g. t. anders

Music and I broke up around 2010. We had always had a decent relationship, I guess, but it became increasingly apparent that the spark had faded. Since our commitment had never progressed beyond an unspoken “we’ll date—for now,” there was nothing to fall back on when our relationship hit the rocks. That year, I gave to music with a half-hour piano sonata, an album of pop tunes, and a senior composition recital. But music wasn’t giving back to me, and my efforts masked a deeper change that neither music nor I was aware of. Allow me a moment of melodrama: we simply weren’t in love anymore.

Actually, I shouldn’t say we broke up in 2010; we just became emotionally estranged, and I think it happened in 2011 or 2012. Can I change my story as I go? I’m just trying to process this. Music changed herself again (she always did—and that kept it fresh for a long time), offering me a role in an indie art-rock band. It was new and beautiful to play bass in Kairos House. I no longer had to worry about writing for classical instruments in a way that would make performers happy. (The classical world is incredibly provincial. “Not my job” is the prevailing attitude, and it’s most popularly applied to parts for one’s own instrument.) Now, in Kairos House, I could blast the living daylights out of my bass with a cello bow and headbang away my masculine angst. Not playable? Oh, we made it playable. It was loud, and it was fun.

But somehow, it came to an end. Life kept shrinking and needs kept growing. It wasn’t that the sounds of Kairos House didn’t speak to me. They did, but other music didn’t. In 2009, discovering Oceansize and Fleet Foxes had changed my life. In 2010 and 2011, these bands’ new albums should have been amazing. But nothing could match Oceansize’s Frames and Fleet Foxes’ eponymous first album. The muse, ever a fickle mistress, had not quite imbued these new offerings with that glorious golden Something Other. Each album sounded like the band that had made it; and that was the problem.

Addendum: Age of Adz gave me a glimpse of All Things Made New, but it was only a glimpse, and it faded inexplicably. Oh, and summer of 2011, music tried to woo me back with an incredible Bon Iver concert in Chicago. Hearing 2,000 people sing “what might have been lost…” has a way of changing your life. But after a few months of providing glorious sensory stimulation, Bon Iver, Bon Iver began to reveal a lack of spiritual depth. It was pure sensory form without spiritual function. I’d been had.

I was still giving back to music, but the relationship had turned somewhat abusive. Winter of 2010-11, I recorded a short album of morbid pop tunes eclipsed by mechanical noise. I called it Come, My Tired Machine, and never released it. I took music and I beat her with the noise and violence in my heart and head. But even under the bruises, she was beautiful. These are some of the best songs I’ve ever recorded.

By now, I’m sure I’ve thoroughly confused music. I am truly sorry for that—and yet, she’s been sending me mixed messages too. For my part, I never meant her any harm; I just have this recurring fear that if I invest too much in her, my writing will suffer. But oh, how part of me longs to make godawful noise on guitar again. That 50-watt Bandmaster is just gathering dust. Then there are those half-formed ideas of songs from last Fall, mouldering on the same harddrive that holds this Word document. There was something about a train sweeping by, and a lonely slow guitar tuned down to C and overdriven to hell. Yes, I’ll be back. Just give me time.

But even nowadays, the committed musicians in my life have kept me from abandoning music completely. They just keep cranking out good stuff. My fiancee’s cello playing has redeemed me on many a night of emotional sickness. My brother’s album, Strongheart, has spoken to me in ways that nothing has for several years. I absorb these sounds now without feeling the old pressure to Know Exactly What Is Happening or Produce Something Just As Good. And maybe that alone means that music and I will get back together, sometime soon; having grown older, wiser, and a little more cognizant of what we can and can’t do for each other. Maybe it isn’t over after all.

Hey music. How’s it going. I know it’s been a while… is this weird? Yeah, I don’t really know where to start either.

It’s hard to understand why some people reach a wide audience in creative disciplines, while others toil away year after year in apparent mediocrity. While you have to be in the right place at the right time, and you have to meet people, the last ingredient is the most critical: your vision must be indispensable.

It’s no good hoping to be a famous author if you keep writing things that people don’t need. Everything is an economy, including the world of thought and emotion. People need emotional catharsis and intellectual leading just like they need bread and electricity. And despite the digital revolution, pirating, and the debilitating effect of TV on our ability to think critically and appreciate beauty, people will still pay for emotional and intellectual catharsis. If you are an artist, this is your industry; and it is not at all wrong to think that way. In fact, thinking that way is the only thing that will help you to find an audience who needs your work.

Good writing can lead its readers to new truths of the mind, just like good music can open the sluicegate of the heart to let the tears finally flow. (I know that’s an awful generalization of the function of each, but bear with me.) We are all, to varying degrees, emotionally constipated and intellectually stunted. We are all trying to find the way. If your art is not showing people the way, it is not necessary; and in any economy, that which is not necessary fails.

All right, so your projects aren’t getting off the ground. That’s okay. There’s a lot that goes into creating something and then getting it to people. For many of us, creating is the easy part; the process of getting it to people is strange and complicated–and waking up to the Internet in 2013 makes it even more so. If you aren’t marketing your stuff, no one will know it exists; and an artwork that could change the world yet stays stashed in the basement will remain stashed in the basement. So the next paragraph is not about artworks that have failed due to a lack of appropriate marketing.

This is going to be hard to hear. But listen. If people aren’t responding, if they aren’t excited, if you don’t see at least a little good that your art has done for others, you might want to sit down and reevaluate what you’re doing. What is your vision? Were you given one, or did you invent one? Are you a conduit of something from beyond yourself, or are you trumpeting the fact of yourself? Are you preaching the fact of Other to others, or are you preaching the fact of yourself to yourself? Do you want to be a vessel of beauty, or do you want to be a rock star? The world needs beauty more than ever, but we have enough rock stars. They’re on stage tonight at every black-painted dive bar in every Nowhere, USA.

The digital revolution and the rise of indie culture have redefined success for everyone who creates things. But the fact remains: if what you create is necessary, and you tell the people who need it that it exists, it will find some type of success. If it is not necessary, it will fail. This is because people need things. They need bread and water and beauty. Think long and hard about this; and if you still turn out to be an artist, go out and let beauty flow through you.