This was a pivotal week for me, we got the press release out, I've been sleeping on a couch instead of my car, I got hired at two jobs, my bike was stolen slowly in several pieces to make it that much more painful, and my car is once again immobile due to reasons unknown. So in short my comfort level has gone up immensely while my mobility has plummeted drastically, thankfully this didn't happen any sooner. Morale has been at an all time low, with every passing day I am more and more feeling the weight of the goals I"m trying to accomplish. The more i meet people in LA who actually make careers from music, the more i realize that I may not be able to ever actually join this group. I see people with whole teams who are excited about their project and believe in them, then there's me with my weird little 5 song EP with only me at the helm relentlessly emailing and hustling trying to get momentum going behind this project. I can't help but feel out numbered but it's like I mentioned previously I have to remember that its still worth doing even if it isn't widely celebrated.
I was at work yesterday and some how the topic of religion came up with a bunch of people whose names I barely know, usually in this situation I'd stay quiet, one because of the subject matter and two because I wouldn't want to offend people that I'm forced to come in contact with on a daily basis. I was participating in the conversation until I got lost i my own head thinking about blind faith. I had always given religion a hard time because I feel blind faith is dangerous, but yet aren't I doing the same thing? Following something not because it logically makes much sense but just operating off of a feeling which to me is almost the basis of being human. I'm not a religious man but I see parallels when it comes to blind faith. I do still think that blind faith is dangerous but there is certainly a profound beauty in it. obviously my faith is a much more narcissistic one as it pertains only to myself and my skills but nonetheless I feel i can confer with the feeling. I will admit there is a certain hint of in insanity to jump without being able to see where your feet will land but the confidence alone in that instance is merit worthy to me. It feels good to have a date set for the EP (February 19th), I feel like things are going to be different this time (I hope). This will be a tough month to reach my goals for the EP and I've set some quite impossible ones.Sometimes my hubris can get me in trouble and lead me to disappointment I will admit, but I like to keep the bar set extremely high. Thinking logically all the time makes life so not fun, I want to just follow what I feel. If i look at life objectively it bums me out but when i operate off of what I feel and what I can imagine of the future, It leaves my mind to paint the world whatever hue I desire.Now some would say this is running from reality, which could be true,but to me though it's not running from reality it's changing your perspective on it. I think that's a reason we sometimes envy children and miss our childhoods because their imagination is for the most part left unfiltered and unaltered but why do we have to lose that just because we become adults? Logic of course has it's place but so does your imagination, we shouldn't ever forget that. It's important to always keep positivity up and I need to remember that.Things will get better I do believe that. I'll be elaborating on my goals for the EP more in depth as we get closer to release, for now I have to keep spreading the word and get this press release picked up! Also artwork should be coming soon!
0 Comments
(DISCLAIMER: I was listening to Outro by M83 while writing this so excuse the epic preachyness)
I hope all of you had a great New Year, mine was alright despite some set backs. I hate to even mention it because it's becoming such a tired story line so I'll sum it up in one sentence. My car is an unreliable piece of worthlessness and I had to be physically escorted from pep boys. I digress, my EP comes out in a month and a half, I'm getting anxious as i feel I'm running out of time, ideas and morale.I haven't slept in a bed in 22 days and I've been exercising so my body hates me. It's been getting so cold right at 5:30 I"m forced to get up and get moving until the sun comes up. Lately I've been struggling with the notion I've been told a million times that in the music business you are powerless. Your fate is in the palm of the people's hands, a twig in the ocean, a slave to subjectivity, part of me has always known this to be true but also a part of me just cant accept that. Ever since I was a kid I've had that unrealistic notion that I control my fate, the thought that I have power over the outcome of my life and that I govern myself. Although when you give yourself to something so fully you have to adhere to the rules that govern the path, in my case, I'm at the mercy of listeners and they could easily just not care about the EP. Despite all my passion,drive,commitment and diligence, my music has always been met with an "eh" sort of feeling. I can't let it happen again, How to I give more? how can i become more? Maybe I am letting my feelings of my music be dictated too strongly by how it's received by others. It is hard sometimes to feel what you are doing matters, I mean really matters in the grand scheme of things. I always have to suppress these sort of thoughts when i start working a monkey job to keep myself from just walking out. I think to myself what am i accomplishing by being here other than being handed pieces of green paper or handed a number on a white piece of paper.Reality cannot be avoided though we all have to make money. I starting realizing just this morning though that I've been generalizing and missing the most important question, what does success mean to me? There can never be one uniform definition of success as it should differ and vary from person to person. You look past money, job advancement, possessions and get to the root of what success really means to you. At first I thought to myself what a simple question but as I delved deeper all the things I thought about felt so superficial. All of my thoughts seemed to equate to either possessions or getting certain places to look good in the eyes of others. If my EP sells zero copies and it fizzles into nothing (very likely) but I love it and am proud of it, should the EP be considered a failure? Or was writing it, funding it and pouring everything I had into it a success