Today is Monday, May 15, 2023. I have been anticipating this day for several months. Yesterday I walked in the commencement at Western Connecticut State University earning a Bachelor of Music degree.
As expected I'm feeling a mixture of triumph and apprehension. Triumph comes from crossing the finish line. The apprehension comes from walking from the tangible, structured framework of academia to the arbitrary vagaries of the self-employed artist.
The absence of external deadlines creates an odd sort of self-tyranny. Without a timetable, an artist can take as long as s/he wants to complete a personal project. The Tyrant of the Open-Ended opposes the idea of finishing.
Trains Like Tracks. Me too. For five years I've been thriving in a system carefully constructed with direction, guidance, accountability, a schedule, and, happily, deadlines. Some people flourish when they have a track to run on. I'm one of them.
Stay the Course.
I love that a unit of teaching in schools is called a course. Merriam-Webster provides this definition: "an ordered process or succession: such as a number of lectures or other matter dealing with a subject." In addition to the academic definition, M-W points out that course means, "the act or action of moving in a path from point to point".
Don't we all want to progressively move in a path, from one point to the next? That is what school has been for me.
I've been doing this self-employed thing since 1987 so the challenge of finishing has been a nagging reality for a long time. The demands of school necessitated a dialing back of creating unassigned music. The writing didn't stop. It just took the back burner. "Real artists ship." Now I have this catalog of original music to produce and get "out there". And as Steve Jobs said, "Real artists ship." In my next blog post, I'll share some strategies for being a shipping artist. I'd love to hear from you though. How do you get to the finish line with an unassigned project with no deadline? Please share in the comments section.
I'm with you Angelo - I did my last release in 2016 and I have been working on the next round since. I'm hoping to have it ready by the fall.
The only way I get anything done is to be business like and go do it at a regular time each day. But it is so easy to put it off when other things come up.
There is something there in talking about courses. I have a wisp of an idea that I can somehow apply it to production. I'll have to cogitate on that for a while...
- Pat Calfee