This is the title of a new piece. I guess it’s not that new by now. It was completed in 2021 and had a run of performances, but today the studio recording is being released. This piece has been living rent-free in my head since I first started sketching out ideas for it. When I write a new piece, the same process tends to unfold: I think long and hard about what it is I want to say with a new piece, and then I realize I’m being pretentious, throw it all away, and try to follow my intuition. But this piece was a little different. I think I did start out the same way, by asking myself what I wanted to say. However, there were other questions circling my mind that took control and ate away at me during the writing process. The end result was a piece that is special to me. All of my music is special to me in some way or another, but this one is special, not because of what it’s saying, but because of what it’s asking. This piece offers up no definitive perspective on something. It’s a piece about searching for an answer and realizing there probably isn’t one. It’s a piece about feeling alone even though you know you’re not. And it’s also a piece about creating art—why I do it, and to what end. Every time I hear this piece it feels like coming home, but not in a triumphant “The war is over!” type of way. It’s a feeling of comfort, mixed with the uneasiness of knowing that “home” could be something more, something better. But home is home nonetheless.
I am an artist. It took me a long time to become comfortable saying that. Not because I didn’t want to be known as an “artist”, but because I always thought an artist did something good for the world. I thought “artists” and “art” made the world a better place. Now, many years later, I have no issue self-describing as an artist, but I’m still burdened with the belief that what I do is selfish. I write music, and I don’t think I could ever stop doing what I do or being who I am, but there is a voice inside reminding me that what I do is only in my self-interest. As artists we can’t know whether our creations will have any effect on anyone for good or for worse. Yet, we do these things regardless. We do them for ourselves. That’s the line we come to live with—our art is for ourselves first and foremost. We do this for peace of mind, to calm an inexorable urge within ourselves; we do this for survival. We have to be selfish. Our work is only truly our own if we are selfish about it.
The world doesn’t need me. is both a reflection on and a reflection of that selfishness. I often write music that has an atmosphere to it, a landscape for you to experience the piece in. However, I took that notion a step further with The world doesn’t need me. With this work, I sought to create an organic ecosystem of sorts, a world created through music that lives and breathes and grows. Some parts of this world are tumultuous, some parts are messy, but there is also beauty. The role of the electronics in this piece extends beyond effects pedals and amplifiers. I created an electronic system that records little bits of what the performer is playing at certain points in the piece. Those recordings get manipulated and played back to create an atmosphere for the performer to exist in. None of the material played back is pre-recorded before the performance. Everything is captured as the piece unfolds; the seeds are sown for the harvest to grow. During the last two minutes of the piece the performer sits there without playing a note as the electronics continue on their own organically, building a new world out of old materials. The ecosystem of this piece absorbs what the performer gives to it, and creates new life out of it. When our work leaves our hands we can no longer control how it may affect the world. We can only hope that it leads to something beautiful.
When this piece was commissioned, the world had stopped. Writing music seemed unnecessary. Who was I writing for? Who would even be listening when everyone is too worried about staying alive? But I wrote anyway. These questions never stopped swirling in my head. The question of “Why?” was never more present in my mind than during the process of writing this piece. Now, I sit down and take account of what is happening in the world, and I admit to myself that the world doesn’t need me to make art. But I need this, and sometimes we just do what we need to do to survive.