Today I shall get straight into it because I have a few minutes before I need to get into a meeting I am not as prepared for and also because the coffee is just kicking in.
Yes, I am doing this at work. You should see how I am typing this with the most intent look on my face, as if a legal opinion. We shall talk about the fact that half the people at work think my RBF is immovable. (Please don’t show them the videos from any Meats and Beats Wednesday at the Meat Guy or I shall lose my street cred)
The last time I wrote on here, it was a bit about how I feel my music “change” from what I feel it was written for, each time the audience gets bigger and more different.
I talked about how sometimes I face the struggle of expressing my “true” thoughts in the distinctiveness they pour out when by myself, before others because, I feel the immediate panic to re-write and re-express the same premise more palatably. I want to revisit that a bit in light of the fact that I have released some ka music that you can find here. As in my usual fashion, I used a sort of metaphor of the double-slit experiment to show you guys that if I decide, I can know random things.
In that spirit of seeming smart, and that you may be hopefully persuaded to think my jazz is mob dope, let me use another ka example- nausea.
Jean Paul Satre, one of my favourite people, wrote a novel with the same title. His girlfriend is also good peoples but we shall talk about her ideas another time I guess.
Its themes expressed things people rarely talk about or write these days, which is probably why he is one of my favourite people, although it is his thoughts that I connect with as he hasn’t existed for a while now. It’s written in one of my favourite styles, stream of consciousness writing. I like that the style can help you at least theorise why the writer writes the way he does- from the way a sentence is organised to the diction. There is the aspect of psychological insight the style gives you that’s more persuasive and moving when meeting literary talent and characteristics for me. It is exactly because of this that I relate the point of this book to a popular idea Satre had and propounded as a deep and thorough thinker and feeler of things.
He talks about the idea of condemnation by, and because of freedom and resultantly, the idea of bad faith.
Let’s begin with the latter idea.
JP described this as basically acting as if you are not free to make choices. Even if it means making difficult and costly choices, you should avoid simply being an object in the world but move closer and closer to realising your full potential as a being thing. Bad Faith for JP was the inauthenticity brought about by denying your purpose of being and living, in the attempt to evade the responsibility of discovering and understanding one’s authentic self.
Based on this, the idea of condemnation by and because of freedom follows in what kind of is self-explanatory, in that, because we have these array of choices to explore to be self, and coupled with the fact that this is never the easiest thing to do, it’s heavy from whatever angle you think about it. He says it this way,
“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
The more you think about the freedoms and opportunities and responsibilities you have as a human and the more you step into them, it does feel like a condemnation with each and every action. Ask any adult about adulting because why is this our portion; but that is exactly his point. As who we are is not determined, but for each of us to figure out, there is a form of necessity for freedom which can never be given up.
He therefore comes to the conclusion that you cannot and should not shortcut the overwhelm of this heavy condemnation by living falsely through yielding to the external pressures of society to adopt inauthentic values and disown your freedom to be an authentic and sentient being. In other words, grin and bear being an adult because by adulting, you are becoming more you. Can I hear a hallelujah and not crickets, please.
I have been doing a lot of work on my attachment style. There is a mighty work unlearning many untrue core beliefs that have for so long been at the fore front of how I relate with people. I have a theory that the relationship I have with my audience as a creative is also one riddled with some of the expressions of my attachment style. It is most likely so, but eh, we shall reach that session when we reach it. For those who do not know what I am even talking about, the theory of attachment styles is they are typically how you behave in relationships based on the emotional connection you formed as an infant. Maybe by the end of this article, you can tell what style I have been expressing for the myriad of reasons I still need therapy to help me navigate, because bambi, I am really the person that attempts to evade the responsibility of discovering and understanding one’s authentic self because it is deathly terrifying.
Like so many of us and including myself, in the novel Nausea, the character Antoine is basically depressed because existence can be overwhelming if you think enough about it. (An existentialist trope I tell you). After trying so many things to escape the nausea he also called a “sweet sickness”, his salvation comes through music. (face-palm with me a little bit about how on the nose this is).
Antoine, like me, ultimately decides to rely on artistic creation to understand himself rather than to give into the despair of everything. Somehow, he is convinced by this to confront what he finds overwhelming. In that he discovers the power to understand he must choose his own essence, in spite of the anxiety that would have ultimately led him to deny both this choice and the responsibility he had regarding it to be himself.
