In my previous post, I reflected on my “why” for playing music and how that “why” evolved over the past three decades. Five years ago when I was in my early forties, I decided that writing, recording, and performing music that I didn’t absolutely love would no longer work for me. I needed to make music for myself first, and not worry about what anyone else thought of it. The test for whether or not a song was finished would be whether or not I craved listening to it. I started a new project, originally called PM94, that evolved into my current primary music project, Here Inside.
It all sounded very romantic, like a self-help meme with an obviously simple solution to the big problem of my own lack of fulfillment. It seemed like something I should have already known. But the issue with this idea isn’t in the logic behind it, the issue is with the execution. In short, this idea is classic “easier said than done”. It turns out that making music that you yourself love as much as you love your favorite bands is really fucking hard. What becomes very obvious through the attempts is why most humans naturally err on the side of “figure out what other people are making that is popular and try to make something like that” rather than working and working and working until what you make is so good that you can’t stop listening to it yourself. It’s simple, the former seems so much easier when you try to do the latter.
Rehearsal 2015 (photo: Aaron Spangler) 
The Depot, York, PA 2015 (photo: Scott Bookman)
I’ve recognized a couple reasons for myself why this is so difficult. The first is the inner critic. That’s the little voice inside your head that value judges every single thing you do. For me, the inner critic becomes much louder and a lot meaner when I’m doing something that I truly love, like making music. If I’m doing something that isn’t as important to me, the critic is muted, and often much easier to dismiss. So in my pursuit to make music that I truly love, the critic is in heaven. It second-guesses every decision, criticizes each performance, and builds a very compelling case about why I shouldn’t be wasting my time with such things.
The variables and iterations of the creative process itself make up the second most difficult aspect of my pursuit of making music I truly love. We get to experience our favorite records over and over as they were originally intended. But for the artist, that’s impossible. David Gilmour once said that he wishes that he could hear the epic Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon for “the first time”. I’m paraphrasing here, but the point he was making is an important one. When you’re intimately involved in the creation of something, it’s impossible to experience the final output in the way that a consumer does. You can’t un-see or un-hear the imperfections. You can’t un-know the lesser quality drafts and iterations that were necessary to reach finality. You can’t un-experience the struggle and frustration of the creative process that you had to go through to reach the final goal. All of these things are part of making something, and they prevent you from experiencing that something in the same way that you experience the things that other people make. The creative process can be so intense that I often find myself worn out by the end of it; not always a great way to finally reap the benefits of all of the work.
Five years into my shift in thinking I have created what I sincerely believe to be my best work to date including music with Here Inside, and a few ambient projects released under J Mundok. I do sincerely enjoy listening to this music, and for the first time in my life, I have made music that has given me physical chills, as my lifelong favorite albums often do. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens. And that’s a really good thing.
But the quest continues. The work of an artist is never finished. And these roadblocks don’t go away, but they can be managed. My inner critic and the emotional baggage that accumulates through the struggles of these creative projects are on me. There are no outside forces at play sabotaging my work. If I’m to move the ball forward at all, I need to constantly figure out how to get the fuck out of my own way.