How do I get your attention? The question feels gross and artificial and I don’t want to follow the train of thought. We live in an economy of attention, where technology is being built to track your line of sight to optimize the advertisements you see to subliminally convince you to want more, to buy more and to believe you need more. As artists, now rebranded as Content Creators, the job has shifted. It’s not about creating art that resonates, building a world or experiencing the meaningful connections that differentiate us from animals. The goal is for you to look at me. How long can I have your eyes on this screen? The job is now manufacturing a false sense of intimacy and connection in bite sized, easily digestible moments to captivate enough attention, enough views, likes and comments to satisfy the machine to even have the chance to open a door to a deeper and more meaningful interaction.
Five days to release of my third record, Love You Forever, there’s this building, uneasy feeling that I’ve been trying to understand and articulate that’s slowly overshadowing my excitement and anticipation in sharing a new body of work that I’ve made for you.
It’s embarrassment.
I feel embarrassed for my ambition, for my desire to share myself with the world and for wanting your attention. I’m embarrassed by my vulnerability. I feel exhausted, reaching my hand out with fear and anticipation that my grasp won’t be met. I’m embarrassed that in order to grow I feel this pressure to dumb myself down to the lowest common denominator so that I’m more palatable to the masses. Not for you. You are brilliant and complex and capable of experiencing beauty and nuance and mess. But for the machine, the algorithm and the platforms that once democratized community and the distribution of information who have become the gatekeepers they sought to disrupt, creating the new, ever changing parameters for what content is deemed acceptable (and most profitable) to share to a wider audience.
The truth is, the decision to be an independent artist is a choice to exist outside the system. A choice that has been both exhilarating and isolating. A choice I made before the systems and supports that currently exist were fully realized. A choice that has granted me immense freedom and crippling anxiety. A choice that has given me ownership of my work, autonomy over what I create and the freedom to share my work when and how I want to. I have been creating art for a living for the last seven years of my life and will be able to continue on this path for the foreseeable future. Though I sometimes can’t see it clearly, I am an extremely successful independent artist.
We sometimes say the grass is always greener on the other side, but the truth is, when grass grows naturally, it’s patchy and imperfect. Some lawns with wealthy owners will grow pristine and green and those without automated sprinkler systems, those who aren’t plugged into the source will look at their well manicured neighbors and wonder what they’re doing wrong. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years wondering what I’m doing wrong, wondering why I’m unable to play the game like everyone else, wondering why I can’t seem to break this ceiling above my head that seems to be blocking me.
I’m not lacking in pragmatism or grit. For me, sustainable independent artistry lives at the center of a venn diagram that seamlessly blends the creation of impactful, timeless art with the building of a sustainable and profitable business and living a full and meaningful existence. It’s a balance I’ve been striking for many years, though the cracks are starting to show. I know how to create art, I find the strategy and business aspects of building a business around my art both challenging and exciting. I attempt to find meaning in my existence through sharing myself and my world, but recently, my existence seems like it’s not valid unless its performative to a degree that’s so false and contrived and distorted to satisfy what feels like increasingly arbitrary parameters which feel like they’re forcing quantity over quality all in the name of virality.
As I sit about 5 days before the release of my third album, Love You Forever — an album about killing off the parts of yourself that refuse to let you grow, an album about cutting off the limbs that are holding you back, a body of work made to reclaim my own creative process, seven years into an independent career that has allowed me the gift of continued creation and forward momentum — I’m feeling my knives beginning to sharpen once again, preparing to cut myself free from myself. And as I sit, feeling like there is a constant resistance pushing up against me and all my forward momentum, the same resistance I imagine you feel pushing against you, I have an eerily positive feeling. I think that feeling comes with the recognition that I would rather die playing my own game than succeed in playing someone else’s unwinnable game. That I refuse to contort myself into the perfect position to fit into this mold that has been presented to me. I have spent all of this time and energy to maintain my autonomy both as an artist and a human to not have to compromise the core of myself to fake a smile and pretend to be peppy as I ask for your attention, as I ask for you to lend me your eyes and ears to experience this world I’ve built for you or maybe even ask for a night of your time to come experience it live, in real life, on tour.
I’m not writing this to ask you for anything. I have desires, ambitions and hopes for myself, for this record and for my future and I believe that if I continue to grind and push forward, step by step, the unexpected will materialize. I mean, yes… please listen to Love You Forever, it’s a fucking brilliant record, but that’s besides the point. I guess I’m just writing this to express this growing anxiety inside my brain and to challenge myself and you to take a step outside the invisible bubble that has been carefully crafted to steal your attention and optimize your consumption with zero care for us, our wellbeing, our creativity or our curiosity.
Defy the algorithm. It’s art.
Love you forever, VÉRITÉ.