#31 It's not just me, it's everybody

A busy month but I'm starting to find my feet. More podcast chats, a climate leadership retreat, a video game conference, and further experiments in community building.

About 6 weeks after I left Double J, I met up with a friend who has probably an extra 10-15 years on me in terms of experience as an arts worker, and as a human being. We met for a coffee near his house, at CERES organic garden in Brunswick.

Picture taken from CERES website. Yes it’s a hippie paradise, you are correct.

He asked me what many people were asking me, and continue to ask me, which is “So, how are you feeling?” I was honest and told him it was up and down - that overall I felt like I’d made a really clear and good decision to transition out of my job, but that some days, like this day, I was waking up with this anxiety of “aghhhh should I be doing something??? What am I meant to be doing?”

He looked me up and down, hummed to himself a little, and with a small smirk said, “I’ve seen this before, Tim. You need to give it about six months, if you can.”

I’m extremely fortunate to, at least temporarily, have the support of my partner and family while I take some space to recalibrate, listen and learn, and figure out what to do with myself without urgent pressure. That pressure will come, don’t get me wrong.

I’ve got about a 6-9 month runway, I reckon. I’m half way -ish through that now, it’s a bit over 3 months since I quit.

Artist’s impression of “Tim’s runway”. Just replace the word “company” with “Tim’s family” and the word “runway“ with a much smaller number

In the last month I’ve been almost back up at full speed, lucky enough to participate in a series of community events that are giving me some incredible clarity in terms of figuring out wtf I am meant to be doing for the next year, decade, etc.

But before I talk about some of those experiences - including a life-changing climate advocacy retreat on beautiful Palawa country in Tasmania, a cup-filling game audio community conference in Naarm, and a series of weekly chats with people like Jen Cloher and Ben Lee for my shiny new podcast - I’m gonna start by just copy-pasting an email I wrote this morning.

You know I’m not super disciplined with this newsletter. I sometimes feel the urge to write but don’t know where to start. Sometimes the words just spill out. That happened this morning.

I won’t say anything more, just indulge me (as if this whole thing isn’t just you indulging me) and have a read.

AN EMAIL TO DAN

Thanks Dan!  Thank you for the continued encouragement  :)

I think - stepping outside of music even for a second - "industry" gets plenty of oxygen, plenty of space to work in, plenty of government subsidisation, plenty of internalised public buy-in.  Industrialisation (as an extension of colonialism & imperial mentality) is how we got into most or all of the messes we are in right now, generalising bluntly of course, as a species

So my energy is going to go more and more towards that community layer I think.  And while I do agree that we need industry reform simultaneously with support for the community layer - one of these things I'm better at than the other.  And ultimately we need not just to reform and tweak how the music industry works but to over time give it the space & incentive to dismantle itself entirely, to be frank.  (Similarly across all industries)

We'll get a lot more done as a community of music-lovers/artists if we instead of trying to 'break into' the industry and/or reform it, we kind of ignore it or refuse to engage with it.  I like the idea of one of the pillars of transitioning to a 'living democracy' is to simply withdraw consent from the systems & ways of thinking that support extractivism .. so for some of us I think thats about being wary of any narrative that is "why can't we have both" because it clouds the necessary fact that we need to turn towards each other and towards the planet and deprogram each other from the industrial mindset

Sorry - getting deep into it here after a coffee haha - can recommend Tim Hollo's "Living Democracy" book which I'm reading at the moment for a good intro into ecological thinking / ecological vision of politics, which I'm directly ripping from in some of what I'm saying above

Fun side note - I may have mentioned this when we spoke - Laura Jean recently reclaimed the word 'amateur' which is often felt to be a slur in artist communities, as if being an amateur / unpaid for your work is something you should be ashamed of or means you aren't 'good enough' as a musician.  Amateur as a French word actually means someone who pursues something for love - amour - so an amateur, back in the day, was not 'someone who didn't get paid to do something' but 'someone who did something with pure intent- for love'

In the context of the world needing to recalibrate its entire value system away from extraction & individualism - and towards connection and reestablishing a custodial relationship with nature as part of nature - encouraging a generation of artists to think  themselves proudly as amateurs, taking action motivated by love and what can come from love, actively withdrawing consent from industrial infrastructure - I'm more and more into this idea  :)

I still have a Spotify account though and sometimes I even eat McDonalds so - yeah

Thanks Dan

Tim

THANKS DAN

Ok so let me add a bit of extra context here. Firstly, this email was to a friend, a recent friend but still a friend. We are engaged in the process of kind of worldview-courting - we are basically on the same page on most things, and these emails going back and forth are a kind of informal process of intellectual courtship. It was only because his prompting was so generous and open that I was able to then “be on one” and articulate myself with what felt like some precision and clarity at the time.

I’m not telling you who it is, and luckily because statistics show that the Australian music industry is 73% made up of Dans, you really have no way of pinpointing who it is. Sorry amateur sleuths. For the record, the other 27% is made up of Deans, Daves, Dannys, Daniels, a bunch of blokes called Chris, Mike, Tom & Matt, and at least one outspoken idiot called Tim who insists he’s not part of the industry when by most metrics he 100% is.

