As the year comes to a close, I feel the need to look back at my music accomplishments, not in a spirit of celebration, but rather with a critical eye that also looks at the future.
Ten releases (from Arrhythmias to Ancient Hills and Enchanted Valleys, but there are also two secret projects), my first tapes from amazing labels (with one more to come in early 2025), two almost complete albums for 2025, one of which will be my longest release ever (yes, topping even Polyphony's running time), many amazing collaborations done or planned for 2025, 14 journals... 2024 has been a year of excess, and this is one of the motivations for my introspective mood.
Friends have been very supportive, but I also have data that a kind of ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ fatigue is setting in. And it's understandable: keeping up with more than a release every other month is exhausting, plus it instills the seed of doubt that projects are not well-crafted and polished, but rather put out only to keep a place in the metaphorical (and, in my opinion, nonexistent) spotlight.
And yet 'I wanted to do more': the title of this page comes from Italian author Italo Calvno, and his words kept me company for more than a decade. They were written on my master's thesis in 2012 and they are still appropriate for describing how I feel about my 2024. Part of the drive to do more is due to my health: as soon as I recovered from my heart transplant back in 2001, I felt I needed to do many things that were precluded to me before. And who knows for how long I could have those newfound strengths? Indeed, my health journey has gone through ups and lows and, even after almost 20 years of mostly ups, I feel I cannot sit still unless someone chains me (how fitting, for this genre).
This is especially true since work and kids started occupying most of my days (and nights). The precious free time I don't share with my wife is almost entirely devoted to music. Erang once said something similar, and I want to share here a quote by Charles Bukowsky that he mentioned in that discussion:
find what you love
and let it kill you.
How do I reconcile the drive to do more without devaluing my music, while staying true to my heart? This question kept stinging me for quite some time, and in a sense I haven't found an answer yet. There are, however, some new attempts. For instance, at the beginning of the year I wrote extensively on why I only have one music project. As I said earlier in this journal, this is no longer true. The only thing that has changed with respect to that journal is an unease at the rate at which I publish my music. Giving energies to different projects, while respecting ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ' identity, allows me to keep pursuing this hobby at my own pace, and at the same time having a more manageable output on each different project. In addition, I'll be able to explore different soundscapes (ones that I thought I was incapable of creating) and themes not really fitting ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ.
For those who don't know me yet. Athshean is most definitely not my music! It's by the amazing Evergreen. All the embeds in this page are by other artists I love.
Alas, some of these changes are also related to some health issues that I'd love to call 'minor', but that are draining me and are making me afraid that something bigger is coming way earlier than I expected. Since September I've lost my momentum and have powered through some projects, including the last two journals on Disquieting and Ithildin, out of sheer hate towards these new issues that are already limiting me to an extent.
Hence, I need to find the path of least resistance (or, rather, a path of minor resistance) with music, and with my journals as well, as each entry is crafted in my mind way before the webpage is created, and it stays with me for many many time after it's published. It was a pleasure and a privilege to discuss here some of the artists I love and to talk with a few of them, but I feel I need to ease this load and focus on less taxing activities (such as writing hours of music). For those who like to read the journals, a little reassurance: I won't be stopping them altogether, and I'm already figuring out some changes that might help me keep writing them.
There's more to my strategy for a more sustainable 2025, including trying to funnel part of my energies into new activities still related to my music journey, but for now it's best to leave everything shrouded in mystery.
So goodbye, at least for a while. But the quest never ends, and I'm sure we'll see each other again.
ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ, November-December 2024
Secrets, you say? You surely are mistaken and won't find anything following this path...