I’ve been putting a ton of work lately into my D&D game - that’s a private game with a group of people who want to mostly keep it to themselves. I’ve been putting 10 or 15+ hours a month into making that experience as fantastic as it can be and it’s paid off! Great, memorable sessions, with only 5 or so other people who’ll ever know about them.
Same thing with the music I’ve been writing - there are times when I’m in the middle of improvising or writing something spectacular and think: “should I record this? should I share this?”. And I’ll hide my phone so even the little digital assistant code in it can’t hear it.
Very, very curious about that instinct to put large amounts of time into things that won’t get much reach - to avoid sharing things that lots of people could really like a lot! I guess I’m worried it’ll get away from me or stop being mine, somehow, but like, would that be so bad?
Maybe part of it’s that I want something in my life that won’t inevitably get fed into an AI model. Hmmmm
Just played the flute for an hour, and in the middle of it, I thought:
“Should I be doing this? It’s not getting me students, and I can’t put this on my resume”
Feels related to the question here. I think I want things in my life that could never be exploited by capitalism. Maybe! Maybe I’m just nervous about how other people will receive my stuff. What if they don’t like it
Hah, I love making things that I’ve not really shared out there with the world. Like you say, I don’t know if it’s secretly some kind of insecurity or what, but I like to tell myself it’s because it wasn’t really meant for anyone except myself. Not everything has to be made for public consumption. As long as you’re happy doing it and it’s not doing any harm, go for it.
But if you really do want to share it and are nervous about it, share it with a community that is more than likely to receive it well. Like here!
Yeah! I think I want to err on the side of sharing more, and I do like this community a lot .
I also noticed that, especially with music, if I don’t record an improvisation I’ll forget it. So is there a reason I want to keep these things from even myself?
Part of me is like, “there is beauty in the ephemeral”.
Part of me is like “no I have too many recorded musical ideas already and I haven’t seriously started on any of them”
Part of me is like “iso, you’re worried that future iso is gonna judge your music and say it’s not good enough”.
And part of me is like “iso, it’s ok, you can be confident, and if people don’t like the work that doesn’t diminish its value to you or your worth”
I’m trying to narrow down if it’s just like, one of these things? But I think it’s all of the above and more.
And you’re right, not everything has to be made for public consumption. Art is wild, it really is.
Yeah, I have quite a lot of time put into music tracks I’ve never shared, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. Having the space and privacy to experiment or practice can be nice. I don’t have to commit to finishing it and I don’t need to spend time packaging it for consumption.
I know this isn’t exactly what this post is asking about, but similarly there are also things I spend a lot of time on that I would never share publicly. For example, I’ve digitized and sorted a bunch of family photos. I also have a more recent quest to set up Immich to facilitate sharing those photos with my family as well.
For me, spending time on things that might not have a lot of reach is one of the enjoyable experiences of life. In other words, I think it would suck if we would need to make everything into content, haha
If there’s something holding you back from sharing when you do want to share though… I hope you can feel comfortable doing so soon! Sharing what you make can be fun. I think sometimes people hold back because they don’t feel like what they are making is good enough, but in my opinion, that is not what sharing art is about. We’re not competing to make the objectively best possible art and I don’t think such a thing exists.
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