I am not a trained musician.
This fact becomes blatantly clear to me in those moments when I'm listening to things I've created and I'm trying to analyze whatever it is I'm trying to record. I seem to have this conviction that I should press the red button every time I'm equipped correctly and I have something to say.
Since 2009, my recordings have been just as important as my written journals to my mission to record as much of my life as possible. I've learned to use my guitar as a way to prompt myself to wax lyrically about how I felt on that particular evening. These audio time-stamps define who I was in snippets when I feel free to say exactly what I want to say.
But, are they anything anyone would want to listen to?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure at all. I am reluctant to post new things to my soundcloud account because I don't know how best to explain the context for why whatever I post is important to me. Everything I do makes perfect sense, but does any of it mean anything to a listener who is not me?
I've not recorded anything since early June. I titled that session "decidely-bland" because that best described how the character of the music, lamenting the way my life seemed at the moment. The 25 minute session was mostly me explaining how I felt at the moment, very much a journal that I'll return to in the future when I need to know who I was around this time. It's very important for me to have ways to travel back in the past for just a moment.
Sometimes I listen back and I have no idea who I was in that moment, that moment in which I confessed something to my microphone. I can now listen to five years of where I was in those moments in which I have previously lived. I've always been able to do this in words, but there's something much more visceral in listening to the way I expressed myself in music, somehow fusing improvisational guitar with improvisational singing in the aims of capturing lightning in a wav file.
And every single time I begin to believe in myself, something happens to make me stop that, and to go in reverse and instead believe that whatever I do is somehow not important, not good, and then that brings me to the middle of July where I've not had the courage to let go and just do it. To go to that place where I...
Sometimes I listen to the older things and I see all the faults in them. I realize that I want to hear talent that might not be.
Then other times I hear the simple act of me creating in the moment, somehow liberated from everything and transported to a place where it doesn't feel like I can do any wrong, making music and sounds that help me make sense of my life.
Sometimes it's noisy. Sometimes it's more melodic. But, it's what I do, and it's who I am. Nothing in my perfect in my life, but yet it all seems worthwhile.
So. What's your creative outlet? Is there anything you keep secret from the rest of the world?
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