All Good Things
In about three weeks, Steel for Brains will come to an end. As far as the metal/extreme music writing world, this will likely have the impact of a gnat hitting the windshield of a car.
And thank sweet Satan for that. Really. I’ve said more than enough about the humble beginnings of this site, and they were most certainly humble (for Christ’s sake, this thing is based on a Tumblr platform - no offense). But things fade. Things change. Things progress, or at least you hope they will to avoid stagnation. I thought about listing a few of my favorite features or even making one last “Best Of” list, but I quickly realized that doing that wouldn’t exactly be an embrace of honesty. Hell, it would be an exercise in glorified halfassery.
I haven’t and don’t pretend to know what success means in a self-obsessed culture. I mean, right now I’m propping up my work and my site, and that’s okay just as is your personal blog or collection of well-filtered selfies or continuous reposts of cat GIFs that will forever be more enjoyable than anything this site ever featured. Comparably speaking, SfB’s lifespan is relatively short. Sites like Metalsucks, Metal Injection, Last Rites, Invisible Oranges, and so many others were around before and will hopefully be around long after December 31st, 2015. The opinion by many that “blogs” are for what’s the equivalent to the bootleg version of Fight Club you bought back in the day that had Korean overdubs, but you watched anyway because fuck it. You can work with it.
The worst thing about that thought process is that many passionate bloggers end up believing that horseshit, resigning themselves to the idea that their writing isn’t worthy or meaningful. In turn, the “real writers only” club turns into an ego shitshow while the music sits on the sidelines and waits for the opportunity to take part, but it won’t happen because everyone else is too absorbed in the butthurt, self-absorbed, and smarmy brawl to even notice. But this isn’t about the few people who end up poisoning the well of what’s, in reality, a majority of amazing writers who don’t take part in what’s essentially a 140-character pissing contest.
I say all of that because what’s most important, what’s intangible and untouchable by anyone, regardless of how many mentions or followers, and regardless of their bylines, the music and your passion for talking about it are the two most powerful assets you have in accomplishing anything in the music writer melee. It’s easy to get caught up in the fray, and there are occasions that demand just that. If you have any kind of audience, you do have an obligation to put a voice on what no one else has the moxie to.
This doesn’t mean you get to saddle up the ol’ reliable opportunist pony, nor does it give you a free pass to be as much of an insufferable asshole as your detractors or, dare I say, those who have other opinions. Pick your battles. Be smart. Not everything is worthy of you taking to the social media forum and all-capsing an invective for every goddamn thing just because you happen to have a few hundred or thousand followers. Look, if everything becomes an issue of grave importance, then eventually nothing really is. Pick your battles. Sometimes shit isn’t all that serious.
It seems like an oversimplification, and in many ways it is, but stop and think for a minute about what’s missing from so much of what we do as writers, what we go to battle for, what we dismiss, what we deride with obvious spite and vitriol. Maybe we could use a dash of simple. Maybe we could stand for a little more shutting the fuck up, settling the fuck down, and chilling the fuck out. It doesn’t negate the seriousness of the issue or your passion for the music, but listening, having an actual, thoughtful, objective dialogue can, wait for it, disarm a situation much more easily than going on a tangent that makes you and your oftentimes correct assertion look like yet one more in the ever-brimming expert cesspool.
You want to be well known, well liked, and well received as a writer? Here’s some advice: go ahead and delete your site, blog, whatever, and save yourself what will seem to you like a mysterious defeat despite employing every bit of your effort into achieving those things. If you want to talk about music, learn to talk about it with more efficiency, open yourself to new ideas about it, and keep your ego in check when people start noticing, if they notice at all, then by all means go for it and kick ass.
If you “engaging” the music as a commentator is largely spent on talking about how you engage the music or how others engage the music incorrectly or we’re all fucked and stupid and only electronica is real, then stop wasting your time and the reader’s sanity. Don’t give more credit or a platform to the peripherals of the actual thing itself on which your job as a writer is supposed to be focused. If that’s your game, you’re not contributing anything meaningful, and if you’re not doing that...what the hell are you doing?
And that’s where the wheat and chaff separate. It has nothing to do with whether you’re a blogger or an esteemed writer of the highest caliber. Your burnout and lack of passion are the precursors of what will inevitably be a nosedive into the same trite drivel you used to publicly despise with the self-righteous urgency of a street preacher. That said, I don’t know why SfB caught on, and I honestly don’t care. Why? Because it isn’t about me, and it never was. Granted, there were moments when I found myself veering in that direction, but what always smacked me back into reality was that constant question I try to keep at the forefront of my mind: To what end?
What’s the point? Who cares? You’re doing this, you’re writing this, you’re asking this musician these things, and that’s great, but to what end? To accomplish something and gain yourself some cred that has the shelf life of a banana peel? If you’re gonna talk about “being real” then you’d best own that shit. Anything less, and you become a fraud, and you lose the one thing that matters: respect for the music. Understand that and keep that at the forefront of whatever you write, and you earning the respect of your peers and readers will come naturally.
Even if I don’t know what contributed to the overwhelming number of people who’ve reached out to compliment, to express their gratitude, or just communicate in any way about how something I loved was something special to them as well, I do understand that those things speak to a kind of success that you can’t measure in retweets, likes, or other dumb shit you shouldn’t give an nth of your time to stressing over.
I’ve been asked multiple times about how I do interviews, why my interviews are different, why the hell they’re so goddamn long, or what my “secret” is. I don’t have one. Get real. People have a story. Everyone. Even silly black metal bands with names that sound like inhabitants of Middle Earth (or hell). People hurt, they laugh, they grew up, they experienced, they doubted, they all have this story that’s solely theirs and unlike any other person’s, and if you can set aside yourself, your hangups, and all your expectations save honesty, you’ll hear that story.
