what even is an audience

I continue to be in a malaise where I'm not looking forward to anything and time is meaningless, where it doesn't make sense when I make money and doesn't make sense when I don't make money, momentum doesn't exist, and I'm skeptical of my audience's taste while also having lost all editorial perspective on my own work. Am I producing good work? Do I hate it? I don't know and for most of last week was deliberately mediocre because at least I knew where that stood.

I'm aware that it's irrational because it cuts across all my various pursuits (music, writing, film, photography, notes to friends, getting dressed, board games, cooking) and it's damned unlikely I went off a cliff with all those skills simultaneously. It also lines up with catastrophes hitting a lot of people I care about, in ways I can't materially help with.

I'm not entirely sure how to get out of this creativity cul de sac because although it's something I'm aware happens to many artists fairly frequently and has been a widespread cultural feature during quarantine and social isolation, it's not something I have to deal with personally very often. I'm generally fairly happy to do things for my own amusement and according to my own timescale.

I am fortunately fairly confident about my ability to write the poem I'm writing, which manifests at least partly as disliking poems by Every Other Person Ever (with the exception of Yeats). What are those poets doing, writing about different subjects than this subject, using different words, having different feelings? So that's going to be awkward if I don't wrap this up soon, since I'm the one reading subs in March. I guess that's a deadline I have.

musician phobias

A common problem if you are a songwriter with a formal musical education is that you know a lot of music and get anxious that everything you write sounds too much like some other thing. There are after all only 12 notes, especially if you are a piano player. (I'm a piano player.) It's so ordinary I can only compare it to how people taking intro to psych think they have every single disorder and personality type.

Anyway I have now ascended to a new level of songwriter paranoia where I have written a song that I'm worried is ripping off another song even though they are in different keys and have none of the same intervals, because if I move my song up a half step and ignore the instrumental breaks and repeat some parts, I can sing it over the other song as a countermelody that sometimes lines up rhythmically and sometimes doesn't. (Which is actually interesting sounding and the texts seem like they could be telling different sides of a romantic mishap.) So for me, they are the same song, half of which I don't own, and the other musician is going to recognize it immediately and be upset.

Except for the part where they are totally different melodies in different keys, are not about the same subject, and use not remotely similar instrumentation.

I'm very paranoid about it. It's irritating Ciro some amount.