Having done over 60 open mics now, I am better at it, certainly. I am more comfortable than the first ten or fifteen times I did it, as is to be expected. But the big question now is what am I attempting to achieve with all of this? My goal, so far, is 100 open mics. Then I might do a re-evaluation of everything, including my approach. At any time I can approach each open mic a little differently, so there is a novelty to that, even though I don’t usually do anything that differently.
100 open mics. 100 songs. I keep these benchmarks in my mind (and on paper).
But my music progress changes over time, so even these notes which I began a few weeks ago have already become modified.
Performing, I still rely on my sheet music, which is admittedly a crutch. So often I can look at my music and not have to think about looking out at the crowd (such as it is). The curious thing at the most recent open mic (a new venue to me, The Monkey House in Berkeley), was that the stage lighting was almost perfectly calibrated so that I was blinded to the actual crowd. (As well, there was an excellent sound system.) Having my sheet music is a crutch in the sense that as much as I have tried to memorize my music and lyrics, I will always manage to stumble over a line or two and even some of the chord changes unless I can look at it. I allow myself to continue to use my sheet music; I’ve got nothing to prove about my memorization skills. My initial goal has been simply to perform the songs to the best of my ability.
My open mic numbers have dropped for personal reasons. The time I had off in July I could have gotten in a few more performances, but I had a change of plans and thus hardly played at all. In August I was out of town and did not have my guitar. Two months, gone.
I am not going into the reasons why I am slacking off my music, but it is notable and necessary (not in terms of music; I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to!) for other reasons. As such, I have also not written as many songs since July as I normally would have. I say normally as if it goes without saying that otherwise I would be writing songs.
As for recording, I haven’t done anything since June, but I released a bunch of songs after finally deciding I’d rather be done with them than to trial and error them to death. I mean, Louie Louie was recorded in one take for 50 bucks. My point being, the song has to be good to begin with; the recording is icing on the cake.
This year, I had established a routine, a manner, a method, of recording songs. It has been several months since I recorded anything–besides a few rough demos, which I’ll always do when I come up with something. Just before this break, for the first time I listened to one of these songs (before it was completed) and I thought, maybe I should try to rerecord the whole thing over. That idea of re-recording has been something I’ve avoided or outright decided against, mostly because of the amount of time that it takes to put into a recording.
This points to existential questions.
Why do I need to rush to get these songs out on platforms? It’s not like my work is in demand, or anyone even notices when I post them. But after a while there is a sense of diminishing returns, maybe, as in, I am putting a lot into these songs, but no one is listening to them. I am reminded that I’m doing it for myself. And, in fact, I listened to them on my bike ride recently, and I had already forgotten several of them, so it was refreshing to hear them again.
To quote from the excellent Joy Division (the band!) oral history I am reading:
“You’re always working to the next song. No matter how many songs you’ve done, you’re always looking for the next one.” (Ian Curtis)
“We’d always relied on what we thought about ourselves. We didn’t really care what other people thought.”* (Bernard Sumner)
I guess I will ask existential questions, and I will continue to write songs when I can, play them live, record them, create interesting graphic designs for the cover, then post them. In my mind this could go on indefinitely, though I also realize that’s unrealistic.
In the past two years, I’ve written enough songs for probably three decent albums, and another collection of songs I don’t care as much about and maybe won’t ever play again. But it’s not 100 songs as I first imagined. Am I putting too much pressure on myself to believe I can achieve that?
There is probably something to just making these little, incremental steps. To being satisfied with having written what I have, the last batch of songs being ones that I think are my best. (When things are good, I always think the last stuff I do is better than anything I’ve done before).
This is a creator’s dilemma. You think because you can produce seemingly effortlessly–and that notion is a stretch; it’s not at all effortlessly–that you always will. But what about when you can’t? For example, I used to pursue writing (such as you are reading here), something I thought I could not live without. But now writing functions as something I indulge in once in a while, not necessarily as an essential. I will go weeks, even months, without writing. I never could have imagined this in the heat of my passion for writing. It’s gone from being essential, to being eventual.
Unlike my work, which comes to me as a problem to solve (design this thing), songwriting is something that I have to actively draw out. There is no one asking for a new song.
As for songwriting, I have already a history of going a long time between songwriting blocks. Twenty years, more or less. When I stopped the first time, in 2005 or so, it was with the sense that, “I won’t get anywhere with this.” I had recorded, very amateurly, a lot of those songs. Then I thought, why continue? (It also didn’t help that I had no community around me for encouragement). What is different now is that I keep having new songs to play live, so I am carried along by that urge. If I don’t have new songs to play, will I want to keep playing? I don’t know.
Maybe the reason I’ve moved around in a lot of different creative fields is that it is easier to pick up and move on to avoid the disappointment. I have a tendency to ramp up to a height, but once I’m there am I going to keep going up?
It’s possible that I will inevitably get to a point where I am not feeling like there are any new songs coming along. Would I just stop for a while? I think of my efforts as an endless well of creative expression; that’s what I’ve come to expect.