I have spent a lot of my life making things up.
I started pretty young, and it has been a constant ever since. I've been thinking a lot about how fortunate I am to do so, and the infrastructure and resources around me that allow it. I spend parts of every single day absorbing what others have created, and with the internet, almost entirely ignoring the former limitations of space or time. I then get to take all of that input, combine it with my experiences and whatever fixations currently occupy my mind, tinker with it until I am satisfied, and then send it off into the ether like some tiny sail boat whose destinations I will never know. It is my favorite thing in the world – with food, sex, games and good conversation waiting somewhere in the wings. The joy of creating is unmatched for me.
But it is a luxury. That I can have groceries delivered to me while in a pandemic, or even further – completely prepared food; that my environment is temperature controlled with a few button presses; that my clothing can be thrown into a machine that does the work for me in under an hour; that I can turn a lever for clean running water, at whatever temperature I choose, and wash up in minutes – all of this gives me time and space that I can fill with the unnecessary. I get to constantly listen to what I feel and think because so many of my necessities are taken care of. It allows me the freedom of inventing anything I desire, and translating it into sound or graphite or words or ones and zeroes, further decorating life. Something notable I find from reading history is how modern society has given us so much space, comparatively. Hell, even in modern times, reading stories about different parts of our world and all the various walks of life only highlights the abundance in my own. Many people have little in the way of time, even more so with brain space. Art takes a surprising amount of mental real estate. That real estate is a luxury.
If you are thinking that I am merely waxing poetic about gratitude, well, yeah. I am. But it's something that has really struck me since going into quarantine. The pandemic has removed so many of my former spinning wheels that felt so necessary only a couple months ago. All the time that used to go to travel, to shopping, to commuting, to working on projects that didn't matter to me but may, one day, lead to ones that do – poof. Gone. And while I miss some things, most of it I do not. And I find myself returning to a much earlier way of life, artistically speaking. I am interacting with art in a manner that I assumed was firmly caged in nostalgia.
My relationship with art is my oldest and perhaps most intense one. It is what allowed me to travel, both figuratively and literally. As a child, art was a window into the larger world. I grew up on a dirt road in Florida, in a low-income neighborhood near the ocean (a real estate anomaly that has since disappeared). Through film, books, paintings, comics, video games and whatever else I could absorb, the world felt like a never-ending treasure hunt. Despite some of the inherent wrongness of my early environment, I saw other options, other ways of being. It didn't matter to me that most weren't even real. They felt real, and that was enough. And when I connected that I could become a participant, that I could make those things, too? A door opened in my mind that has never closed again. I walk in and out of that door, between reality and potential, constantly.
But art is also what allowed me to see the world. Traveling wasn't something I knew as a child. Things like family vacations or road trips were financially and logistically impossible. My first memory of leaving the city I was born in was around 11 years old, when I went on an end-of-the-year trip for 5th graders. We traveled to Virginia and Washington D.C. by train, which cemented my enduring love for that form of travel (still my favorite). After that, I traveled a bit more, mostly with friend's families who let me tag along, but rarely very far. Until touring began in my early twenties and my world was flung much wider. Seeing lots of other places and cultures really altered my world-view — more than I realized at the time, in hindsight. But coming from where I did, geographically and economically speaking, I doubt that would have ever happened were it not for art. Creating things has always been a bridge to possibility for me, both in my mind and in my life. It is so entrenched at this point that I would not know how to perceive the world otherwise. I would be a very different being without it. Not to sound melodramatic, but I am pretty sure that, if I had not connected with art the way I had, I would no longer be here at all.
But what caught my mind while in the shower a few days ago, and why I am writing this, is because I am interacting with art in a way I, somewhere deep down, didn't think was possible anymore. A side effect of so rarely leaving the house is that my time for creative work has effectively doubled. I am drawing and painting in a way I haven't since high school, and in a way I honestly believed was gone. I first started drawing pretty intensely around 7 years old, and I drew almost daily until I graduated high school. For reasons I won't go into here (that's a story for another time, as they say), I stopped. Sure, I would make visual art if there was a direct purpose, like an album cover or doodling on merch while on tour. And while I was thankful that all those years of studying and practicing gave me the tools to work in other visual mediums, like music videos, I otherwise didn't think of it anymore. And now I find myself drawing every day again. I am watching tutorials, learning digital art, and currently have 6 sketches waiting to be colored. And I love it. It caught me off-guard how much I missed it, and how different from music it is. It's so much more instant, and I really appreciate that contrast right now. It's refreshing, after typically spending many hours in front of microphones, which so much of I never keep or share.
Even with music, this abundance of time has changed things. The last time I felt I had this much breathing room to make a record was when I did “The Roots.” A major difference is how much more I feel like I can just play. I can set up mics with no other goal than exploring. There is a really big learning curve to becoming successful at something that was once a hobby, to dealing with external pressures like production deadlines and tours and meetings. I've spent years just learning to build my own label and all the legal and practical components that go into that. All of those factors take away time from the core act of creating music, and if you are not careful, they will destroy it. And while I have always been a DIY artist and have pursued so much of this in the name of artistic freedom, one change that I didn't quite perceive, because it was such a gradual one, was how the limited time creates a need for efficiency, and in turn how that need for efficiency alters the process. I traded a lot of whim for focus, to make sure I could finish the projects on time. And while some of acquiring that discipline was a good thing, there's a balance to all things. I feel like I am resetting that scale. These days, going into the garage to just see what happens when I start recording, as opposed to going in to specifically finish a particular song, is a total joy. Some days bear no fruit, and others make for a strange meal I probably wouldn't order again, but the freedom of just seeing where it all goes is something I genuinely missed. I am glad I can call upon that focus I've learned when I need it, but right now I'm even happier that I can ignore it.
So I feel grateful. I am spending so much of everyday just making things. Hell, that I have had this current afternoon to sit with a mug of tea and just type these thoughts up is such a luxury. While the existential dread of a roaming virus is definitely there, and living in such a political and economic state of uncertainty demands its toll, my newly vibrant relationship with art shines a lot brighter at the moment. It may only be for a moment, but hey, I'll take it. And I will gladly take a step back and be thankful for the circumstances that allow it to exist at all.
I hope everyone is well.