the experiences they already had are as real as they were when they were alive- and the collective memory of those experiences and actions, are as real as any life can be.
I got really sick in March, and it derailed my life for about a month. I'm happy to report that recovery is going well and I'm starting to feel like myself again. I'm still processing what happened and how scary it really was. My doctor said this was something that might have killed you 150 years ago, but modern antibiotics really are a life saver. Honestly I'm just so glad that I made it out of this without any serious lasting consequences or lifestyle changes. I have a lot to be thankful for, and I'm so grateful I was able to take the time I needed to ensure I got better.
I'm so grateful for all my friends and family who helped me through the worst of it. <3 This experience has been both a scary a wake up call, and a lovely reminder of all the people in my life who would go out of their way to take care of me.
I'm continually humbled by all the love and resources that my family and friends have poured into me all my life. It takes a lot to make a person who they are, and I continue to feel the weight of that love and energy in everything I work on.
There's a lot to do to keep up with my timeline, and losing a month certainly didn't help. I've got plenty of stuff to record and edit for the album... and the endless churning and bubbling germination of undeveloped ideas and structures continues to simmer at the piano as often as I sit down on the bench.
I was away from the piano (and mostly the guitar too) while I was recovering at my parents house, and I'm so glad to be back at an instrument to help me process all of this. New songs, and newly realized songs are starting to take shape. Sometimes the unfinished song is a monster that threatens to consume crush you under its weight. Sometimes it's a towering tree covered in vines rising higher than the clouds and begging you to climb up and explore. Other times it's a limp, tired animal that you try to drag reluctantly across the finish line. And sometimes it's a confused little fish swimming through the substrate of your imagination, trying to find the water it can most easily breath in. I'm relieved to have these creatures back in my life.
There are two primary frameworks/modes in which art is made. One is art that is born out of a studio practice- inspired by other art (either made by the artist in the past, or by other works they have seen) and focused primarily on material mastery and/or experimental innovation. The other is art that is born out of a need to articulate and process a person's real lived experiences in the world.
In the first framework, each piece is a bit like a a technical iteration upon previous pieces. The thing being articulated is in some way similar to those pieces (either conceptually or experientially), but the refined product shows constant improvement and novel innovation. This practice focuses on rich discovery/mastery of the materials and practices being used (including conceptual material/practice, like in the case of the many readymades that followed in Duchamp's footsteps) . That isn't to say that work made in this framework is necessarily derivative- but rather, that the artists primary goal is the production of a work that is technically marvelous and exciting in a way that is rooted primarily in the pursuit and practice of art making, rather than personal emotional situations.
Art made in this mode can be found sitting in modern studios and galleries often. Much of it (in the contemporary context) leans into abstraction and theory. It's stated meaning seems to be discovered along the way, or to be applied after the production has started (or sometimes after it has been finished...) The emotional core of work sometimes fails to resonate, or comes of as disingenuous for viewers. I've had conversations with many artists who mostly make work in this mode, and they often loathe the moment when they have to write a statement and give the work a name. It's not that the artist isn't passionate about the work, but rather that they don't know how to satisfyingly articulate exactly what aspects they care about- which is not at all their fault! Especially when dealing with work like this, the ability to articulate the thing that excites them (that gives the work a reason to exist and explains why it's hanging in front of you) depends heavily on an audience having a lot of the same studio/institutional experiences as the artist. This makes it difficult to explain on a plaque. It's a piece that makes you cry if you've spent 10 years looking at other art. In some way, the work asks that you already know what it's "supposed" to achieve before you've even looked at it.
The second type of art attempts to capture, invoke, or reflect upon a sensation that the artist has directly experienced. It attempts to synthesize an aspect of the real world and clarify and distill it into a new experience.
In order to make art in this second framework, the artist needs to have a wealth of lived experiences to draw from, and a strong memory of an emotion that propels them to make the work. In many ways, this type of art ends up being more approachable to an audience outside an academic art institution, because it is directly spawned from experiences that anyone might also have in the world. This is not to suggest that art in this framework speaks directly to subjects typical of everyday life, but rather, that the meaning and intention of the work were developed first (in whatever inarticulably vague notion) based on circumstances unrelated to the art itself, and the process of creating a work happened as a direct result.
There are pitfalls in this mode of art making too. Sometimes an artist engaged in this mode will make something that speaks deeply and profoundly... but only to them. The personal context that produces the work is so elaborate that it isn't directly or obviously able to be re-constituted in the mind of a viewer. There is an argument that work made in this way doesn't particularly care for an audience in the first place. The primary objective of the maker was not to have something ready to display, but rather to capture and process a feeling or situation in their own world for an intrinsic (often therapeutic) purpose. (Perhaps there is something to be said about the potential potency of an art object made for a very specific and limited audience, but that should be its own topic)
Truly great artists are wrapped up deeply in both worlds- engaged frequently in both an academic context that encourages practical/material innovation, and a lived context that gives them something real and meaningful to continuously make work about. Entering academia will give an artist a great foundation for making work in the first mode, and leaving academia will give an artist a great appreciation for work made in the second mode.