A Meditation on Creating Things
If I have failed in some ways at least I haven't failed in this way.
I just received my personal copy of my most recent album Is This Minimal? from ElasticStage, and it makes me Have Feelings.
It's a complex set of emotions being tickled out here, and in describing it there's a risk it's going to come off as bragging, but it isn't that, not really, it's more like... satisfaction. Satisfaction that isn't as easy to achieve without this physical artifact. And even as I say it I know that it's mostly kayfabe, an illusion.
The music on this album was released last March, and while I liked it well enough to release it, releasing it didn't really fill me with a whole lot of verve. I did it as part of the RPM Challenge, and thus got to have a selection from it played on their "Listening Party", meaning a non-zero number of people heard my music, and I saw comments from that moment that were approving and encouraging. Which was nice, that's always nice.
And then... nothing. Apart from that, the album went the way of most of the music I release online, which is that I can see a small spike of new listenings on my Bandcamp page for a day or two and... that's it. I post on X or tumblr, nothing ever comes of that, and it all drifts away silently into the void.
But this object is an object, not simply a digital file cast out into the uncaring cloud, ephemeral, intangible. It exists, I have to move it with my hands from place to place. If all the electricity in the world was neutralized, this album could still be played on some spring-wound relic of a Victrola. There's something to be said about that.
Somewhat related is that, to make this into an object, it has to be designed - in this case, also by me - some thought and expertise has been given to the appearance and packaging of the object, something more than just slapping a stock JPEG into a cover wizard. And, well, whether or not you approve of the minimalistic graphics style I chose, I don't think anyone can deny it was done with a certain level of production values.
Outer cover, inner sleeve, even disc labels - all part of a cohesive style, and arranged nicely, if I do say so myself. And the same goes for the other album I released through elasticStage, image filters and lower-case helvetica - it looks like it could be a My Bloody Valentine album.
And there we are - these artifacts would not look out of place in the electronica racks at an actual record store, or even the limited offerings at your local Wal-Mart or Target. It looks like they were crafted with intent, to catch the eye, make you think "hmm, wonder what that's like". I did that! Me! I even designed the spines to resemble the way many vinyl LPs were designed, with a clear readable typeface that can be seen as you look at the ends of your albums as they stood together on a shelf.
It looks like they belong, like they're just as good as any other album, like someone invested time and money to put this out there professionally.
That's the kayfabe, of course - I invested the time and money, I paid a company to put all these things together into a single artifact, it wasn't some record executive recognizing my musical genius, it was me opening my wallet to a company with nice printers and fabricators so I can produce one-off vanity press copies of albums I couldn't sell to save my soul.
Even so, holding this tangible item makes me feel more enthused about my own music than anything has since the RPM listening party. It makes it feel more real, even if that's an illusion, it makes me feel like it's good enough to co-exist with all the other albums out there, like it's something more than just the million other online albums out there constructed from prefabricated royalty-free loops and then blasted onto Spotify to try and generate a quick buck.
And maybe... that's good enough.
(It'll have to be, won't it?)
