fear – The Conscious Pilgrim

thief of joy

As much as I eschew clickbait, I do still see those absurd headlines attempting to conjure clicks and engagement. The one I happened across just before writing this entry was about how Taylor Swift is the cultural heir (for lack of a better term) to what Bruce Springsteen has cultivated over his decades of writing and performing. I don’t really care what that article says, but I know enough to be able to acknowledge that Springsteen can do no wrong in most older music fans’ eyes, and that Taylor Swift is a polarizing character because she’s seen to have not ‘paid her dues’ yet for some bonkers reason. Hence… the clicks.

Chock it up to chauvinism, generational baggage, or whatever you want in order to justify the old guard’s disdain or distrust of Taylor Swift – but the fact is that this is not how all of this works. It’s not a royal bloodline in the monarchical sense – but proposing it might be a royal bloodline does serve to upset people who might not realize the bullshit factor in these types of comparisons.

Comparison. What a bitch.

Comparison is the thief of joy. It’s been said so many times that it’s almost meaningless when we hear it, but the distraction that comes with comparison can derail so much greatness. The amount of alcohol I’ve ingested, the amount of bad food I’ve eaten, and the amount of drugs I’ve done pale in comparison to the distraction I’ve put in my own way through being concerned with what other people are doing, and what successes other people are seeing from their efforts.

“This peformer is ___ years younger than me”
“That video has ___ more views than mine”
“That band has ___ more people at their shows than me”

… all of it distracts from what it truly important in my life – which is: am I engaging in my purpose?

None of that shit matters.

What I’m doing matters.
But… What I’m doing doesn’t matter to you – or at least it shouldn’t – partly; if not completely, because it brings about a sense of fear, and fear doesn’t live in the present moment… it lives in the future.

That brings about another thought which might seem to come from out of left field, but I think it relates. That is the potential role of A.I. in art and music as the future comes hurtling toward us.

It was recently put to me that with the advent of companies buying up the catalogued works of Bob Dylan, Dee Snider, and other song cafters of the 20th century and the growing ‘threat’ of A.I.’s presence in the arts are linked, and that these catalogues will be fed into A.I. machines for the purpose of creating more Bob Dylan (and others’) records long after the death of artists like him, and that “this is what we’ll be competing with in the future.”

I have to say that if this is remotely true, I won’t be competing.
It won’t be a competition.
If there’s a market for computer generated music, it’s likely going to be in genres of music that are inherently perfect. Recordings that have been engineered to a point of soulless perfection will be under threat of being undercut by machines that can do it faster and cheaper, and that don’t come with the flawed human elements of coping with addiction, trauma, stress, and all the other things that make art a reflection of humanity.

There will be no competition because there will be no comparison. If anything, it’s just as likely that value on human performances – flawed, imperfect performances – will increase, because it is real and relatable… and because as close as these things can get to being authentically human, humans still have a gut instinct that tells them when something is ingenuine, or outright bullshit.

If anything, my skills will be even more specialized as less people are actively doing them live and in-studio.

… there will be no comparison.
And my joy in performing my craft will stay intact.

best years

I’m not sue if it’s because I think a lot, or because I’m approaching what most people consider to be mid-life (though I’m planning on living a long & healthy life, the length of which I shouldn’t be half way through yet) but I lend a bit of thought to when a person might ‘peak.’

Even as I write this, that feels like damning language, but it’s fair to say that once you reach a certain age, you won’t be able to perform to the same level as you once could. Typically this notion is cast upon athletes, which is something I can consider myself now (though not professional by any measure) but as years go by it gets cast over musicians and performers; as well, not being able to sing or perform to the level they could in their ‘prime.’

It’s most startling in athletes though. The thought that someone’s athletic potential in a given sport could come & go before the age of 25 years old (and that’s generous in some sports) is a hard thing to hear for me – someone who is a staunch late-bloomer in a number of ways. To spend the latter 3/4 of a century in the shadow of a mountain you once climbed is a dangerous existence, fraught with high-risk decisions making, if one does not re-examine their sights and focus on a new goal. There are too many cliche examples to mention.

Suffice to say, I couldn’t be happier to have become the late-bloomer I am. Being in my 40s and taking my creative career more seriously than ever has it’s daunting moments, for sure, but it beats the shit out of burning out early. A few years ago, I decided that I’m not finished doing what I do, and quite honestly I’ve been writing my best and most important lyrics ever since, and playing, performing, and composing better than ever – and that’s not even and objective statement. I am more technically proficient and intentional than ever before.

