On giving yourself fully to the art life

In terms of your artistic career, you’ve been writing lyrics for at least 35 years now. Throughout that time, what have been your practices as a writer?

It’s important to understand that I don’t separate the written body or exercises into something that I’m going to delineate to be prose, poetry, lyrics, or something that’s a longer form piece about anything. I just essentially capture the idea and let its natural structure happen the first time. With that said, my process is more about journaling on a regular basis, at least in theory. It doesn’t have to be ritualistic to the point where I need a specific determined amount of time every day or anything like that. But when I feel compelled to write, I try to follow that siren song every time. I do that with all creative things, which is probably annoying to people around me. If I’m motivated by just a spark of an idea or something around me, or just the emotions of a day bring me a particular direction, I try to carve out a small minute or two to capture the idea that is starting to blossom inside my head. Because as powerful as those ideas are, they’re fleeting.

You may be consciously working on a piece of music or art or writing, and you’re very conscious of being deliberate about your actions with it. But oftentimes it’s those silent moments in your head when you solve the creative problems that you’re trying to solve. When those happen for me, I am pretty quick about capturing them in some way.

My voice memos on my telephone are this vast wasteland of song ideas, musical ideas, writing ideas. I have a written version of that that I keep as well. I have a journal that I always keep with me. I usually have a variety of Field Notes books; I have an art journal I always have with me. When it’s time to refine those ideas and come back to them, that’s when things start to take more deliberate forms. Where I’ll say, like, “That paragraph feels more like a song to me.” And we’re working on this musical idea with band A, B or C, this thematically calls to that or emotionally calls to that, let me see if I can pair them together in some way.

Your lyrics are direct when it comes to your life struggles. That can be a vulnerable thing to do. How have you grappled with the notion that your career involves so much revealing of yourself?

It’s a subject I think about often, but it’s not something I necessarily struggle with. There are a few ways to look at it and I have to reframe it for myself on a pretty regular basis. Because you’re right, it is very revealing and just vulnerable. I feel that, near any art form, even if you’re creating something that isn’t, in terms of subject matter, about your own personal experiences in your life, you’re leaving such a big part of yourself in that creative process. You’re giving so much of yourself to that. I don’t see my emotional struggles with those things as any different than somebody who illustrates cars for a living, or something. Or as a passion, is probably a better way to put it. Because their heart is fully in it.

With that said, ways I manage that and I’m okay with that is, I basically don’t read the things [articles about his art]. I’m aware of them because you can’t be wholly unaware, but I am careful to not let that outsider’s perspective of my work affect me in some way. Now, from a personal perspective in my life, creating art and music and writing, and however you want to define it, I write the truth. That is a painful thing sometimes, but it’s an assuring thing. I’ve never had anybody come back to me, that I’ve written about my perception of things, artistically, and never said I was wrong in any way.

Of course.

Well, it’s not an of course, because you could create art and music and something from a vitriolic place and feel differently, but I’m really careful not to do that. I’m not trying to vilify human beings or the personal experiences and interactions that I had with people, I’m just reflecting on the emotional weight I’m carrying from it. So that’s a comforting thing. You’re right in the sense that it would probably be easier if I was a little more veiled in the way I write and less emotionally exposed, but that’s what the art is for me and that’s what the purpose is for me.

In the time since your TCI conversation with J. Bennet in 2019, has anything changed in how you maintain work-life balance? Do you find yourself getting burned out or is burnout something you’re able to dodge relatively smoothly at this point in your life?

I do think burnout is inevitable. It happens to anyone in some way. My operating resting heartbeat of activity of what I do every day versus what other people do every day–I do a lot. I think even when I am a bit burnt out, it probably doesn’t show because I can still do the stuff. If that makes sense? My professional demeanor will make it happen and that is a skill that comes from hard work and repetition. Because I know that, at the end of the day with anything that I am tasked with, that it starts and ends with me. The only way is through, for me, when it comes to dealing with workload, navigating all of the projects and trying not to experience burnout.

With that said, it’s challenging. You know what I mean? I’ll put it in perspective, real talk. This is what my last bunch of days have been like. I have a list of visual work that I have to do that’s probably like two or three dozen things long, basically before Wednesday. I’m chopping at that. Now I have four pieces that I’ve written for my Substack that I still need to edit. I have to finish all the visualizers for this album [Converge’s Hum of Hurt] that’s coming out on Friday. I have press to do. My cat went missing four days ago and I’m trying to explain to my two boys that she might not be coming back. I had a funeral to go to for a family friend on Friday, and his services. So, my Friday was unavailable for professional work in any way.

I’m trying to be as present as I can with my family in a challenging time, where I still have to operate at a high level, creatively and professionally, for other things. Am I feeling burnout now? I don’t know. I feel challenged, for sure, by all of it. But I’m still standing. It still starts and stops with me. I try to remember that when I’m feeling a bit dark, that I can push through things. I can show up for people. I can be present, and I can deliver professionally and creatively while I’m in a heightened state. I try to recenter a lot and I try to remember that, again, the only way is through. So sometimes that means taking five minutes and driving the long way to work to just get your thoughts in order.

