Voice Note #5 - Consolation Prize

On feeling stuck, overcoming creative block, and the vulnerability of making mistakes

These past two weeks, I’ve been experiencing one massive, all-consuming mental block, and it’s been hell trying to find my way through the sludge. I wanted to draw, and paint, and make music, but each time, I stopped myself—or more accurately, kind of had a half-hearted go at whatever it was I wanted to do, then gave up the moment my frustrations started to overwhelm me. (Every single day, on my to-do list: Write a song. Not once, until just a couple of hours ago, did I manage to bring myself to my guitar). 

Whenever I resolved to do something, I felt like I couldn’t, but the truth is, I simply didn’t. I’m realizing that there is a big difference between the two—most of the time, we mistake the former for the latter. The truth is, we are capable of so much more than we think. I hate to sound like a cheesy zen platitude, but it’s true. I’ve known for years that a resistance to doing things you know you want to do comes from a fear of doing them wrong — in other words, a fear of failing. A lot of times, for me, it’s the fear of the experience not living up to my expectations. It comes from some form of perfectionism, and having ideals or expectations that feel too daunting to meet. 

It tends to manifest in times of stress or uncertainty, at least for me. At some point in high school, I wanted to get into a bunch of old independent films, all titles I’d copied down from Rookie articles. I would be seized by an odd brand of anxiety whenever I sat down to play one of the movies on my list. Petty, inane worries popped up so often that the voices in my head blared over whatever was playing out onscreen: What if I’m not smart enough to appreciate this? What if this environment isn’t conducive to how I’m supposed to experience it, what if I get interrupted and someone texts me or my mom asks for help with chores or what if I suddenly remember a school assignment I’ve neglected? What if I don’t get it, what if I’m not cool enough or deep enough to understand what this film is really about? (I was very fun at parties.)

The answer is simple and everyone knows it—Google knows it, your grandma knows it, every self-help book on the market knows it: let go of expectations. Let go of the iron-grip pressure of being perfect. Despite the fact that I’ve known this for years, I find it difficult to genuinely assimilate this mindset. I frequently find myself feeling paralyzed. Even now, ironically, as I write this, I feel paralyzed. 

Whenever I feel paralyzed, I distract myself with other people’s work, under the guise of “research” and “gathering inspiration.” I know, deep down, that it’s a thinly-veiled excuse for procrastination, but it does comfort me to know that the people I admire experience the same obstinate grinding whirr of creative block. Durga Chew-Bose has said that “writing is grunt work.” And while working on Melodrama, Lorde talked about feeling anxious because she wasn’t sure she had it in her to create anything that lived up to Pure Heroine. Haley Nahman is open about feeling stuck on her newsletter, Maybe Baby — on bad weeks, she just sends out lists in lieu of essays.

Last week, Rachel Nguyen uploaded her first Youtube video in months, a gorgeously unpolished, honest vlog about her life in lockdown, mostly captured on screen recording. It popped up on my homescreen a few minutes after it had been uploaded, on the day I sat down to finally, finally write the week’s newsletter (the one about Miley Cyrus). The video was only eight minutes long, so I allowed myself the distraction.

The vlog simulates a video call—Rachel’s face peers through the box of her laptop’s Photobooth webcam, a lone square in the middle of a desktop littered with screenshots and files. I found this ingenious. That is, after all, how we live and connect and show up these days. When I first heard her say This is how I exist, I felt a surge of relief. I’ve been feeling unmoored, lately, by the inertia of being stuck. It’s ironic, I know—but I liken this feeling to the sensation of drifting, of floating belly-up on the surface of a deep, dark ocean with no land in sight. You’re not moving, everything is still, and it’s all so terrifying.

It felt refreshing (and comforting) to see Rachel run through old footage. In the vlog, she vents earnestly about how difficult it’s been to attempt to cobble anything compelling from the past few months, a frustration I can deeply relate to. Everything feels so isolating lately, like the days are clouded over with a light wash of loneliness, just visible enough to niggle through the seams in between all the quiet moments. Sometimes-eerie, sometimes-tranquil silence has been the one constant of this year for many of us cooped up at home. “If this were a vlog, this is what you’d see right now,” Rachel says, and the video cuts to a shot of her perched on a chair at her desk, facing her computer, in sweatpants and and a tank top (the all too familiar work-from-home uniform of this pandemic!). 

