Landslide

"I took my love and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
'Til the landslide brought me down..."

Fleetwood Mac, "Landslide," a b-side recorded during the sessions for "Rumours."

Back in November of 2009, I launched this blog to document my experience completing an album of original music that I've been working on since 1989. In a bold statement of purpose, I gave myself a deadline: if the album wasn't finished as of March 15, 2011, then the project was over. On March 16, the point of no return would be breached and, if uncompleted, I would abandon the album forever.

I felt that I needed to take such a bold move in order to motivate myself to work harder and more consistently. I felt then, and still believe, that it was the right thing for me to do. And in a perfect world, such motivations would be effective.

But this world is far from perfect. In fact, it strains credulity to call this world even remotely cooperative.

Put simply, it isn't very easy to place a creative project in such a high position of priority that everything else automatically becomes relegated to secondary status. It can be done, certainly, but at a cost. And if the needs and concerns of people that you care about comprise any part of the reality of your life, then it becomes hard to see the de-prioritizing of those needs as anything but extremely selfish.

At the same time, it is far too easy for the ever-changing needs of others, as well as one's own evolving needs, to keep pushing a goal on the back-burner until its completion becomes not merely difficult, but potentially impossible.

Where does one draw the line without either guaranteeing the failure of the project or compromising the humanity of the artist? Does having such a creative goal demand that an individual serve but one of two mutually exclusive masters?

My experience directing the feature film "The Revenant" pushed me somewhat over the edge. I'm ashamed to admit it, but there were moments when I succumbed to the pressure of making the film and behaved in unpleasant (if not tyrannical) ways. Reflecting upon that experience, and the person which I devolved into during production, has made it difficult for me to approach making a film ever since. Especially a film that might involve other people. The few post-"Revenant" projects that I have worked on have been documentaries that I made by myself. I was neglecting everything for the sake of the film, including my own health, and the lack of regard that I offered everything except that creative project contributed to a nearly-fatal bout with septic shock that required a week in the hospital in order to recover. So, I've been there, and I can state unequivocally that relegating everything else in your life to second-class status in order to focus on a singularly desirable goal isn't really the best way to go about things.

But those goals can't remain on the back-burner forever, either. Before you know it, every friggin' thing that ever comes up, every whim and distraction encountered by yourself and those around you ends up taking precedence over your intangible, unintelligible hopes and goals. And days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months and months turn into years and the next thing you know people are standing over your grave lamenting you and your stupid unachieved goal, failing to grasp the fact that you were pretty much required to neglect your goal every time that the pet dog needed to (bleep).

I'll ask again: where do you draw the line? Life is short, and our days are numbered and each of us will be dead long before we'd like to be, and all of our hopes and dreams will be buried with us. So every irreplaceable moment that we waste on the menial, insignificant, unsatisfying tasks that comprise the majority of lives and prevent us from accomplishing our goals becomes harder and harder for us to ignore.

I feel the approach of March 15, and I'm not sure that I'm going to make it.

One thing that I failed to mention in my previous posts is that the completion of this album, as important to me as it is, is not the only goal that I am currently working towards. A while back I made the decision to return to college and pursue a degree in psychology. I have withheld this information from just about anybody and everybody that I possibly could, because part of me is ashamed to admit it. To acknowledge in my early forties that I'm going back to college sometimes feels tantamount to acknowledging an embarrassing failure - the failure to know what I wanted to do with my life at the age in which I was expected to be deciding such things. The failure to pursue the goals that I had in my twenties with the level of conviction that would have been required in order to bring them to fruition. The failure of recognizing just what would be required in order to accomplish the things that I had hoped for. I have always been regarded as talented. I say this matter-of-factly, without any ego. It is typically the first word people use to describe me. Unfortunately, when I was younger I stupidly assumed that talent was easily recognized, readily acknowledged, and that talent alone would almost effortlessly create opportunities. College, in my mind, was for conformists headed for a lifetime in a cubicle punching numbers into a calculator. Having talent bypassed having to take a bunch of (blankety-blank-blank) classes on subjects that you'll never even think about again in order to be considered educated enough to commit yourself to an unsatisfying life in one of those cubicles, right?

