Partial photo of the front cover of the Oct/Nov 2022 issue of my favorite magazine, Tape Op.
In case you can’t read it on your screen, here’s the quote:
“When the way of grace is followed, very little difference results in the beauty of the final productions, no matter who the maker may be and no matter what it may be that they are making.”
Isn’t that beautiful? Producer John Baccigaluppi writes in Tape Op: “The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty is a book of the writings of Soetsu Yanagi, a philosopher and founder of the mingei (folk craft) movement in Japan in the mid-1920s. Mingei celebrates the beauty in everyday handcrafted objects, such as ceramics and furniture, and how they bring daily beauty into the lives of so many people. These pieces of art are made with care, patience, and skill by craftspeople, ones who are, for the most part, anonymous and unknown.”
Having just released my new Auric Fields records, I’ve been fighting against what seems like a lifelong instinct to turn away from pieces of art or music or writing that I’ve published.
Like many makers, I haven’t always done so well at publicizing my art once I’ve finished making it. Part of the reticence is a fear of being judged or criticized by other musicians. (“How could you not hear that synth spiking at 400 Hz, dude?”).
But I think the biggest challenge is an insidious sense of perfectionism. I know that nothing I’ve made is flawless.
I know if I listen to the final product often enough and for long enough, I’ll hear things I could have done better.
If I trace this pattern of desiring to hold back rather than share my creative output, it feels very Leo Ascendant. Times I’ve been so juiced that I made something cool that I’ve thrown it out for public consumption without allowing time for my excitement to cool down so I can listen and make sure it’s really good enough — according to my own standards.
At any rate, I’ve had to fight hard with these new records to overcome the urge to keep on editing, keep on tweaking, and keep on polishing — and let myself put it out there knowing I did my absolute best and that “I followed the way of grace” in the process of making them.
I always love it when I go to the mailbox and there’s a new Tape Op issue. I love reading about what inspires musicians and engineers and producers to make music. I love reading about the gear different musicians have gravitated to and about the philosophies and practices they’ve developed to overcome the forces in the world that try to stop us from making, from creating, and from sharing our creations with others.
It was especially sweet to see that quote on the cover of the issue that showed up in the mail just after I’d finally released Auric Fields.
When I look at the places we’ve been since 2020 as a society and the turbulence to come — as many people attempt to disengage from the degraded Matrix system and find more wholesome ways of living, while many others continue to march toward a global corporate totalitarianism — I feel more strongly than ever that art is what saves us.
As I’ve said many times in the past we are of the Creator. Like the Creator, our nature is to create — to make things that express what’s in our souls, to make things that make life more interesting and more beautiful.
And, when we are lost in the process of making something, all of the heavy mental energy of the Matrix dissolves from us. We become who we really are for those moments. And that is what the world needs most.