August Newsletter: The Chase

I woke up at 4 am this morning from a strange, vivid dream; the dream, plus the fevered interpretation my mind gave it in the following minutes, transformed alchemically into a Good Idea. How Good it was, I wasn’t sure - I didn’t want to follow all the paths it opened up, wanted to preserve the not-yet-activated chambers of my brain for a few more hours of sleep - but I did want to write it down. Where was my phone? It’s always by my bed, but this morning it wasn’t. I got up and walked around my apartment, searching for it without success. Is this a sign that this Good Idea wasn’t meant to be captured - that it was in reality only a lower-case-i idea, blown into greater significance by my less-critical dreaming brain? Should I abandon it and go back to bed? Instead, I grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled the basics down, then laid in bed for another hour and a half while the sun slowly dawned. I drifted a bit, but did not sleep.

After spending half a year largely on hiatus from day-to-day creative work, frankly, I had some reservations about jumping back into the album process. I had achieved a certain level of domestic balance in the absence of a “real-world” project, mainly focusing on body-healing practices and a homespun bible study group with a dozen furries of diverse spiritual holdings. I sensed that getting the next album from vague demos to a completely-manifested work would necessitate awakening some demons I wasn’t eager to see. For me, a Good Idea is like a drug. For a brief window of time, it knits me into the surrounding world and opens up all my senses to the divine flow of the universe; six hours later, I feel worn out, dried up, and at a loss on how to continue, either with my projects or with life in general. The Muse is a jealous god, who demands precedence over sleep, food, and all other relationships.

As per the law of Enneagram type 4, my greatest struggle is envy, which, in cases like this, I take to mean an envy of ideas, and which one occupies the throne. For there to be a Good Idea so enthralling, it requires the existence of many lesser ideas, a mediocre horde which seems to dominate and clutter my daily life.  I listen to a song, and a voice whispers “wouldn’t it be better if it went like this” - i.e., “wouldn’t it be better if you wrote it?” I can’t deny that this is a primary motivation for me in the creation of art: dissatisfaction with the existing vehicles, a feeling that nothing here could hold truth so well as that partially-glimpsed snatch of song that only I have the power to chase after and render into a real, accessible thing. It’s what launches me out of the realm of vague, pleasant dreams, and into the sharp realities of arid music studios and windowless, noisy practice spaces. It’s also what makes me, at many points along the way, bitter, closed-off, and harshly disapproving of my bandmates and anyone else involved in the creative process with me. And seemingly every time, at the end of it all, I’m deeply dissatisfied with any reception an album I worked on gets. Envy gets the best of me - it promises some fundamental shift of reality if I chase after the idea, and when I chase it to exhaustion, what I get is the same old reality, that same old feeling of dissatisfaction.

This time feels different. We’re approaching it as a band, obliging me to drop my worst instincts, to remain open and accept an ongoing not-knowing of the whole. I reign in the Judge in my head and encourage him to use his instincts for good, to be less Beethoven knocking his colleagues off of piano benches, more Christmas-romcom protagonist who channels her creative energies into making wreaths for her loved ones. Because that’s all any creative work is in the end, no matter how ambitious - a temporary arrangement of materials in a way that opens hearts, causes joy for a short while, and, perhaps, leaves a lasting impression of love.

So far this summer, I’m having the time of my life. We’re passing work back and forth, getting excited about each other’s ideas and coming up with pieces I never would have dreamed up on my own, buds of the album that gloriously manifest that initial half-glimpsed state, which would have died unwatered if I’d been left to my own devices. Out of all the ideas flying around, certainly the best one I’ve followed this year is this: cherish the people, not the Ideas.

E: But I might actually be an Enneagram 8...still, envy is envy...