why do artists need to create?
reflections on writing a musical.
I would like to begin by doing something I hardly ever do— evoking the words of Mark Zuckerberg.
I don’t have an exact quote for this, but I recall seeing an interview where Zuckerberg talks about his reactions to the Social Network movie starring Jesse Eisenberg.
Zuckerberg says that one of the inaccurate things about the movie was that Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg made Facebook in part to impress girls and gain popularity.
In reality, Zuckerberg says, it seems as though Hollywood struggles to wrap its head around the idea that some people just love building things, and don’t need any further external motivation than that.
I found this to be an interesting thought.
There’s certainly quite a bit of truth to it. Getting paid for things is a vibe, and being admired is a’ight (as the kids say), but, there certainly is something to be said about people who simply create things because.
One of the most sensational things I’ve seen on TikTok lately is the story of a man who’s been creating a miniature model of the New York City skyline in his home, seemingly just for the love of the game.
It’s an incredibly impressive feat and, although he’s gotten tons of praise and admiration, and although the model he built will likely end up on display somewhere for many more people to see, we could still ask the (potentially redundant) question— why did he build this?
This train of thought leads us neatly into our question for the day~
Why do artists need to create?
As you might have noticed, there is an unstated premise here, which we can frame as a question— Do artists need to create?
This is a tricky question, which could be the subject of a different essay.
So, for now, let us take it as a given that yes, artists need to create. And now we can ask— well, why?
I was thinking of this question recently because my short musical Prism was released last week (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way).
And, the process of writing, workshopping and eventually recording Prism (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way), was certainly one of the most time-consuming resource-intensive side quests I’ve been on in a while.
During the busiest points of my last semester in school, I found myself going straight from class into a practice room with my sheet music to work on vocal parts with some of the sensational singers who workshopped the music with me.
On one particularly tiring day, as I was organising my music, I wondered to myself— why am I doing this?
Additional thoughts included—
“Certainly, no one’s asking me to do this”.
“I hardly doubt it’s going to make any money”.
“I’m not even sure that anyone’s actually going to listen to it”.
I caught myself thinking these thoughts and, as I tend to do, I then proceeded to think some more about the fact that I was thinking these things.
This was all interesting because my views on the more public-facing parts of being a musician have changed over the years in interesting ways.
There was a time, way back when, when I was opposed to performing because I didn’t see the need for an audience to observe my music.
I eventually moved on from this view, and developed a fairly interesting (at least, I think it’s interesting) philosophy regarding the vulnerability and intimacy that comes with being perceived while performing. This would actually be a super cool thing to talk about (for another day).
But, shortly after I exited my “I’m-opposed-to-performing” phase, I entered my “hmm-now-I-want-to-release-music” phase.
When I first started releasing music, I knew from the get-go that I was never going to be mainstream pop-ish. That’s just not what I write.
So, I embraced the reality that most people probably won’t exactly blast my acapella choral arrangement of The Lord Is Good to Me (From Disney’s Melody Time) while they’re out on a run or going for a drive.
I knew that some people would probably find some joy in the music I release, but it’ll never be a large number. And I had no qualms with that.
Yet, Prism (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way) was different.
I found myself really— really wanting people to hear it.
Not only that, but, because I wrote it with musical theatre things in mind, it’s the kind of album that’d be wonderful (I think) to deeply listen to and hear how all the themes connect across the songs.
So, if the question plaguing me was— why am I doing this? The answer, for the first time perhaps, was— So people will listen! So, people will like it!
And yet, despite the truth of this statement for me, I realised that something more fundamental was going on.
And that is, simply, I just needed to release this—
I needed to release it so that it could exist.
Sometimes, when you love something, all you desire is for it to be okay. For it to exist, simply.
Sometimes, yes, one desires to possess something that they love. One desires to hold it tight and never let go.
But other times, one just wants it to be.
One lets it go not with any hopes that it returns; maybe, not even with a desire that it returns, but with a hope that it runs free.
And with this, I learned how all these thoughts fit together.
Prism (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way) will never be free, will never truly exist, will never be, until it is perceived by other people. Until it is experienced outside my head and outside my heart.
Yes, the German idealists (we can throw Fichte and Hegel into this camp) would certainly agree that one can only be when one is observed by another. But this is a story for another day.
The point is, Prism (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way) must be experienced in order for it to truly be.
While writing and recording the album, there were a few instances where the incredible vocalists I worked with picked up on things that I actually had not intended. In those moments, I imagined Prism (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way) free. I imagined Prism (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way) happy. I imagined Prism (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way) as more than what I had in mind for it. And that was beautiful.
Epilogue: Some wisdom from bell hooks
(I’m 6’9 by the way)1
Behold, some wisdom from bell hooks, which is relevant in many contexts, including ours at the moment:
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others”.
The first step of learning to love is giving up the desire for domination.
One consistent thing which I have believed ever since I started releasing my own music is the idea that once a piece of music of mine is out there, my thoughts on what it means becomes one opinion in the sea of many— not more valid than anyone else’s.
I don’t really believe that the fact that I wrote something gives me any special insights into what it means, once it’s been released into the world.
I, like anyone else who experiences the art I create, simply have an opinion.
Prism (available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way), which purposefully has a lot of unanswered questions in the story, is the embodiment of this belief.
I really do hope you’ll consider listening to it.
Did I mention that it’s available to listen to wherever you listen to music, by the way?
vibes est vida.
I’m definitely not 6’9.
In Letters to a young poet, Rainer Maria Rilke poses this; you have to ask yourself, must I write? Ask yourself in the darkest hour of the night, if I could no longer write, must I die? And if the answer isn't a wholehearted yes, if the motivation is anything else (accolades, approval, money), you'll never keep it up because the work is too tender, too hard. The only way you'll keep it up if it's the only way for you to exist. (Very, very freely paraphrased)