StarkQ and Ultimate Artist

You know one of the things that’s cool as shit about this whole music composition thing is the way you are no longer the person who performed or created even what you did yesterday.

You know? Do you ever listen to something you did before and think ‘who was that guy?’

I guess this is true for everyone and everything, but it’s sometimes so much clearer in the heightened context of creation and of music. Probably will be the same for @Lion. Reading a poem from weeks or years ago and thinking, ‘he/I felt that?’ ‘I wanted to say that?’

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I hear to meditate more. Center myself. Understand that even though it’s tough times, the important thing is to not get caught in the descending spiral of the negative. Keep my mind centered on my goals, visualize these goals every day. Don’t be so quick to close the door on what’s possible in these current trying times. Even though circumstances seem bleak it’s important to challenge those. Accept the emotions of feeling defeated, hopeless, or lost but counterbalance them by filling your head with what you desire.

As that relates to jobs, I’m afraid of finding something new in the event they decide I’m an expense they didn’t need and then I struggle to find another job. The current job I have is safe and secure, but it doesn’t contribute to my life in a meaningful way.

And then this is just another vent here that came to mind when I was writing.

I’m trying to exercise just how much power I have over my own personal reality, but I have doubts. I see external circumstances as solid, unmovable. But reading Neville Goddard he always says circumstances don’t matter and to persist and live in the end. Every part of me screams that things are so fucked right now and I just feel I don’t have the strength in myself to believe that I can get past it.

I’m hitting a point in my life where I realize just how sad I am. I just buried all of it for years and soldiered on because that’s what you do right? You grow up and just do the same shit everyone else does. But I can’t do it anymore, I don’t want to do it. It’s just an overwhelming exhaustion that I ignored for years. I used to think I wanted to commit suicide, but now I see I really just wanted to escape all the stupid societal expectations about life that were imposed on me. And when I say that to most people in my life, it’s like they hear my words and don’t understand how heavy it really is. They just give me solutions like “look for a better job”, but it’s so much more than that. This is my life we’re talking about here, I don’t want to go through it being some expendable resource for someone else.

My tolerance for any slight thing that compromises my own well being has gone down by a lot. The current problem I’m facing is realizing just how much shit you have to deal with and be aware of to look out for yourself. But simultaneously not feeling like I have enough courage, bravery, strength, confidence, etc. to drastically change my circumstances and be free from it all. It’s like I’ve woken up to everything and I can see clear as day how enslaved I was being and how all my “options” weren’t good or beneficial in any way. I don’t even really have any desire right now to work within the system. I want to be outside of it.

Like “Here’s life, you can do this, that, or this. No you can’t do that. No that’s not how this works. What you don’t like it? Tough that’s how it is, get used to it. Oh you can’t function like this? You’re the problem, not us”.

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So I had one cup of coffee yesterday and it wrecked me. This is after I’ve been off of it for two weeks. Call it curiosity or doubt, I don’t know. But it followed the familiar pattern of the initial high and then the huge emotional crash. I wasn’t feeling too great today either and I just think it’s a bit of a hangover from yesterday. All in all, I’m done with it for good. At this point it’s like poison for my physical health. As exaggerated as it sounds, but it really is the difference between me being depressed as fuck vs ok.

There’s definitely other emotional stuff going on, but the coffee certainly didn’t help me manage any of it.

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One thing I struggle with and I know I need growth in this area. Is not allowing my current emotions and feelings to derail me from action. For most of my life I’ve shoved these away to get things done but obviously that doesn’t work because it’s basically outright denial and they still influence me. As I learned to accept it more I swung the other way, I became inactive. The stuff felt paralyzing. My body and mind had me thoroughly convinced doing absolutely nothing was better for me.

So there’s this midway point. Where I’m not denying what I feel, but I’m not allowing it to dictate my actions. When I’m not battling for control of my emotions, but I’m also not getting swept up in them. It’s easy to repress stuff and carry on and it’s easy to collapse under the weight of it all and get sucked into that negative spiral. At the end of the day reconciliation is the mind holding two opposing view points. Neither one being invalid. That’s the tough part. It’s not so easy to let go of the past ones and it’s not easy to allow the new ones. So I either find myself knee deep in past shit or pushing too hard for the new reality and denying the old beliefs that still influence me. Needless to say it’s thoroughly confusing being stuck in that headspace.

The philosophy you are developing is so aligned with the principles of ACT (pronounced to rhyme with ‘fact’): Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. If you haven’t encountered it already you might really dig it.

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This was cool. I’ve heard of ACT but never gone any deeper. I think at the time the idea of “acceptance” was unappealing to me and I was still operating out of an incredibly perfectionist mindset. So accepting felt more like failure to me. I’ll have to look into this more because it definitely appeals to me now. Thanks for showing me!

On a completely different note, I am realizing that at some point in the next 1-3 years, I’ll be investing in a more professional or semi-professional DAW. I wanted to consult you to get your opinions as I decide which way to go. It’s not urgent, but I just want to mention it first. (NanoStudio is awesome but I’m realizing that as I want to get things more developed it will be good to work with other software.)

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Oh nice! Yeah DAWs can be tricky. Lots of choices out there. Are you looking to learn a completely new environment? Or would you rather have something similar to NanoStudo?

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Right now, it’s not even a twinkle in my eye yet, but I think I’ll be looking to learn a new environment.

I’ll want a robust home studio. I think.

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Nice. When the time comes I’ll see how I can help. I’ll say this though, gear is an absolute labyrinth to navigate and the internet doesn’t help lol. But that’s a whole separate conversation.

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You have grown alot

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Thanks man, always good to hear affirmation of that. Sometimes it’s hard to see.

