These last few days, I have remembered how incredibly exciting and fun it is to make music.
There’s a lot of crap that comes with it. Right of the bat there’s the time and money spent on it. I’ve spent more money and more time on it than I’d like to admit.
And then there’s the almost complete lack of success, feedback or any noticeable progress in the context of getting new and/or active listeners. Sure, I’ve made progress in regards to skill, and maybe it’s shallow, but I want people to like, nay, to love it. And that’s not really happening too much. I feel somewhat ungrateful when I think about it, but it’s the truth.
I don’t always make music for fun. It’s somewhat like breathing, I guess. I do it because I have to, because it is what I know and it is all I know. And there are times when I just can’t do it, and that almost kills me. In that sense, it’s like breathing, but with asthma, which I have, so that makes sense to me.
But then, there are these few moments when I realize how fun it is to do it.
I have created a double-length album with 17 tracks, lasting 1 hour, 38 minutes and 57 seconds, in which only 3 tracks have been released in some form before (via Soundcloud and the advent calendar I had on Tumblr). That means there’s 14 completely new tracks, that nobody has actually heard before. And that’s very exciting to me. I have absolutely no idea how people will react to it, and I wish I could see people’s faces the first time they hear it. (Or, at least I hope I would wish to see their faces). I want to share the entire album, right now, with everybody. I am excited, and anxious and impatient about this. I want people to listen to it and like it and tell me, honestly of course, that they like it.
And I just love that feeling now. I love having made something, and wanting to share it with you. It is perhaps one of the greatest feelings I’ve experienced, at least these last years. I am truly, deeply and madly excited about this. And I really hope you all will like it. It isn’t why I make music, but it is the best part of it. By all likelihood, it will be released in a few weeks on Bandcamp, for free, as always.
I will be sad to let this intense joy go, for all moments pass. We can’t always fight nature, John.
