the void and how to stab it in the face.
I have been practicing guitar all morning for the show in Canada, I played the same festival with clann zú a hundred years or so ago and I really enjoyed it. The people were fantastic and it was a great mix of rock, folk, first nation, art and interesting projects. This will be my last show until September.
When I’m touring I always daydream about having a long period of time at home to work on projects and actually finishing them. Unfinished projects (of which i have about 32,000 ) wake me at 4 am with “the terror” and I go into panic meltdown, these thoughts usually join forces ten minutes later with thoughts of exes and upcoming rent and malevolent bills to totally skull fuck me. I will run through and mentally address all of these petty terrors for at least two hours before admitting sleep is off the menu.
Usually when I get back from tour I have a day of decompression , trying to find where things are in the flat, processing utilitarian things like the “tour laundry of death” (normal laundry but biologically unstable – swine flu may have started in my tour bag) and laughing at my bills and threatening letters. Then I launch into tearing chunks off my projects.
But this time it was a no go. I achieved sweet fuck all in two and a half weeks. Project guilt built up exponentially and made it worse. These are the times where i think I am a lazy fuck. But then I realised I have been doing this with 20 years. I think I was exhausted. So I gave in and figured let it rest, I went and hung out with people I haven’t seen in a long time. I think it is called socializing. I am not very good at it. Normally when i am sitting opposite someone after an hour i start to think about projects, work, what i should be doing right now. I am terrible at sitting still and just enjoying someones company. Not out of selfishness but obsession with work. Then realised later in the week after meeting lots of people that i was treating socializing as a project, something i could analyze and improve my performance with. Turning it into a fucking project. Yes, this is disturbing. If it’s any consolation to my friends i am the same with myself. I can’t sit with myself in silence for more than 10 minutes before i want to carry out self inflicted blunt force trauma. This is why I am shit at yoga. I love the physical and am a fucktard when it comes to meditating. I have to make something or do something constructive to achieve any peace. The only time i can achieve zen is when surfing or fighting, fucking or singing. With all of these things my brain turns off and I just hum. The machine takes over.
People think you are an ego maniac for performing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as fucking vain and shallow as the next person and who the fuck wouldn’t enjoy getting applauded by a room full of happy people approving of your art. But i can honestly say that i make music, write, draw, paint etc because I have to. I would go insane if i didn’t.
And that’s where it all goes weird, because I can’t do anything else (mentally speaking) other than be creative, is where as a means to eat I have to make a living out my creativity. This is hard. It is the hardest thing I have ever known. It is not natural and it takes immense amounts of energy and planning and seeking of help from others (which i am shit at). So i am trying to make that part as creative as possible.
I am looking at ways of re tweaking the machine i am in to survive so even the earning part becomes creative. Alternative venues, house shows, unscheduled performances, flash mobs…my brain is spinning trying to figure it out. Okay i will stop here and post the rest of my thoughts on the music “industry” and it’s dying breaths soon, enough for now. Go outside and get some air. We are both on this fucking net tit too much.
July 7, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Declan, today I turn 60! This is my first ‘midlife crisis’ as I never was bothered by such stuff before. If I am not creating something I feel totally crazy. Over the years when place, travel, living location or something impedes that, it is always the same. So I write and make things and try to make more things and write some more. Projects do build up and I wonder if I am someone who can’t finish but I do finish and do something else. To make money, I am worse at, and want to earn me own way, and do here and there. That is great, but then I must keep going. Now I am supposedly old. I kept wondering when I would feel middle aged. That maybe is here, but it is a number that is surprising and a little disturbing, rather than a chronological age. But other friends who are artists seem to suffer the same symptoms. That is not a help, to me. I can write anytime, but I haven’t always a place for a work area. To make large things, furniture from wood I find in the forest, I need space. So I struggle with place and circumstance more than I want to. The show in Canada sounds like a great gathering. Being sociable is only as much as one individual has in them and enjoying the company of others can be done without bullshit. Small talk is for the birds. I enjoy your music and passion and looks like that will go on and on. Tabhair aire, Mar
July 9, 2009 at 3:45 pm
I often call the music that I do, my sanity. When I think back, it has been there practically since birth when my Granmother encouraged me to pick out simple jingles and nursery rhyme tunes on my Dad’s old piano. In the end I went with percussion but the joy from it is still there, even after all this time. I too have a million half finished projects done in one medium or another and downtime of any length usually ends with a project being pulled out from a box to be continued until the next time. Sometimes I regret not making the creative side of my life also my professional side but hey, the day job has a creative element and at least the insatiable curiosity and the creative slant gives me plenty to do at the other times!
July 14, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Ow Declan, I get stressed by just reading this! I feel like I need to do something useful now, instead of reading blogs from people I care about!
I should work now..I am at work..damn…guilt is building up now..
Anyway.. sorry to hear that you feel like this. It would be nice if you could relax at times, and just sit down for a period of time, and work on projects in an effective way. Not doing a project can be useful to discover other things in life, that might be fuel for inspiration in..projects!
But, I hope things work out for you. Sometimes it’s just good to sit back, put a project aside for a while and approach it again later.
this post is no contribution in help at all haha, I just want to say hi, and hope you’re doing ok. Great drawing by the way!
Take it easy Declan.