How to Stay Motivated in the Face of False Friends, Absent Funding, Pathetic Stats, and the Gaping Void

As a creator, I hope you aren't in similar dire straits:

• a minus zero budget
• no promise of funding
• inadequate equipment or setup for production
• not enough hours in the day for seriously pursuing the dream
• can't qualify for "monetization" due to a snail's pace of new followers
• supportive commenters suddenly drift away with no polite goodbyes
• so-called friends drop away when you dare to express your frustrations
• leaky viewer/listener retention
• potential collaborators break promises or outright ghost you

In the face of all these challenges (and more), during free moments over the last 2 years I've somehow yet filmed over 200 episodes and recorded over 70 theme tunes for my horror-comedy web series Grave Mood Rings, and the production goes on.  There's likely no one formula for staying motivated, since no two creator situations are exactly the same.  B

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Key players dropping out: Past script writers for Grave Mood Rings have retired themselves, but I couldn't let that kill my momentum, so I made the conscious decision to feel freer.  I had to choose to flip the negatives into positives, so instead of being left in a lurch, I manifested heightened creativity in their absence.  Sure, there was disillusionment and dismay to process, but I could also celebrate saying "good riddance" to those who weren't, at the end of the day, genuine supporters of the project.  They may have dallied with the idea, they may have contributed according to their own comfort levels, but they ultimately got left behind because they simply weren't running fast enough.  The thing is, art takes on its own impetus.  My show may seem like my "baby" that I nurture, but babies develop according to their own natures.  I have to keep running, too, to see where the project is going.  Sure, I try to steer things, but it would be delusional for any creator to feel in total control of a work of art.  

Headaches of collaboration: Collaboration has been the lifeblood of my show.  I could work in a vacuum, shooting hoops by myself in my own driveway, as it were, but that feels too lonely.  Grave Mood Rings isn't an egotistic pet project, and I'd much rather showcase additional talents by making the show a game with multiple players or (since I don't really know sports metaphors) a soup improved by lots of interesting spices.  To date, the show has featured 40 guests.  But, oh, the headaches involved!  There have been uncountable collaborators who never responded to queries, who made false promises (sometimes repeatedly!), who had enough time to type out complex excuses in the time it would have taken to film the 10-second clip for the show, and those who did in fact follow through but took a year to deliver.  Project management could be a full-time job in itself, for without follow-ups and cajoling, disappointment is all but guaranteed.  It's fascinating to see just how precious people can be with their time and supportiveness.  No judgement (well, maybe some!).

Money issues: Dealing with a zero budget can lead to greater innovations, so I actually embrace not being funded (though, let's face it, I wouldn't turn down money if it were ever offered).  Incrementally over 2 years, I have spent $1000 on props, costumes, and a green screen.  The phone's camera and the tripod I already had.  A family member has gifted me an occasional prop, wig, and even the costume for a haunted tree character.  A co-writer who fired himself bought a branded t-shirt we needed for a particular theme, but that apparently drained his entire fund for investing in our production.  I haven't factored what my time has been worth over the course of producing 200+ episodes.  The editing alone averages to 8 hours per 3 minutes of completed footage, and work on pre-production easily doubles that.  My partner, who plays all the characters except for my own Prof. Oddfellow, takes time away from his paying job to complete the post-production, and I haven't tallied the money he'd technically be owed for over 2,000 hours should we ever secure funding.  We're both dedicating our time and our own money to make Grave Mood Rings happen, and we're the only ones doing that because we're the only ones who believe in the show enough to do that.  All the boo-hoo-hoos aside, it's actually pretty cool because it puts us in a class of our own.  We'd prefer to be who we are than to trade places with anybody who has let us down or let us go along the way.

