I should start by saying: I’m not overly comfortable with discussing my mental state on the internet. Feelings; yes - especially those connected to the experience of engaging with or creating art, but my MO is usually to keep things relatively light and let the work provide the emotional weight. Be-sleeved hearts and dark nights of the soul can feel a bit performative wedged into in an extravagantly hashtagged Instagram post; like pain and dysfunction make us, in Billy Connolly’s words, more ‘windswept and interesting’.
This place feels a bit more conducive to being open, and so - given that here is where I want to talk about process - I’ve pushed the emotional boat out. Not to hunt down any White Whales, you understand; and it might also be more of a Powerpuff Girls lilo than an actual boat.
As a teacher on a songwriting course, I worry that one of the things I communicate least effectively to students is resilience, perhaps because it can so easily come across as bitterness, or be misinterpreted some kind of lazy Boomer commentary on the perceived over-sensitivity or entitlement of a new generation. Who wants to be taught by a cynic ? For that matter, who wants to be in a room with a cynic ?
Entitlement is a strange noun though. The first few weeks on Mr Zuckerberg’s newly-minted Threads were so rife with inspirational quotes that - without some scepticism - we might actually believe there is some universal definition of success; another strange noun that remains functionally so subjective as to be meaningless - at best, nebulous and at worst, catastrophically misleading.
To a 20 year old, success can seem pretty clear-cut: work at your craft, write good songs; build a loyal fanbase through gigs and canny use of social media; enjoy some degree of fame, and hope that the money follows. But I wonder: is it fair to arm people with all the tools to create and disseminate their art without managing the expectations that accompany them ? Most importantly, how might you manage them without sounding like an asshole ?
I still haven’t figured out the answer to this.
At 50 years old, success is often just about managing expectations, and right now, after four years of nursing our sixth album, Somapolis, into the world, along with its dramatic reimagining - I feel a little self-conscious. Is there a quantitative line under which my regularly inspected and dutifully recalibrated expectations become excuses; or worse - just plain denial ?
I should explain. A year or so ago, I heard that a Sweet Billy Pilgrim song was probably going to be synced in a new Netflix show, if it ever got made. A few weeks back, I got an email saying that they wouldn’t be using the song on the now-in production show. The producers had decided to go with ‘something better known,’ and that was that.
Generally speaking, I never ever harbour any hopes of things like this happening until: A) they’ve happened; and B) I’m absolutely sure that I’m not dreaming, because: A) they never happen; and B) I have some pretty vivid dreams. This time around though, it felt different. The show was definitely being made ! The song lyric was woven - inextricably, I thought - into the source novel ! The author was excited about getting us involved !
Alas, I fell into the hope trap, and I found myself at the bottom of a hole, petulantly ignoring sturdy vines thrown down to me by friends and family, because I felt like an idiot. The author sent me a lovely, hugely apologetic email; friends in the film / TV industry were perhaps surprised at my surprise, but remained understanding and supportive, and I reassured everyone that I was OK, with the fervour of a man who has just very publicly fallen off a Penny-Farthing (ie. covered in blood and bits of tarmac, but too mortified to acknowledge any injuries because he was riding a fucking Penny-Farthing in front of people, and he just wants to limp away and chew his own stupid hipster fist off).
Returning awkwardly to my initial metaphor, it suddenly felt like I’d always been falling into that hole - in slow motion - clinging to the roots and dry grass at the top, and suddenly it had all torn away with dry crackle and I was at the bottom, on my ass, with the wind knocked out of me. And, as I intimated earlier: I felt like such a dick. What kind of an idiot calls clinging on by your fingernails a vocation ? Also, in my excitement, I’d actually mentioned that this was happening, to other people; worse - I’d planned the reimagined version of the song we were going to record. I was even thinking about a week’s holiday when the first royalties came through: Tallinn, maybe - or Prague ? Hunstanton ?
Eventually, I picked myself up, dusted myself off, took a deep breath and… sat back down in the mud, cursing the blue sky framed at the top of the hole, and the whimsically shaped clouds scudding across it. Fuck you, Mr-Crocodile-on-a-Scooter. Up yours, Disney-Castle-with-Thunderbird-Three-Crash-Landed-in-Your-Turret. Piss off, Robot Unicorn.
In my vengeful cloudbusting, I was suddenly the anti-Kate Bush:
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen (when, FFS ?)
I don't know when (of course you don’t - *rolls eyes*)
But just saying it could even make it ha… (*walks out*)
At the bottom of my hole, I reflected. After writing and recording six albums (as well as music for TV / radio / music libraries), earning a Mercury nomination and great reviews for all the records, driving to endless rehearsals, performing all those shows, creating stupidly time consuming additional content, laughing in the face of regularly contracted employment; pooh-poohing pension plans, rashly mooted mortgages and a holiday every ten years or so, my expectations dimmer switch had no more notches left. It was pretty much dark down here.
At which point, having dragged you down to the bottom of the hole with me, this paragraph is where I planned to turn the whole thing around, seamlessly cross-fading my preceding minor-key dirge into the heart-bursting euphoria of a chorus, complete with gospel choir, handclaps and maybe even a harmonica solo.
I wrote some words down. Words about house shows we’ve played where - band and audience alike - ended up in joyful tears; some other words about the generous people who have invested sums large and small in the band so that we could make Somapolis; still more words describing the laughs we’ve had making music together, both on tour and in the studio, and the joy that being in a band has brought me.
I tried to make those words - and the memories attached to them - enough to make it all better. I even made a list:
Success is creating something that connects you to other people.
Success is paying this month’s rent without having to go back to that office job.
Success is remembering that you’ve found what you love doing, and it’s not like you’ll ever just stop doing it anyway, right ?
Success is remembering to remember the joy.
Success is using dips and bumps as metaphors, instead of holes and mountains.
But the words didn’t really work. I don’t feel better yet. Today isn’t about answers, or about creating or defining anything, except how disappointment can feel. It certainly isn’t about heroically pushing through all of the negativity, or (ha !) inspiring you, patient reader.
Today is just about resilience. And that’s OK.
…especially if you happen to stumble on the perfect metaphor.
POSTSCRIPT: Completely independently of one another, myself and
have written about much the same thing. He’s done an amazing (and much more inspiring) job of it here.
Ah I read that script. I’m now off to shout at the director.
Honestly, I don't know how you creative types function. I manage praise as badly as I do rejection. I exist within an emotional cocoon from which I never emerge quite far enough to escape - unless I'm sure it's on my own terms. Not that I'm not creative. My mum reconciled herself early to spending school plays observing my feet beneath the scenery I had happily volunteered to hold up. I schlepped my mates round the pubs of north Kent. So I'm creative adjacent. Because I never had the guts. Or the Latin. (I could have learned the Latin. It was a handy excuse for tha lack of guts.)
You'll be expecting a point around now: I'm so so grateful for those of you who DO have the guts.
I also recognise the self-lacerating sense of foolishness that comes with getting your hopes up over something that doesn't ever happen. Of telling others in the hope of somehow willing it into being. Just not over anything personal and worthwhile. You absolutely deserve to feel proud of the work and hopeful of wider recognition.
Plane doors just closed xx