I share that email for two reasons: one is simply that it’s an easy way for me to tell you where my head is at. The second is that I want anyone reading this, who also increasingly has a habit of dropping “look-at-me” political statements and “wow such intellectual much observant” worldview stuff into emails and group chats and office convos … well, you aren’t alone. It feels weird and uncomfortable and people look at you funny and sometimes you send an email that feels exciting but actually was probably intense but here’s the thing we do not have time to wring our hands about it any more. So .. be respectful .. be mindful .. learn, listen .. read a book goddamnit haha .. soak up everything you can around you. But do not hesitate to add to the dialogue as soon as you feel ready. Because we don’t really have time to not be saying messy, complicated, dangerous thing to each other.

Why you ask?

THAT’S A SEGUE FOLKS

Gonna pivot here to talk about a few things I was part of over the last 6 weeks or so, since we last spoke.

I went to BIGSOUND! For a day. Regretted it. See email above.

Then a couple of weeks later, I accepted the invitation to attend Green Music Australia’s Sound Country Artist Climate Leadership Retreat. Boy that’s a lot of words.

Myself and 20-ish artists who are passionate about climate advocacy travelled with the Green Music Australia team to gorgeous Palawa country in Tasmania, to spend a few days at Spring Bay Mill. It was a transformative experience. As I learn more about climate activism, I’m so heartened to realise that the conversation is already decades along in terms of intertwining climate activism with indigenous justice. The climate movement is indigenous-led as will be our recovery. We were generously welcomed by Palawa people onto the land and were graciously provoked by our facilitators, challenged to think about our ancestry and our connections to country.

We also attended workshops and presentations on what climate action actually looks like, about how music can act as a vehicle for change, about what power artists have when they join together behind a common cause. A highlight for me and my nerd-brain was learning a bit more about an ecological approach to politics courtesy of Green Music Australia founder Tim Hollo, whose book Living Democracy I am now powering through.

We also spent hours in practical conversation about what we (as in, literally the people in that room) can and will do (as in, actually doing stuff not just talking about it). That has already led to the creation of WhatsApp groups, regular Zoom calls, in-person meet ups, and the beginnings of at least one major climate awareness campaign driven by our passion and volunteer spirit, Google Docs and schemes now abound. As someone who also deeply curious about what exactly makes these kinds of experiences feel transformative, it was a deeply valuable thing to have the chance to do, and I will forever be grateful to Green Music Australia for the opportunity.

Learn more about Green Music Australia here and if you haven’t already read their incredible Sound Country green music handbook, you should do that immediately.

ALSO SPENT A WEEK IN NERD-TOWN

So that was that, but then in the last week I’ve been fortunate enough to fill my cup even further - maybe I’ve upgraded the size of my cup ? - by attending many events at Melbourne International Games Week. Chief among them was High Score, a game audio conference which I had the honour of co-curating this year alongside my buddy Amy McNickle. That meant we got to curate two days of talks, panels & technical presentations from Australia’s best game composers & sound designers as well as fly in some bloody legends from overseas to speak like Richard Lapington, the audio director for Alan Wake II (!), Sonia Coronado who worked on Helldivers II & God of War: Ragnarok (!!), and Samantha van der Sluis, an Aussie US-based cosy game composer specialist who also worked on Avengers: Endgame & Frozen II. (!!!)

Got this pic from APRA’s Instagram, see more here

I don’t have much to say except that the event sold out, spirits were beyond high, and a fire alarm went off that caused three fire engines to arrive on site (the culprit still tbd but highly likely someone vaping somewhere). Oh, and I heard the word ‘capitalism’ used both on-stage in presentations, and off-stage in chats over lunch, more over the weekend at High Score than every other time I’ve ever attended the event. It’s in the air. It’s not just me.

But yeah if you love audio and games, you should come to High Score next year, put it in the calendar. October something something.

MY PODCAST IS AN UNQUALIFIED SUCCESS

I said this previously, but I started this new podcast Why Make Music as a personal exercise and have almost no interest in how many people are listening to it. This isn’t “ex-radio host starts podcast in order to maintain profile / build audience / make money”, it’s about as far away from it as that. Though I am 100% an ex-radio host, I’ll cop that bit.

But I say “almost no interest in how many people are listening” because, honestly, if no-one was listening then it would be hard to just fit the time I’m spending editing the videos for YouTube and posting little snippets to Instagram. I do want people to listen but I don’t really care how many. I set myself a goal of 100 people, across Instagram and YouTube - not 1,000, not 10,000. I felt like 100 would be a good vibe.

And that’s about where we are at! This isn’t the part where I tell you, “I hoped 100 people would listen but now there’s a billion WOOWWWW AND NOW BUY A T-SHIRT” .. nope. It’s about 100. That’s excellent. Let’s keep going.

If you want to catch up on recent conversations with Jen Cloher, Ben Lee, Dr Anita Collins, Maggie Tra & Elijah, you can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

BYE

Ok I have to go now because it’s time for me to fully commit to the rest of my weekend, which is essentially a two-day Taylor Swift themed festival celebrating my 9 year old daughter’s birthday. I’m not proof-reading or editing this newsletter at all this week, let’s just get it out there, so I apologise if anything is broken.

Hit me up if you want to say hi

Love ya

Tim

PS. Here’s a song that means a lot to me. It’s not just me. It’s not just you.