It’s been a while since I’ve written here. Or anywhere, really. Since moving up here to San Francisco, I’ve found myself with even less interest in the digital side of life. Which I find pretty funny. I moved to the belly of the tech-beast to largely ignore it. Maybe this is my tiny form of protest? Ha. Either way, my phone remains devoid of apps (not quite true, I use one for meditation). I doubt I’ll go back. When I poke my head out it seems noisier than ever, and I don’t see much point in adding my voice to all of that. I’ll post some drawings from my desktop, put up recordings when they’re done, and send out some newsletters if I have anything worthwhile to share. I think that’s plenty.
I turn 40 next month, which for reasons I won’t go into here, I never really thought I would make it to. I like it, though, the idea of officially being middle-aged. It feels like societal permission to do what I’ve been doing for a long time anyway. I just finally look the part. So now, for example, if someone asks whether I’m on Tik-Tok, I can say “I’m forty”, or simply gesture towards my body, and we can go about our merry ways. I say this in jest, but I have talked about it enough that I clearly feel some need to explain my abstinence. I think this is because I used to write to nearly everyone who bothered to write to me, and now I am feeling that difference. But online behavior has deteriorated to the point where I largely avoid it. Inboxes can quickly get filled by people who are upset at what you are, or are not, doing. There are nice notes, too, but the see-saw tipped too much toward the problematic side somewhere along the way. Maybe it will rebalance in time and there will be some shift in digital etiquette, but I only check in very occasionally now. For those who send nice notes, thank you. They’re still very much appreciated. I just might not see them for a while, and I apologize in advance if I don’t write back.
But talking about what you are not doing isn’t very interesting, and all this peace and quiet has been far from idle. So let’s change gears.
I’ve been making tons of headway on my next big project, called “Into The Woods,” but it has been a strange path. Even for me, and I never learn in straight lines. If I were to quickly explain what this album is going to be, I’d say I have finally decided to truly combine all my interests. I’ve been bitten hard by the art bug in three mediums over the course of my life – the first was visual art, the second was prose and the third was music, in that order. I’ve always used elements of them all in my projects, but not to this degree, and nowhere near this interwoven. It’s been a real challenge, the biggest I’ve ever taken on. I’m genuinely enjoying it! I love pushing myself, and feeling like I’m onto something new for me. But I have to stress the second part of that sentence. For me.
I am not a very original artist. I never have been. But it’s also never quite been my goal. Something struck me recently while listening to a talk on meditation about a month ago. The sentence was: you are what you pay attention to. That was one of those lightning rod sentences that made me sit up straighter. I’ve thought about it a lot since, and it helped frame a lot of my current mindset.
Back to the initial part of this post, a major part of why I have backed away from spending time online is because it’s not what I want to pay attention to. It doesn't make my life, or my work, any better. But I also thought about how this applies to my approach to my work, and how I’ve never paid very much attention to originality. Not to say that I haven’t done some particular things along the way, or I approach things in a generic fashion. But when I listen to something like “Loveless” from My Bloody Valentine, and how sonically singular it is, I am well aware that I am not that kind of artist. I’ve never made anything that stands so apart. But when I really think about it, my attention has always been directed toward two major elements – quality and mood. That’s really it.
What do I mean by quality? It’s not simple to put into words, so this may be clumsy. But my idea of quality is when I stumble on someone’s work, and it just is. It feels complete. And this has nothing to do with whether I like it, or how much effort went into it. Sometimes I listen to a record, or watch a film, read a book, look at a painting, and I totally accept it as a viewer. It doesn’t feel like it’s almost there. I don’t notice what it could have been. It’s finished, it exists, it’s what it’s supposed to be. My only question is how I feel about it. All my favorite work is like this. And to clarify, it’s not an issue of fidelity. Some lo-fi music can feel totally correct, while some incredibly well-produced work can feel like it just never fully formed. I can look at something loosely painted and feel like it’s perfect as it is, and see something painfully rendered that just “feels a little off”.
The pursuit of this quality is rarely straightforward for me. I can give an example with this recent project.
Since I’ve decided to paint the entire story myself, I have been seriously working on visual art again. I have been painting digitally for about a year and a half now. I already had some initial sketches and design ideas for this record years ago, but I knew my chops were nowhere near where I’d need them to be. It did not have that elusive sense of quality to me. The best I was getting was “charming”, and I wanted more. My gut was that it would take me about 200 paintings to develop the level and variety of technique I’d need. I’ve made over 180 finished paintings since I started, and I’m finally getting close. So my gut wasn’t far off. But I wasn’t going to find that certain quality just working directly on the project itself. I don’t learn well that way, just hammering one thing over and over. So I branched out into various topics to better teach myself. The three major focuses were portraits, figures and scenery. Within each category, I worked on different levels of rendering, from gestural to realistic. Over time, I realized my primary concern is light, and I’ve honed in on that more and more. The other aspects feel more open-ended and forgiving.
To return to an earlier point, at no point have I been attempting to be original over the course of these 180 paintings. I will blatantly steal from other artists I like. I bought collections of Sargent and Klimt paintings, as well as artbooks from digital painters that utilize certain qualities I’m after. I mimic them. Some I outright steal from. My personal taste is guiding my hand the entire way, so sometimes the result is more unique than I was expecting, but I see that as a side effect. I’m just chasing after my particular idea of quality, and how the work feels. Every 20 paintings or so, I jump back to my project and try a few more ideas, and see how much closer I am getting to my goal.
This is not very different from how I make music. I’m not out chasing unicorns. I just want to make records that can sit next to my favorites, where I feel like I’ve communicated my intentions well. I want to hang out with the giants in my mind, to not be embarrassed if something I made happens to play after something I love. It’s a tall order, but it’s one that keeps me motivated. And while I may not spend much time on whether it’s truly original, I do spend a lot of time chasing after very particular moods and feelings. I don’t want the result to feel like someone else’s, even if I’m borrowing techniques, and I have clear ideas of how I want the work to come across before I begin. But as for how I go about it? I’ll steal from anyone.
So this new project has me working in all three categories, and moving between them often to see how they are all interacting with each other. It’s a little unwieldy, but totally fascinating. I’m certainly sick of this pandemic life in many ways, but I love how much time I’ve had to explore all of this, to get it all right. I still have a lot of work to do, but since I have no external commitments like touring, it doesn’t feel too daunting. It’s a big challenge, but I have enough time to really meet it. And I’m going to keep chipping away at this sense of quality until I find it.
I’ve updated the art tab on the website with more recent work, if you’d like to see where all this painting has led me. But I will keep the music and writing parts private until it’s ready to be released. Until then, it’s a lot of chasing that idea of quality. Wish me luck.