THE WHY
My attempt at maintaining a creative practice in the woods.
WHY?
I know this is not very profound, and that I am not saying anything that hasn’t already been said, but I am going to focus on my own experience of attempting to keep a creative practice alive while abstaining from the social media apps. I am keeping a daily journal, and my goal is to distill it all into a once-a-week thing. Should be easy enough while gaining some of that screen time back, right?
I believe that the social platforms are a direct reflection of the society that we are being encouraged to live in and foster: a sociopathic society only concerned with people as numbers and making as much money as you can, with zero emphasis on genuine human connection or creativity, all while showcasing “who you are” and who you are “connected” with. Total bullshit.
I have 15,800 followers on my personal instagram. Aside from work, I have only spoken to the same 5 people in the last 7 days. With the exception of an impromptu zoom conference where I discussed this a little bit. I am typing this post with a large scabby wound compliments of the weeping eczema on my face- making me look like the child from the horror movie released earlier this year- “bring her back.” Adorned in a white stained bathrobe like a diseased mad king, completely unkempt, cold and alone. At 7:04 a.m. on a Saturday* I would normally consider posting a well curated artistic image of myself flipping a table or ripping riffs on a dunable guitar on the socials, but instead I decided to dedicate my time to this. Not very sexy, not cash money.
Though I am off of social media, this doesn’t mean that I am not a fan of connecting. I just do not think that any meaningful connections can be made on the social sites with the way things are structured on them in 2025. With a blog, you choose to be there, choose to engage in larger ideas, and so on. So, this seems better for me, for now.
Let’s see how long it takes me to ask my assistant to post it on my drug of choice, instagram.
I have no followers, no reach. I am not known as a writer. Unfortunately I am known as more of a maniac man, or A devil booking agent (to the delusional). I am not telling anyone about it yet, and i’m just going to see what happens. My brain is on fire with the possibilities- or lack thereof. How will I promote myself? Everyone else I know that maintain a substack use- that’s right, the socials. The deep thinkers of our time, Eugene Robinson, Jake Bannon, Becky Laverty, Kim Kelly, Cat Jones, Kelsey, Legg, etc… they use the socials. Do I even WANT people to see this? Or is it for me? The eternal question.
I think that there is a denial within creative circles about how detrimental this is to our artistic practice. They have turned us from creatives into little social media marketers with no reach. The actual goal is to keep us on their sites, bringing them money, turning everything into a numbers game, draining our time, leaving less time for actual art. And we have become sick as a result. No one wants to sound the alarm on this for fear of losing their audience. In the attention economy, struggling artists value yours more than anything. It comes before money, before the next big gig, etc. I know a lot of people who “post and dump.” Great—I have done that too—but what if we returned to a world where we did not have to painfully use and degrade ourselves in order for us to continue to do this thing is supposed to be uplifting and free? Art is supposed to be freeing. The socials are an invisible chain. Or a clearly visible one if you look deep into the eyes of heavy metal musicians making reels. Double the chain thickness if they’re over the age of forty.
Incentives are given for filtering your art through the templates and apps they provide, to engage with the public in a way that pleases the machine known as the algorithm. On top of this trap, our feed is filled with mostly divisive content and the curated activities of people we may or may not actually like in real life—that we feel pressure to stay connected to to further our “career.” How helpful are these apps for a career? Mostly, what I have seen is how this makes musicians and artists resentful and hate one another.
So I am trying to distance myself, and maybe eventually I will leave forever. I love the idea of a network of people who show up to what I am doing because they are paying attention in a meaningful way. That is how it used to be. I remember a time before, when outsider art really was for outsiders and existed because we cared to pay attention. It really was our lives and in our blood because we had to show up for it. Sweat for it. Really feel it. We didn’t have to worry about everyone having a camera in their pocket to capture us looking embarrassing. You could dance and do whatever you wanted. We loved the underground so much, sometimes we went to jail for it (more on that another time). Now we can just watch and consume all of it through a little magic box in our pocket, past and present. It has cheapened everything.
In a world that young me was struggling to find meaning in, underground music gave me that. So, to watch the thing that helped me get here as an older man, be turned into a bloated, rotting corpse we have to drag around ala “Weekend at Bernie’s” only slightly resembling the majesty it once was is disheartening in a way I could never have predicted.
The other day I did an interview for a magazine in which I said that left-leaning or progressive musicians spend too much time eviscerating one another over semantics and purity politics while Spotify uses the songs we created with heart and souls, to extort revenue so that they can create weapons of war to carry out unspeakable acts against men, women, and children and everything in between. I cannot stop thinking about this. I cannot stop thinking about how much control we have allowed these people to have.
I look at my iphone as the chime for a shipping notification from USPS catches my attention. The camera in my iphone takes its hourly picture, marks my location and smiles.
-ELM
*All creative slaves to the algorithm know better than to post anything meaningful on weekends.
