A box I can fit into
A lot of things have changed since I wrote the previous blog. I feel like I discover a new thing every month. I'm maybe just as curious as you are. Something I didn't anticipated is me admiring the circumstances that led me to here. Nothing feels like it's ideal, yet everything seems to snap just right into place.
There was a time that I thrived for consistency. A time where I wanted my output to be predictable so people didn't have a reason to dislike my work. They're getting exactly what they expected; "why would they dislike something they expected?", I thought - and I used to perceive that as being a good thing, but the actual thing that was happening is that I was intentionally walking me into the pirate's plank just above the swirling sea, to my death.
The why of branching myself into many aliases was so I can keep experiments coming without having to worry about breaking "my sound". At first glance, it seemed to be a interesting, though brute-forced solution to the problem. You see, the main reason I was doing that was because of fear. I don't like disappointing people, specially people that helped me before. By creating art that won't meet people's expectations of what I normally do, I would be brewing disappointment and negativity in someone that once looked up to me, even if it's one or two people. I was afraid of being too much me because I was insecure if people would actually enjoy it.
This, for the surprise of no one, creates a whole palette of issues; specially when you don't have a bird's eye view of what's happening. This is not only unsustainable but actually traps myself even further, limits the way I express myself and how I treat art in general. To be fair, the idea of branching aliases are not all that bad, I can still see it's potential, but I almost did it for the wrong reasons: a fundamental lack of understanding in why art was made in the first place and why it comes to be. Why artists do the way they do and why we agreed on labels like "cheesy" to describe a piece of work that puts you after the creator themselves. It was clear that I was working around a personal problem rather than finding its source.
I received an e-mail from someone called Samantha. This person was asking me for a commission, which of course I was happy to help with, but also this person also wrote another thing. They said that they liked my released, early and recent experimental works - the ones I labeled as belonging in the trash. So I actually listened them back and well... a chunk of them were labeled properly, but there was ones that I completely forgot about that were actually really good and resonated with me. At the time I didn't quite realise because I was trying to achieve a certain goal that I had in mind.
The goal was consistency, each work better than the last one. This helped me to challenge myself and be better every time and keeping up with my peers (I used to be somewhat competitive). However, yet again, I was brute-forcing my way in. I learned a lot of sound design during that time and it wasn't all that bad for my growth, but it was ultimately unsustainable and unrealistic. When you miss the mark, it's only okay if you let it be okay. You cannot expect yourself to have the best shot every time, and that was precisely what I was missing. My personal favorite works I was doing were the ones I was the most loosen and indifferent about it.
This made me reevaluate a lot of things and what I was doing. The original concept for my alias is: "my only consistency will be the inconsistency" - this was the only reason I created this alias in the first place, it was already set on stone! - and yet I kept running away from this premise because of fear. It made me realize my constant search for a box that I could fit in. Some of my friends witnessed all this unfold in real-time, constantly overthinking what I was supposed to be doing.
Today, I feel a lot calmer about this, where as before I was constantly anxious about it. I've long ditched the audience-centric approach I did before. I took my time to sit back and understand where I was getting it wrong and reflect as much as possible on it. What I've been focusing on now is in deconstructing me back into the nature I belong to.
I feel ashamed to expose the once-invasive validation-seeking part of me here, but I wanted to share how changing can be something beautiful; letting go of older beliefs, sticking with your life values and letting your present self take over.
Thank you for reading.
No. 1: Triple The Trouble and new alias
No. 2: Branching Aliases in Music
No. 3: A box I can fit into