in itself. Maybe I've already won and the outcome doesn't really matter. Just because what you are doing isn't widely cared about by others doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. Birds sing in empty forests, stars continue to burn in empty voids of the galaxy, flowers grow on mountains which will never been seen. So what's my conclusion, what is success to me? For me the answer has been with me all along, for me success is to never give up or stop believing that what I'm doing matters. After all the grief I've given myself and how hard I've been on myself I now see the epiphany. No matter how broke I am, no matter how hopeless things get I"m still fucking doing it. I'm waking up every morning with my same childish hope and clocking into my dream. With that being said I don't feel i have achieved my idea of success just yet. I want the EP to do as well as it can and I want to support myself off of music but like I said the outcome will not change my feelings on what I think of it. To me this is success but I encourage you to take money and possessions out of the picture and ask yourself the same, What is success to you? I'm excited for 2016 I need this to be a good year but no one is going to hand that to me, January is a key building block for the EP. Press release coming this Tuesday with Maelstrom PR! P.S My final words in pep boys before being physically escorted out were "I would rather light my car on fire than to ever bring it back to this dog shit establishment" I refuse to even capitalize their name. The pendulum sways to and fro, the good and bad are tandem. This week I was turned down from a shit load of jobs, my bike tire was stolen ,I got a 64$ parking ticket and my radiator gave out which is costing 732 dollars to have fixed. The bike tire bummed me out more than just my tire missing, it was more the fact that someone would betray another human being for a bike tire which probably made them 10 dollars. I won't lie, after I saw it was stolen I rolled through the blocks and started shaking down homeless people looking for clues, I was kind of like an uncool version of Shaft. These are for me a formidable stack of unfortunate monetary events. As my bank account dips lower I feel the pressure amounting not only on me but on my EP, I feel it when I sleep, I feel it when I eat, I feel it when I breathe, it is ever-present. This is good though it means my plan is working. Those of you who've read my previous posts know I've been sleeping in my car, so when pep boys took it in for the night I was legit homeless. I didn't feel safe sleeping so I did what I do best, I wandered and I pondered. I did catch about 20 minutes of sleep at a bus stop where I was subsequently woken up by a little raccoon that looked at me as if to say "Really man, a bus stop bench". You're right must keep walking. I stumbled into a target and watched people scurry around to get last minute shopping done. My first thought was "man what a money mill Christmas is" and scoffed but I was just looking at it in the wrong way. I always like to introspectively analyze my train of thought which led me down an interesting road. Christmas isn't for the ones receiving the gifts its really for those giving. I found myself not wanting any thing I saw ( although I do have a weakness for watches) but wishing I had a more lucrative passion or line of work so that I could feel that sensation of giving someone a gift. I felt sort of selfish putting my dream before all of it and skipping buying presents and things like that because music ties up all of my money. I feel money isn't always necessary when giving presents though, So I will continue to do my best and attempt to bring the world back on my shoulders and set in at the feet of those I care about. Destroy poverty and the chains money has over us. I spend such a large part of my life just worrying about money and lately it's been really getting to me and annoying me. Due to my car problems I'll probably spend my Christmas wandering around, studying and analyzing people and myself. I cannot wait for the holidays to be over simply because I want to get back to promoting the EP. Everyone is on break and for a crazy person like me it is not good. Once I announce the press release with Maelstrom then things will get rolling. The process I'm in now is a process I call void mailing, which has a response rate of maybe 4 percent. It's a way I fill my time when I don't know what else to do and I find people I think may dig my stuff whether it be blogs, radio, record labels anyone I think can help and I send them an unsolicited email. I call it void mailing because practically you are emailing into a gigantic void of messages that never even get opened but hey four percent is better than zero percent. This EP has to do well there is no other option. Come January I have to step things up even more.I did book a radio interview which I'm very excited about. I have some grassroots ideas I will physically try here in LA and although my budget for digital marketing is shot I need to at least to give it some monetary backing. I do think it's time to sign a lease and for my car living days to be over. I miss my Korg SV-1 immensely, I want to play it so badly, light some incense ,drink some coffee and fill up some notebook pages .I just want to sacrifice for the EP and give it everything I've got so when I release it, even if no one buys it at least I can sleep at night knowing I tried. I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. This was by far the hardest year of my life, Let's all of us make 2016 better than 2015, for me that will be very easy. Tell me your goals, dreams and ambitions for the coming year. don't be afraid to comment! Oh and remember it's your duty as a citizen of Earth to make sure Donald Trump doesn't get elected. 