Wednesday 5th July, 2023

Preparing to go dark…

Last night I filmed a weird & unexpected vlog… I won’t dive too much into the details of it here, but it’s generally about me going dark for a while, disappearing from social media & performances for a while. I’ll edit it & get it out asap to give you the full reason why, but today I wanna talk through the prep that’s gonna go into it. I don’t wanna just disappear…

While I’m gone, or inactive, I’d like for anyone new to what I’m doing to be welcomed with a general summary of what I’m about, what I’ve got out there… the album, film, my face, etc. This means a few pinned reels on instagram, & that’s kind of all it means. Instagram is the only real place I interact with the social media world. In a small way I have a few people on Youtube that will see the vlog explaining my step back, & TikTok forgets you exist every 10 minutes.

So, considering instagram’s ‘grid’, it’d serve me well to have three posts pinned across the top. One about the album, one about the film, & one about my disappearance I guess. If you could sum up what I’ve done, it’d be pretty much that.

I’ll get my editing hat on, film a lil talking head, & create these posts over the next few days. Hopefully by the end of this month I’ll be able to unplug completely, having set up my socials to sit idly & guide new people where I want them. It’s gonna be weird taking a step back, & I don’t know if it’s fully gonna work… but it feels right.

I know a lot of people are gonna disagree with what I’m about to do, the music industry folk have a very ‘copy & paste’ attitude to advice. I can hear a few people saying that I’m gonna lose followers, listeners, opportunities, etc. That what I’m doing should be documented online & they might be right on a few of those counts… but the metaphorical ‘gaze of the public’ makes a big difference, to me at least. The feeling of finding yourself in front of people feels too constrictive. Maybe I’ll document it, & keep it all for afterwards.

Now, what can I say to you to help you out this week?

If you’re an artist, go with your gut… & make sure you have strong opinions. If you’re not willing to fight for anything then you don’t have anything worth fighting for. Be careful of people trying to motivate you with fear. What you will lose is nothing compared to what you will gain.

For the non-artists out there what can you glean from this? I guess the above applies to you too. You all have your dreams, your gut feelings, the things you avoid out of fear. Trust yourself. (but be sure to talk to your friends & loved ones about your ideas too… sometimes your gut feeling is born in fear, or self doubt/hatred/etc)

That’s all for this week, I’ve a bunch of editing to do & some choreography to figure out too…

Next week!

Nathan