To turn or not to turn pro?

The fear to create, and the fear of mediocrity

Music has always been a huge part of my life and identity. Spending time in spaces filled with musical instruments heals me. When the world gets too much, I go there so I can breathe better, and be the kid in a candy shop around guitars, drums and amplifiers. Learning the guitar solo to Master of Puppets by Metallica on my second (or third) copy of the Fender Superstrat guitar as a 14 year old kid with long-ish hair worked better to raise my spirit, than drinking cheap Russian vodka for the first time at a friend’s place on new years’ eve did. 

The Guitar that saw it all

Words did not really speak to me much then, sounds much more so. The craft of mastering an instrument is a high the likes of which I haven’t known anywhere else, a never ending journey of exploration, the joy of discovery and achieving higher and higher milestones. 

For most musicians, the journey from being a bedroom player to a pro becomes a quest to “make it” as a successful touring or recording musician. So they begin to write their own music, to try to make it as solo singer songwriters or be in a successful band. That intentional ambition is something I’ve never been able to embrace, and whenever I tried to write music I’d feel like a fraud - like there was a resistance that was pulling me away from it. I never really felt called to write my own material. So I never honestly tried. Every time I’d try to think about why this was happening, a voice within me said that I didn’t yet have an authentic reason to do so, although I could never understand what that meant.

I don’t know if this was my excuse to not try, and I never really tried to probe that feeling further, until now.

I told myself that there cannot, and should not be an intention to the creative process, if my best work is to emerge. The best stuff always comes out in a complete void of ambition.

Holding on to the belief that the transition from just learning to play the music I liked, to writing my own was one that should feel as organic as my journey so far with music had, which had given me nothing but joy and confidence. A fear of not being able to match up to my musical heroes had lodged deep into a corner in my mind. That my original material might not be as good as my ability to play or sing most of the music that I heard on the records had paralysed me from even trying to write anything. When songwriting did not feel as natural and exciting to me as just learning to play other songs, I realised that the Superman within me did not want to take off the costume and go to work as a regular Clark Kent. 

I couldn’t tell whether this was a fear of mediocrity, or I was simply procrastinating to avoid the murk of creating something new. Or whether I was waiting for the day for a song to magically spring from my soul, and any intentionality or discipline to create I must not encourage. The creative process cannot be painful, should not feel as anything but joyful, because that is what I had been used to so far.

I told myself that a day will come when the music will simply pass through me and the songs shall write themselves. When the muse will grace me with what I can offer to the world, and I can create what I’m meant to. 

Of late though, owing to many hours spent watching many interviews on Youtube of artists describing their creative process, I became aware that a lot of my heroes didn’t necessarily agree. They struggled to write sometimes, worked to a clock, and had to take care of a lot of the “business” stuff. Which then got me thinking, that maybe there is some adulting to being a pro artist that I can’t probably avoid.

I find it strange though how one man’s pain of creation can become another’s joy, which is music in my case. That is probably the law of nature, just ask all the mothers in this world! It’s the commitment to create that matters, and is perhaps an intentional decision that must sometimes be uncomfortable and other times, excruciatingly painful. 

And it will occasionally take a toll on the spirit and the body, and I probably need to be okay with that to some extent. But maybe the juice will be worth the squeeze, and I can’t find that out unless I try.

I’m not sure whether this is my path going forward, or should I stick to what I’ve always believed in. I’m afraid I may have been waiting on a deprecated platform for a train that’s never going to arrive there, but on the other hand I feel absolutely certain that resistance is not the best catalyst for any worthy piece of art, but maybe those moments of fluidity have to be facilitated and engineered by the momentum of scheduled and consistent effort. Maybe the muse is waiting for me to show up on a different platform each day, to sit down in a chair every morning with a guitar and a writing pad and embrace whatever feelings might be unearthed.

And that’s when the muse shines it’s grace with occasional spurts of brilliance (which I pray that it does for me), but the rest of the work has to be still done day by day.