Where Does the Music Go?
One thing I noticed during Covid is that we thought people would have all this time to create—and I think I alluded to it a couple entries ago—but music really gets affected when things are bad. It gets put on the shelf.
Covid forever changed our songwriting group. It really affected this small group of sensitive people (and I don’t mean sensitive in a negative way—I deeply relate). A lot of people who were trying to write songs just never came back. I guess it affected me too. My consistency definitely suffered.
But post-Covid I was back, and maybe that’s when I went on kind of an electronic holiday—away from my more typical song-and-verse kind of stuff—which I’ve recently returned to.
But changes always!
I lost a job. Do not cry for me. I’ll find something. The next 60 days will be weird, but after that things are looking good. Still, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been sleepless nights, big questions, and lots of processing—things that make it really hard to do all this: the daily music blog, the “music is my extracurricular fun thing,” and me trying to keep it going when things are very NOT fun.
Where and why does music go first, or damn near it?
For one, it really occupies my thoughts. A lot of the time I’m trying to figure out what to do. Especially leading up to something like January, where I write a song a day. How am I gonna do it? Should I set up templates like I’ve used in the past? Are my templates good? These things all take a backseat to: oh shit, real life is weird and it’s rearing its ugly head. And at the same time, I had a kid declare—for real—that he’s quitting college.
That’s a lot in one serving!
But what I did this time around was be very conscious of music, and try to keep the goal in mind. So for those of you out there who’ve had life changes: just know the music does come back. And no one cares if you pause. If you lose audience, there are more people out there who will listen.
I’m really looking forward to a very emotionally charged January. These demos are gonna go deep, which could be really hard to do mentally given all that will go on another parts of my life.
But I’ve done it before, which means I will do it again.
PS: A friend the other day told me to stop taking life so seriously. Trying hard to take this advice!