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Another random thought:

With your great attention to detail and your drive to bring musical visions to completion have you ever thought about helping other musicians to mix and complete their own projects?

Many of them/us may not be so conscientious with that aspect. I know for me I’m much more focused on the moment of expression and creating than on the refinement and mixing/mastering afterwards. I like that part; but you seem to have a talent and real connection with it.

Like engineering and mixing as a side gig.

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Also unsolicited. If you had a YouTube channel or podcast where you gave tips and tutorials about music production and gear and work flow that’s also something I’d be interested in.

Feel ultimately free to completely ignore these ideas. I’m just in this space right now.

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You’re not far off the mark actually. I’ve thought about it. My main issue with providing mixing/mastering would be the gear. If I’m gonna do it I’m gonna do it right and it does get expensive. Also it can get demanding, sometimes I worry if I went that route I wouldn’t want to touch my own music again. Could just be a fear though.

I have thought about YouTube a lot though. I definitely want to set up a channel in the future. I also want to do live streams of making tracks on twitch. But I’m holding off on doing so until my music is consistent and I have something to back it up with. I’ve been through a lot of YouTube channels, although well meaning, their tips and tricks were not reflected in their own work. As much as I’ve learned and know now I don’t feel I’m in any position to give people advice on their stuff.

But I’ve always wanted to help out aspiring producers who might be getting stuck in the same stuff I did. Making things easier. There’s a lot of ego caught up in music sometimes and secrets and all that, but I don’t believe in that. Definitely something I’ve always had on my mind.

Trying something new this week with subs. I’m running 2 loops of aegis and starkQ. But the plan is to run aegis in the morning back to back. Then wait a few hours, then starkQ. Also going to switch to 3 days of this then a rest followed by the same but substituting starkQ with UA.

I wanted to keep experimenting doing small changes so I had a solid understanding or information that would be valuable. Unfortunately this is my life and I just don’t have the time to waste doing small controlled experiments just for the sake of isolating variables. So while I’m not doing extreme things, the variables aren’t exactly the same.

My reasoning for back to back loops is based on my experience with hypnosis in the past. I’d often be more suggestible after the second loop of a hypnosis file. It’s like the initial barrier was broken down and it built up momentum. Now I don’t know if that’s the case with the Q subliminals but I’d figured I’d try it out.

@Malkuth Thanks for turning my attention to ACT. I bought a book called the happiness trap I’m reading now that I feel is really going to help me manage all this better.

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Oh wow that fucking sucked. I guess with all the stuff going down lately I’m on high alert. I had a dream last night, except it wasn’t a dream. Felt like sleep paralysis or something. I was facing my wall sleeping on my side which kind of always makes me feel vulnerable because I’m not facing the entrance to my room. Anyway it felt like someone was going to come up behind me and slit my throat or something. Like you know that feeling you get when someone is close by, but you don’t see them so much as sense them? It was that. It wasn’t a oh this is scary feeling. It was an oh shit I’m gonna die right now feeling, they’re gonna kill me.

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Had a dream last night I was going for an interview for a new job/finally leaving this one. Seems like 2 loops is digging deeper. I have a lot of fear surrounding that, hate that I’ve stayed at this job so long out of fear. Hate the fact more that I put up with the bs just to make a meager paycheck.

Also realized I like to take problems in my head and heavily deconstruct them. But what I really fail to do is change myself. Most notably I try to find solutions to problems from the same frame of mind that got me into the mess in the first place. So my mind is filled with biases and distorted truths. And I hate it so much.

The questions that burden my mind. Why is it that I seem to operate from this idea that I have some concrete knowledge on how life is for me? Life in general isn’t the same for everyone. Which means for me it doesn’t have to be this static thing where I just suffer over and over again.

I get frustrated with my life but I keep doing the same shit over and over and expecting a different outcome. I put myself in a shitty job. I’m the one not leaving it. I’m the one not being more prolific with music. I’m the one that lets people take advantage of me. There’s nothing out there that’s asserting it’s will on me. I do all this to myself.

Maybe there is no why. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I just don’t do enough to reinforce the mentality and the real issue is I don’t persist enough and let doubts get in my way. Maybe wrestling with the why is utterly pointless and at worst just another tactic from my own mind to convince me it needs to understand everything before it can change.

This may or may not be practically helpful right now, but:

I think you do not realize how powerful you are. And lest I sound too zen-like, I underestimate my own power (yes, like most so-called advice this is a projection of my own experiences. I’m just saying it because I think it may also apply to you).

When you do actually move to a better job, I imagine that it will be anti-climactically easy.

Intellect-heavy people tend to have this pattern, I think. Also, introverty, highly-sensitive people. Also, neuroticky (haha, I’m creating new adjectives) people.

We fetishize and aggrandize action-taking, even simple action-taking,until it seems like every change will require the effort of climbing Mt. Everest.

Some things really will be challenging. But some of the things we imagine will be, won’t be.

And now time for the context-appropriate yarn:

When I was 15 or so, I used to tutor two little daughters of our family friends. I’d ride my bike over to their place or their mom would pick me up. They had a very big dog that looked kind of like this:

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It was pretty loud and excitable. In order to not have it run at me and jump all over me, the mom had a very simple trick: She’d take a little string of thread. and just lay it across the doorway. No gate. No door. Just a line of thread on the floor.

image

She told me, ‘When he was a puppy he was running and playing and jumped onto a counter top. Then he got tangled in that thread and slipped off the edge. He was dangling and felt so scared. We got him untangled and sorted with no problem. But ever since then, he always avoids that bit of thread.’

So this huge dog wouldn’t cross the bit of thread on the floor. It’s actually a true story.

Anyway, I think the same thing happens to us.

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