Tuesday 14th March, 2024
Lemmie hear you say it… we’re almost there!
With only a few weeks left in my degree… the clock is ticking down & the noose is tightening. Mid-May is my deadline, & I’ve got way too much work to get done. On top of this, I’m still trying to find time to write, produce, & plan my big ol’ return to the public side my career. Oh, & I’m trying to have a personal life too… no complaints here though.
The past few weeks of uni have been a bit of a blur, zipping by me like a racecar spelled backwards: an obscure demonstration of both the doppler effect & a palindrome. Lucky for me, I’m a clever boy who knows how to kiss two birds with one… lip? For my last few assessments I need an essay on law, the future, & me. Now, I’ve already got the work done on me, cause I’m completely self obsessed… & also old enough to have written many CVs & cover letters throughout the years. When it comes to the law, & the future of the music industry… I have less work already finished. In a stroke of inspired laziness I’m doing both essays on Spotify. I’ll look into the future potential of their ‘hyper-personalisation’ features for music discovery & curation… while also looking into the legal policies & implications of their data management practices. Who’s kissing two birds now, ey?
Me, that’s who!
The thesis project is kinda stalling. But I think I’ve accepted a limited collection of data with my surveys. (thanks to you all who completed them) So I’ve two points of action now:
Analyse the results of both surveys & collate the data to infer some preliminary conclusions.
Discover a body of ‘smarter people’s theories’ to both corroborate & challenge my arguments.
After these two steps there’s a fair few more to get done including: a secondary brainstorm session with ‘the artist’ (it’s me, I’m the artist), the recreation of an updated & ‘informed’ branding document, new or curated content with this branding document in mind, & a small A/B marketing campaign to see if there’s any difference at all. I don’t expect to prove anything beyond the viability of more study into this topic… & a personal process that I might be able to develop into a separate/adjacent career path as an artist/brand developer.
So what’s stopping me? Why aren’t I doing it all right now?
Good question, & I have no answer… why would you ask me? You know my mind, you knew my answer when you started writing this. While I don’t have a good answer, I figured we could drill into why I just can’t seem to get this kind of work done earlier. Is it procrastination? Yes. Is there a lot of information & studies on procrastination? Yes. Have I read any of the research? No. But I do know that I’ll be fine, if not completely stressed out in the last two weeks.
In a way, I am doing the work, just in my head. I’m not approaching the problem head on, I’m standing next to it, thinking about my favourite moments in Adventure Time.
(which I could do a whole other post about… but to give you the top one, it’s where Finn & Jake are in Marceline’s closet & she turns to grab a dustpan to clean up her lamp [that was broken by a spider who bit Jake], & F&J panic silently falling over each other looking for a place to hide.)
Okay, I’ve gone off track & forgot where I was going with this point. I’m learning a lot about myself, the older I get, & the more I choose to accept myself. Turns out that I’m a tad chaotic… & that’s essentially okay. For the most part. Let’s just roll with the punches, cause I’m sure you’re smart enough & patient enough to handle the chaos.
This is a good point to bring up about my return to socials, & live gigging. I think, before, I was trying to be a little bit more mysterious & cool. Yaknow, magic & mystery go hand in hand. I wanted to create an epic & profound feeling in people… but I think I’m just a little too ‘ferret-like’ to do this. I can have my ‘Deirdre’ & ‘Rewrite’ moments… but overall? I’m a chaotic little beastie. Nothin wrong with that… just means I’ll need to be a bit more of that when I chat to folk.
Recently I confessed something to someone for the first time. It’s not something I’ve ever said to anyone, & it’s weighed me down profoundly. It’s probably out of a fear of rejection & maybe it comes from a lack of representation of father figures in media… but there’s a great moment that, looking back, really makes sense.
When I watched the film ‘Michael Collins’, with Liam Neeson as MC & Alan Rickman as Eamonn DeValera (perfect casting choices…). A moment always stuck out to me. My boy Liam walks into his friends room. Both his friend & wife are there in bed, just chilling in the morning light. Liam is just talking about regular things, meetings, etc… then he starts joking around with his friend & begins to chase him & tickle him. Here I am, a little Irish teenager, looking at a depiction of his ‘great revolutionary’, tickling another dude in the nip. This playfulness. This silliness. This fun… all from a man of great dignity. I had never seen it. The stoic pictures in my history books had lied to me. He wasn’t a hero. He was me.
Throughout my teen years I never really accepted the stupidity & goofiness of my personality. To me, & to all of us, a ‘man’ is serious & effective. He’s efficient & measured. But I’m none of these things… & when I try to be, I feel like I’m hurting the people around me. That sounds like an exaggeration, & it is… but that’s also me. Since the age of about 7, when I learned what the cool hierarchy was, I’ve been tamping my personality… my bat-shit crazy. I’m 31… I’m too old to hold back.
The reason I bring this up here is that you can tell… everyone who listens to my music knows that I’m holding something back. You see me perform, & you can tell. I don’t want to hold back anymore… & as an artist, I’m socially allowed (& possibly expected) to be free & me. So, I’m considering this my new goal: to be fully me. That sounds trite… it is… but I’m a cheesy sentimental sentinel too don’t you know.
I’m gonna need some courage going forward, but I’ve got you reading this… & that’s not nothin. That’s support, that’s permission, that’s love.
Nathan