I know that’s a mouthful – but the important part was that I decided to level-up. My history is one of massive and lengthy self-doubt and fear of success before I decided to clean up my act – but as one once so poignantly stated: “If one desires to climb the Ziggurat, one must take the first step.”

So the real question isn’t about the past at all.
The real question to ask is: Are your best years behind you?

Being a first round NHL draft pick at 19 years old, or being a self-medicated & socially lubricated songwriter navigating a local music scene in a medium-sized city is completely irrelevant at the age of 40 years old, because you can’t go back and change it no matter how you feel about it.

You can’t live there.
You can’t live there any more than you can live in the future where you’re a wild & unbridled success… you can picture both the future and the past, and use them to guide your decisions today, but you have to live here in the present.

Only fear can live in the past.
Only doubt can live in the future.
But success and potential, inspiration and discipline – those live here and now.

I can say definitively… My best years are in front of me.

Check out the new podcast I was recently interviewed for! Pillars of Creation is a new podcast dedicated to creators, by creators, for creators, and is definitely worth a like & a follow & a subscribe!

life with fear

In light of recent election results, I figured it’s time to talk about fear. I’ve spent a good portion of my life afraid of a lot of things. It’s through conversations with other people that I’ve come to this realization, and I’ve come to the realization that I was actually raised this way.

I’d wager a guess that a lot of us were.

I don’t blame my parents for this. They did their level best. We’re all doing our level best… but that doesn’t change the fact that I was raised in this environment. We were a low-income christian family who; on more than one occasion, were cut off at the knees by the church, and when struggling what any atheist might call ‘sour luck’ my folks were told they had sin in their lives that they needed to sort out.

Now, I don’t care if you’re a christian, but if you are you’d probably have a hard time arguing that christianity isn’t entirely based in fear… fear of Hell… fear of Satan… fear of being ‘left behind’… fear of sex… at this point, I’m not completely sure what the selling features of this ideology are, save for the fact that we are all spiritual beings looking for connection and a sense of belonging, and churches advertise their ability to provide these things on billboards.

Okay… back on track… my folks didn’t have much money, and what they did have they were very careful with – to a fault, really. So much so that most opportunities to invest were seen as high-risk. Even clearly good investments, like real estate provided a level of anxiety that I can’t seem to make sense of now as an adult.

This is the tip of the iceberg, but I won’t divulge much more because; again, I don’t blame my parents and I’m not interested in placing myself above them as though I am superior, because I’m not – However, the message that this lifestyle supplanted in my mind at a deep, subconscious level was one of similar fear.

I grew up to be an adult who was ultimately afraid of failure and afraid of success simultaneously. That might sound like a contradiction, but as far as my art goes, it kept me from pushing myself to do bigger and better things because I was:

afraid to compromise artistically because I might not be happy with the result
afraid to push my art further because that meant leaving my comfort zone
afraid to fail, because any failure I might have would probably be public
afraid to succeed, because if I found success doing something I didn’t love entirely, I’d be stuck doing it anyway
afraid to commit to any band for a long period of time, because I was constantly starting over at the bottom… where I was comfortable
afraid to be alone, because the value I put on myself was tied to other peoples’ opinion of me
afraid to be with people, because of how inferior I felt compared to them

… I could go on like this for days. I trapped myself in a cycle of mediocrity because it was within my comfort zone. Not that the music or the people I was making it with were mediocre, but that my effort to have people hear it was… and these things fizzle out when you don’t try very hard. That’s just how it works.

In the end, I’ve made a conscious decision to not be afraid. At the risk of summing it all up and making it sound simple and easy and quick – it is NOT – I’m not afraid of failure – it’s how I learn, and I’m not afraid of success – because any success is a gift, and it can leave me just as fast as it arrived. Maybe faster.

Really, I choose not to be afraid every day. It gets easier with the momentum of the previous day’s choice.

During the covid times, I stopped mainlining cable news, because it instills fear by constantly showing exceptional situations and telling you they’re normal, when the reason they are newsworthy is because they’re not the norm.

I’m not afraid of Donald Trump.
I wouldn’t have chosen him, but as it turns out, I wasn’t consulted on the matter. I won’t live in fear of the things I can’t control, and who becomes the president of a country I don’t live in is most certainly not something I can control.

What I can do is call out injustice when I see it. I can advocate for people less fortunate than myself. I can use my art to broadcast messages of love and growth. I can challenge the status quo when I see fit. I can support those who need it.

Fear lives in the future, and the future is uncertain.
I live in the present, where there is no fear, and there’s no uncertainty.
There’s just us… doing what we’re doing right now.
So we must act accordingly.

laughable

Certain recent global pandemics that shall remain nameless shook things up a lot. If an understatement exists, surely it was the one I just made.