Wrong.

I had a nice little career going for me. I was making decent money at a thankless job with a good title but ever-diminishing authority. I was miserable, but was making enough money to keep me in my place given the pitfalls of the local job market. A downturn in the economy brought on by a handful of (bleeps) who decided to fly a couple of jumbo jets into a couple of skyscrapers ended up forcing my hand, and required me to leave that lousy job (that I otherwise would have probably stayed in forever) behind. The local job market, already flooded with hundreds of hopeful applicants which had been laid off when a handful of major local employers shuttered, was unforgiving.

So I've been going to school. And being a full-time student while holding down a job and raising two children leaves a lot less time available for luxuries like making movies or recording songs. Add a two-hour daily commute to the campus, and one's available time dissolves further. I was counting on a period of months during this summer to allow me the time that I needed in order to finally invest a good amount of effort into my album, only to have my basement - where all of my recording equipment has been awaiting my touch since September of 2009 - flood with water, thus requiring that my long-awaited available time be spent working on a whole new list of unexpected chores. The time slot that I looked forward to for months has now effectively been denied to me. By the time the problem in my basement is resolved, I will need to be devoting all of my available time preparing to take the GRE and applying for graduate school. Then my final semester as an undergraduate begins, and I will be occupied with my studies until Christmas.

I simply cannot see how I can possibly meet the deadline that I gave myself. And I hate the idea of pushing the goal back any further. What's another week? What's another month? What's another year? Well, before you know it, all of those little delays of a couple of days here and a couple of weeks there add up to twenty-one (bleeping) years wasted hoping to complete a goal which keeps moving just beyond one's grasp like the unobtainable carrot to a brainless (bleepity-bleep bleep) mule. There's a point where one can barely tolerate such continual, seemingly arbitrary disappointment.

The album is probably something like ninety percent completed. I have labored for years working on the arrangements and recording the backing tracks. All that remains is the recording of a handful of guitar parts, the vocals, and final mixdown/mastering. But as of today's date, I have only 266 days left to complete these tasks, which seems like a lot until you realize that most of those days will necessarily be devoted to accomplishing academic goals, leaving the few remaining days in which I could potentially be working on the album further depleted every passing day in which water continues to flow into my basement or some similarly unforeseen (blankety-blank) circumstance demands my undivided attention. Yes, I'm disappointed. Yes, I'm frustrated. Yes, I'm angry. Creative projects are difficult to accomplish in the best of circumstances, but the best of circumstances remains a luxury which I shall seemingly never be afforded.

As an artist, this is the "long, dark night of the soul" for me. I am haunted by the very real fear of never completing this project, in spite of the thousands of hours that I've devoted to it over the past two decades. I am adrift in a tempestuous sea, indifferent to my yearnings, immune to my pleas for mercy, hostile to my efforts. I fear that I cannot recover from this blow without further compromising a deadline which, to me, already represents a shameful amount of compromise.

I am tempted to quit this nonsense right now. I'm just so tired of the constant frustration, with no tangible justification of my efforts.

Having written this, part of me doesn't think that I should post it. Part of me thinks that I should go back and edit some of the language out of concern for the sensibilities of some of the people who might read this (addendum: I ended up doing that anyway). But this is how I am feeling right now, and why, and part of me thinks that any honest depiction of my experience working on the album - the very purpose of the existence of this blog - needs to include this. There are moments in the creation of a work which are immensely satisfying. There are moments which thrill the soul and stimulate the emotions. But there are also tortuous moments of despair, when the passion of creation becomes an unrequited affair, and all that one can do is helplessly howl at an indifferent moon.

Woof.