There is no secret. There’s no mysticism with what’s nothing more than simple people skills. Again, there’s the rub. In a culture where success is measured by how loud and repeatedly you can sound off like a feckless, arrogant shithead, the very idea of giving consideration to another human being’s story, much less in an actual conversation, is the journalist equivalent to throwing a peanut into the ocean, and then getting upset that no one notices. If you don’t care about your subject, then why the hell are you talking to them? Nothing is more transparent than you trying to slobber your way through a list of questions when all you can think about is the fact that you’d rather be doing anything else.
That isn’t to say that those who depend on freelancing should only take those stories and features that speak to them or whatever the hell. If it means heating my house or eating that week, I’ll happily make a list of my favorite Big Bang Theory moments, even though watching that show is for me a special kind of sadism where my brain feels like it’s being beaten with reeds. The point is that your integrity, your success, and the respect you hope to gain is contingent entirely upon how hard you’re willing to work, how much emphasis you place on the music, and the humbling reality of your place as a writer in the grand scheme of things.
I started this site because I love music that oftentimes sounds like a howler monkey using bagpipes to strangle a feral cat. It’s not for everyone, and that’s okay. The fact that I have to say, “that’s okay” is troubling enough as it is to merit a kind of step back and re-evaluation of just what it is on which we’re placing the most value. Our brand? Our dreams of having our page verified? Our hopes of reassurance from complete strangers who probably didn’t even read what we wrote, but would rather just add to the perpetual white noise that is the comment thread of social media? Fuck that.
Having the wherewithal to know when something has run its course is difficult. It’s challenging as hell, but it’s something you hopefully come into with growing up and having those experiences of running something so far into the ground that you’re ass up and still trying to convince people to buy whatever it is you’re selling. If interviews are your bag, you’re selling a story. You’re selling the narrative of a life. Sometimes that narrative isn’t pretty. Sometimes it demands a sense of accountability from you as a journalist with even a cursory understanding of ethics and responsibility.
What you’re not selling is a headline or a vainglorious crusade against whoever it is you’re interviewing. You want to give a platform to a piece of shit? Interview them and ask them why they’re a piece of shit. You will get both exactly what you want and exactly what you don’t. A story that’s sure to garner hits for miles? Sure. The loss of respect from your peers and potential editors? Yep. It doesn’t mean don’t ask the hard questions. It means know how to ask them, and if you don’t, then don’t bother interviewing.
I love stories, and I love the fact that SfB’s own story is something I am incredibly proud of and, more importantly, something I’ve been able to share with so many people around the world. Very early on, I heard/read phrases and words like “Nope,” “Lol. Won’t happen,” “Sorry to disappoint,” “Doubt it,” and more often than not, total silence. I was a blogger. I am a blogger. I’m a writer. I am whatever the hell I am, but most of all I’m just a person who craves the experience of listening to someone tell the story of their experiences, their vulnerabilities, their loss, their love, their fears, their triumphs, just their life.
We live in a culture hinged on abbreviation because the speed of information we receive demands it. Quickness is a commodity and, to a large degree, a point at which we lose what’s so vital to our understanding of who we are not just as music lovers but as human beings. It’s why the narrative, right now, is arguably more important than it’s ever been in sharing and reciprocating empathy and objectivity. That’s not easy to do, and it’s not easy to maintain, but it’s worth the effort in stripping away the bullshit and getting down to the consistently fascinating story of human experience.
If you hope to get there, and if you hope to have the success and respect you want and hopefully deserve, then stop thinking about those things and stay honest and humble. You are never more than the words you write and the ideas you represent, so make them count. Make them yours, own them, and if you’re wrong, then own it just as readily, suck it up, make it right, and learn from it. Take criticism as eagerly as you do praise, because if you refuse to, you will be so damn miserable that your own resentment will eat away at whatever passion you had in the first place.
If nothing else, I really do hope that at some point over the last three years, you’ve read an interview, review, or essay here that’s struck a chord within you or that’s at least given you the opportunity to gain a new perspective on something you thought you’d had figured out long ago. I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading the content as much as I’ve been thrilled to get it prepped and posted. More than anything else, I hope you can avoid giving in to the jackasses at either end and all their grumbling and unsolicited commentary.
If you want to offer something different, then stop trying to be different and just be you. Hardly anyone is doing that anymore, so maybe you can jumpstart a trend that probably ended right after Freddie Mercury died and no one had the chutzpah to wear a one piece leotard, makeup, and write/sing the greatest rock ‘n’ roll song ever to exist. Period. Don’t worry about meeting anyone else’s expectations or archaic, laughable ideas of identity. You are you, just as you are, and you can either own it or let someone else own it for you.
That’s the best guess I have as to why it seems a good number of people ended up liking Steel for Brains. It sure as hell wasn’t me, thank god. Give less of a fuck, and you’ll have more luck? I dunno. Seems catchy. But man, it’s true. It’s been my pleasure to share my overwrought [see this essay] thoughts with you and these amazing stories from these just as amazing people who, through their words, reveal a sort of comforting commonality through their experiences.
For those who are curious, the site will remain up and running for any interested readers looking for old or archived features. In more exciting news, next October will see the first of what will be SfB’s annual publication, Cerebros. Cerebros Book I will contain original artwork, essays, poetry, fiction, interviews, and many other features I’m thrilled to share with you. Until then, there are just a few more interview features before I sign off, and we move on to the next chapter. Thanks again to all of you. Love and light all the way.
- Jonathan