Mixed into the barrage of things we all had to roll with whether we liked it or not; were a couple things that a good number of people I’ve talked to recently actually miss about the inappropriately termed ‘lock-down’ time. The most consistently cited was the slower pace of daily life.

<sarcasm> y’think??? </sarcasm>

I’ll start by quickly assessing and then pushing aside the fact that it wasn’t actually the slower pace of the pandemic that appealed to us, but rather that the break-neck speed of e-commerce and the never-sleeping algorithm forever parting us with our money in exchange for temporary amusements is not a pace that the human body was ever designed to endure, nor was our collectively exhausted brain – and now that the aforementioned break-neck speed has resumed, a great number of people are resounding in wonderful rebellious chorus: fuck this.

I don’t remember the exact point at which I stumbled across a meme informing me that “it’s ok to stop mainlining cable news” and my respect for meme-culture, if that is indeed a thing, shifted.

Between my conscious decision to stop watching new news; having determined that anything truly important will be brought to my attention either directly or indirectly, and the more recent advent of news outlets being forbidden from posting directly to Facebook (because Facebook refused to pay them for their stories being shared… which is another fun discussion for another day), I am happy to say that the fear machine, in my world, has been cut off at the knees.

As a member of the adult, caucasian male demographic in North America in 2023, and a fervent self-analyzer, I can assure you that most of our decision making is based in one thing: Fear. It’s for this reason that I’m elated to have these reach of these news outlets curtailed significantly, even if it means they might sink to some desperate depths in order to retain Canadian readership.

My observation is that in order to unite any number of people is through connection on a common emotional level. It’s spiritual in nature, because it’s subtle and personal. On a small and positive scale, it’s what unites young couples – the sharing of stories and laughing together; laughing of course being one of the few expressions of self that is socially acceptable. The sharing of tears has a similar effect, but it more acceptable in settings such as bible studies and addiction recovery meetings, or occasionally in a movie theatre where Schindler’s List of some similarly heartbreaking film is being watched, as it’s heartbreak that crosses all personal boundaries. The imagination is triggered in most cases and a relatable experience may come to mind, cascading the emotion – which is why when you’re laughing, the cracking of another joke can make you laugh harder, even if it wasn’t as funny. A shared sadness can have a similar effect, but generally speaking people find these feelings uncomfortable, and avoid these scenarios.

The same emotional connection is made when a feeling of fear is shared, except without the obvious jubilation that a shared laugh brings about. Fear is more humbling and subduing because of it’s negative nature, so when fear is broadcast and shared, it has a sweeping effect as it; too, triggers the imagination and causes a cascade of negative emotion. What is even more problematic about fear is that we as humans tend to fixate on it.

I’ve heard this described as an evolutionary trait, wherein once upon a time, our primitive ancestors might be foraging for food miss something helpful and nourishing such as a fruit tree because they were more concerned with the presence of snakes lurking in the grass. Seeing the snake would be more important to survival than eating an apple or a pear in that moment, so attention to the negative is crucial in times of stress for this generation of ancestors. Eons later, we live under constant stress and anxiety to the point of physical fatigue… but this age-old trait is apparently why we have such trouble looking away from car accidents, too.

So, to have the presence of this fear reduced dramatically will ideally make more room for the sharing of laughter and tears, and connecting with each other on an emotional and spiritual level – the kind of connection we were truly missing through the pandemic (and I would argue much further back than that). Meaningful connection through the sharing of stories, and the spoken word is absolutely crucial to our existence as a species and as a group of individuals, because we quite honestly share more commonality than difference.

It’s fear that serves to categorize and label us. Not love.

I recently drove between opposing sides of an issue – a protest and a counter-protest, held on opposite sides of the street on my route to work. It was big, and people were still just arriving at the time I was passing through. Upon exiting the protest/counter-protest gauntlet, I came to witness a couple walking up to a cross-walk wearing traditional religious garb small-talking with a couple of; and I use the term lovingly, blue-haired freaks. It was fairly clear that both couplets were destined for opposite sides of the street to address the issue at hand, but they appeared to be walking together, and being cordial and polite despite the impending discord.

