There’re a lot of things pertaining to song a day that I wish I had considered from the start.

The fact that I always wear purple now, for instance. I wish that I had done that (or something like it) from the beginning. I always had a sense (and people were always giving me advice) that song a day needed a visual through-line to hold the project together. One person at some point suggested a background that I always have with me, which was a cool idea. But then my friend Ronen noticed how often I wear purple and just suggested that whenever I’m in front of a camera, I should have the purple on. It was a simple and elegant solution.

Back when I started song a day, I wasn’t thinking about this kind of thing at all.

I often wish that I had started song a day a day BEFORE Jan. 1 2009 so that I could write each day’s song the day before. The reason for this is that I think it would be a good idea to release the song at the same time each day. Say, 10am. Or something. This is pretty much impossible if I’m making the song of the day ON the day, but if I were always one day ahead, it’d be much simpler. I could always start doing this at any time, and maybe sometime I will, but for some reason it feels like an awkward thing to do so far into this project.

Back when I started song a day, I wasn’t thinking about this kind of thing at all.

I’ve always noticed (and it’s well known) that small consistencies can really make folks who watch or stick with a project over a long period feel welcome, and at home. Many YouTubers greet their viewers with some pet name (Nerdfighters, or Ze Frank’s Sports Racers). I’ve noticed that I have this “at home” feeling when listening to podcasts. The announcers always start the same way and it makes you feel good and welcome. This podcast I’m obsessed with at the moment, “The History of Rome” has the simplest intro but for some reason it feels great. “Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome”. That’s it. Over and over, episode after episode.

I used to put the number for my song in the title, at the beginning: “Song A Day #1: In The Time of The Gods”. Then at some point I took out the number and just had the title. This was because I noticed that when my videos came up in the side bar, it was just a deal of “Song A Day #x” and it looked horrible. It was visually distracting and it made me not want to click on anything. But eventually I missed the song number so I started putting it at the end: “In The Time of The Gods | Song A Day #1”.

This worked for while. but earlier this year I decided to take them out again. I just really like the clean title look. And I feel like a clean title is more clickable, for what that’s worth.

Then just the other day, while listening to the History of Rome, I got the idea that I should introduce myself at the beginning of each video, and say which number I’m on. It’s winwinwin - I can keep the number, have a clean title, and have a thing that I say at the beginning of videos to make my listeners feel like they’re home. I wish that I had been doing this from the beginning. Oh man.

But back when I started song a day, I wasn’t thinking about this kind of thing at all.

I’m in San Francisco at a conference with a lot of designers. Some of them know my work, and when they come up to talk to me, they most often talk about how amazing it is that I’ve been writing a song a day for so long. Like, it’s just incredible!

I really don’t feel like it’s that crazy. I honestly think that everyone has strengths and weaknesses; making lots of things consistently is one of my biggest strengths.

If that’s not something you’re good at, there’re so many different projects and frameworks that exist for helping people break out of their creative blocks. Making something everyday, whatever it is, is an obvious one. Whether it be for a month, a year, whatever. There’s NanoRiMo, where you’re invited to write a novel in a month. There’s SongFight which invites you to create a song based on a title every week. There’s a ton of these kinds of things, and it’s not hard to find them on the internet.

The thing I’ve had trouble with though, as I’ve written about before, is diving super deep into ONE thing, and iterating over and over until it’s as close to perfect as I can make it. I just don’t have the innate ability to do that. I lack that perfectionism gene.

I wish there was a project or framework for someone like me. Like, a “Song A Day” or a NanoRiMo for someone who needs to focus on quality, not quantity. I have no idea what that would look like.  I don’t know if there’s really a big enough market for that, a big enough audience. Most people I know struggle with TOO MUCH perfectionism.

But if someone wanted to develop something along those lines, I’d be eternally grateful.

It's fascinating to see yourself and your work through other people's eyes.

