Goodbye, Old Friend

do I quit? or have I been fired?

I have a growing sense of impending doom. As the year goes on, I find myself reluctantly inching closer and closer to my 31st birthday, and I can’t help but look around and wonder at what age one feels less lost in life. At what point do we know ourselves? At what point do we know where we would like to go, and exactly how to get there? At 20 years old, I had the idea that I would have everything that I had ever wanted by 30, a child, a home, a stable career, a vintage Chanel purse, and the ability to pick myself up and keep on striving towards excellence. Instead, I find that whatever energy I had for grasping onto any small semblance of hope for my future, has began to dwindle at rapid pace, like the strength of a bluebird fighting for it’s life against a very hungry hawk, I’m simply worn out by it all. I loom around my apartment in paint splattered sweatpants and a Paul McCartney t-shirt, I avoid my guitars, and find that strapping into a bra is just as exhausting as responding to the build up of inquiries about my new album, some days I cook elaborate meals for hours, only to taste nothingness with each bite, which seems only to be an analogy for how I feel about every song I’ve ever written. The truth is, I feel for the first time in a long time that I am finally pivoting away from the thing I have desired above all else for nearly half of my life, the idea that I am meant to make music.

Every 6 months or so, I am catapulted into the depths of a sweet and sticky depressive episode, my mental illness begins to persuade me of my own lack of worth, of my own lack of talent, of my own undeserving state of existence. Generally, after a couple of months, a flurry of medications, and some odd strike of luck, I am brought back to a rational state of mind, and all of my doubts subside into the darkness of my memory. Although, this time, my doubts remain before me in broad daylight, etched in stone, as I stand at the foot of a grave, placing flowers before the dreams I once held so dear. I could lie and say I have no idea how I got here, that I don’t know where it all began, that I haven’t been told time and time again by various industry figures that I am ungrateful and undeserving, like the time I received a phone call telling me that writing my own songs would be career suicide. I could lie and say I have forgotten about the plate of fettuccini Alfredo that was pushed away from me by a manager, telling me that gaining any weight would only lead to me being dropped from my record label. I’d be lying if I said I was unaffected by the ever constant scroll of comments informing me that my entire identity exists only because of the various men who have involved themselves in my career, or that I didn’t mind when the names of these men were yelled out at my shows “Where’s Alex Turner?!” I’ve always been tempted to yell back “he’s hovering in the rafters, pulling the strings on my guitar”. I’d be lying if I said each time I have been dropped by a record label, I didn’t fall into a state of suicidal ideation, of feeling like I must be just entirely worthless. So I won’t lie when about this particular time around, when the release of my third studio album coincided with my immediate release from another record contract, “the numbers weren’t great”, “I could have posted more on TikTok”, “my management failed”, “I could have toured more”, that I don’t wish more than anything that someone would just tell me straight up already “you’re not good enough”. I can’t tell if I am breaking up with my dream, or if my dream is simply leaving me for someone much more qualified.

I write to you from the perspective of a person who is utterly exhausted by it all. My sensitive nature is what makes my art what it is, but those feelings do not dwindle with the timbre of the songs final chord, they linger and grow within me as I walk out the door, and I am left alone with them and only them. In music, sensitivity is praised until its inevitable transition into difficulty, and I am sick of being difficult, I am sick of it all feeling so god damn difficult.

Am I just tired? Or am I tired of it all?

-A