Derek Kirkup

I have been experiencing an interesting new phase lately. Having spent so much of my early twenties being an individual in constant use of his intellect, but little else, I am now finding myself with less and less to say in words. Indeed, I commence this post out of a sense of fear or perhaps even mourning for this side of me that has been so prevalent for such a long time.

It is in fact rather disempowering to experience. It’s not that I have nothing to say, I’m sure I can and still do make somewhat useful observations. It’s just that, the compulsion to do so is rapidly diminishing, amidst a sense that I am struggling to really find the value of these observations.

Simultaneously, my lust to descend ever further in to the intuitive world of art and emotion grows stronger. But where as in the world of words, one can make compelling arguments with language and evidence, in the world of emotion, I am often finding myself frustrated that these tools are inadequate. I am finding that what I want to convey, cannot be conveyed with the tools I am so used to using, and any attempt to do so leaves me feeling disappointed.

I am reminded of some wise words that the purpose of art is not to draw conclusions, but to explore. How true this continues to feel as I delve deeper in to story and music. And the reasons are becoming quite clear to me.

The stage for humanity has already been set. The struggles repeated. We live, we love, we learn, we die. Those fundamentals of humanity and life have not changed in the millions of years we have been evolving, and they don’t look set to change any time soon.

It is said that there are only seven stories, and with those seven stories there is also a set number of characters. These have been present since ancient times, studied in the archetypes of Carl Jung, and they remain unchanged today, simply because life remains unchanged.

It is no surprise then that one may find oneself at a point in life where to philosophize seems meaningless. Even in an age of science, where we come to know the world and universe around us in even more detail, allowing us to live more comfortably and efficiently, we still cannot change the fundamentals of life, love, learning, exploration and of course death.

When observing from this position one is challenged with many thoughts, the most glaring of which is of course - Why? What is the point of it all? But answering that does not matter and is at this stage of human knowledge, an excercise in futility.

The next thought that follows, and perhaps more a feeling, is a sense of liberation. A sense that all the dramas, all the pain and suffering, ultimately push humanity forwards. One might call all pain, growing pain, as long as time moves forwards.

And it seems, that as long as time does move forward, though we cannot change the fundamentals, we can do our best to keep everyone moving in the same direction. That does not imply any specific goal, other than moving toward openness and love over resistance and fear.

So then, if the purpose of art is not to conclude, but to explore, it would seem that all we can do in our art is provoke rather than lead. In telling stories we cannot tell an audience who to be, but we can remind them of who they are and especially, we can remind our audience that the game, the ride as Bill Hicks’ wonderfully refers to it, never changes.

Though I used to have faith that wonderfully worded, profound observations have the power to change anyone, as life goes on my experience of arrogance tells me that they can only change those who are humble enough to listen.

Perhaps then, the quest of any artist, whether conscious or unconscious, is very simply to find new ways to provoke, new ways to express experience, and perhaps novel ways that can reach ever more complex personalities in an ever more complex world. And hopefully, by reminding audiences of the simplicity of life, its poetry and story, we can…

Well, perhaps words cannot capture the possibilities.

I’m sure for many these words state nothing more than the obvious, but having spent many years of my life ignorant and unaware of these basic truths, I hope I can offer some insight to someone.

It was late at night and I had been working on music for hours without a break. I was in the middle of several days of remixing old material, bringing it up to my current standards.

I had recently received a boost of passion and vigor about my career and made a clear plan for where I wanted to be in the coming months.

However, that plan could not have been farther from my mind as my ears honed in ever more precisely and technically to the minute imperfections of my music. I endlessly tweaked away, yet found myself repeatedly more dissatisfied and frustrated.

What was I trying to achieve here?

I could feel, just at the edge of consciousness, a sense of self-consciousness about putting this material online. I wanted to get it perfect. Essentially, I was afraid that the production quality of my material was not high enough to attract the people I wanted to attract.

So, I took a break. But whereas I perhaps should have left it for the evening, I instead decided to check my email.

Sitting in my inbox was an email from Avaaz.org. It was a petition to the Arab League to help the Syrian people, who are enduring months of increasing abuse, torture and murder by the Syrian government, with no end in sight.

Suddenly my fears of what people might think of my material paled in comparison to the terrible struggles the Syrian people are facing.

But not only did this comparison serve to humble me instantly, it empowered me. I remembered why it is I write music, primarily, why it is that I write for film.

