passion: where did it come from? where did it go?

there is an arc that i notice reoccurs within a lot of musicians i work with, and that i myself have experienced some variation of a few times as well. it goes something like:

• the musician first discovers music
• the musician falls in love with music
• the musician feels pressure to succeed as a musician
• the musician pursues success for a long while
• the musician falls out of love with music
• the musician's output suffers as a result

it's not surprising, happens all the time. the passion that leads one into making music their whole identity - can it even be sustained through all the time and the tedium and the testing and the failing and the setbacks and habits and contradictions of reality? is it even possible?

familiarity breeds contempt

so the idea is that if you spend enough time with anyone or anything, you will inevitably reach a point where you are exhausted with that person or thing.

at the beginning? the passion is all consuming. you want to experience everything. you want to take in the very best art humankind has ever produced, all the way down to the very worst. you want to decipher every chord and understand every lyric. you want to know how each sound is made and which frequencies it is composed of and what gear was used to create it and what kind of batteries were in that gear and what the climate of the studio was at the time of recording. you want to master every lick and outplay any player. you want to know how to let loose and swing, and how to tighten up and play like a robot, you want to make your masterpiece, and you want to give the audience a performance they'll never forget.

and then you start the slog that is learning how to do all of that.

at first it's fun - you learn what a compressor is. you figure out what the drawbars on an organ do. you now know why the drums on that one record sound like that.

but then, it starts to become an obligation. you're working on a song and something doesn't sound right - what do you do? why isn't it coming together? what are you missing? you are trying every trick in your toolbox, but you just don't have it. are you not cut out for this?

and eventually you figure out something that sounds good enough and move on to the next thing, and when the next crisis arises the cycle repeats, and on and on until you have encountered and overcome every challenge under the sun. you have now become neo. you hear a song not as music but as its constituent parts: note. chord. instrument. vocal. reverb. chorus. bridge. solo. vamp. crescendo. loud-quiet-loud. distressor on the drums. new york compression. tape bias. delay feedback warp automation. flextime siren riser with default autofilter preset. serial chromaticism. hypnagogic hauntology. these terms and ideas fly around your consciousness at the ready and soon enough you have a little box with a label on it for everything. there's nothing you can't catalog and categorize and contextualize, and it all seems so...

is the passion gone? did i learn too much?

music doesn't sound like it used to. maybe you need a break.

so you turn the music off, take a vow of silence, read some books, take a hike and paddle a canoe. you flirt with the idea of giving it all up, giving up everything you were once so ferociously passionate about, and trying something a little more manageable and predictable. maybe an office job, you know, something comfortable.

an office? what? that's not who you are, is it?

let's back up a bit... what happened to that whole 'music' thing? did you really figure it all out like you described? oh yeah? if that's the case, why aren't you living off your royalties in a mansion in the hollywood hills, sipping ciroc like diddy? why hasn't anyone heard your music? why do you have only an unshared folder of mp3s with 46 total plays to show for this magnificent breadth of knowledge you've accumulated? huh? if you are the neo of music, why are you considering applying for a job at a company that sells dialysis equipment?

seamlessly switching the analogy from the matrix to something else

maybe on (what was once) your journey to the peak of music, there's somewhere further to climb. so you get back up, refocus your binoculars and see that, indeed, what you had thought was the open sky is in fact a huge and seemingly boundless mountain, towering in the far off distance, way out of your reach, extending up beyond where your eyes can even discern. and suddenly, it dawns on you.

'music isn't just a collection of terms and concepts and technicalities,' you realize, 'but rather a mission to affect and improve the lives of the people around me! and i've been over here climbing this tiny hill, thinking it would somehow lead me to the top of that huge mountain!'

once again, you are listening to music thinking 'how did they do that?' and just like that, there's passion again. there's a new goal. there's a whole world of things to learn, things you haven't mastered. you want to know how other people experience music. you want to make music that brings people together. you want to fill a need; to figure out what music people are sorely missing in their lives, and create it for them. you want people from all over the world to be healed and overjoyed by the fruits of your labor. all you have to do is make the right music and deliver it to them. you have the knowledge, the skills, the determination. only thing left to do is climb the mountain.

moving past both analogies entirely

it's good to be outside your comfort zone. that's where growth occurs.

that feeling of 'finally, i've figured it all out'? it's the enemy. there's always something else you haven't thought of, something more you can learn, another angle, a different strategy. once you stop looking for these things, it's vital to seek out something that will change your perspective.

there are only two hard cold truths you will run up against in life: 1) people are ultimately unknowable, and 2) everybody dies. art, like very few other things, can transcend both of these concepts: the best art lives forever, and makes us feel that even in our deepest, darkest selves we are not alone.

but to get to that level? it takes curiosity. it takes honesty. it takes always wanting more. it takes passion.

never let your passion leave you!

👻