Could've tripped out easy a-but I've a-changed my ways It'll take time, I know it but in a while

"What would have happened if you became a recording artist?"

Do you ever just... have someone say something to you that is so shockingly insensitive and downright stupid that it just... leaves you speechless?

A few years ago over dinner, a friend of mine asked me the question above. I couldn't believe this person would ask me something like this. I mean, I COULD, this is not the first time this person has said or done something like this. It was another comment in a litany of insensitive and stupid comments this person regularly makes.

I grow weary of other people's projection issues. I am sick of people talking about themselves to put me down.

Today I released my EP 'we are the werewolves,' which it out today on Bandcamp and may be out on streaming services at some point in the future. It's the 3rd anniversary of my LP 'Sweetest Tongue, Sharpest Tooth,' which was the 6th LP I had released and the 2nd LP I had put out in 2020.

So, what do you mean, "...if you had become a recording artist?" What are all those albums? What are all those singles? What are all those EPs? Some of which have thousands of streams?

I have been thinking a lot about the intersections of privilege, proximity to wealth, and disability in the last few years, though especially over the last couple of months. 

Canadian Soprano Robin Hahn (who is the most lovely human being, please go follow her), speaks candidly and often about being a disabled artist. She gave comfort to a lot of us during the 23/24 announcement cycle, and recently spoke about how so many of us are scared to talk about out chronic illnesses and disabilities, for fear it will kill our careers.

Just because my disabilities and lack of access to funds prevent me from touring, it doesn't make me not a recording artist.

Just because I do not have tens of thousands of people following me on Instagram doesn't mean I am not a recording artist. The fact that social media has completely warped our entire sense of worth and value based on follower count is baffling to me: can you imagine even, like, 300 people standing in front of you? 1,000? That is a lot of people! That fact that artists are expected to measure their value, worth, and validity based on how many faceless numbers they can amass is absurd!

Touring is expensive. Promoting your music is expensive--and you happen to have the misfortune of releasing the same day as a big name artist, forget it, you will be knocked out of the algorithms. You will have wasted all of that promotional money. You are also expected as the musician to be the booking agent, the promoter, the payroll, the engineer. You are expected to be a brand instead of a person, on top of being a human Swiss Army Knife. You are expected to cower to the gods of the streaming services, making ha'pennies in return.

I think when I first started making music in 2012, there was this expectation from my some of my "friends" that I was going to be "famous," and now that I am not, 11 years into making music, that I am somehow now a "joke." (Mind you, most of these people have never done anything with their lives, never tried anything, and they live hapless and chaotic existences--again, the issues with projection...)

I. work. so. hard.

Most of the time, I don't even take time out to enjoy my releases or celebrate them--because it's already onto the next album, already time to start mapping out the next project. The lack of physical releases and touring making releases anti-climactic. And to add on top of all that fact that so few people care. I am not talking about the people who do care--I am not talking about my friends who do buy and share and send me congratulations. I am talking about the ones who don't. I am talking about my family and friends who think that I am and what I do is a joke. I am talking about the ones who think they are laughing behind my back (even though I can hear them), who think I should give up, who think I am too old. Who think because I have not "made it" by their definition of success.

You never buy my albums, you never stream my music, you never share my releases on social media, you never even send me a fokken congratulatory text on my release days, and then you crow over my perceived "failure" as a musician.

It cannot be understated how much nepotism factors into success, to the point where there are memes about how you never ask an "indie" musician who their parents are. I think the facts speak for themselves. I know nepo babies turn into whiny piss babies at the insinuation that they're only where they are because of their parents, but there are so many people who are lightyears more talented than them who are lost because of poverty.

I. work. so. hard.

I have spent my entire life working harder than everyone else for far less. I have spent decades pushing my disabled and chronically ill body far beyond the limits of even an able-bodied person. I deal with people who were handed everything look down on me because they failed at whatever it is they barely put effort into. I have crushed myself by pushing myself to my physical, mental, and emotional limits for next to nothing, because the world has made it impossible. 

Every day I hide behind an electrical cabinet for 20 minutes warming up and practicing standing by piss, shit (human and dog), garbage and needles wondering if this is all really worth it.

You have no confidence when no one believes in you, or when they make you the avatar for their own folly and failures. You tell yourself, "I can't" because the world has told you you can't. You have everything to lose. You don't have room for risks. But you also can't let rich brats be the only people in this world who get to make art. You watch another audition and announcement season go by because you're not ready and you can't afford the astronomical application fees.

You work so hard all of the time, much harder than everyone else, for next to nothing, while you watch legitimately bad people constantly get rewarded by the same industries.

I. work. so. hard.

You are constantly expected to do so much for nothing, and  then mocked for the little you do get to accomplish.

So, to answer the original question, "what would have happened if you became a recording artist?"

I don't even know how to answer a question so stupid and insensitive, but I do know when I reach the levels of success that you deem worthy enough, I will not be taking you with me.