Creativity

I’ve thought a lot about this question.

Why do we do it?

Is it prestige? Recognition? A need to look like a champion? To leave some sort of stamp on your world?

I’m not sure. I think I was just born to play drums. Nothing more. In fact, I know I was. It’s all I know how to do. Write, play and record music. The best music I can at the time. Nothing else makes me happy.

That is the big lesson I’ve learned releasing EASTERN CHRONICLE. That I’ve put forth my best effort at this point in my life. The very best I’m capable of. It was two years of just being completely happy creatively.

And that’s an interesting thought. Much to the chagrin of my previous employers, I will not say that’s always been the case. And before anyone vows to never hire me again… Let me explain that.

It’s a flawed premise. You get hired as a film composer to write a score under duress. Always. There is always a problem. Not enough money, time, resources, or creative license. So as such, there are built-in limitations and barriers to the best job possible. Now, you may do your best job under those restraints, but restraints they are, nonetheless. And that’s a bitch because it’s the fault of those things that you may never be able to produce in the way the story or the sound is calling you to unless one or all of those limiters where loosened a bit.

Composing music for any visual media is always service job. Everyone knows that, especially the employers. You are working for them. There is little to no creative leadership in it for a composer. Oh, we try to say that there is, but we are just self-talking ourselves off the proverbial ledge of creative and artistic suicide. It’s about the story. We serve it. The story. It has always been about the director’s vision and it always will be. The score is only as good as the film, I don’t care what you want to say to make it mean more than that. If the film sucks, the score is forgotten, unless you are talking to another composer which is a very small cross-section of society. And frankly, an insignificant one in most circles. (Travel outside the self-proclaimed “center of everything” — Los Angeles — and start talking about film scores and you’ll see their eyes glaze over. I’m not wrong on this one.)

So, can you say that you really did give your balls out best on something that is set up with so many creative limitations? Hmmm. I’m not sure you can. Because you know that given more time, more money, and more license you could do better. It’s said every day on Facebook by dozens in the industry. “If they would have given me _______, I could have done more.”

Why do we do it?

What’s in it for us as Creatives? Well, creating that end product is fulfilling on a lot of levels. Let’s see anyone else write, produce and record 70 minutes of music in three weeks or less. I dare them. I just saw Sound City again where Grohl says they did Nevermind in three weeks. Forget that Kurt took years to write those tunes. Forget that they had Butch Vig behind the Neve.

So we are special in that regard. It’s a tough gig. And it’s tough to make that many people happy in the process. Tough but necessary, and there is art in that, too. Come to think of it, that actually might be the job right there: We are shrinks, not composers.

Why do we do it?

Well, I’m learning that much like where I live geographically in the world, different moods require different satisfactions. If I feel like chilling out after a long push of work, I’m trying to convince my wife to go to Bali or Phuket. I wanna be on a beach with a Corona in one hand and a plate of BBQ’d mango coconut chicken in the other. I want UV rays. I want bikinis and sand. I want to live for a while where I don’t have to think about the teeming bustling world across that ocean water. Screw that. It’s not appealing. I’m in a hammock with my iPhone and my island WiFi and not a care in the world.

If I’m needing the engines refueled, if I’m needing to get inspired, a beach won’t cut it. I’m not thinking or planning to being inspired on the beach. I’m just veggin’ out. To get that sort of fulfillment I’m in Ireland or northern Japan or Switzerland — somewhere beautiful and awe-inspiring. Somewhere breathtaking. Somewhere Arcadian. Somewhere that has a rich history with a cadre of pals who know where the good places are to dine and recline. And it has to be somewhere slow. Where you have to wait for the friggin’ cows to cross the road. That’s a recharge place for me. Somewhere people aren’t honking at me on the red. Everyone’s patient. No drama. I get that in my home state of Oregon. That’s probably the most relaxing place on earth for me right now. My mother’s little mountain house in the Oregon wilderness. Only a few miles away is that small group of weekend friends. Chama, Jenn, Angelina and Jeremy.

