In 2005-2006 I composed an album which I never released to the public. (Not that anyone was waiting for it) The album was finished, but it still felt incomplete to me. Tonight I completed it.
This past year has been rough for me. I have faced difficulties that I previously couldn’t have even understood. Early in the year my issues were purely emotional. Being faced with situations that I had never encountered, my system broke. Though I doubt anyone beyond my closest friends even noticed, I was often unstable and upset. Writing this, I’m beginning to see that I have never understood my emotions. I treated them more like a black box and only analyzed the inputs and outputs, ignoring the process. I simply felt them, accepted them and then controlled my reaction. I would ask, “What made me feel that?” but not, “Why did it make me feel that?”. To survive this year I had to start asking that question.
It is April and my war ends. Spring has come. Slowly, I rebuild my tattered perspective. I scrutinize the pieces, attempting to keep only those which are sound; many are not. Viewpoints and understandings that I have developed over years of contemplation are gone, rendered useless by new evidence. The devastation is quiet drastic, yet I hold fast. My resilience surprises me and provides faith.
The gaping holes in my perspective lead to questions. Some of them are new to me but frustratingly many are essentially rephrasing of questions to which I had thought I already had the answer.
Looking back, I can see the beauty in my struggle; the unending journey for Truth, understanding and wisdom that we all travel (Some a bit more waywardly than others, I might add). I can also see that I have traveled well for I am far from where I was last year and the mountain I am now on is taller. I am satisfied with my progress but still have infinity to go, so no time for rest.
My new vantage point has come with a surprise. Over the year my understanding of art, in all forms, has grown profoundly. My old understanding now seems ridiculous, like a blind person explaining what a rainbow looks like. I am rather excited. Most importantly I better understand my emotions. Without this understanding my creativity was lead mostly by intuition and slightly by a third grade understanding of art. My work had no focus because I could not conceptualize that upon which art focuses. The second major understanding is much less obvious and not truly necessary to create great art. However, it essentially allows me to translate between engineering and art. Thus, I can put all of this expensive engineering training to work making art as well! I am beginning to understand the ways in which our minds actually function, along with how we naturally react to certain stimuli. Before this the phrase, “Music is the Universal language.” had no real meaning to me.
I feel like I need a disclaimer here for anyone who doesn’t know me personally. I have always loved music and art, despite my math, science and engineering focus. As far as musical involvement: I played saxophone in 5th & 6th grade, taught myself a bit of keyboard in 8th grade, started teaching myself guitar in 10th grade, started teaching myself bass guitar in 11th grade, started teaching myself drums in 11th grade as well, played bass guitar in a small band for 2 years, composed an electronic album in 12th grade, sang in choir in 12th grade and performed in musical theatre in 11th and 12th grade.
I tell you all of this only to emphasize how ridiculous it is that I did not realize any of this sooner. I always had a terrible time keeping up my motivation practicing any of these instruments. (Except bass guitar, social involvement/pressure with the band plus band class senior year got me pretty sharp) I kept coming back in cycles because I had surpluses of creative energy but I did not understand the process of using it. This built up energy is uncomfortable. So, I spent my energy inefficiently and quickly became frustrated when the fun part of playing an instrument, creating, had such a high failure rate
Now, finally, I am ready to truly begin my musical education. Unfortunately I don’t have the amounts of free time I had in high school to devote to music but still, there will be time enough.
I owe quite a bit of credit to my best friend, though he didn’t realize it. He is a film director and I often work with him to help produce movies (though often only theoretically haha). It is from listening to his vivid, in-depth analysis of the scene from Quentin Tarantino’s film “Death Proof” in which Jungle Julia is listening to the jukebox and swinging her hair that first lead me down the right train of thought. He kept talking about the mood of the scene and how every aspect of the image communicates this mood. It got me to ask myself what the focus was in my own work. I now have come to the conclusion that my focuses were often weak because I couldn’t really grasp the focus myself.
Now. . . I mentioned an album. . . Tonight, while driving my old album started playing on my iPod. It feels like my songs have changed, but I know that it is I that have changed. Tonight I can feel the emotions in the songs I wrote (I’m lucky I never wrote lyrics for them though). They are not perfect but they are pleasant and relaxing. This time when I listen I understand why I made the choices I did while composing because I can understand the emotion which was trying to convey. For the first time I can call my work complete. I have chosen to not modify any of the compositions of the songs nor the album arrangement. Any regrets I have with the album will stand as a benchmark for my progress. Besides this, I have plenty more music to create, music that has more potential in the first place because my goal will be in mind.
Furthermore, as a symbol and celebration of this achievement I am releasing the album, right here, right now.
Feel free to use these tracks for anything you want. Just mention me in a credit, I usually go by the pseudonym “JessXe” (also, a link would be nice! ^_^) and let me know so I can hear it!
The album Title is “Poetry” I consider it to be experimental electronic music. Kompt2, bumpin2 and hot beat are my favorites. You're going to need a system capable of low lows to hear hot beat properly.
Sorry about this website's lack of organization. I recommend downloading them all and putting them in a playlist in order.
1. 1. Is Our Mother There? - Reason 3.0
2. 2. Storm Horizon -Reason 3.0 (My first Reason Composition)
3. 3. Jazzy2 -Reason 3.0
4. 4. Racin’ -Reason 3.0
5. 5. Kompt2 -Drums Reason 3.0 –acoustic guitar –electric guitar –electric bass guitar -keyboard
6. 6. Happy Dream Song -Reason 3.0
7. 7. Ist (Pt 2) -Reason 3.0
8. 8. Cool -Reason 3.0
9. 9. Bumpin2 -Reason 3.0
10. 10. Minor -Reason 3.0
11. 11. Sweetbeats -Reason 3.0
12. 12. Hot Beat -Reason 3.0
Today is the day I stop being an aspiring artist.
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