Moving Forward - An article of reflections
A long exhaustive read that outlays my motivations with music and how I'm moving forward. (Not edited by AI. lol)
I'm endeavoring to be public in a public way by taking things back to the streets. It's a form of public living that I enjoy that still allows anonymity - you can be seen for a moment and then be a regular person when the guitar goes back in the case.
I won't be posting regularly and have only maintained some posts because I felt it was my duty to offer some follow up to the many people that contributed to my crowd funding journey for my Crete trip last year - of which I received an abundance of support. I want you all to know that I'm so very grateful. The experience of being so public with the need has taught me resilience and better composure. However this has led me to realise this point again: I need to maintain music on my terms in order for it to be meaningful to me.
In my life, I'm working deeply on interpersonal relationships that move into the long-term. I want to establish my identity more firmly and become solid within a community before I pursue a public life - if of course, that is what I choose to do after establishing a clear foundation. I'm working on gaining a regular living like everyone else and enjoying being mindful in simple things. 20 years ago I was unable to maintain a steady job due to many factors which led me through a rollercoaster of over a decade of both living on the streets of Australia, then to street performance as a singer/songwriter all around the world. Through my ambition and dedication towards my craft I learned focus and this focus has assisted me in finding a way down from my tower within and working a job as a part of community. I'm still ambitious at heart but there are many ways to express this ambition that doesn't have to constantly draw attention.
I like the anarchist view of things - in the sense that authority or influence should never be wielded by any one person for very long and that people can and should be transient in these roles. However society has a habit of building towers and putting people on them - which in effect also sets people up to fall.
It is not the fear of falling that deters me from public life. It is the lack of authenticity I feel when integrating within a hierarchical system of creativity.
I agree with a premise set forth by Alfred Adler: my greatest reference point for my inferiority complex is my ideal self. I choose to follow that path and not one in which I am dependent on rewards or attention from others. It doesn't mean we discard the influence of others or live in a box away from people - it means we don't let it control our lives to the point where we lose agency. It means I do this music thing on my terms and if I feel crowded out by expectation, I step back and take a breather to decide what is me and what is not me - as, in the heat of the moment it can get confusing which is which and often I start to become something I never intended. Then the public sees me as that thing I never wanted to be and it becomes a spiraling feedback loop - and a grapple to maintain control of identity in conjunction with representing an archetype.
Too often in this crazy life I've thrown everything in and done the extreme thing - which yes, has been deemed courageous by some. I've jumped right in and had a good go - of religion, cults, politics, lifestyle, you name it. When I was 20 I once said to a partner studying a belief system and providing observational points that there's no better way to understand it, than to get into it and experience it and believe it yourself. And that's exactly what I've done. That kind of living was important to me, however this also became a pattern. I see now that in a large part this extreme it was me claiming ownership and control of my life - in a society where I was conditioned to believe in a high level of individuality and entitlement. I felt I didn't have that control that I was promised by society - so I claimed it! I breached many boundaries of social conventions and I learned so many things first hand that people only study and never realise. I also made so many stupid blunders and went through an immense amount of suffering as a result of my way of thinking and decisions. In retrospect, this experience, coupled with my ability to reflect now becomes living knowledge I take with me for the rest of my life. One take home from all of this is this - it's ok to be ordinary. Infact, it's the end goal. To be happy and in a community as part of a community, serving a community and having that service recognized as useful for the functioning of that community.
You don't need to go on my rollercoaster to get that - you can just live it now.
That would be a good closer. But I've got more to say!
Regarding fame, In my brushings with some famous people in my life/travels I've also discovered how this need to control reality by having influence inverts your intended control into powerlessness - as the public takes ownership of your image of which you are the only living representative. Public life can be a bi-product of good living and certainly good things can develop as a result of this influence. But add this to the fact we now live in a world where every second dreamer believes they're owed a global theatre, presenting undeveloped ideas and demanding massive returns of attention. It's the dilemma of authenticity. Before, it was only those with the courage, the skills or with a manipulative edge getting attention and developing fame - it was much more honest - and the archetypes that emerged were fantastic. Now every one is on the treadmill of attention insanity made to feel any fart of life could go viral at any moment if only we capture it and put it on Tiktok. This in turn can then be used as social capital as we endeavor to make more and more addictive or popular material for greater and greater amounts of attention.
I reject the classic model of a person with influence and nor was I very famous - I have maybe only developed the seed of the capacity for this influence. I'm so glad the classic 'famous person' model is collapsing in on itself - as it, yes created expertise and high standards of things to work towards but it also allowed for abuse through monopolization and the resulting music industry of today is a microcosm of all the various industries existing today that have fostered hierarchical relationships. For these systems to flourish the hierarchy needs to be abolished regularly and new gate keepers let in - then this in turn also needs to be wiped. Society needs to remove itself from the idea of eternal progress through established history as this leads to stagnation. I believe in decentralization.