It is for that feeling, that inspiration, that one gets after experiencing an inspiring story. The feeling one is left with after watching heroes struggle to overcome the odds and succeed. The feeling of knowing we are all on our own heroic journeys.

That feeling is priceless and its effects immeasurable. Walking away from an experience with the sense that we can be better people, that we can have better relationships, and that we have the power within each of us to change the world.

Through art we open up the human capacity to feel and we show our audience that they can get through it, that they have the potential to go beyond what they thought they were capable of.

Because although we may be humble artists, amongst our audience are scientists, engineers, teachers, entrepreneurs and many other disciplines. Between them they possess skills and abilities that far outnumber those of any one particular field. But we all value art.

If we create with true intentions, if we choose to feel the value of our work, if we can access that flow state whereby our art seems to develop from a place beyond our ego, then its essence will speak for itself, no matter how imperfect its presentation may be.

We must open ourselves up, confidently yet humbly engaging with our audience and our peers, and we must seek to improve ourselves and our art through these relations.

Because it is through our relationships with others, and the products of these relationships, that we will always change the world.

We are all characters in a story, most of us the heroes, some of us choose to be the victims.

Many of us however will at some point in our lives be making that transition from victim to hero. Perhaps we are living in the present and looking to the future with heroic qualities; courage, determination, focus, but we are remembering the past with the traits of a victim; regret, shame, guilt, self-loathing.

Sometimes it’s so hard to let those memories go. They play as scenes over and over in our heads. Maybe phrases repeat with them, words that reflect the feelings that are experienced. “I shouldn’t have done that”, “it is not fair what has happened to me”. 

The only thing that is holding us back is our identification with those memories, and the belief that those memories are a fixed and accurate version of events.

Consider this dialogue from David Lynch’s “Lost Highway”

Ed: Do you own a video camera? 
Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them. 
Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way. 
Ed: What do you mean by that? 
Fred Madison: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened. 

The memories we play in our heads are films, films in which we play the central character. None of the people or events in our memories are real, just as we are not really there. Now they are only images, literally imagination. 

And if they are not real, that means at any time we can change the script, we can edit the film.

If you want to be a hero in the future, if you want to be a hero right now, be a hero in the past. Every time you fell down, all the people who hurt you or that you hurt, everything you remember and how you feel about it can be edited, every single frame.

We can’t deny the events of the past, but we can change our experience of them. We can replay the film as we would have liked to see it, change the assumptions we have, learn what we need to learn, and become who we want to be.

Only you can know the fullest extent to which it feels right to edit, what it is that you require to make your peace and move forward. But you must start with the complete freedom of knowing that it is possible to edit everything.

Life is one big story, but like the scripts that make it to film, the novels that we read, our own stories go through multiple drafts. The difference is that we will spend our whole lives writing and re-writing our stories, and much like the fiction we create, it is others who will be the ones to read the finished work, long after we are gone.

You are the writer, so damn well write a story you want to read!

… Your own, that is.

Arrogance speaks only in words. It finds rational arguments to convince us of things we wish were true. In essence it is denial and at its most severe it criticizes others as self-defense.

It is the part of you that makes excuses, and they can be very convincing. It may tell you ”I don’t need to learn this” or, “I already know that” but behind these phrases often lies fear, the fear that we are being led away from our preferred self-image.

Rarely are we in a position to rationalize accurately what is or isn’t relevant to our future. Yet the more elaborate and specific the image we seek for ourselves, the more we will be arrogant and unaware of the opportunities around us to grow and change.

There is a better approach. That of openness and humility.

Humility speaks in feelings, and intuits what is real as truth. Humility needs no words to explain or justify. Its intuition knows the steps one must take in order to progress.

So how do we spot the difference? We must connect with our feelings. If you do not need to explain to yourself why a particular path is or is not relevant to you, you are probably acting in your best interests.

It is when we feel the need to defend our positions that something isn’t right. When we find ourselves justifying our position with “because” and “but”, we must take a moment to become aware of how we feel. It may be that we are afraid.

“You cannot think your way in to becoming yourself”.

Act with humility, seek out the part of you that knows truth with intuition. Allow yourself the belief that you know what is right for you without having to rationalize it. And, if you are afraid, be honest about it, with yourself and with others.

I’m spending some time at the moment writing strictly in standard notation and I would greatly appreciate hearing from instrumentalists of all kinds. I would like to be able to write for you and also to hear your feedback on the playability of the pieces I am writing. 

