What really do I want out of all this?
I know damn well I’ll die an angry old carcass of regret and mediocre creations if I look for my validation and taste in the clumsy hands of algorithms and apps—one day shining their warm and bright eyes upon my songs, lifting a curtain to a million onlookers that praise and praise until the next morning comes and the silence is complete, beyond a few snickers and jeers (be they imagined or not).
It’s troubling that I have found so many good people through sharing my work online, and it leads me to come back again and again like some hungry dog, both for the praise and for the company. I have always wanted to be seen, to stand in front of ten thousand people and mean something to them—a common quality in young people starved of some form of validation at the beginning. I don’t think this part of me will ever die, and yet the real kicker comes with my refusal to just play their game and add to the overflowing heaps of rubber, soulless excess that gets passed off as art.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a great number of wonderful and honest creations being distributed at the highest levels, but clawing at their boots is the sheetrock, department-store music and noise that fills far too many rooms and empty heads (adding to the emptiness, to make matters worse). And this lower batch of machines keeps a lot of lights on in the record companies, and for that reason, it has become a well-shined and walked path that is encouraged, if not forced, upon many doe-eyed kids such as myself.
Anyway, I was just upset for a moment. All is well. Carry on.
