Being creative means being cringe

I’m back in Melbourne this week, finishing the album I’ve been working on.

Recording ‘Anomie’ has been a huge education. I am not musically literate. I taught myself guitar and only learnt a handful of chords. Turning my strange solo work into recorded songs that make sense has been challenging at times.

It’s also been a mentally taxing process. Sometimes my insecurities (and canonically unstable mental health) get the better of me. I wonder: What's the point? Is it any good? Will anyone care? Am I too grandiose? Self-absorbed? Cringe? Ugly? OLD?

Collaborating to create art is an inherently vulnerable process. Let alone sharing and promoting it. Despite the countless times I’ve said to young people that mistakes, failures and ‘just having a go’ are what’s most important, I don’t like being vulnerable 🙅‍♀️

I’m trying to remember that being creative often does and probably SHOULD mean being a bit unhinged. Being dramatic, sensitive and cringe. Feeling, and looking, silly.

I’m lucky to have patient, kind and clever people around me to work through ideas and issues, and reassure me when I’m spiralling.

This week my brother sent me this encouraging quote from Mary Oliver:

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

I may be a little late, AND I MAY BE A LITTLE CRINGE, but I’m glad to finally be giving these songs their best shot.