12/18/2015 1 Comment Fan The Flame With this blog the number one thing I wanted to do was be 100 percent honest. I will admit I have exaggerated in the past, the desire to have friends and loved ones proud of you is truly palpable, but honesty is much better than creating wild success stories dripping with hyperbole. I've been hanging out Santa Monica this place is gorgeous, everyone is so beautiful and happy. Even their problems seem to be not that bad, I overheard a girl who had " a gigantic argument" with her mother over what type of sunblock she should bring, damn what a travesty how will they ever get past such a colossal divide.. Lately, I've been so worried about how I can make living off of music and how I can get people to like me blah blah blah. I've forgotten that I do this because I enjoy it and I was reminded of this in the most surprising of ways. I saw a street drummer the other day I stopped by and dropped a dollar and complemented him because he was really good. Then just yesterday I'm sitting at a table at a Starbucks with only one other person who after awhile looks over and says "hey man how's it going"? At first I didn’t know who it was then I realized it was the street drummer whom I later found out is named Jay, or J maybe he's with the men in black. He began asking me what I was doing here and I told him (omitting some details)and we talked about music for a moment. He went on to tell me his story that he used to play drums for his church but then started "messin with drugs" as he put it and left Sacramento and had ended up here. His story was very sad I condensed it quite a bit, he went on forever but what he said next really led me on an introspective journey. He just said he loved playing street drums, he was telling me he searches all around the city looking for new parts of his set to get a different sound. He pretty much reciting the words for a perfect old blues song. He told me how much he loved drumming for people and how much they loved him, it was almost as if he had no clue he was homeless and destitute. So basically I thought to myself if he can enjoy drumming on old paint buckets with absolutely nothing, maybe I should calm down think less and just enjoy making music again. You never know where life's lessons will come from. Oh and after all of that he was like "Yo man you got a couple dollars I could get", you just had to ruin it didn't you Jay. Anyways,since I've moved and have been living from my car, my productivity has gone through the roof, I've been up early, I mean I'm making the sun look bad, that also may be because I'm sleeping in a tiny little car and I get three to four hours of sleep a night BUT I feel great. And hey homeless people are still asking me for money so my appearance must not be too bad. For the first time in my music career I feel like I'm really out here fighting and grinding it out its beautiful. My negativity is at an all time low as well, in the past couple days I've only had one negative thought. I saw a woman wearing a shirt that said "OCD obsessive Christmas disorder" and it really made me want to assault the whole cast of the Big Bang theory and make her watch.I digress,I am going to be employed soon which is great to have income again.Instead of signing a lease I've decided to live from my car a bit longer so I can afford the promotion I have in mind. I'm sure you all remember our talk about sacrifice. I've brought on a publicist and I'm looking into a couple more people I may bring on to the team. I have a rule that I will always follow, no one works harder on my project than me. I've been going to the library everyday, emailing blogs and radio shows, anyone I can get my hands on. I've made up a flyer for my EP "Schematics" with my website and I've been handing it out to people which is probably a waste of time but only one way to find out.. The outcome no longer matters, all that matters is intention and action. I've upgrading my blog as well, I'm a real boy now and it's a .com site. i'll be putting heavy promotion behind it, I just have to get the blogs and the people behind it. The march toward the EP starts now and I couldn't be more excited!
Los Angeles is a very strange place, I can't help but feel as if I've sneaked in uninvited.I thought I was coming here in search of LA and that it had answers for me. In reality, this place is a gigantic mirror pointed directly at those who enter. You try to focus on the expanse of this gigantic place but it's funny how it leads you back to looking inward. Why am I here? What do I want with this place? What am I all about? And through these questions you start to mold your journey through this interesting slice of Earth. I also would like to point out the hidden sort of caste system here, if you don't make a certain about of money you can't live in certain parts of town to keep different income levels in their predetermined places.It exists everywhere but is so much more noticeable here.Now pertaining to my journey it comes to one question that's been asked here 7 gillion times(yes, really that many) how can this place further my music? I guess I have to network,Ughhhhh I have to interact with humans I don't already know. "Hey man so uh you like do music around here?" That may open up lines of communication that could then lead to something blah blah blah. I guess that beats my previous opening sentence " Hi I'm Hythum, can I sleep on your couch?" Anyways, I could beat down empty clubs for years and years until my soul is sucked dry and I end up desperately covering top 40's hits to get stupid people through the door but I just don't have that kind of time. So i'll try a myriad of different ideas some conventional and smart, others are unconventional and probably a waste of time but all of them require people giving a shit about me or my music which is tough for anyone now a days. I'm going to try some PR and some grassroots promotion,hell maybe even some busking(I know, gross).Everyone thinks they know what people want or what they want to hear but in realty everyone is different. My mind state is that even if i grow by connecting with even one person a day and they dig my stuff mission accomplished. I used to think that people either think to small or too big with music but you really have to marry the two schools of thoughts. Given what do I know but of all my time of promoting music I have finally learned that it's good to have very big goals and plans with lots of small moving parts inside. I will be having copies of my demo made and soon I will also stop being cheap and actually start putting promotion behind this blog. If you think you have any cool ideas of how to further spread my music I am humble and all ears reach out tell me what's on your mind or topics you'd like to tackle with the blog. Or if you want to complain to me about my run- on sentences and punctuation errors, then well come at me bro. For now, I leave you with this thought, success with music is kind of like that part at the end of Saving Private Ryan when just as Tom Hanks is shooting his pistol at the Nazi tank it explodes after being hit by a bomber plane above. Now that is either my best or worst analogy thus far.
