A few days ago I listened to a podcast conversation with Thomas Curran, author of The Perfection Trap. In his book, Curran cautions against striving for more at all costs and argues for the “power of good enough”, as the subtitle puts it. As I listened, it reminded me of a story I came across a few years ago. As the story goes, a university professor of film photography announced on the first day of…
If you ask me what my favourite song is that I’ve written, I’ll almost always say it’s the most recent one. Deep down, I know this isn’t necessarily true, but it’s simply a manifestation of the recency bias. Put another way, I tend to think more fondly of my most recent songs compared to older ones. This isn’t unique to me from what I gather, I’ve heard a few explanations and rationalisation for this phenomenon…
A few days ago I popped into my local Waterstones bookstore, the one on Deansgate in central Manchester. I’d taken a quick detour to browse through the new books on display, as I do on my evening walks, with my left ear plugged with a podcast and my right one free to keep me tuned to my surroundings. I was closely inspecting a book when I heard, or thought I heard a sound. I recognised…
I attended a wedding yesterday. My friends got married, to each other. It was a lovely event, a blissful ceremony, a wonderful time all around. The bride also happens to be a former colleague, one who has always appreciated and encouraged my art. So when, a few months ago, over coffee, she asked if I’d be willing to play a few songs of mine at her wedding, the answer was a no-brainer. I play live…
Years ago, when I went public with my music, a well-meaning individual gave me some advice. They told me the music business is a numbers game, and went on to explain that to be successful, an artist must do two things. First, an artist must aim to appeal to a broad range of people in order to find their crowd or audience and, second, once the audience is identified, the artist must broaden this niche…
There’s a story about two young fish swimming in the sea. As they swim, they come across a third, much older fish. “Fellas, how’s the water this morning?” asks the older fish. The two young fish glance at each other, and back at the older fish. Not to be rude, they exchange pleasantries with the older fish and then swim along in silence for a moment. With the older fish out of sight, one fish…
I’ve spent the last few days reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. For the uninitiated, Newport is something of a unicorn. He’s a computer science professor and writer who is now in his early 40s, making him an elder millennial, and – wait for it – he’s never had a social media account. Suffice it to say that Newport is a rarity in our times. I have followed his work for a few years ever…
Failure is an attention-grabbing word, isn’t it? It’s the one thing nobody wants to be, the one thing nobody wants to do, the one thing nobody wants to attract. Nobody wants to be a failure, nobody wants to fail, and nobody wants to be caught in an endless failing loop. Or maybe I’m just speaking for myself, maybe this experience isn’t as universal as I might think, maybe this is just another journal entry that…
Years ago I stumbled upon an article on the work of Leonard Cohen, in which he said, on the subject of his creative process, “if I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.” I found this fascinating then and I still do, because it always seemed too good to be true, the idea that a master storyteller and poet like Cohen could have little say in how his ideas come…
The other day I stumbled upon an old conversation between Steven Dubner and Richard Thaler. If you’re at all familiar with the Freakonomics body of work – the books, podcasts, and blogs – then you’re most definitely familiar with Dubner. Richard Thaler is just as, if not more legendary, as one of the pioneers of behavioural economics, and more pertinent to this post, a Nobel laureate. Thaler won the Nobel Prize in Economics in the…