I had a great discussion last week with Ben Arthur, the main teacher at the songwriting summer program where I've been working. He was asking me some pointed but friendly questions about the nature of song a day as it relates to my overall goals as a songwriter. 

Ben is a songwriter and performer and all around creative dude. He's about 10 years older than me. He has a similar career to me in that he hustles and brings together a bunch of disparate but related avenues to make his living. 

He spoke about Song A Day as performance art - akin to David Blaine holding his breathe for an ungodly amount of time, or locking himself in a cube above London for a week. It's not that I've never thought about Song A Day this way, but to hear him lay it out so clearly was interesting. It was crazy to hear how clearly he saw what I do as being in that light - this kind of superhero marathon type thing.

One of his questions was: Where does it go? I never really know how to answer this. As I've talked about so much in the past - I follow my nose more than anything else. Concrete plans? I have few.

Ben has a great quote that he keeps telling our students: “I’ll do something I love for free, something I hate for money, but I don't do something I hate for free.” In our conversation, he talked about keeping his "art" separate from his “business”. The songs he writes for money - the work that brings in the dough - is totally separate from the albums he makes for himself. He seemed interested - maybe even a little concerned or confused - by what he perceived as Song A Day being this amalgam of what I do for money and what I do for myself. Like it’s too mixed. Which is largely true. It's definitely got layers of both going on.

I asked Ben - when he puts out a record and it doesn't do super well (in terms of copies sold - as has happened to both of us), does he ever doubt the quality of the record? The quality of the work? In other words - if HE likes what he's made, does other people's lack of interest negatively affect his perception of what he's made? And his answer was no, absolutely not. He had this great idea about "scratching an itch". The idea being that any creative endeavor begins with an itch - a weird sense inside yourself that you've got an idea, a feeling for a thing you've got to make. If what he's made successfully scratches that itch, then nothing else matters - he knows he was successful. 

I really like this idea!! I suppose to a great degree Song A Day started as a way to consistently scratch an itch that's just kind of ongoing for me.

When I put out an album, when I go back and really focus on a set of songs, mixing, mastering, releasing on iTunes and Spotify and all that - that's DEFINITELY me scratching an itch. But I guess for me, I have a hard time with the itch scratching being the end all and be all of the purpose. If not as many people hear or respond to the thing that scratched my itch, there's this big part of me that doubts whether or not it's "good" - EVEN if I still like it and think it's good work. EVEN if the itch was thoroughly scratched. 

I think, once again, it’s a confidence thing. Always back to those damn insecurities. I want to learn to trust myself more, and the instincts that lead me to scratch the itches in the first place.

Memories are weird, but I’m pretty sure I remember the moment I understood what death meant. I have a distinct memory of the feeling, that first realization hitting me hard and then the overwhelming fear in seeing clearly that someday my mom and dad would die. That fear got stronger as I got older, to the point where I would keep myself up nights thinking about them dying. I’d be at home with a babysitter, and I’d be sure that they’d get into a car crash on the way home. I still entertain these thoughts with some regularity, and I’m definitely the kind of person who, if you’re more than 10 minutes late, is convinced that you are dead in a ditch somewhere, full stop. So please be on time if we’re meeting up.

These days, every time I get a phone call from my folks, I’m convinced it’s to say that one or the other of them has died or is in the hospital. Does this make me crazy? I don’t feel crazy. Granted, in the last 15 years I’ve gotten maybe three? four? of these phone calls, out of thousands.

I’m fascinated and horrified by all the different ways somebody can die. A few years ago I was at a dance performance and one of the dance companies was performing in honor of their choreographer, who had died a few weeks prior. He was in his 40s, healthy as can be, and then he had a brain aneurysm. Just like that, he was gone.

(I wrote this song in response to that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6WJWegizHo)

When people have near death experiences, one of the things you always hear about is how much it makes them appreciate life. Getting close to death gives them a new clarity to see all the things they took for granted.

