ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges

it was the summer of 2009, and I was up in Boston for a five-week intensive music program.

I’d just picked up the guitar for the first time about twelve months prior. though I’d been diligently learning piano for a few years, I had quickly become enamored with my new instrument—like many teens, images of Led Zeppelin and AC/DC up on stage conjured up a raw but visceral desire to reach rock-god status myself. TNT—I’m dynamite.

and so, after wrapping up my freshman year of high school, I packed up my epiphone les paul and set out on the first major step in my rock star journey: the Berklee 5-week music intensive program.

the coursework was fair and the classes were instructive. my theoretical understanding of music was high, but my inexperience on the guitar shone through—for the most part, professors were content to focus on the students they deemed the most promising.

but I encountered a foreign and disorienting world in those streets and dorm rooms. it was my first encounter with a vibe, or a scene—very different from the faux-southern charm of Charlottesville, VA, where I’d just moved a few years prior, or even the brutality of my hometown Saskatoon, SK, where you had to be mean just to survive the winter.

no, my peers engaged in a performative coolness I’d never seen before: smoking cigarettes on the front stoop of cafeteria, or staying out all night just because they could.

worse, they knew I was different—in a competition I didn’t realize existed, I was coming in last. I contented myself to kick a soccer ball around with a few of my outsider friends, or play Tony Hawk’s in my room by myself.

“there’s so much out there in the world,” I remember deciding. “I don’t want to be like those kids. I want to learn english, and history, and whoever I am, I don’t want to be a musician.”

and that was the story I stuck with through college and graduate school, and on to NYC to pursue a career in marketing. it was creative enough for me, and besides—I found business interesting. who is really that passionate about their career anyway?

along the way, I’d flirt with re-entry into the world of music—an internship in a studio here, a fellowship with a non-profit there. I’d work for free, half-heartedly cleaning equipment or going for coffee (anything except making actual music), and the feedback I got was always the same: “you don’t have what it takes to make it.”

that feedback astonished me, even as I took it to heart. evidently musicians possessed some ungodly drive to eat sh*t on their way to the top—a gene that had somehow passed me over even as I longed for it. dejected, I resigned myself to a Clark Kent-ish fate: corporate stiff by day, musician by night.

but secret lives have a way of persisting. my music slowly but consistently continued to develop—limited by the hours of the day but funded by the savings I stacked away from consistent paychecks. I moved to Denver, then back to NYC, then back to Charlottesville, then back to NYC. I recorded an album, and released it to an audience of friends and family in a Brooklyn living room.

and as years passed, I realized something strange: every decision I made was with the intent of perpetuating my ability to write and perform music.

as inflation and housing costs mounted, I stopped going out to eat—instead choosing to hire my friends to play gigs with me in small venues across the city. saturday nights meant an early bedtime so I could wake up early, do laundry, and get to the park by noon to busk for a few hours.

and at times this split personality was brutal. there was so much I was learning about the world through my secret second life that I wasn’t able to communicate at work. and though I continued to progress as a musician, I was always missing jams and shows to keep up with my 9-5. by the end of this summer, I felt I was reaching a breaking point.

and then, a week ago wednesday, a funny thing happened. just as the music scene spat me out for the first time nearly two decades ago, the corporate world did the exact same. and so my theory of stability > passion collapsed just as quickly as it had been imagined. it was time for a pivot—cue the track, Dave.

NYC, present day.

the structure that has defined the past seven-ish years of my life is falling away, and the most concrete foundation that remains is the years I’ve poured into my musical practice.

and yet, there was some truth to my original vision: there is more to life than just music, and my time spent in the corporate world taught me how to organize and synthesize that insight to drive organizational value. many of the musicians I meet lack for real-world context, and many of the real-worlders are searching for the fulfillment that my artist friends have built their life around.

this is a long way of announcing that I’m hoping to slowly shift the emphasis of this newsletter to incorporate more than updates on my (eventual) second album and performances throughout the city. I hope to diversify the range of topics, examining how to structure creative work so that it’s repeatable and measurable—with the ultimate goal of leveraging my musicianship to pay the bills and beyond.

if you’re looking for more business-focused insight, I’m hoping to do the reverse of this newsletter on my LinkedIn by providing tips for how to incorporate creativity into more structured and value-driving processes.

but fear not, no jargon, acronyms or buzzwords will find their way to this garden—it will remain a holdout of human emotion as reality bends to the whims of our techno-industrial overlords. let’s see who breaks first.

“there is one rule in the garden; you must give more than you take.” –Alan Chadwick