The numbers game of stats and followers: Here's something that ought to adjust one's attitude.  The digital marketing company Chaotic Good’s founders said the following in a Billboard interview: “Everything on the internet is fake. ... It’s an open secret in the music industry that all the numbers—play counts, followers, stats—are fake or at least obfuscated. ... Bots and 'streaming farms' have become a marketing expense."  So this is a great reminder not to compare our own apparent success to other people's.  We can't even trust the numbers on our own stats, since the powers that be not only inflate the "success" of artists being pushed on the public but also deflate the stats of those in obscurity.  It's a terrible situation, and it would be great if we could really know just how many people are ever seeing or hearing what we create, but for the time being we must be content with working in something of a gaping void.  Like tossing messages in bottles into the sea, we must maintain a bit of blind hopefulness, since the current state of the internet does not allow us to know much if anything about our audience share.  By the way, here's a little laugh: my creations aren't even followed by bots!  I watch my follower counts very carefully, and I can track almost every single one of them because they are each the result of painstaking direct marketing.  I spend hours every day searching for people who might be interested in what I'm doing, for me to reach out to.  This is an excruciatingly difficult and too-often unsatisfactory process, especially when hard-won new viewers end up dropping away over time.  If and when I discover the secret of retaining a loyal audience, I will share it gladly.

Bottom line: I admit to being an artistic failure at: making money, keeping colleagues, and maintaining followings.  But I'm a winner at not letting the setbacks defeat me or slow down my productivity.  When I don't dare to buy another prop, I craft my own out of whatever trash is lying about (best or worst example: a stethoscope fashioned out of scrap paper).  When a scriptwriter fails me, I write my own.  When my partner has no free time to film or edit, I research future possible collaborations and channels to keep the momentum.  My goal is to write and film 3 new episodes each week; sometimes it's just 1 episode, which is still okay.  It all seems to come down to a decision or an intention: keep going anyway, undistracted by so-called setbacks.  Losing two co-writers ended up breathing new life in the series, so we can't ever judge stumbling blocks as they occur since we can't know where they'll end up leading us.  A very supportive horror host just said: "[Grave Mood Rings] has always been good, but it seems like since that one writer dropped you, you've just really spread your wings.  Like a phoenix!  Kudos coming out of a difficult situation and making it better."

Onward and upward!

From our outpost at Spacey Panda Music:

The Artistic Introvert / Extrovert Clash Too Few Are Talking About

From our outpost at Spacey Panda Music:

Art Requires THIS Sort of Sacrifice?

There's a Japanese legend about a cursed flute.  It makes its player a gifted musician, but the price of the flute's magic is blood sacrifices.  Does all art require burnt offerings of some sort?  Close to home, my Grave Mood Rings series essentially took as a sacrifice a close acquaintance of several decades who outright cancelled our connection over communication differences.  Could something similar be happening with people who "ghost" fellow artists?  We try to make connections in relation to our art, and sometimes those attempts create ghosts as if the art took a sacrifice.  Making art fine-tunes one's frequency, so we are bound to encounter more and more ghosts as we focus beyond those at other frequencies.  Thing is, people on other frequencies literally can't understand or even see us.  It's like the ending of the first Silent Hill film — Rose is trying to call her husband, and his phone even rings, but he can't hear her voice through the static because she's on another plane of existence.  When we lose friends or go off someone's radar, we might flip our interpretation and take it as a badge of honor, for it proves that our own frequency has risen beyond them.  Consider a mountain metaphor — when you're standing on a mountaintop, you can see down to those who are lower than you, but from their angle they can't see where you're standing.  Maybe they can sort of hear you calling down, but there will be a weird echo and they probably won't understand.  It's nothing personal, even though it can feel totally personal.  

So when someone ghosts us, can't we say to ourselves, "Another sacrifice to the art, and the art feeds and grows"?  Just imagine a Japanese-style bulletin board of people's faces, with red streaks of paint crossing them off along the way.  Nobody promised it would be pretty, right?  

Speaking of ghosts, should we ourselves operate more as if we are spirits in this world, not expecting to be seen or understood but seeking to materialize our miracles to the wonderment and confusion of others?  Why try to get caught up in the all-too-human popularity game when one's frequency is literally above all that?  Granted, we require at least some amount of money to survive, and we surely wish for sets of eyes and ears to take in our work, but just think of the horror of appealing to the lowest common denominator!  Let's focus on finding a refined, rarefied audience.  As my magic teacher, the thrice-great Eugene Burger, suggested, "Always speak to the smartest person who might be in the audience."

