the art of nothing
I moved to nyc…again.
The more you move to nyc the fewer times you can talk about it on social media haha.
But honestly, it is childish to think in absolutes. Anything worth doing is worth taking multiple attempts at.
I feel kind of listless. A word I only know in context of other words. I am living with someone now. That is a huge adjustment. I have a big boy apartment and a big boy lease and big boy bills.
But I’m handling things, it never feels like enough but I have plenty.
I’ve only heard of maslow’s hierarchy of needs in conversation, I don’t know shit about it. But from what podcast bro’s have told me it is a simple design. The bottom of the platform is about safety, food, shelter, things like that, then further up is things like meaningful work and pleasure.
I guess its not uncommon to move back down on the pyramid, depending on whats going on.
I think that’s how I feel. When you move to nyc to do some kind of artistic thing, everyone expects content. They expect product.
But the content is built on a platform of security (either from parents, a rich partner, good job, or from someone who has scaled their lifestyle to zero). If the security is challenged, its very hard to think about being creative.
Why do I feel the need to explain my experience?
Theres several ways to do that. Sometimes we explain out of discovery, but the lowest form is the explanation out of the need to be seen in a better light.
I wonder often why I can’t relax in times when I want to relax.
I think the answer is simple.
I haven’t done enough of the meaningful things.
Why haven’t I done so?
I went to a museum today. Museums have such strange atmosphere. They have that somber quality of a graveyard, but that aspirational quality of a church. In that quiet walking I remember that I love creating stuff. That I too want to stand in that stream and make my little waves.
But then I wake up, and people start messaging me. I watch my mandatory 19 hours of reels, I have old grudges to settle, I have people to please, I need to work out so. I won’t be fat, this friend needs something from me, I should meditate.
Its very hard to do anything.
A man needs a rule.
I think that’s why when I was younger I understood the call some people feel to join a monastery. The world is so confusing, human choice is infinite and confusing. Having an external rule is the most simple of wishes.
Its hard to return.
Its hard to circle back to the thing you were talking about within yourself.
But I have to believe that the space makes the next thing even more beautiful. Some times the prettiest songs are the ones with the most distance between the notes.
I was born to understand repetition. Repetition is power. Show me how to make one brick, and I will build a tower. But not everything good can be replicated. You can try, but some days the brick does not appear out of the mud.
That alone is why I don’t try. The fear that I will be alone with the labor and reward-less.
When I was a musician, I was so confident. I was so sure. I had spent so much time over a guitar, alone on a piano in a empty church. If you put me in a room with an instrument, either I was coming out with something, or I wasn’t coming out.
Nothing else works like that creatively for me. Everything else comes out accidentally.
But I guess, the accidents are attracted to the work.
I admire anyone that creates anything. Even people I don’t like. If I see a creation, I know you scaled a wall that lives in everyone and you brought something back. If I could hope for anything for myself for this new season its that. That I embrace the art of nothing, the willingness to work with the invisible even if it stays invisible.
The work is all you have, the results have their own volition.