The Tightrope of Deadline

Balancing art, instinct, and the madness of a self-imposed schedule.

And so there I was, gobsmackingly behind schedule again.

It crept up on me, as it always does.

“Why,” I asked myself, “did I have to choose to release this song this month?”

It was the only song that wasn’t finished on the album.

And so my checklist peered at me, dismissively:

• get song mixed

• get song mastered

• create artwork

• upload to Spotify etc

• shoot music video

Each of these things may seem incidental next to nation-building or whatever today’s current autocrats are up to. Yet each one of these tasks is its own miniature odyssey. And so I started putting my ducks in order — is that really an aphorism? — and got down to the business of getting stuff done.

No, not quite true. Let’s set the real ducks straight:

First, the panic. What?! It’s the f*’/ing 22nd of March? ALREADY!?

Of course, it doesn’t matter how angry you get at the date. The date always remains steadfastly, well, the date.

Second, I had to negotiate with my inner child. Well, you could just skip a month... This felt like a most reasonable, comforting solution. Then—what!? GET BEHIND ME, SATAN!!! Okay, okay, no negotiation with excuses. I’m on it. I promise.

Third, I had to converse with my own resistance. Is that not always the precursor to the desperate things we set ourselves? That part of you that really wants to do something is paralleled by the part that—when confronted with the exigency of actually doing it—finds itself bafflingly indifferent. An easy night in the pub wouldn’t go totally amiss... WHAT!?

In any case—I did, finally, set about my task.

My Motivation Was Threefold:

Living Up to Yourself — when you set out on a great adventure, yes, you can pivot, get lost, even turn back. But there is also something rather joyous about the gritty determination to see it through. For me, it is leaning into this space — the space where everything is knowingly permeated with compromise — where I find a form of peace. It’s about taking the limitations that come with your silly little life and shaking them up as best you can. Who’s to say they might not land in a rather beautiful shape?

The Tightrope of Deadline — In deciding to release a song per month this year, I have subjugated my life to 12 deadlines. The wonder of these little tyrants is how they expose you. Here’s the thing: you can either be permanently pulling back on life — or you can be pushed along by it. It is 1000% certain that there is no way I would get this album out this year — let alone make 12 music videos — unless I was being pushed by my terrible taskmaster. He is pushing me not only to be accountable to the dream I set out with in early 2024, but also upgrading my creative powers in multiple areas. How? Simply due to the fact that I am having to learn an absurdity of skills. Yes, I am living in a state of Stockholm Syndrome with my own autocrat!

Ruddy Spotify — One of the great helps for any indie artist is getting onto a Spotify editorial playlist. This is like buying lottery tickets, but worth the punt. The only trouble is, you have to have it uploaded a full seven days before release to get in with a shout. The last week has been a frantic palaver, but I think I’ve managed to get it in on time. Well, I’ve got it uploaded to my distributor, and now I have two days to wait to see if it’s confirmed in time by Spotify. Cripes—let’s see!

The Cost of the Easy Way

So, why didn’t I just decide to do it the easy way? I had another song and video ready at the beginning of the month. Why not just release that?

Well, frankly, sense can be damned.

Yes, I know that I should do the things that give the project the best shot in the market.

But there is also something called artistic instinct.

The new song just felt right.

It felt right for the moment. Right for the month. Right for whatever it is that I feel is missing in the world right now.

Of course, it doesn’t matter to the world at large what song I release — but it does matter on a different level.

Whatever art is — creative life itself, maybe — it is about answering something we find missing in the world.

I know it sounds absurd to say.

But you can’t be in the arts unless you’re foolish enough to believe it.

That’s one of the main reasons that songwriting always calls me back again — I am trying to find the songs I can’t find.

That’s the resonance I’m looking for.

That feels much more important to me than sense, and much more important than commercial optimisation too.

I just hope that if you hear it, it might bring something — the most little missing something — into your life too.

It might be clownish, grandiose, absurd — but if it fills a few atoms that were previously missing — that’s why we follow our beautifully misguided instincts.

The Small Matter of the Video

Now the other not-so-small pressing matter has been that of getting the video for the song made.

The most important point with this video was that it had to be ZERO budget.

This was helpful.

It ruled out a million things one would like to do and concentrated the mind on what one could actually do.

Within these parameters, I’ve been noticing a shift in me.

For a long time, music videos were kind of dead to me. I enjoyed shooting them for other artists, and last year tallied up 15 for clients. But I had no real inclination to be in front of the camera myself.

With this year’s project, though, the concept of the music video is undergoing a resurrection moment.

