Loneliness.

and "How the algorithm ruined Music for me" Q&A

I have never considered myself a performer, it’s not my favorite thing to do, what I love first and foremost about my job, is that it allows me to write songs and create small worlds around them. When I was younger I often envisioned myself on a stage, as a teenager the idea of singing in front of people was enthralling, but as I get older I find that I feel a bit silly waving my arms around and whispering into the mic now that I’ve entered into my thirties. All of this aside, performance is an aspect of my career that is inevitable, I lug heavy instruments and equipment from place to place, in and out of vans, into venues and hotels, back into vans and onto planes, around 9 pm each night that I am on tour, I pull myself onto a stage to perform a set of music I have written. I stand up there with my band and make small movements with my body as I sing a series of tunes that span over the last 10 years of my career. In front of me, there is generally a small space full of people who pay about $25 and commit a few hours of their week to support my music, we look into each others eyes and have a unique sort of interaction, within this space there is a mutual respect for one another, I feel gratitude for their presence, and they go out of their way to make me feel seen and heard. This is the kind of performance that one might say “fills your cup”, a special sort of synergy between real human beings in the name of art. Performing can feel invigorating, but it can also be sort of exhausting, see within a performance, you give, you give a lot of your self and express a kind of vulnerability that most people are never expected to show, and this can inevitably make you feel, drained. That is why self care is always necessary for recuperation after a tour or even one single performance, this means, for me anyways, a lot of time alone to reconnect to the real me.

Nowadays, as time has passed and the world has gone through some dramatic changes, there are a lot of new exceptions for artists, we are no longer only expected to perform for small amounts of money on stages for real human beings, we are also expected to constantly perform for, well our cell phones, in order to market our art. It can be incredibly lonely, standing in front of a screen, putting yourself out there in the hopes that your “post” will be picked up by the algorithm, performing, alone in a room, only to, in my experience, be greeted with a small handful of kind words, and about 4 hours of air time. This, to me, just feels so incredibly lonely, I find myself talking to my phone, hoping to be seen and heard, only to wake up the next day in a flurry of embarrassment and shame, “god, am I this desperate?”. Making short form content is a lot of work, aside from the emotional element and the loneliness it causes me personally, it takes hours to make a TikTok, maybe for me, as a millennial who carried a flip phone around until I was a legal adult, social media is not second nature to me, and I used to feel real pride within that, but now I find myself in a whirlwind of envy and pity for the Gen Z kids who were born with an iPad in there hands. “You should be posting two or three times a day”. Two to three times A DAY?! The question now is not “how can I post two to three times a day” the question is: “how can I keep up with this constant state of performance expected of me, and also, make good art?”. Performance and introspection are two opposing things, I must click myself out of one, into the other, in order to keep up whatever form of sanity possible. If I am performing, I’m not making good art, because my energy is facing outwards, and to write good music, you just simply need to be facing inward.

So, this is what I mean when I say that the algorithm ruined music for me, when I wrote that piece, I was met with a lot of people saying “well that is just how it is” “you get what you ask for” they’re not wrong, that is how it is, but am I not allowed to mention that perhaps this is not how it should be? Is there anyone out there protecting artists? No, labels expect us to exhaust ourselves with social media without providing the proper infrastructure to market our work outside of these platforms, Spotify takes our art and commodifies it, paying us less than a cent to use our music for people for free, social media takes the highest grossing artists and pushes them to the front of the line, leaving smaller acts to crumble into the darkness. So, if no one is protecting us, we must protect ourselves. Being an artist, comes with the inevitability that you are most likely pretty sensitive, your job is to be tender and open, and if social media exhausts this part of yourself, there is just no way to survive.

So, I reached out to my followers and asked if they had any questions about what I mean, I am always surprised by the response. So, I’ll pivot now into answering the questions you all had.

1. “How do you deal with the definition of “working hard as an artist” transforming from “seeking inspiration, taking risks, being vulnerable” to “playing the game, writing the catchiest hook for Tiktok challenges, being tiktok-smart”? You already touched upon this in your piece but unfortunately some responses were probably like “well you gotta play the game and keep grinding instead of complaining, that’s just what the music business is, look at X and how she rose to mainstream fame from viral Tiktoks”. How to grow a thicker skin and staying true to self?”