12/3/2015 1 Comment The Vice Grip SchematicsEureka, jackpot,mission accomplished,pay-dirt, Hallelujah sweet mother of all things divine deliver me from white lines and grey skies. After 2,009 miles in under 48 hours I've done it! I made it! I accompl...... wait a second I have no where to live, no one here knows anything about my music, I have no income and I've eaten all of my granola bars. I have taken the problems I had when i left and moved them to another place and amplified them ten fold, why would anyone willingly do this? I believe the true potential of people is rarely seen, mainly because it surfaces when we are pressed and and challenged under the right circumstances. Comfort can be a disease it is important to test our boundaries. It is time for me to test my theory and put my money where my mouth is. Every situation is unique, every person has a different way of challenging themselves. You don't have to move anywhere or do anything too crazy, It's just a matter of looking inward and asking your self what you are capable of and how you can push yourself to attain your full potential. Anyway, enough preaching what the fuck do I do now? The only answer I can come up with is to go out there and fail a whole bunch of times. Try everything and once all that fails that find more things to try. Of course I'll be practicing for my first gig coming up that I'm completely not ready for but Ill be ready when the time comes because I have no other choice. This loosely ties back into my point, I probably should have waited a little longer and gotten more comfortable with playing solo but fuck it when show time rolls around we'll see what I've got.Now I don't want to diminish the importance of being prepared, sometimes I'm unprepared and that's bad. It takes a bit of discretion and just judging the situation but if you believe in your heart of hearts that it's worth a shot then just do it. What a month this has been, I'll never drive cross country like that again(unless I'm touring). All of those naive souls who go "I love road trips!" have obviously never made the trip I just did. I will say being here feels good, it just somehow feels right. I've never wanted to be successful more than I do now. I want this for myself and all of my hard work all these years, I want this to give my family something to be happy about for once, something to speak on positively, but most of all for my brother. He was always so supportive of my music and would always show me new music he's found and things I could try or ways I might improve.Me and my brother were always secretly comparing ourselves to one another as some brothers do.The foundation of our rivalry was build on respect so there was never animosity, we always wanted the best for each other.I'm not a religious man but in memory my brother is here with me. So although I have picked a particularly impossible mountain to climb I now have no choice but to rise to the occasion and become better. When I think of my brother and all of those who believe in me, I feel that beautiful empowering pressure that extracts dormant resolve residing inside of me. So .I'm not alone, all those who've never given up on me are right here with me,So let's go big brother we've got a lot of work to do.
A story that's been told and heard a million times, a musician goes to "follow their dreams" in the promise land that is LA. No promises,no one waiting for your arrival,no real reason to go but still you feel something pulling you there.Maybe it's the movies or the media that puts that feeling in some of us, whatever it may be I've succumbed to the beckoning. What started as a hopeful,inspirational move to Los Angeles has now turned into being shipwrecked in Kingdom City,Missouri sleeping in the back of a 1994 Toyota useless piece of metal. My transmission apparently didn't want to make the California trip. I would rather have taken 2 non lethal bullets than have my transmission blow and I mean that. I knew this endeavor was impossible but the impossible part was supposed to start later than this. I always say passion Is all about sacrifice, my own words haunt me in this dark little car. Dumping more money into this underachieving sub par little machine is a horrible idea but unfortunately it is also my best idea. I digress, I have been entirely too negative. The bright side really is, I get to spend the next three days in Kingdom City, Missouri. Despite my whining, music is worth all of it, it's shaped and molded me. Dawn has given me a renewed sense of hope, it serves as a solid reminder to why I'm doing all of this. My resolve is more important than my bank account or my car. LA could be a total waste of time but I have to know for sure. The danger of music is that there is no blueprint you have no idea what will work, but this is also one of the beauties of music, no story is ever the same. So as I adjust around the metal rod jabbing my rib cage, I circle back to the self evident truth, sacrifice is the backbone of passion.
|