The initial motivation was simply to have a promotional tool for the songs. However, they are now morphing into a partner project.

What I love about the music video is that it’s such an open canvas.

You can literally follow random inclinations, found objects, or abstract storylines and see where they lead.

I think what is starting to capture my attention is simply the joy of how little a music video matters.

It is so irrelevant that it becomes precious.

The question simply becomes — in what way can you evoke the atmosphere of the song with the limited tools available to you?

With all of this in mind, I realised something important.

I would make this music video as an act of exploration. I would not rush. I would just follow my gut, experiment, stay open, sit within time, and let something unfold.

The Useful Parameters of Limitation

Doing this music video 100% solo necessitated certain things:

First was location. At the moment, Mahalla is quiet in the evenings. And so I wanted to use, once again, this magnificent building as a canvas.

Second was time. I needed the building to be quiet and empty. This meant night shoots. However, carting even limited gear around a 10,000-square-foot building means a lot of carrying stuff. But I had the great friend of the independent artist on a zero-budget schedule: time.

This is not to be overlooked, either. As soon as you’re on a big-budget music production, every decision is crushed by time because every minute is costing. Without blinking, mere setup time costs your client, in real terms, several thousand euros per hour. I, on the other hand, was criminally free of this constraint — and so cracked open a beer, started carting my gear around and seeing what the wondrous nooks and crannies of Mahalla might reveal.

Shooting

Each evening, I would start preparing my gear at 8 and loading it out of my room at 9pm. On no night, when opening my door into the vastness of Mahalla, did I know what the hell I would shoot.

What I realised on the first night was that it would be better to try to make one good scene, rather than diluting the shoot into a thousand incidentals.

And so, life started happening.

On the first night, while setting up, my dear friend Mischa appeared. He is my neighbour in Mahalla, in his 70s, and has become very dear to me.

I had been trying to film a first scene, but it felt, well, boring. The awful thing about using yourself as a prop is that there quickly becomes too much of you in what you are trying to do.

Now, Mischa — hero that he is — has taken to creating electro music in the basement.

The first night I discovered him, I stepped out of my office to the ghostly throb of monstrous bass pulsing from Mahalla’s belly. I followed the sound — and there he was.

It’s hard to describe the poetry of this — a man in his 70s discovering a penchant for dark house and cranking it out as loudly as Berghain in a Schöneweide basement.

In any case, Mischa insisted that I do some shooting for the video while he DJ’d. And so that’s what happened.

The night turned into a veritable comedy as I attempted to listen to the playback of my shoegazing synth odyssey of a song while Mischa met my efforts with full-cap thunderous electro.

I realised two things that night. The first is that if you cede control, you open up space for magic to happen. I have no idea what the world will make of how utterly bonkers these scenes are. Why, exactly, am I singing “Love, please let me know,” while a bespectacled Balrog of the electro world spins his tunes?

Perhaps more important is the message behind the reality of the scene.

In it, one character is a man in his 40s who went in search of his muse, while at every stage of his journey confronting the question of age itself.

And the other is a man in his 70s who, perhaps not even knowing it, embodies the reality that your potential is never destroyed, never defeated, and always available to you. It may choose to express itself in darkened electro beats or in the decision tomorrow to pick up again a musical instrument that has been haunting you.

But the point is that while blood pumps through your veins — and despite my own self-questioning — you don’t have to apologise to anyone for the decision to go after a calling. We forget our own miracle, how briefly we burn. Let it be like a dragonfly soaring, ecstatic.

To Conclude

After so long working on the musical side of the project, there is a gentle momentum building.

It is easy to want to define momentum by what happens on the outside, but for now, I am talking about what is most important —

The Momentum of the Spirit.

Things will move, or not move, in their own way.

But the one thing you can be sure of is that what does move moves as a result of your own inner momentum.

That’s why I try, as best I can, to hold this as a spiritual reality —

To fulfil the vow of some distant spark you feel brings meaning to life.

It’s too easy to ignore those sparks.
Too easy to think they’re too faint to catch, too weak to rise from spark to flame.
Too easy to believe we’ve already played our best shot — and that our chance in the game has passed us by.

But there is also Mischa.

Who represents the archetypal reality that you have no idea what you might find if you have the courage to step down into the basement of your being.

As for me, I will adieu this week with a final screenshot from my curious little video.

It will be out next weekend on my birthday — a present would be to see you there at the YouTube premiere… if I get the damn thing edited on time! For now, you can pre-save “Please Let Me Know” on Spotify HERE.

With love,
Jim