As a person, I experience a very similar form of this “sweet sickness” that permeates into my creativity because of that thread Antoine and I share, and that thread is nothing other than society. With the grand complex and intricate thing that society is, society comes with other peoples’ expectations and somehow also, the insecurities that form when I do not meet expectations, even as an artist; that I shall lose affirmation and support if I am anything less than what I imagine or understand them to expect.
Still like Antoine, I have experienced that nausea get worse when I actually do give into others’ expectations before what I have chosen to be, which goes against the necessity of my freedom which is to be me particularly and singularly. I feel sick about everything because of all the dissonance most of the time. The work in life therefore, is to practice and express the fact that, and although external circumstances may be limiting, they needn’t force me to follow one remaining course over another, even if it means I must choose this in anguish; which is an possible consequence of following this path.
As an artist, I am learning that means finding the courage to present my art and indulge my creativity, in the conviction that it shall be helpful to those that it is made for, or even solely, helpful to me. The point JP made is that something like that isn’t always easy, but worth it, more so because you believe you are being true to yourself, and what you believe you can do with music for you and for others.
I am learning again and again that I can even share where some of the inspiration for these choices come from, even if they may be deemed “serious” and “much”. Generally, that means I have to live and press on, with and against the feedback that my honesty and vulnerability for some is cringe. On that note, please go and check out my latest single called “Damaged” so it can get some streams ko, but more importantly that in case you need the message, it is yours because this authenticity stuff is taking me for laps as you can see.
I wrote that particular song at a time I truly believed that all the hurt and pain and trauma I had been through had forever rendered me damaged; broken and irreparably glitched in some way. For a long time, I did not think that I was capable of truly loving again or letting my walls down because at a very complex level, everything about life became and was learning to live in the post traumatic. The anxiety and the manifestations of non-secure attachment pouring through so vividly any time anyone got close were expressed for so long as isolation and masking, as it felt it was the only ways to get through living through the aftermath of a lot.
But in this life, I am a lover and not a fighter and just letting go of all the hyper vigilance and independence was, and has been just more detrimental than a solution to anything. It goes back to JP’s conclusion in that, if I have to find in myself more strength than would be necessary for others to be as I am, then I must be stronger enough to connect and love and share vulnerably in my life and therefore also, in my art. The other option is turning into the imposter that Ebeneezer Scrouge was- secretly a lover and not at all a fighter.
The “damage” was because of choices and the freedom I have to make them and if I claimed the right to enjoy them at the time when nothing had soured, then this probability and now reality I live in must be an embraced capitulation as well. At the time, most of them, if not all, were in some belief that they developed the realisation of myself and affirmed a “correct” or “on-brand” self-concept. From these choices comes a new horrible reality I pull through, and at the same time, a fear and paralysis that every next choice shall be wrought with the same aftereffects for every new choice I must make. Yeah, you can see why art is such a salvation, because how else do you metabolise all these different directions of emotion? (Be like Antoine and listen to more music)
I try to depict an emotional journey through the aftermath of trauma, capturing the heartache and fear of feeling irreparably wounded again. It is a version of the interplay between illustrating that mess to the world and his wife, in choosing to be a braver and more vulnerable artist, or otherwise act in bad faith.
The lyrics lay bare the inner turmoil and the struggle to heal, while also expressing the deep anxiety about how these scars affect loved ones. When you listen to it, I hope the song’s raw and honest portrayal invites you to empathize with the complexity of living with emotional pain and the hope for understanding and support from those who care.
I wrote this to encourage myself really. That’s the purpose of all my writing to be honest.
However, I really do hope that you who reads this understand (if you managed to survive all that Satre jazz above), that figuring out how to step in to the sun is difficult, but you are not alone in figuring it out, and that it is always worth it to. Nothing is wasted. Not a single life experience. Here’s a song about that because I can also put on you on dope music that isn’t mine.
The life being sucked out of you because of the condemnation to be free is inevitable so in fact, wretch away if necessary because we know how to make ORS.
But the point I hope in everything is that, you and I can understand that we should not seem to be.
But be.
Be true to yourself, no matter the cost otherwise you are lying to no one else but yourself.
Please remind me if I ever seem to forget this.
I’ve put this here so it can remind you too.
augandanartist.com 