Category: LifeCategory: Life

From Bree Stilwell, talking about crying upon the experience of human nature and college radio, and how getting there came from a piece I helped with called “Ghosting Spotify: A How-To Guide.”

And here Kid is, with his own radio show, queuing up Amy Winehouse because he and his crew ‘blast her stuff all the time back home’ and telling his dad on-air that hosting his show would never have happened without him.

I cried into my breakfast not only because I’m a mom and often daydream about such flagrant and public gratitude from my own kids

Read the rest of “How a student DJ made me cry into my breakfast.” Then close your music streaming app and find a nearby radio station to listen to.

Our relationship soured in his later years, but boy, could he play the guitar.

My musician friends would talk with him about scales and modes, astonished at his musical knowledge. They shared laughs and insights. He spoke with them and his students (he taught guitar out of his house) like old pals, just hamming it up.

Not with me, though.

He gave me a few lessons, but for some reason he never poured out that same enthusiasm.

Like they say, artists are complicated people.

I ended up with his guitar when he passed. I had zero intention of ever playing it, and just knew it’d take up space in the figurative and literal sense.

An old musician friend came to town recently. A buddy that my dad shared a musical conversation with many years ago. This friend spoke glowingly of my dad, blown away by the depth of his musician wisdom and knowledge.

So I gave him the guitar.

I’d rather it go to someone who won’t resent it, or let it waste away. I’m bitter, but my friend is joyous. He’s sent me several photos already.

“I’m at a guitar show,” he told me, “and the luthiers are flipping out at the guitar. It’s mid 70s. They are guessing a mint condition would be around four grand. I was about right saying three.”

It’s just a guitar, and I connected too much with it for it to be useful to me. I’m believing in the hands of someone else it can do so much more, and so far I’ve been proven right.

In the end we own nothing, and we’re always able to give it away.

Relying on a platform to get it right is hard because platforms are made up of people, and it’s hard for people to get it right for everyone all the time.

I was on the phone with my buddy Dino Corvino the other day, bumming about the recent election, and he said, “Someone in your town is hungry; make them a sandwich.”

I searched “Thanksgiving volunteer (your town)” in Google and found a local non-profit organizing meals for the upcoming holidays. I told a friend, and we went out and bought three meals for people needing a Thanksgiving dinner.

Today, for me, that’s my answer to all this.

From Embedded:

“It’s time to stop ceding our humanity to these platforms. It’s time to invest back into IRL community. It’s time to stop 24/7 scrolling social media—you will not find the answers there.”

I’ll find more of the answer when I drop off these three boxes of meals later this week because the answer is people, not platforms.

We need more people working on bringing joy into the world instead of uploading vertical videos for no one to see.

As Alice Katter says,

“The systems we live and work in today are human-made; they were created by people. So, why not create something different? That’s the beauty of creativity — it has the power to overcome established rules and even the language we use daily.”

Get to know the people who work at your local record shop, music store, gas station, library, or grocery store.

Say hi to your neighbors. Tell other creative people you like their work. Start Zoom hangs or phone calls with your friends.

Start a blog, an email list, a neighborhood group, a community meeting of artists, or gardeners, or joggers.

Conversely, don’t hang out with people who drain your energy. Set boundaries. Cut people from your life if you need to. Yes, even family. Life is short.

Spare me the “echo chamber” talk. We can have different opinions about economic policies and football teams, but if you think people I love don’t deserve basic human rights, well, go fuck yourself.

Yes, we should continue throwing stones at Spotify and Apple and Facebook and Amazon, but we can also do the work of engaging our communities for the benefit of humanity at the same time.

We can create new systems, new ways of working, new ways to show our work. I know it’d be super cool if I just laid out all the answers for your super-niche category, but I promise that you already have the ideas inside of you.

Do the thing you want to do. Most people won’t see what you’re doing anyway, so you might as well do it how you want.

Email someone way up the food chain. Go to the event. Ask for an introduction. Make your own luck. Your next big break could be one email, one interaction, one person away.

Hitting the viral jackpot on social media won’t save you, but building genuine connections with people around you just might.

I found out my dad died on July 30th, 2024.

We don’t know the exact time he passed, but he died alone in a trailer park in Florida. We didn’t have much of a relationship in the last seven or so years of his life for reasons I won’t go into, but I want to share a bit about his music.

My dad was an absolute music theory genius. He spoke in keys and modes and time signatures. He could play multiple instruments, listen to a song once, and play it for you backward and forward.

When I was a kid, he played in a country rock band called The Buckaroos, playing at ski resorts on the weekends and clubs during the week. He made good money playing guitar in the eighties.