Cue - Enter AI.
On top of this, AI, is making creativity more streamline. It's making creativity more accessible. In my perspective, being raised in the home of a computer programmer/electronics engineer - I've always had a sense this kind of development is inevitable. It's the static dinosaur structures of ownership that sit in the way of allowing a fluid approach. It does mean that many who had ego-centric incentives in order to be inspired or make great things are fighting tooth and nail against AI. Can our motives be aimed towards community instead of the self and can we achieve more by doing so? Will it just let different players take hold that are dominant in a decentralized approach?
It's straight forward to me how machine learning operates and functions and I see little difference between it and the way the subconscious works in its passive accumulation of information which organises itself in the background and then presents possible solutions on meditative request. I feel we live in a world where AI can be what we want it to be. We can use it as a tool, a mirror, a teacher - a pattern repeater and recognition system - yes, much like our own cognition patterns and awareness. We can also use it to be the harbinger of the darkest doom if that's where we want to take it. Time and existence is our oyster.
The crux of the matter remains the same. Self-responsibility - living responsibly does not occlude the use of AI. I've learned it's a valuable tool for developing ideas and organising thoughts - though not for writing things directly. To behave as an assistant that runs around doing all the organisational and admin tasks and also can then suddenly be used as the most scathing critic to look at biases more directly and in turn help me become a much better thinker. In my perspective, it is inevitable that the conglomeration of collective information up to this point become a single entity capable of being all of this for us and it makes sense intelligence in some form has done this before in another aeon.
Using AI to take our responsibility away from us thus limiting our capacity is also one road we can take with this. Exactly how much responsibility we let it have is how much agency we demand and reserve as a right.
It's all gone very deep... so I'm going to bring it back. Thanks for coming with me on this read!
To wrap it all up - I'm still going to be involved in projects and various endeavors but need to take care of myself first. An important declaration within this is if community is to be engaged at all it can't be through social media primarily even if at all.
[Side note: I reject its invasion in places it has no right to be in. eg. Friend requests come up on FB for phone numbers on my phone because I agreed for access to contacts on Whatsapp (I mean, really? We've got to the point where we just let these things slide?) . I reject its monopoly on community. I recognize it is a tool but also feel alternatives need to be fostered outside of legacy media eg. Mastodon/Hive blockchain.]
My journey up to this point has taught me I simply need to establish myself and my ideas much more firmly as a grounding before I'd even consider pursuing a public life or calling myself a mentor or life coach. I tried a hand at it with my self-employment support program starting mid 2023, I had a really good go, thinking if this me and this is the way it is done, then so be it - I'll jump in! And I've seen enough to say, yeah, no - this is really not what I want - at least not now and at that I'm vastly unprepared emotionally, mentally and physically. For me personally, pursuing any angle in the attention economy distorts my very purpose to be creative. It can only be participated as a by-product of good living and I'm not there yet. As a strict requirement for the way I do things - I can't engage in creativity based on vertical relationships implicit or implied. It's something I've learned through the pain of experience after coming up to this point and hitting my head against it constantly - losing all motivation and inspiration in my creativity then slowly crawling back and starting again. I've enjoyed using creativity to develop my mind and harness focus and develop discipline. These things are far more important to me than working toward the reward of attention. I've used my craft to build my identity and self-esteem from nothing, proving to myself I can work hard, focus and discipline - working through the barriers of a mind that said I could not do it. I still have a mind that says I cannot do it - yet I do it anyway. When attention as a motivator gets involved it messes with the beautiful thing I have used music to be for me - which directly affects my self-esteem because that's what I have used my music to develop. It's pretty plain to see why would you give the keys to your self-esteem away to this? In exploring the ideas of attention and its use in order to be available - I deliberately choose to walk away on the present terms. I never agreed to give up my foundation to a battle. I set the rules for my foundation and I make it a zero-sum game - in which I can only persist and get stronger in persistence according to comparison to an ideal which I alone foster - to allow myself to remove the pressure as needed and take breaks and enjoy ordinary life.
I enjoy running events and putting on a show - organising things down to a tee and being really meticulous about the way things play out to provide an experience for people - the story concerts in collaboration with beautiful artists/dreamers and philosophers - that to me is a passion which should be developed and so, of course, I'll make an event and a poster and talking about it. But like on the street, enjoying a moment of fame is good for that moment, then we put that part of ourselves away and go back and live with everyone else integrating our experiences with community - allowing someone else to take the stage as they feel it. In this way, community breathes - like a big body - and no one person stays at the head. It takes a level of developed experience, intuition, a structured approach to community and a high level of emotional intelligence to create long-term institutions that understand exactly how to decentralize this energy and distribute power in this way.
So having said all this - In one sense this is goodbye, but it is also a big hello - in a deep and meaningful way. If I see you in the real world, hit me up for a chat, let's sit and talk about life. What an interesting thing it is!
Monty