It made me think about both sides of the issue, and how quickly political and societal issues would be resolved if each side saw the other side for who they are: people… doing their best.

a.i. art

“Art echoes the human experience, so for someone to even refer to A.I. generated images or sounds as ‘art’ is a minor pet peeve. Any A.I. generated music is likely to be prompted with profit in mind, rather than quality – so my career as a twangy rock & roll recording artist is no more in jeopardy from A.I. than it is from any blossoming DJ remixing top 40 hits in the same year as my next release – it doesn’t even register as a blip on the screen. “

Beyond everyone’s dystopic fears of being enslaved by robots, there are several much more nuanced conversation about A.I. that can be had in the here & now – because no matter how you feel about it, A.I. is happening. The only portion of this conversation I feel remotely qualified to have is that around art.

People are worried; as they have a right to be, that A.I. is changing the landscape of what can be defined as art and what a piece of art might cost, and I think before we take the hair-on-fire reaction to something we don’t fully understand, we’re going to have to acknowledge a few glaring problems within this industry. As I go through this I’ll be toggling between a few different kinds of art.

The first of which; is that most people can’t afford to purchase original art. The glaring example is that The Mona Lisa; owned by The Louvre Museum in Paris, France, is essentially priceless. It’s hypothetically worth more than a billion dollars, but it’s not for sale regardless – this does not prevent me from purchasing a beach towel or a pair of socks with the image printed on it for a much more manageable price tag. I enjoy the licensing of that image, essentially for free.

I own printed copies of original artwork, still in support of the artist, purchased from the artist for a fraction of what a commissioned piece would cost. Many of us do, so the argument of ‘the original article’ vs ‘a reasonable facsimile’ is best left to people with an actual art budget.

Similarly, if I want to hear Bruce Springsteen sing ‘Hungry Heart’ it’s going to cost me a few hundred bucks, an evening, and I’m going to have to wait for the luxury. If I’m willing to settle for a cover band’s rendition of it, I’ll save more than a few bucks.

That’s all from a consumer’s standpoint. As an songwriter and recording artist, myself, I have to say that the entire world has been “getting the milk for free” for a long time without ever worrying about the price of the cow. I truly believe that we should all be able to subside and thrive off of the fruits of our artistic labor, but in the same breath I have to say that if you are making music or making art specifically for notoriety or financial gain, that you’d be better off picking up a part-time job at 7-11.

I make music because it’s in me to make. I’m not sure I really have a choice in the matter – and yes, what I do has value, and I am compensated for my efforts when I perform – but streaming revenues are not something that an artist like me banks on, but it seems to be the price of trying.

Art echoes the human experience, so for someone to even refer to A.I. generated images or sounds as ‘art’ is a minor pet peeve. Any A.I. generated music is likely to be prompted with profit in mind, rather than quality – so my career as a twangy rock & roll recording artist is no more in jeopardy from A.I. than it is from any blossoming DJ remixing top 40 hits in the same year as my next release – it doesn’t even register as a blip on the screen. As a matter of fact, the original version of the aforementioned top 40 hit didn’t register a blip, either, as it was more than likely pieced together in a board room in Sweden by a handful of men led by Max Martin or one of his disciples who specialize in turning note intervals into dollar signs.

… and if Max Martin loses his job to A.I., I have a feeling he won’t be on the bread line any time soon. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’s already using it to make his life easier.

My thoughts drift to my subtle awareness of how the diamond industry works. Aside from the hellscape that is the Blood Diamond trade, I learned a while back that in the golden age of diamond mining, the pursuit was ‘the perfect diamond’ meaning of course that it had no; or at least very few, flaws. That is until the advent of the cubic zirconia, which is a synthetic compound with an equally stunning appearance that served to crater the notion of mining the perfect diamond, and the end result was an increased valuation on diamonds that were previously considered less valuable due to their flaws. This is because the presence of flaws made for easier certification of real diamonds. Clearly, the diamond industry has it’s problems.

This is analogous to the music industry in a number of ways. With the advent of most advances in recording technology, there have been people who push against it, arguing that the integrity of the craft is being lost – but there are flocks of music fans who go out of their way to see live music in all it’s imperfections, as well as purchase live albums, and seek out ‘gritty’ and ‘raw’ recordings because they feel more ‘real.’ With the undoubted flawless execution of music works performed by A.I. there’s little doubt in my mind that the number of people looking for the humanity in their music and art will only grow larger.

In the end… writers will probably take the biggest hit from this. Copywriters, translators (if there are any left), editors, some journalists I’m sure… but the greatest artistic works will continue to be the echoes of lived experience, which is something A.I. can never profess to have.

In the end, I guess you can go ahead and make all the A.I. generated “art” you want… just don’t expect me to pay for it.

Frankly, I’d be more interested to hear that A.I. has taken on the menial tasks of humanity – all the toilet scrubbing & burger flipping – for free, so we can be free to create more art than ever.