I just had a conversation with a good friend of mine, who is a cofounder of an excellent group called “Diversify the Stand”. I meet with her twice a month to talk about where my career is going and to get an additional set of eyes on what I’m doing. Career moves made by a horn and electronics soloist/photographer can be somewhat lonely. I don’t have a duet partner! (Besides Stan, of course) The topic of this week was pretty simple. I’m stuck in the mud. I haven’t felt like my music is as easy to write as it has been, I don’t feel like my photography truly meshes in with my business, and I don’t have real clarity on what I’m doing. I told her that I wanted to hang up the camera, focus on more traditional horn playing, and put this whole thing behind me. This is scary to admit! I’ve relied on Carrie for years to help me articulate my problems and work out how to deal with them. What was the sage advice from the doctorate from Colorado? “Write a blog about it"What? Carrie? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? Write a blog? A BLOG? What a useless idea. Get out of here, Carrie. Not helpful, swing and a miss, bye Felicia.
So here I am, writing a blog trying to figure out how to write a blog about not doing well, and I’m realizing that my big mistake for the past few months is dissociation. I’ve looked at my photography, music, personal life, and other avenues of my life in a vacuum, and I’ve failed to remember that I’m just one artist living a single life. What I’ve forgotten is that it’s all connected. Yes, I can demand of myself that I play at a level where my horn playing can stand on its own. I can demand of my photography that it can exist without music (in fact, it does!) Moving forward, I realizing again that I am a multi-faceted artist. Who am I? I’m a horn and electronics performer/composer and photographer. When I’m playing horn, I’m still a photographer, and when I’m taking pictures, I’m still a musician. So here’s to 2021, a year when I make this promise to myself. No more worrying how things “fit” or “work”. I do what I do, and that’s good.
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A few weeks ago, I put the finishing touches on one of my pieces, “First Takes #4- Extended”, and I realize now that it was a massive milestone. This is the first piece that I’ve written that I truly enjoy listening to and playing. I can be crazy guilty of working on my productivity as a means of being productive, but I learned quite a lesson from finishing a piece that I like so much! I have been struggling to write for the past 6 months. Some of that may be pandemic, but as I crest the hill of #4, I’m realizing that I found composing to be so difficult because I simply didn’t like what I was writing. Sure, some of it was cool, but I didn’t actually really like it. So, my advice for musicians, photographers, and other artists is this: “Write/Play/Do What You Like”. It’s funny that I’m coming to this conclusion now- when I was studying at the University of Maryland, I was working for the performing arts center and managing visiting artists. Sometimes I got opportunities to ask them for advice. An amazing brass quartet called The Westerlies performed shortly before I was going to take an audition. I asked one of their players for any words of advice, and he said simply, “Go play what you like”. It sounded like reasonable advice, sure, but the audition mindset didn’t really give me an opportunity to take it fully. Now that I am working my way through a composer journey, I am finding new mileage in his advice- go write what you like! As I’m moving forward I’m asking myself “What will make me like this piece better?” It sounds crazy simple, but as I’m going forward and making things that I like, I’m finding sitting down to write music much easier. I’m so looking forward to incorporating this into my horn playing, photography, composing, cooking, and other activities! How do you focus on what you like? Sometimes, as a horn player or photographer, it can be difficult if you’re being hired to do something that isn’t very exciting to your artistic mission or drive. This is when it may be possible to do some creative problem solving to break down what you are doing and find elements of what you like in it. When I was performing in the military, I sometimes didn’t like the rep selection. I loved performing with my friends though! I would try to focus on a single one of them and see if I could get them to interact with me on a new level. I found that I enjoyed the playing a lot more, and it raised the level of the whole ensemble. Thanks, Willem! If you like my music, subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the bell to get notified when I go live!
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There is no weekly scheduled time to stream yet, but if you are interested in what I do, or simply want a productivity buddy to keep you honest, please head over to my Youtube channel and subscribe. Be sure to click the notification bell to be notified when I go online. I hope to see you there! A few nights ago I drove out to Makapuʻu Beach to see if I could make pictures of the Makapu‘u Lighthouse during the blue hour, after the sun had set. The Makapu‘u Lighthouse is one of the most frequently photographed subjects in Hawaiʻi, but I had not seen very many photographs of the lighthouse in the dark! The clouds didn’t quite cooperate. I was able to set up a composition that I was pretty pleased with and made a photograph of the lighthouse, the darkening purple sky, and some still water with the help of some long exposure photography. For a photographer, it can be disappointing to skip out on the sunset (only a 10 minute drive away) in hopes of creating an image that would be outside the norm, especially if the end result isn’t exactly what you had in mind. It’s a nice image, but not the one I had in mind when I planned the shoot. The real magic of photography and other art forms is that the artist is so much smaller than the form itself, and small things can be quite surprising! Just as I was about to pack in the tripod, some fishermen arrived about 20 feet away from where I was shooting. All three members of the party had headlamps! In the same spot, I turned the camera to the left and shot some more long exposures while they did some natural light painting. What I got was so much more than I could have created by just showing up to the blue hour alone. I spoke to the fishermen after I was done and got an email address to share the photos with them after I was done processing. It was a great way to meet some strangers, share a love of art making, and leave a comfort zone! Lesson learned? After the sun is set and the shot seems missed, keep your eyes and mind open for an opportunity. You never know what fish (or fishermen) may bite.
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