I’ve now been working on this music project for over 2 years.
Writing songs. Arranging, recording and releasing them. Trying on stage outfits. Performing on stage. Taking photos. Making music videos. Posting on socials several times a day.
That’s a lot of different attempts at trying to find my artist voice.
Surprise #1: i feel like i’m not changing so much as revealing myself.
I really thought it would feel incredibly inauthentic to be building an artist persona.
This process of finding my artist persona or my artist voice is a very active and a very conscious one. I’m trying things out, evaluating them, adjusting, and trying again. What an out-of-body, surreal thing to do, when you think about it. I feared it would feel fake, like trying to become someone i’m not.
But in fact, it feels remarkably natural.
It just feels like i’m becoming myself for the first time.
I’m not really making anything up. I’m just curating my personality, taking a couple facets of it that are ‘the right kind of weird’ and turning the volume up on them.
If you think about it, it’s what we all do every day, really. When you go into work, you don’t necessarily bring up the goth sex fan fiction you like to write on the weekends and when you’re on a first date, you don’t mention the big pimple you have on the back of your thigh.
That doesn’t mean you’re pretending to be someone you’re not, you’re just curating what you show of yourself for the occasion.
From the outside, it might look like i’ve changed quite a lot over these last two years, both physically and mentally.
But inside, i actually feel like i’m not changing so much as revealing myself.
It’s almost as if for years, i’d kept the volume on my personality at a 2, and this music project is giving me the possibility to see what happens at a 10.
Like me walking in a crowded city with raccoon makeup and pink and orange hair, for example. Never in a million years would i have thought myself capable of doing this, but i felt not only totally fine with it but incredibly badass and confident.
Surprise #2: i don’t feel the need to be smiling for people to pay attention to me.
Which is weird because in real life, i tend to smile an awful lot. I’ve always been shy around strangers: a little distant, a little socially awkward, but in nice, non-threatening way. Almost apologetic, some would say. Like ‘i’m really sorry that i have to take up a little bit of your time and a little space in your visual field but here’s a friendly smile to make up for it’.
But i notice that the only videos that feel right are the ones where i’m not smiling.
Maybe it’s because it fits the music better, since my songs are mostly sad or angry. Or maybe it’s because i now deeply feel like i don’t have to perform niceness to be valid. (Probably both.)
I can just be and that is enough.
I can see this ‘unapologetic-ness’ slowly spilling into the rest of my life and i fucking love it. If i had to choose one, i’d say this ‘take me as i am’ attitude is probably the best thing that’s come out of this music project.
Surprise #3: i really don’t care what random people think of me anymore.
Getting mean comments online was something i was terrified of. It almost stopped me from starting this project altogether.
But posting relentlessly on social media has totally overhauled my deep-seated, almost archaic fear of rejection.
Not only did it gift me the heartening validation of the many very lovely people who leave me sweet comments on my music, but i also got to physically experience the new and amazing feeling of ‘oh. You know what? I actually don’t care what you think’ that surfaces when someone leaves a nasty comment.
Those comments even make me roll my eyes and laugh now. ‘Ok, sir, you don’t like me, but what a sad life you must have that you took time out of your day to tell me.’ I almost feel sorry for them. Who has time to give unsolicited feedback to strangers on the internet?
I do not give a shit what @random1234 thinks of me and i feel it in my bones. After years of endless people-pleasing, what a wonder!
Surprise #4: it’s crazy how comfortable i feel building in public.
(And by building in public, i mean failing in public.)
I’ve shared my vulnerabilities and struggles online most of my adult life, so that’s not new. I was oversharing on blogs back when blogs were a thing, then on social media back when facebook still had ‘status updates’.
But i never shared about any of my struggles until they were 100% resolved. I needed to feel secure in the fact that i wasn’t vulnerable anymore before i could tell people ‘look at how stupid / bad / inexperienced i used to be’. (The subtext being, of course: look at how smart / great / unshakeable i am now.)
This has changed.
All of this is in the present tense:
I am trying. I am cringe. I am learning.
I might never be anything else. And that’s ok.