My Mind is a Cult.

an artists conviction to end the struggle

I had a breakdown over the weekend. It was about something that seems so silly and pretty embarrassing to admit but- I’m going to talk about it because I’ve experienced it for as long as I’ve been doing my music- over 30 years. Here’s the trauma: I have never been able to decide how or how much I should share about my music with the public. And in the last 18 years or so, because of social media, this reality of “sharing” got so overwhelmingly difficult for me that for periods of years I stopped presenting as a singer-songwriter. I didn’t only stop, I put my guitar under the bed and tried to scrub myself clean of what felt like a dirty image.

I don’t know if it’s because my music is so integral to me and close to my heart but the assumed risk of sharing it of it has always been excruciating for me- even though I’ve done it for the better part of my life.

I was just 18 when I released my first album. Santa Barbara at that time was an insane hot spot for the music industry and I quickly got snapped up in a whirlwind of “next big thing.” At a young age I had a publishing deal with a prominent company, and eventually a record deal. There was a lot of pressure on me to get the right producer and right sound to compete with the female artists that were popular at the time. We didn’t have a strong leading force on my team. It was kind of a circus actually, and I certainly didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Ultimately the record company folded halfway through my album being recorded, and the publishing company dropped me the next day. I was in shock. I decided to put out another album back home with my old gang. That album, “Orbiter,” got critical acclaim… but I was definitely still an itty bitty indie artist.

Overall, I ended up doing ok in the business, I mean, I had successes which were bigger comparative to most singer-songwriters. But somehow it was never enough and the feeling of struggle and failure never shook out of me. In fact, I allowed these feelings to fully identify me when really all it had been was some temporary bad luck and timing. Happens much more often than not in the music industry and makes perfect logical sense, but I couldn’t process it in a logical way. I took it personally and that feeling and experience of not being good enough formed the roots of the sharing of my music. Not the creation of my music, thank goodness, but the sharing.

The voice of hesitancy in my head when I go to share my songs, it deserves a name. It reminds me of the“Debbie Downer” character from Saturday Night Live. It’s like no matter what I do in those moments of deciding what to share musically, it’s never going to be right: too short of a clip, too long of a clip, not the right song to present at that time, not the right way to describe what I’m sharing, the fear that the song will be misunderstood. A common thought is: In my heart, I know the songs are good…but what will the world think? That little thought right there is all I need to stop me in my tracks. If for a moment I start to question a thought like this, the voice of the thought gets loud and deems itself imperative for guiding me and reminds me that free thinking will only result in failure. Holy Crap! That sounds like a cult! (Or maybe more like the Wizard of Oz.)

Yesterday, while uploading a snippet of a new song to Instagram and in my usual mental war of indecisiveness, the thought passed by that it would be really nice if I could get to a place where I could simply share as much or as little as I want without “the voice” haunting me. The freedom to just share whatever I wanted, when I wanted…with no critical voice screaming. It was a delicious thought that passed through my mind. It had the scent of freedom. It felt like air. And in that moment I could feel a separation. Kind of like a fish popping its head out of the ocean for the first time.

A little later in the day as I was scrolling Instagram, a spiritual guy came into my feed and he said: All you have is your mind, it’s all you’ve ever had. He said it with such a beautiful calm voice, it absolutely broke me. Something clicked in my brain again. He went on to talk about how when we spend our lives second-guessing ourselves we miss out on the present moment. This wasn’t news to me, but by the same token, it was not realized.

So here we are. Me, with the realization of: I can’t live like this anymore. The striving. The boxing up. The impossible rules and regulations. The needs and the desperation. It’s so fucking painful and I’m so so so tired of it. It’s only in this one aspect of my life- the music. But it may well be the aspect of myself that is most dear to me. It’s like how a drunk abuses the person they love most. I want to be free of my abuser. I want out of the cult. And, by the way, it is not lost on me that my songs (always, but especially on this upcoming album) are about having the courage to do exactly what I’m talking about. In fact, It’s all I’ve ever written about.

I’m asking something very big of myself…I know, because the world ultimately does not operate in this way. On the outside the world operates and controls through fear. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

So, what happens when I disinvite the excruciating voices of striving and expectation? Even the super sneaky ones? What happens when I’m diligent? What’s on the other side and what will I be left with? All I know is this, I’m going to find out.

xoxo