And man, I get it. When you’re feeling blocked, it’s hard to form a remotely exciting narrative about your day-to-day life. Throughout the last few weeks, I compulsively compiled notes on anything that might be at all interesting to write about. I ended up with a long, confusing, messy list, a record of the minutiae of my day-to-day that overwhelmed me more than anything.

“I had this realization as I’ve hit, like, a blocking point with this video,” she confesses, through the soft pixelated blur of her webcam. “I’ve actually done this quite often, where I work on a video, and I’m like, this is just not how I’m seeing it in my head, I cannot execute the idea, and more often than not, the video just goes into a hard drive and disappears into the ether.” Standing over my desk, I felt a pang in my chest and thought about the 118 voice memos on my phone, all songs or snippets of songs or tiny melodies or ideas or lyrics. 

For years, it seems, I’ve been working and working on all this music with nothing to show for it. To be fair, not much has materialized. The ideas have remained seedlings because I’ve neglected to nurture them to fruition. Ironically enough, the two years I pursued music full-time were the two years I wrote the least material. I’ve been coming back to it, slowly, and sometimes I am suddenly caught by a tune or a line out of thin air. But I’ve been squandering these little fragments of inspiration. I haven’t had the bravery to see my ideas through. I haven’t truly dared to explore my curiosity because I’ve been too afraid of risking failure. 

When I started this project, I wanted to challenge myself to put out a song every week, hoping that most of them would be new. I also wanted to put my old songs out there. But if I’m being honest, up until tonight, twelve hours before this newsletter goes out, I hadn’t written anything new from the moment Voice Notes launched. Everything I’ve put out on this newsletter so far has been a previously-written track, something I finished at a time I was maybe a little more courageous, a little less self-serious, a little more sure. I’ve been feeling guilty about it, not because I’m under any illusions that anyone is expecting anything from me, but out of a sense of obligation to myself. 

I began Voice Notes with the intention of finding my own voice, both as a writer and as a music artist. But you can’t find your voice unless you actively go looking for it. Clinging on to old takes isn’t going to produce new ones. Sometimes you just have to make shitty work. (I said this in my last newsletter, I know! It’s so easy to dole out insights and so hard to actually do the work). I admire it a lot in others — I find myself so frequently capsized by the rough beauty in imperfections and cracks — yet I’m unable to do so myself. I want my work to be genuine, to have the same raw quality I am so drawn to elsewhere, but in truth, I don’t know if I can pull it off. It’s hard to see yourself the way other people do from the outside, so I don’t know if I ever have. I do try, all the time, to be as real as I can be, and I guess that’s got to count for something.

Lately, I’ve been talking to a friend who’s starting a new professional path, one that’s sharply different from the career she’s dedicated the past five years towards. She’s exploring something new in a big way, and moving abroad shortly after New Year’s. A few weeks ago, while I was bouncing off newsletter ideas with her, she texted, “I love that this feels like a new beginning. You can just be whoever you want to be—and that might look like so many things at once.”

I’ve always admired people who can explore all facets of themselves, who can be rebellious and free, but also maintain a sense of integrity. I think part of growing up is getting to realize that you don’t have to pick between sides, that you can be all of them at once. My friend told me, “You are more than enough—more than all the women you think you need to be.” I hold this close to my heart. It might sound simple, but to me, it was a revelation. I repeat it silently like a mantra when I begin to feel my anxiety whirring. I’ve never really given myself permission to be more than one thing. To think that you can be all of them, that the world can open up to you in this huge way, feels incredibly rich.