This is the perfect question. I never intended on playing any sort of game, I intended to make music, to make art, to show a sliver of my true self through the words of a song, and now that the success of my career seems to rely on some strike of luck on an app on an iphone, well, I’d be bullshitting you if I said that hasn’t effected the way that I write music now. I don’t want to be considering TikTok trends when I’m in the midst of writing a song, I want to believe that long form albums are being heard, I want to be genuine and fully immersed in my work, social media is like the Devil on my shoulder, and I wish I could just simply swat it away. This isn’t about stubbornness either, I don’t suck at tik tok because I’m stubborn and I want my music to take off, I just simply do not like the way it makes me feel, it makes me feel anxious and lesser than, and who wants to be forced into partaking in something that makes them feel sick? We have enough of that just in our lives as adults, as adults in a capitalistic society, so yes, I SHOULD do more, but I just hate how it makes me see myself.

2. When i read your substack, i was hoping you’d give yourself some credit regarding how we don’t know what happens in ‘the silence.’ when i put out a novel, i can see little metrics that go up or plateau, but it’s only when someone messages me or i see them at the bar and they say some nice things about the work that i’m reminded that what we do exists in perpetuity, and will exist after we’re gone. you talk about how it feels to see your followers go down, but there’s a silent accretion of people who discover your work, and maybe even become minorly obsessed with it but leave no digital footprint. my alexandra savior cd spins and only i am there to witness it. consuming can be something done in total private so this could be happening right now, as you read this, and you’d never know. you’re a shy person- probably not someone who would make a grand gesture to tell an inspiration how much their work means to you. is it not reasonable for you to acknowledge you have many shy girls (and boys like me) who are silently touched by your work as well?

I get a lot of comments from people who enjoy my music and the general consensus seems to be “why isn’t a small handful of listeners enough”? It should be enough, it should be enough to not only support an artist financially, but also, it should be enough to encourage an artist to continue to be themselves. But, social media now, and not to mention Spotify, it’s a constant cycle of hunger and consumption, a post, or a song, is just simply given less time to grow, because we are onto the next thing in only seconds. So, yes, I am lucky enough to have a small group of shy girls listening to my music, and that is beautiful to me, don’t get me wrong, but, I’m just not being paid. Yes, I am a shy person, my mom says I’m an “extroverted introvert” whatever that means, and I have had a small amount of success, I should mention that this success is completely enough for me on a soul level, I had dreamt of this all my life, and the fact that I have people who listen to my songs boggles me, I just can’t seem to make a living off of it, and it takes SO MUCH time and energy to do this job, so I guess I’ll just say this : if you clocked in every day working at a cafe, slinging pancakes and pouring coffee from a pot, you love your costumers but, at the end of the day you’re utterly exhausted, then, payday rolls around, and your boss says “oh no this job isn’t really paid, but you should be grateful because so many people drank your coffee and ate your pancakes” would you go back the next day and keep working your ass off?

3. hello dear alex! this is very exciting. I really loved your writing style and choice of words in that article :)) and I’d love to ask a question or two! what kind of self do we, as a society and individuals/artists lose when our first instinct is to ask how we might appear, rather than who we might become? what parts of your artistry feel truly yours, and have you ever caught yourself pushing and shaping parts of your art to fit and to survive in an industry that prioritizes marketable femininity? If our work is consumed in seconds, does the slow act of creation take on a new kind of courage? do you think the pressure to remain “relevant” is a modern version of the old pressure for women to remain desirable— and how does that shape the art you can make? (and sorry for my poor words.) how do you navigate the conflict between wanting your art to reach people and not wanting to commodify yourself in ways that feel untrue? In a world where successful women are often framed as exceptions, not the rule, how do you stay connected to your sense of worth when success feels strategically

   limited? when you think about younger women entering the industry now, what do you hope they learn from your struggle and what do you hope they never have to learn at all? ..that’s it! I hope I asked the right questions.

Wow what a beautiful set of question! I don’t think I’ve ever felt pressured to express femininity, I’m a pretty feminine person and I think that is beautiful. I have felt pressured to mold myself early on in my career to something that might be considered popular, but I don’t feel that anymore. For younger women, I just hope that they feel that they can be themselves And shut out the noise of what everyone else is doing and what everyone else wants from us as women. I do feel pressure to remain “relevant” yes, more than anything I feel like something is slipping out of my hands, the magic that I rely on to make my art, it’s fading with the exceptions I have to be relevant.