The Year of Limitations

Plus a demo from the archives

If there is a God, sometimes I wonder if I’m his little experiment to see how many times a person can start over.

That’s what I told my friend over coffee the other day and I thought he was going to fall out of his chair laughing. It’s funny if you have a full image of my life. If you have that, it’s fucking hysterical. Well, it’s funny if you’re able to laugh at yourself—and I’m pretty good at that.

The glass-half-full, positive spin on the aforementioned theory is that God is looking out for me. He knows that I’m the physical embodiment of the meme where the dog is in the kitchen and everything around him is on fire and he’s just sitting there with his coffee telling himself, “this is fine.”

In that optimistic spin on my initial theory, God knows I will stay in the flame engulfed room. I will stay until my skin burns off and I disintegrate to ash. The only thing that can possibly save me from my own blind devotion to any given place, arrangement or relationship is being introduced to an alternative by circumstance or a third party. For example, if I’m the dog from the cartoon, sipping my coffee surrounded by flames, I can’t reach for the window. I could be staring at the window the whole time and never consider that it’s there or that it’s worth opening. But if someone else opens the window, all of a sudden I’m like, “Holy shit. This is fantastic. Everyone outside of this house seems generally happy to not be on fire.” And for the first time, I will consider that I should perhaps exit the burning home.

Though I’d devoted years of my life to it and had my identity very much wrapped up in it, I was thankful when my band broke up in 2010, only because I knew I’d never be the one to end it, even if it was time. After that, I spent two years working under a producer in NYC making music that wasn’t allowed to leave his studio (I still don’t have those files) before my friend begged me to move to LA so he could help me. In 2020, I booked a solo trip up the coast to hike and go whale watching. I made it to the entrance of Big Sur, then turned around, came home and ended a 10 year relationship. Apparently I just needed to feel what it was like to be alone to know that it’s what I needed.

I can’t see it until I see it. I can’t imagine it until you scream it in my face.

I’m there now. It happened again. One of our dogs got sick last year. Adriana was no longer working from home, so I found myself putting in 3-4 hours each morning at my studio and heading home in the early afternoon to be with our animals. I’d bring home a few things and set up a bare bones studio in my living room and worked there. What I realized a few weeks into this new routine is that more was pouring out of me creatively in my living room with barely anything to work with than in my beautifully constructed oasis of a recording studio with everything I could imagine at my fingertips.

I began noticing how I felt when walking through the threshold of the studio. Pressure. Overwhelm. The feeling like I can do anything, with the absence of an instinct of what that should be. I’m not the type to pack it in over something like that, so I pushed through. If you don’t have an idea, sharpen pencils. Sharpen pencils long enough and you’ll have an idea. I just picked somewhere to start, since my gut was not firing the way it was supposed to. Or it was bombarded with options, so it couldn’t do its job. Or it was doing its job and I wasn’t listening. Whatever it was, the path I chose always felt arbitrary.

A surefire way to make matters worse is to guilt oneself about whatever feelings arise. Like that Buddhist saying, “Suffering is wanting things to be different than they really are.” I’m probably recalling that incorrectly, but I think I got the sentiment right. The point is that I’ve gotten exponentially better at that pitfall. In another lifetime, I’d have told myself, “Don’t be ridiculous. You spent all this time and money building this fucking studio. This was your dream space. You’re spoiled and full of excuses. That’s your problem.” I didn’t do that this time around. Instead, I just stopped showing up.

When I was 17, I had barely anything to make songs with. Those tools, or the lack of what I had is what forged an identity. I think I missed that feeling. I recognized that the limitation is what was inspiring me, and I decided to make that the ethos for the entire year. This was to be the year of limitations. Everything I’ve done and will continue to do this year is going to be born out of constraint. The majority of what I’m sitting on was made on an old nylon guitar I inherited from my father-in-law. I’ve been making things out of whatever I have in that moment, rather than what I want or think I need. Telling stories with whatever means I have to tell them. More than any thing, I want a clear head. I want acreage of the mind. Space to let it roam. I want less, as it’s already given me more.

This is the year of limitations.

“Waiting On What’s In Front Of You”

This demo felt like an appropriate companion to my words above. This is a song I wrote with barely anything in my home studio, years ago. It would later have a fully produced version, which was to be part of a violent joy release. And if you want to know why that one’s not being shared, please see my words above about God making me start over.