Diving deeper, busier, into my career, I realized this morning, just as I’m getting out of bed (ooh, that’s the name of one of my songs) that I have to change my creative paradigm from putting away ideas into finishing them. It’s been my practice, as it is probably yours, putting away an idea (melody, lyric, human insight…) for later accessing, developing, reworking, finishing, and sharing with the world. Later, really? Look at this partial screenshot of my Idea Folders. We won’t even go into my Songs Folder that has so many songs, I had to subfolder them into A – C, D – E, etc. Or into my Video Blog Ideas, or… WTF dude!
Older is not the same as younger – I keep telling all them New Age, vegan, self-affirming, you-can-do-anything, you’re-only-as-old-as-you-think people. Now, when you’re young, you just don’t have enough ideas, and don’t know which ideas are even good. When you’re young you gotta plan, plan ahead. As you get older, as I, Cindo Santos get older, I got some many ideas, I’ve got gigabytes of ideas neatly in folders catalogued by year. To publish my best music ideas would take me decades of releasing an album a year, or a song per month. Believe me, I did the calculation. It would take me another lifetime. And I’m still generating new musical ideas, every freakin’ day – I’m not kiddin’: I don’t fool around on the guitar anymore, because of new ideas popping up: it’s stressful; and new blog ideas almost every morning when I wake up. Jeezus!
I might not even be here in five years, hell, maybe not even next year! Planning, making a plan, a five-year plan, bla bla bla. I got no time to plan into the future. Meaning: the only plan I need is this year’s, maybe next year as well, the next six months, next month, next week, tomorrow, and today (I go with the kids to get their vaccination records; practice the two-step dance moves; finish and publish a video eating tacos with Fidel Gaspar in Clewiston, FL; finish and publish this Post). Meaning: don’t plan; just do it! Besides, tastes, demand, interests change so fast in our digital society, what your plan for what seems great at the moment, might be totally boring in a year’s time.
This reminds me a little bit, of what Calvin Harris said in some interview. Basically, if the song idea isn’t clicking or he feels there’s no future in it, he just drops it; he only works on music that he believes is going to succeed. Just from the summer of 2018, when my sons and I travelled for two months in California and in Brazil, I have, over a dozen really neat things to share – but when? How long are their shelf lives? And there’s the incredible summer of 2019 coming up in a month!