Whether you are a beginner or whether you passed grade 8 years ago, I would like to write for you and find out what my pieces are like to play.

Drop me a line via the email link above and let’s make a connection!

I have recently been facing a growing dilemma. It has lurked for months but its growth has accelerated lately, reaching the brink this week.

As my knowledge and loyalty to myself and my feelings has rapidly developed, I have become so aware that the sector in which I am currently earning money does not seem to fit with these feelings. But it has been particularly burdensome for me working in the charity sector, because as my motivation has declined, my sense of guilt has increased as I have become more and more aware of the impact of my decreasing motivation.

I chose this week to begin talking about it more openly with colleagues, and coincidentally it is this week that one of my managers chose to approach me. These conversations have been entirely open, genuine and helpful conversations that have done much to lift the weight that has been bearing upon me. One particularly poignant highlight came as my manager and I ’compared notes’ to find that we had both previously concluded my heart is not in this role, a moment that only confirmed that feeling.

Only the next day I approached my other manager, at another but essentially identical role and told him my concerns. He had also been sensing a problem and was kind, understanding and hugely supportive in listening to me.

What has begun emerging from these conversations, which I wanted to share, is the real problem that had been developing.

As I had been growing in awareness that this field no longer provided me with satisfaction, I had also been becoming concerned with how continuing in the field defined me. I had unconsciously been worrying that the consequences of being seen in these roles and to be perceived as passionate and capable, would only draw me in to deeper involvement in this field. I had determined that this field was a different direction than those I feel compelled towards. I was concerned that I was powerless to be as I feel within this field, a field which I had determined in its entirety was no longer of relevance to me.

But in conversation with my managers, it was expressed that perhaps I had become too involved in the content, the product that I am dealing with. In a field that is wholly focused on an improvement to emotional and physical health of others, I was ironically not being selfish enough.

So it seems some reframing is required. It is not about the content that I am delivering, it is about the skills I am developing. Perhaps one should not even go as far as to decide whether the skills are relevant to ones dreams and aspirations, because dreams can transform as one develops. But of utmost importance it appears to be about whether I am enjoying developing these skills.

It is not enough to feel passion or simply be interested in a topic, there must be opportunities for personal development and growth that can be satisfying and rewarding to oneself, regardless of the field in which these emerge. It seems the real challenge, and indeed the ultimate question is whether one can continue to find these challenges within one’s current field.

If the answer is no, then perhaps there are only two conclusions: One can learn to work hard and keep searching for fulfilling opportunites despite doubts and disillusionment, in the hope that this in itself will be a useful skill later in life. Or otherwise, one can conclude that it is time to move on.

Because it is only when one is feeling adequately fulfilled that one can produce work with the greatest potential to change the world. One has to start with oneself.

This is the phrase I have been pondering lately; the cliché that appears through Hollywood films and on the lips idealists and optimists everywhere.

It’s a phrase that seems to say so much, yet unless one knows how to dream, it really means nothing.

And I am not all that convinced many of us do know how to dream.

Often in this context one might receive advice such as ‘Don’t let anything stop you’, or indeed, ‘Don’t let anyone stop you’. But what if you have no dream? How does one find a dream to follow?

What rarely seems to be discussed is that perhaps the biggest obstacle to having a dream and achieving it is ourselves. We never get to the dreaming stage because we want to know the dream we pursue is right for us. We don’t want to waste our time on the ‘wrong’ dream.

What we don’t seem to understand is that there are no wrong dreams. It is not the dream itself that matters, it is having a dream that is important and especially, choosing not to doubt it.

No one can objectively decide upon their ability to achieve a dream, there are far too many unknowns between now and the point where the dream is attained. Why bother to question it? If to imagine attaining your dream makes you feel good, then allow that power to take you.

It is the surrendering to the possibilities, the good and the bad, the forces of nature, without resistance, that is the essence of dreaming.

Like a canoeist rowing downstream, we merely stabilize ourselves in the irreversible current of life. If we remain conscious, we can ensure we avoid the rocks, drifting safely through the rapids and out in to an Ocean Sunset. The longer we choose to row against the current, the greater the likelihood we hit the rocks.

Allow yourself to drift, allow yourself to daydream, allow yourself to feel good about your dreams.

Never question why.

Only how? 

Picture - ryafacan.deviantart.com