Artists seem doomed to handle ruining blows.  Just yesterday, I felt devastated after receiving a measly 45 cents on a $40 sale of a Tarot deck I created.  So I had to employ that esoteric practice of seeing things in a new and truer way by flipping them upside down and backwards.  That 45 cents can be viewed not as a defeat but as a personal victory.  The 45 cents shows just how terrified the Archons are of artists, which proves how important art actually is.  My art is so priceless that the printing company didn't even know how to begin paying me for it.  The Archons want to obliterate art, to make artists doubt their worth and to give up trying, so this 45 cents is the perfect reminder never to give up and never to let them win.  The number 45 recalls an old 45 record, which is a "single" ... so perhaps I'm symbolically being reminded that I'm a singularity?

Onward and upward, I'm Prof. Oddfellow.

From our outpost at Spacey Panda Music:

Do THIS to Be Remembered as an Artist of Originality

The Japanese painter Korin, who lived until 1716, is famous for having blazed a trail "that seemed designed to thwart any would-be followers" (Mizuo Hiroshi, Edo Painting, 1972).  Followers here refers to adopters of Korin's style and/or students of his technique, but it can also mean one's champions and enthusiasts.  And there, in a nutshell, is the secret to being remembered as an artist of originality: express such peculiarity as to be inimitable even by your own biggest supporters, and also don't give your admirers a second thought.  That's not advice that's necessarily easy to adopt in a flash, but might not its achievement be the key to securing one's legacy?  To be unattainable elsewhere — that's the definition of "exclusive," and surely it's a goal for any artist.  Another definition of "exclusive" is "excluding," as Korin did his would-be followers.  What a solitary path!  But that's no surprise, is it?  Every true artist is a trailblazer, and the way is narrow when we stand upon the trembling margin of a new world.

What is effortless, actually, is finding one's singular artistry.  That's because it's always at the core of your very being — it doesn't have to be discovered but rather unfettered by externally imposed overlays that may be masking it.  Just as no two singing voices are identical, every artistic vision is one-of-a-kind, as long as it doesn't lazily emulate those who came before.  It's inevitable for an artist to have idols, and those idols very likely direct one toward one's own singularity (meaning that if you resonate with another artist, it's because there are aspects in that person's work that are stepping stones on your own path toward originality).  But consider someone like filmmaker Brian De Palma making blatantly Hitchcockian thrillers — De Palma homages his hero, which is a lovely gesture, but isn't it Hitchcock himself who will be remembered as the true original?  The two most effortless ways to untangle yourself from your models and free your voice are to pay attention to your dreams and to meditate (if not formal meditation then the Zen practice of "just sitting" quietly for periods of time).  

To cite an example close to home, as an electronic musician with the band Neons Gone Mad, I didn't wish to blur into the background of all my biggest influences, so I sought to create a hitherto unknown genre characterized by a haunted grandfather clock connected by a thread of cobweb to a Tesla spirit radio.  Clockwork rhythms, eerie bells, and ghostly voices from the aether accompany synthesized melodies and lyrics representative of my idiosyncratic angle on life.  The overall effect is unique, instantly recognizable, and nigh impossible to be imitated.  To be clear, this new genre wasn't forced simply to be something weird and different.  The inspiration for it came naturally, as the genre simply distilled several of my interests (time-bending, Tesla inventions, Spiritualism, ghost detection, experimental soundscapes, mechanical/industrial noise, synthpop) into a theretofore unknown synthesis.  Like the work of David Lynch, Neons Gone Mad isn't for everyone, but we've been commissioned by artists around the world for haunted clockwork remixes, like Sigfus of Denmark, Archmage Band in Australia, Bearcraft in the United Kingdom, and Wunderfish in Hawaii.  Yes, we're still working on "don't give your admirers a second thought."  It's a process.