I will rise to the occasion, but I might be a little slower on some base. But again, I think that if you’re a determined person, and especially a determined creative person, you have the ability to solve nearly anything that is coming your way, or at the very least, navigate it. Especially the artists and creatives that are self-made, in the sense that they gave themselves fully to the art form and to what they’re doing professionally. Because if you have a parachute when you think you’re in trouble, you’re going to pull it, right?

Since I was a kid and since I started my creative path as a person, there’s been no parachute. There’s been no… That’s it, that’s what I have. I give myself fully to it regardless of if it’s burning me out or not. It’s my path and I’m very aware of that and I respect it greatly, so that’s what I do.

In the press release for Hum of Hurt you say, “I appreciate the creative home and support this community has given, yet rarely is space left for anything else.” While you get to have this wonderful privilege of art being your job, it’s still a job. How do you navigate those feelings of possible resentment, but also being extremely motivated to make art? You’ve talked about being envious of the painter that just gets to sit and paint a landscape for the sake of joy.

Yeah, absolutely. That’s something that is still lacking in my life. It’s a give and take, right? At this point in my life, my kids are at an age where they want to interact with me a lot and it’s the most important part of my life, outside of professional life. When I’m at home, I’m pretty much with them. It’s very immersive and there’s absolutely downtime and whatnot in that, but downtime for a family of four is like: I’m doing all of the chores I need to get done, all the maintenance stuff around the house, like taking out the garbage. By the time I get home, by the time I finish doing things with them for maybe like three or four hours and they start winding down, there isn’t much time left for much of anything. Sometimes I’ll draw while I spend time with them, or I’ll write here and there, but having that time without a clock, just your own individual thing, I still haven’t had that. I do really wish I had that, but I don’t necessarily have resentment because I’m having such a beautiful experience doing other things. That is also feeding the creative spirit to me as well. It’s different life experience. I’m having these other things that I’m reflecting on, so it’s not like it’s dormant, I’m just not sharpening that specific skill. I’m sharpening a different skill.

I do love seeing that freedom in other people’s art that I work with to this day. It’s what inspires me. I think it’s beautiful, and I take that inspiration and apply it where I can in what I do, and to motivate me to be a creative person. It’s not so much resentment, it’s just there’s an awareness there. Because there’s lots of things that I would want to do that are probably not creative, just in general. That’s basically my life in terms of repetition, right?

I don’t give myself to shows or movies, I don’t partake in that stuff, so it makes me quite a bore. When the band travels and the guys are like, “Oh, did you watch this thing?” I’m like, “No, I was working on all this stuff.” I wish I had that bond with some people a little more, because socially so many things are tied to how we entertain ourselves outside of this world of professional things. And I don’t do that. But again, it is what it is. My life will level out in a different way at a different time.

A concept that means a lot to me is that of the “Art Life,” which I first heard from David Lynch. This idea of one’s total devotion to art. You have your family, but outside of that, your life revolves around art. Do you feel this sentiment resonates with your life?

I guess I have my own version of the art life. It’s imperfect, just like all seemingly perfect approaches to things could be or are fully immersive. For 24 hours a day, it’s art life in my head, in the sense of the way that I process life experiences and things. My coping mechanism, emotionally, for that is giving it some place to live within my own art. So, it’s always present. I do weird solitary things that I’m sure other people that are weird do as well.

When I wake up in the morning, I do the exact same ritualistic quick things and then I immediately get to work on whatever. I think that being a creative person, you try to remove the things from your own personal creative act which would be a distraction. For me, since I’m not always making visual art in front of me, I might be thinking on it and trying to visually problem solve something I’m working on. It works just the same. I fully give myself to the life of a creative individual.

I don’t know what art is going to look like for younger generations because my version of art and the world I exist in is unique to now. But the only thing that I see as a through line for all creative people, whether it be writers, visual artists, musicians, is, if you give yourself fully to it, then there will be no questions at the end of it. If you don’t have a parachute, there would be no questions. You don’t do anything but give your soul and spirit to the creative self and that pursuit. It’s part of you. It’s not something that, you’re just a painter, you’re just a writer, you’re just a journalist, you’re just a whatever. It doesn’t matter, it’s the creative pursuit. If it’s truly your passion, you never give it up. It just evolves with you. It may pause for a brief time to recalibrate, but it’s still there.

I do know that I can be the man sitting in the marsh, painting a sunset, one day. I know I can do it, and I know I can be it, but it’s not where I am now. I’m okay with that because that’s what my line is. To each their own. For younger generations, they should look to all the generations, this generation and previous, to see what works and what doesn’t. I’m sure there’s people that are talented in other ways that are more, I guess, seemingly natural. But for all of the natural talent anybody has, you still got to do the work. You might be the best writer in the world, but you might have to write 10,000 things for that 9,971st to connect with people in a way that you’re finally understood.