I recently noticed that many of my songs end in a stroke of realization, a thunderbolt cast across the auditory sky signaling that the storm is over and the war is soon to be won. This realization tends to free me from the agonizing, earth-shattering troubles felt in the first two minutes and twelve seconds of the song (if I even make it that far).
I wonder why I feel the need to create this sort of resolution when my troubles are often still very much present; even more often, there is no resolution other than just letting it be and moving on with my life.
I suppose writing songs this way provides me a moment where my troubles do have a concrete resolution other than just chugging along, even though it sucks. I am terrible at that. Growing up as an iPad kid does not bode well for scenarios where instant gratification is unobtainable.
Making music and art, I would say, provides little instant gratification. In creative projects, there are few moments where you can just check a box off and call it a day(or at least I feel like there shouldn’t be). I am taking mostly art and music classes currently, and Introduction to Logic. My work for Intro to Logic is so much different than my other classes in that….it can be completed 100%. I sit down, I do problems in Chapter 5, E 25-34, H 122-132 and then I know, with 100% certainty, I am done. With artistic projects, it is so much more ambiguous. Its not that I think artistic projects cannot be completed, its that I think that it is hard to tell when to stop, when to stop tweaking and “perfecting”. While I know attention to detail is very important, it gets to a point where it is no longer about an artistic vision and more about the inability to say something is finished. Artistic decisions are everywhere; in some regards we are making them all the time. The biggest one though, in my opinion, is deciding to be done.
On that note I must say: I let this one sit in the drafts for approximately one (1) month because I felt like it wasn’t completed yet. But I am sending her off into the world just to make a point. To who? To me. I think.