When I think about all the time we spend distracting ourselves - with TV, with mindless internet browsing, with songs, with…stuff - I see it all as a way to ultimately distract ourselves from the reality of death. Put another way - when are we just distracting ourselves from our fears and when are we actually, you know, living? I dunno. But it seems like if one were able to really confront, in a given moment, the very real fact that you or anyone you love could drop dead from an brain aneurysm right now, then maybe you could be enlightened and totally appreciate everything you have. Maybe I’m supposed to embrace mortality instead of fear it.

Now that I have a son, I’ve piled new fears of death on top of old fears. For most of my life, since that first moment of understanding, I’ve feared the death of the people I care about. Now I fear my own death in a way that I didn’t before. I look Jupiter in the eye and think, “Fuck, I can’t leave this boy. I want to be around for his whole life.” My dad’s dad died when he was 18 and it fucked him up. My whole life my dad has said, “Morty would have loved you. You would have really loved my dad.” and since I never knew him, all I could do was sort of imagine what that meant. I wish I could have known him, but I never really felt the loss of him. Since my grandma died before Jupiter was born, I finally understand why my dad used to say that to me al the time. This loss I feel. In my gut. There’s nothing that makes me sadder than thinking about Jupiter will never get to meet Natasha, my bubby. She would have loved him. And he really would have loved her.

https://youtu.be/nM4fGsyyWF0?t=21m20s

Derek Sivers is best known as the founder of CDBaby, the first easy to use store for musicians who wanted to sell their music online. He’s also just an incredibly nice, smart guy who writes and speaks and makes occasional videos about entrepreneurship and other interesting subjects.

I was thinking about one of his video’s recently. In it, he lays out what he says is the importance of finding the reason *WHY* you do what you do. Most people, he says, never really bother to figure it out. They go with the flow, or even worse go down a path laid out by some external expectation, be it parental or societal.

Lots of people will tell you to find the *WHY*, but I really like Derek’s take on it. In this video he puts up a list on the screen:

MONEY

PRESTIGE

FAME

LEGACY

FREEDOM

His thought is that you should pick one or two of these (I would add ARTISTIC PURSUIT) and focus on that exclusively, to the exclusion of all the others. I think this is great advice. An example he gives is that movie stars are often not as wealthy as producers, who are, in turn, not as well known as the movie stars. If you want to make money, if that makes you happy - focus on that. If fame is what you’re after, you may turn down things that would lead to more money in favor of trying to accrue fame. He uses Donald Trump as an example of someone who cherishes legacy above all else. He puts his name on EVERYTHING.

Well, as I was laying in bed the other night, it occurred to me that I’ve thought a TON about the *WHY*. I think about it all the time. And the conclusion that I come to over and over is that I have multiple why’s. Many overlapping why’s. I cannot choose just one or two of those things. Bits of each are tightly wrapped up into everything I do.

This is a very similar conclusion/discussion as another blog post I wrote a while back about “picking the basket”. Focusing is not my strong suit. I want it all. I can see why it would be good to focus. I can imagine what it would be like to focus. But I just can’t bring myself to do it.

On other other hand, I’ve wanted to be a musician, to be a songwriter, since I was 12 years old. So in some ways, I have focused on that and I have always been singularly focused on that pursuit. But in that pursuit, I’ve definitely lead myself down a whole variety of paths, some that make me happier than others. I feel like some of my why’s are in conflict with one another. The need to make a living and support my family is in conflict with my desire to try new things and feel like I’m moving ahead creatively.

My main source of income is writing songs for companies. I don’t hate it - there are aspects of it that I really love. I think there is actually something romantic about practicing songwriting as a literal craft. Like being a shoe cobbler. Someone tells me their idea and I make it into a song. It’s not magic, it’s just that I’ve practiced my craft.

But as you all know, I would much rather be able to make a living solely from a direct relationship with fans of my music. That continues to elude me.

Is that because I'm not focused enough on fame, at the expense of everything else?