everything is improving / art without the "I"
stream of consciousness practice #36
the thing about voice is that it can make you live in a box. sometimes we have a certain voice or style and people outside of us associate our sound with this particular style. theres no ill will here. its just what happens. humans for some reason need to categorize things. put them in neat little boxes. is it humans that need this? or have we been conditioned by societies programming? is it the algorithm that puts us in boxes and we feel like we need to live by them, inprisoned by them. and maybe it started with school culture, understanding peers by the “groups” everyone is in. the root of it is not really important here, only that it exists and that it is limiting to the artist. take these streams of consciousness i am doing, if i were to publish some of my fiction or even some of my essays sound different, unfamiliar to what you are now used to. “it doesnt sound like you.” maybe that is the point. maybe the point is for you to not discover the “I” of my work so much. this also seems to be a human nature thing that we are always trying to uncover the “I” in art. when we read fiction novels that feel so real we think it must be autobiographical, we start to research the writers life and connect the sometimes imaginary dots, we make the story up in our heads to satisfy ourselves. this is something sheila heti has talked about because people always ask her if its how she really feels, i think the motherhood book really got to people and they had to know, please, tell us, is this you or someone else. why does it matter anyway? it doesnt, it doesnt.
Marie Howe said at that reading i went to a month or two ago, that she wanted to stop the man who was introducing her to the public (us), he read a bunch of her accolades and prizes she won and blah blah blah, she said she became a poet to disappear. that we become writers or poets to disappear, to let only the words stand. which of course is not true for everyone as we know. in fact it takes great strength and courage to allow yourself to disappear from the work, to have no ego, or abandon ego, or kill ego. (can the ego really be killed? i think not)
hayden released and album today, i’ll link it here, it was designed to be heard with the intention of healing through music and 432 hz, and to promote restful sleep, to decompress, to regulate the nervous system. this is not an album where hayden is playing “crazy” on the drums, which is a version of himself that people attribute to his voice. everything has its place. hayden was a presidential scholar at berklee college of music, went to the arts high school here in houston that beyonce went to, has been in recording studios since he was a baby, so there is depth and width to his playing, but a lot of people knew him as a crazy good drummer, one of the best in the world. even though he was always interested in more than just the drums, he was/is interested in piano and guitar and synth and composing and producing and mixing. he simply creates from start to finish the entire scope of his albums, nothing goes untouched by hayden. but the thing about voices keeping artists in boxes is there is a feeling of having to stay within the box, perform to the boxes limits in order to maintain credibility? ego maybe. which is why i am so impressed with this album he just released. he wanted to make himself disappear, the ego, the I, the ego of music where you want to be applauded as a star, he wanted to make the music stand and speak on its own, he wanted it to heal. so he pulled back, made the drums “simple” which is actually incredibly hard to do, holding restraint takes strength, confidence in oneself, and focus. i love space, for things to be left alone so my thoughts can fill in the gaps. almost like the listener and the artist are collaborating. and maybe he is challenging all of us, the listeners, to look at ourselves in the mirror, to face our own egos by presenting the absence of his. we are forced to look at music not as a distraction from our life, but an asset, a vision, a tool, a teacher to show us how to sit with our emotions. show, dont tell.
“I am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own life, and it will come to the artist, the composer or the writer or the painter, and say, ‘Here I am: compose me; or write me; or paint me.’ and the job of the aritst is to serve the work.” - Madeleine L’engle
Spirit, god, the universe, or inspiration, whatever you want to call it, comes to us with an urge, we are vessels (which is why we can never run out of ideas) to follow the urge we must try to get out of the way as best as possible. we fail sometimes. naturally. the ego is a force, a destruction, that takes and takes, its good at playing tricks though. and listen not all ego is bad, there is good necessary bits to it, but coupled with stardom, fandom, bigger than life-dom things start to go a little sideways. maybe the “I” in my work is meant to present the you in it. and yet some things remain. some fragments of our voice is just that, our voice, listen closely. read closely. something about haydens work feels so familiar to houston, there is a certain shape to it, that someone who grew up here can only make. its the same for leo on the sax, you can feel the southern roots bleeding through. so at the core maybe our voice is unqiuely singular. if i closed my eyes, if i heard haydens music miles away, in a crowd, i would always be able to spot him out, though i suppose now, my relationship to his music is so intimate, i see it so clearly as his bones, the same way i know his walk, the same way i know when something is wrong, the intimacy of not having to speak. and now his music is in my bones, much like amos’s dna is in my dna. forever linked.
everything is improving, the song title tells me. i am in the car, driving past tree after tree after sidewalk after freeway after gas station after park. the sun keeps dancing through the trees, we are not chasing the sun, but driving alongside it, keeping it company. any problem seems far away in this moment, in this song. i think of the past present future as one moment, the songs bleed into each other, like the ocean kissing the sand. there is just enough hope in the album, while holding the weight of reality, the weight of the past. an album without an “I”, it is my own reflection glaring back at me on my phone screen. an album that makes me feel less alone. i drift off to sleep, dreaming of the days to come.
go stream it on spotify or apple music, let it bring healing and sleep to you. baby approved too btw.