But once I’m recharged, man… The last place I wanna be is Oregon. I want to get into the mix. I want to be in the thick with the people. Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam. Get me to the crowds. I want street food, live music and energy. Bright lights, big cities. Weird looking money and even weirder experiences.

And then once I’m full of that… I’m ready to write again. And with my mobile rig I can do that anywhere. I prefer Japan or West Coast, USA, but honestly I can do it anywhere. All I need is a WiFi connection and an electrical outlet and I’ll never come outside except to eat and pee.

And creativity is the same. We have different outlets for different moods. Some cats want to do film and that’s it. But then maybe they get a little older and realize that unless they are part of the top 12%, chasing the film biz is a relatively shitty way to live the Creative Life.

Or TV. It’s a demanding schedule and a damn lot of fun. But it’s turning into “Game of Libraries” — at least two out of the four majors now have blueprint plans to be at least 80% library-driven by 2015. That means that even scripted television scoring will be drying up soon for composers unless your clients are premium or upper-cable entities, or you are churning and burning libraries.

Video games? The tide is turning toward established recording acts. Although there is still ample opportunity for composers in the mobile arena, even that is changing too. The big corporations are taking over the mobile space. It started with telecom companies renaming and rebranding things to their liking and it will end with even bigger companies throwing out what those people have done and rebranding again. It’s a sick-cycle carousel and composers are the dogs under the table waiting for something to fall on the floor. And a couple thousand pooches are all licking their chops.

So… Again…

Why do we do it?

Because we have to, that’s why. Because it’s in us to do. What else would we be if we weren’t doing what we loved? TV repairmen? Expert plumbers? Do you know how to fix bikes? Are you in the top two percentile of accountancy wunderkind? Yeah, me neither. That’s because I locked myself in the garage like a fuckin’ Frankenstein from age five to age eighteen and played drums and wrote music like a weirdo when all my pals were outside running their Tonka trucks up and down the dirt pile at the end of the street. And you probably did that to. Music was our solace. It was the refuge. In most ways, it still is today.

So, you want to do this for life? Start figuring out which projects make you calm. Which projects make you energized. Which projects make you inspired to do more. Which projects feed you and which projects don’t.

See, the true gift of the Creative Life is in its abundance. It never runs out. You don’t have to be pigeonholed into one thing or another. That’s a Hollywood mindtrip, but it’s not life. They’ll try to do that to you, but that’s just the Matrix having you, Neo. It means nothing unless you let it. A friend of mine said of this town once, “If you let them, they will bum.”

I had to let a few things fall by the wayside to get EASTERN CHRONICLE finished and out the door this year. It was an important project for the sake of my own creative growth, maybe the most important project of my Creative Life thus far. Time will tell. But the point is that it is the best I can do at this point in my life. It really is. The very best. I had zero limitations, zero people to please and zero expectations placed on me. None of the things I’ve had as a film composer… On every gig.

And you should try that every once in a while. Try and build a life by which you do not have to do anything out of demand. One that allows you to go to the drawing board every now and again and work on something just for YOU. You shouldn’t have to depend on chasing and hunting down the next profitable thing. What kind of life is that? Sure, we can justify it by saying we don’t mind, but you know you do. With SCOREcast in my life, I’ve had the occasion to talk to many a composer about their business. The #1 recurring theme is that they hate chasing money. #2 is that they hate not knowing where the next gig is coming from. Solution? Create the gigs. BE THE GIG. I’ve said it before: The gigs don’t exist.

Get out there and change it up. Map out a plan of action on something you’ve never done before. Dig trailer music? Why not do a trailer album and market it like you would a stand alone release? Hell, release a trailer cue a week for 12 weeks straight. Do something fun and crazy. Make a campaign out of it. Be different.

Want to be “epic”? Buck a trend and stop doing what everyone else does.

Bottomline: Don’t let people/industry/society/economy/trends dictate what you are going to do. YOU decide how it will be. YOU are the artist. YOU are the boss.

Everyone else can pucker up.