Tyler Daniel Bean
Kat Kat Phest 2 - Day 4
The Fire, Philadelphia - 12/31/13
i wonder what its like to be tyler daniel bean. you play music and literally everyone in the venue starts crying because it is literally the saddest music.
I’m not sure if you’re wondering what it’s like to create and play to an emotionally charged room, or if you are wondering how I deal with the fact that I am perpetuating the unnecessary and overwhelming cultural fixation on sadness.
I’ll attempt to answer both: 1) It’s reassuring to the notion that I’m doing something worthwhile, that I am providing something needed, but it’s not fun. Especially considering that as a solo artist, I recognize I need to give a much stronger performance to get the same respect as would a band. I feel these songs at every show, and I think the performance may hurt me more than it does the audience. 2) Whenever someone says “get sad,” I get uncomfortable. I don’t appreciate how such like sentiments have helped cultivate the emo revival. My music is specifically a creative outlet. The process of doing, of creating, has left me with a more stable mentality. I won’t suggest that my sorrow has disappeared, and I’ll acknowledge that my next record will be more physically depressing than Longing or EYDSM, but everything has been written in order to define a path out of my current condition. Basically, If sadness is for personal torture, I don’t see its worth. I understand how sorrow can overtake a person, but I don’t see how someone could find balance in only sadness. That said, I think it is important for people to listen to music that sparks an emotional response like you could find in Pedro The Lion, Kind Of Like Spitting, My Disco, or mewithoutYou. It’s important, especially now, to interpret how others handle situations similar to your own. So I understand where this comes from with my music, but I’m not sure how to feel about it. Like Plato and Aristotle disagreed regarding emotional expression in poetry, is it justifiable to introduce an audience to something they have potentially not yet experienced? Will it hurt them more than it will help? If my main audience is 16-22, am I causing more trouble than my expression is worth? Part of me thinks my music causes unnecessary emotion and is then uncalled-for, but another part of me understands that in some way anticipating emotional experience is important—that as much as it hurts, it helps or eventually helps—and that if it continues to help me personally, it’s beneficial. It’s a bigger problem than I initially gave it credit for, and it’s the reason why I have not yet made concrete plans for the release of my next record. The sadness my records have caused is not something of which I am proud, but it may speak further to the fact that they’re necessary.
I have experienced neither the death of anyone particularly close to me, nor any particularly difficult break-ups or relationships. My grandparents on my dad's side died when I was two and eleven so neither death really affected me in an especially sorrowful or heart-wrenching way. On my mom's side they are both alive, well and great. My only relationship in high-school was with a girl who I liked and got along with, but with whom I was decidedly not "in love". She was replaced by my current girlfriend, with whom I quickly and decidedly fell in love. We are approaching our fourth anniversary. My parents are great and in love and still married. My childhood and adolescence of were almost entirely devoid of hardship. I am white, male, straight, stereotypically 'intelligent' [straight A's] and middle-class ("I'm a straight white male in America//I've got all the luck I need//Shit's gonna work out for me").
Emo/screamo and emotional music in general holds an important place in my life because, in spite of all great things I have listed above which should stand as proof that life has hardly short-changed me, I feel that my life has been lacking in the direct, immediate emotional response that is prompted by events such a those that I have not encountered. Sad and/or emotional music have filled in some way for me the void of feelings that has existed inside of me. The experience of sad music is more than a second hand experience of the emotional and mental anguish of the artist. It is a direct representation of the feelings of the artist, imagined and felt directly by me.
In short, sad and/or emotional music is both good and necessary for me because it keeps me from being a robot entirely.