Live music started to fade in our area, so he started teaching music out of his house. One of his students was a fiddle player who moved to Nashville and toured with a notable country artist or two.

In his later years, he’d seek out bass players and drummers, always looking to form a jazz trio. He had some luck getting gigs back in PA and later in Florida.

But when these groups fell apart, so did he.

He would still play at home, with his little Polytone amp that he bought in the 80s, playing his be-bop jazz and whatever else came out from his decades of experience.

While loading up our rental car with some of his belongings to take home, a neighbor named Otto pulled up, rolled down his window, and asked, “do you a photo of Ronnie I could have?”

My sister found a photo during the two days we cleaned out his trailer. It was newer, a shot in a grassy backyard, wearing his fancy shoes and his beret.

He loved that fucking beret.

“We would sit outside and listen to your dad play,” said Otto.

I handed him the photo that my sister found.

He didn’t say a word, but his eyes welled up.

“I’m glad you got to hear him play,” I said, and Otto drove away.

Dad’s idea of “success” was having a group so he could get booked at local venues. Without that, life seemed not… worth living.

And yet, his neighbors loved hearing the music he played.

It’s a lie that you’re not a real musician if you’re not booked at an actual venue.

The lie is real artists are in galleries, their names are on marquees, they have engineers setting up expensive mics in a studio in the hills.

The biggest lie is we have to make our entire living on the sale of our art, or else we’re just no-talent wannabes.

So many artists fall for this, feeling like 100 views isn’t enough, and they stop because “no one cares.”

I wake up thinking about the artists, poets, writers, and musicians we’ve lost because they couldn’t keep up with the “hitting it big” rat race of social media.

Somehow, 10,000 views aren’t enough because you really need 100,000. Having 12 people at a show on a Tuesday night is a waste of time. No one buys your art because you’re not making enough Reels.

It’s lies, it’s all bullshit.

Otto probably has that photo of my dad on his refrigerator or next to his record player.

The world doesn’t need another hot-take reaction to Spotify rates, or Instagram impressions – it needs you to release a three song demo you recorded you in your bedroom. Self-publish that piece of fiction.

Like the wise Cassidy Frost says:

“Go play a roller rink. Create your own festival. Tastemakers can’t take away your power if you’re creating a sick world around your music that other people want to be a part of. You have the tools. You don’t need the tastemakers.”

Someone needs your podcast episode about Edward Bouchet.

Someone in a small town would love to read your essay about landlocked countries.

You need to go to that open mic night and sing that song the universe dropped in your lap three months ago because someone in the crowd really needs to hear it.

Like Amy Stewart wrote, you need to “Be the Artist-in-Residence of Your World.”

Don’t wait for external validation from someone who just needs to fill up a Tuesday night, or fill a slot in their editorial calendar.

Don’t wait, don’t wait, don’t you dare wait to release your magic into the world because time spent waiting adds ups, and the regret compounds, and most of your belongings will end up in a dumpster a week after you die anyways.

I’m officially in “Not My Business” Season, for which I owe a debt of thanks to Olivia Rafferty for describing how I’ve been feeling most of this year.

This isn’t just for Substack authors- it’s for every creative person.

Social media made us believe we must become graphic designers, video editors, sound engineers, interview hosts, SEO experts, copywriters, and about a dozen other things in addition to the thing we do.

Experts will have you believe that if you tweak your About page a little bit more, focus on SEO, or make better thumbnails, then success is just around the corner!

Not my business.

Sure, there are some “best practices,” but the bar is low (ahem, a website and an email list). We’re not here to chase lowest common denominator tactics, we’re here to shift culture and change the world, right?

• Imagine spending more time on things that rejuvenate your soul instead of cosplaying as an overworked social media manager.
• Instead of learning how to navigate all the new features that Meta has set up on Instagram, imagine becoming a better musician, photographer, or artist.
• Spend most of our non-day job hours honing our craft rather than becoming part-time “content creators” while expecting full-time results.
• There’s a screen time app, but where’s the guitar time app, or painting time app? Imagine if we tracked our creative practice and saw that we spent three hours a day writing. We’d celebrate that, wouldn’t we?

We don’t need more subscribers; we need more heartbreak, laughter, and / or deep metaphysical talks about the afterlife in cemeteries on rainy evenings.

That’s the business I want.

Let’s stop worrying about growing our audience. Open your contacts app and reconnect with the people who came into your life but you stopped talking to because you felt just posting on social media was enough.

Get in the business of building connections instead of shouting.

We’re talking about art here, people. We’re not selling USB cables or homeowner insurance, we’re channeling the divine, spending time in the fog, smelling the flowers, jumping in puddles, and walking around museums.

That’s our business.