No one is making you do this.

The odd thing about the creative life is that no one makes you show up. No clocking in and out, no one making sure you are logging billable hours or sending off your work on time. There isn't even any sort of contract that says if you put in time and make things, you'll get paid for it. With visual art, I find it makes a bit more sense because you have a physical good you are selling or even a design that will be used over and over like a logo to define an idea or business. We can palette that kind of value. It mostly makes sense. You buy a greeting card for $5 because why would greeting cards be free? 

In my different roles in the music industry over the years, I have over and over wondered…“why are they/we doing this?” Why are all these musicians showing up, playing their music, forking over thousands of dollars from their own pockets (or going into massive debt) to record albums. Aside from a binding record contract, no one is making them show up to work to create or continue on this path. Maybe it’s just pure ego and the American dream of fame and fortune. Yet there are hundreds of small bands who embark on this journey without a care for fame or success. What are they after? What are all of us searching for? What is driving this seemingly endless effort of shoving our hearts into the ether through craft and creativity?

Today I uploaded a 13 song album to get mastered. It’s the final step in the music production process. Polishing the sonic wave forms to be as balanced and tidy as possible. t’s kind of like the framing or varnishing of the painting. 

I started this project almost two years ago. I had gone through a breakup that led to a ton of change in my life and I had been writing a LOT of songs because that’s just what I do, especially in crisis. My last music releases were in 2019 and 2021 as Windoe (the moniker I used while I was married). I knew I wanted to start putting some of my new songs into recorded form and I knew I wanted to work with Max Harnishfeger (AKA Water Monster), my former bandmate in Super Sparkle and Cathedral Pearls. I love how Max thinks and feels about music. It resonates with me. We decided to just start working song by song because we were both really busy and tackling an album felt impossible. 

In 2023 we managed to release two of my new songs and started working on several more. Due to some unfortunate circumstances the songs still in progress were lost and last fall I was starting from scratch. It was a hard blow for both Max and I but I decided it was a good moment for me to take a little more initiative with the process. 20 years ago I was engineering and producing my own songs…looking back I now realize the level of audacity that required and how it was completely lost on me. I paid no mind to how things were “supposed” to be done. I just went ahead and did them. I took some inspiration from this younger self and invested in a couple pieces of gear I needed to be able to do most of the tracking on my own at home. It felt like time to get to work.

WHY THOUGH?

I asked myself that question just about every time I would putter up to the attic and sit down at my recording desk. Why am I doing this? On a good day I usually just would push the question aside, not really having an answer to quiet my anxious brain. But the question can become pervasive. Sometimes it can rend me completely paralyzed. Mostly because there is no answer that makes sense in these modern times. No one is paying me for this and there is not even any guarantee that anyone will listen to it. Historically, my music doesn’t reach a wide audience and I don’t see anything huge changing on that front. Sure, it is fun for me most of the time, but there are plenty of things I could be spending time on that would be easier, cheaper and maybe even more productive for my career. I will always write songs. It is like journaling or brushing my teeth. It’s just something I do. Making albums on the other hand is not a process for the weak willed or the insecure. Yet here I am. Often insecure and sometimes questioning the validity of this effort. Yet here I also am. Showing up to my desk. Adding a guitar here, a vocal there, finding my way through logic, having a friend over to add fiddle or harmony or guitar. 

Over the weeks those tiny efforts became a pile of songs and those songs were lifted by the help of a weekend at Johnny Long Station with Justin Landis and many many hours put in by my friends with Max at the top of the list. This week when I realized we were almost finished, I text a friend something like, “It’s crazy how when you put one foot in front of the other over and over again you end up getting to the finish line of something that initially felt impossible.” 

So, why do we do anything? Love, fear, hope, meaning, attention, validation, searching? 

Fear that if I don’t do it I will be living with regret. That is a big motivation for me with music. I’ve never regretted making an album. Not even a tiny bit.

Love of the process…the little moments of collaboration and connection, giggling when the cat comes upstairs jingling his bell right in the middle of a good take, the feeling when the drums come in on your favorite song for the very first time, the realization that you actually really do like how that one thing sounds. 

Hope that your music might mean a tiny fraction of something to someone the way your favorite music means something to you. 

Attention/validation - it’s impossible to talk about creative journeys without touching on ego. We all want to be seen, noticed, loved, adored. Some need it more than others and when balanced with other intentions and needs, I think attention seeking isn’t really all that bad. At it’s core I think it’s a desire to feel less alone. To pull the world close and see yourself and be told that you are good.

Meaning. You keep coming back to a thing over and over because of that something unexplainably special. Like praying but with sound and all you want is for that to flow over the hearts of the people you care about and maybe, just maybe it might make things in this world a tiny bit more tolerable. And in the process it makes things a tiny bit more tolerable for you.

Searching for some cosmic creative spark that will heal the wounds of divorce and loss and betrayal and climate change anxiety and terror and and and and and….maybe I’m crazy but I still believe songs hold this power.

Some days there’s really no reason I do anything creative. I just do it. I hope the work I’ve put in to get here was whole hearted enough that each move will be in the direction of something good. Even the moves without a conscious why and especially the moves where my shadows are telling me it’s not worth it and my why’s are all trash. The deepest part of the hope is that in a world of dwindling resources, pain, loneliness and suffering we have this beautiful infinitely regenerative resource of creativity. And the fire of that resource can only be stoked by our movement.

Stay tuned for more info on my new music entering the world.

Happy spring, I hope you see a flower today.

karli