We box ourselves into expectations of who we should be and what we are allowed to do. I did this a lot while I was pursuing music from high school all the way until a couple of years after college. I’d tell myself that I could only be a singer and I had to be consistent and I had to stick to writing the same kinds of songs, and I had to stay in my lane, and I had to get really, really good at this one specific thing. I didn’t allow myself to play or explore new things. I didn’t ask myself, What would my life look like without all this pressure to be just this one thing? What would it look like if I allowed myself to open up to everything else? On a smaller (or perhaps larger?) scale, I’ve seen reflections of this mindset in our discourse online, as people refer, even jokingly, to their personal “branding.” You see it on Instagram feeds, which are becoming more and more inconspicuously curated, and on Twitter threads depicting personalities in concentrate. I’ve succumbed to this so much throughout my existence on the internet.

I’ve been realizing, a little late, that life is so much richer when you allow yourself the potential of exploring everything you are. I’ve spent far too many years boxing myself in. Whether for fear of disappointment, failure, the unfamiliar, or all of the above. 

The reason why I started this newsletter in the first place was because I was tired of the cage I’d built for myself. I wanted to heal my relationship with music (and creativity) by allowing myself the freedom of sharing some kind of creative output every week. Before writing the first letter, I put together a manifesto. In it, I wrote that Voice Notes would be “a space to play, a diary, a place where I can follow my curiosity. A virtual, freewheeling playground where I get to explore all the kinds of writing and creativity I’ve ever wanted to try out, or just talk about whatever.” It’s a long manifesto that goes on for a few paragraphs, and then at the end: “...a place where I can consistently be inconsistent. I am allowed to be imperfect here.”

As a (recovering) perfectionist, the commitment to imperfection is very, very difficult for me to follow through. The creative works I love the most have a raw, unfiltered quality (like Rachel’s Youtube videos or Liana Finck’s scratchy drawings or Petra Collins’ hazy photography or Ophelia Mikkelson Jones’ paintings). Yet I have difficulty letting loose with my own work. I’m trying not to be a people pleaser anymore, but I am still so easily paralyzed, even when met with success—especially when met with success. It’s confusing to try explaining this to others, because I do get to put my work out there. My music is on Spotify. I have a newsletter. But it doesn’t change how I feel. I’m still so frequently held back by wondering what people will think, ashamed as I am to admit it. I’m still on a tightrope I’ve constructed for myself because I’m so afraid of disappointing others, and even more afraid of disappointing myself. (What does that say about my self-talk, my inner monologue? Being inside this head gets exhausting. I’m trying to change that.)

In her video, Rachel says, “While I try to be raw, I’m not being raw with myself. Not being real to myself about my own creative process.” She pulls up Google Chrome to share an image search mosaic of crumpled up pieces of paper. “If this was a real life moment, this is what this video could have been, is one of these... This video, like many, probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day. But what I would give to see the crumpled-up papers of people that I very much admire.”

I loved seeing Rachel’s crumpled up piece of paper in video form. I love listening to early, crude recordings of songs getting made, like the behind-the-scenes clips artists share on Song Exploder. I love leafing through illustrated journals—the sketchy drafts and studies are my favorite parts. There’s a kind of magic that this vulnerability captures, a subtle magic that fades into imperceptibility once the final work is polished. I too want to be raw and vulnerable and authentic, but it’s hard for me not to polish things. It’s hard for me to relinquish control and just run free with whatever I want and then put it out into the world without any self-consciousness or shame.

Last week, I wrote about Miley Cyrus’ new record, and how a bunch of other artists I liked had released new material, all within days of each other. It was wonderful and inspiring and incredibly frustrating. So much new music, and I couldn’t write my own. It felt almost hypocritical, to be drafting that letter after having spent the previous night sitting with my guitar on my lap, unable to come up with anything solid.

I offer to you my crumpled up piece of paper this week, this botched diary entry/letter/rant. And a new song, finally. The first I’ve written to completion in months. Tonight, I sat down for an hour and attempted a speed-writing exercise. I committed to writing a song in fifteen minutes, and I promised myself I’d be okay with it being bad. It took me an hour, but I think just the permission to make something that sucked helped me loosen up.

It feels like something’s dislodged, and I can breathe a little bit. I’m hoping that getting past this hurdle will make writing songs a bit easier with consistency. I’d forgotten how much I loved writing songs. How satisfying it feels to have this whole piece of music complete, like you could hold it if only it were tangible. I recorded it on my phone, and tried very hard not to get too itchy about the mistakes. I hope you like it. Another crumpled up piece of paper from me, in song form. I still have a backlog of songs that I haven’t released. I’ll show you all these crumpled up pieces of paper as I release those old works. I want to make space for new ones. 

A couple of weeks ago, I came across “Fast Running,” a comic strip in Edith Zimmerman’s newsletter Drawing Links (which I love so much, I reference it in almost every newsletter I send out). It has stuck with me since, and I think about it probably every day. I’ll leave you with this:

Excerpts from Edith Zimmerman’s comic strip, Fast Running

See you next week. (And merry Christmas, very soon!) <3

- Niki xx

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Consolation Prize

Well, I guess this is it
I think we've reached
The end of the line

Couldn't pry myself away for years
But you've gone and
Outdone yourself this time

Not another fucking consolation prize
I would rather
Stand here stranded
And watch you say goodbye

From the windows of the train
Home spins out of view
Then fades away

Yes, I know that you tried
But I'm through with shrinking
Just to make you smile

Not another fucking consolation prize
I would rather
Stand here stranded
And watch you say goodbye

I loved you so much and it was all so sad
But the leaves are changing and I can't stay
The sun doesn't rise here anyway

Gathered all the courage I had saved
Cashed it in for this one rainy day
I won't sit in the smoke rising from your sparks
How does a flower bloom in the dark?

I don't want it
You can go
And don't forget your pride
I'll be heading
Off to somewhere
Wide and open and bright
To catch a little light

To catch a little light

In case the embed on top doesn’t work, try clicking on the title, above the lyrics. Shoot me an email if you encounter any issues.

Listen to the entire Voice Notes secret playlist here.

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Troubleshooting links

In preparation for this newsletter, I read a bunch of articles about feeling stuck. They were all incredibly helpful, and eased me out of the frozen rigidity I’d been trapped in for what feels like weeks.

1. How to Silence the Censor and Step Into Our Creativity

“(Your inner) censor is basically telling you that your work sucks, and that you’re going to fail if you put it out there. Because he thinks that failure is your greatest fear. And this is where you reframe your thinking. I have learned  that stepping into my own creative self means that I must have the courage to fail. I have also found that when I am willing to fail, I rarely do. Seems counterintuitive, but it’s true.”

2. How to get over “never good enough”: A practical guide

“…ask yourself what messages you received in the past about your value and safety within relationships. And begin to realize that you don’t have to live by those rules or avoid pain any longer. Connecting with pain teaches that you can tolerate it and that your vulnerabilities (Ed. note — read as: failures) don’t define you any more than your successes do.”

3. Diagnosis: Artistic Paralysis (a practical and incredibly useful list with concrete steps for taking action when you’re feeling too paralyzed to start)

“To begin with, forget about mastery and focus on what you can achieve now, in this moment. Set yourself small creative tasks that can be carried out in a short amount of time. Find quick ways of exploring an idea or simple exercises to get going with a design. And even if you only complete that one small task, it’s been a good day. You started! One possible cure for artistic paralysis is to take the pressure off. Start small and build gradually. Don’t expect to make a masterpiece. Don’t even expect to make something you deem to be good. Just expect to start.”

4. The courage to be an imperfect artist; or, how not to get stuck on your way to perfection

I think in our century we’re all starving for authenticity and honest simple stories of simple people, who live just as we do… What do I mean here? You don’t have to be a genius to tell the story (here, by story I mean a drawing or whatever you create — photography, music, dance, or cookies) or a superhero to catch people’s feelings. And this is one of good work criterium, I think — it is hitting a nerve. It excites and makes you feel. I would say this is the main point.”

Lastly, I kept this note pinned to the top of the document where I wrote this:

Don’t expect to make a masterpiece. Don’t even expect to make something you deem to be good. Just expect to start. Enjoy the process. Be willing to do it badly.

This week, if you’ve been feeling stuck, like me, and maybe just needed a little push, I hope I can offer some kind of encouragement. Do something you’ve really wanted to do. Do it badly. It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be done. You might even surprise yourself.