The Blog / Reflection on “For Boston”

Hey there.

Life after Mayday -

Today, Monday May 4th, is the first weekday since I released my first album under my own name, For Boston. I spent the length of Lent creating the album, and the month since perfecting its branding, preparing bonus content, and setting up its section of the site. This means that, for the first time in a while, I’m not occupied by the project anymore. It’s a bit of a weird feeling, and I’m inclined to find ways to keep at it just in the spirit of familiarity. But with that being said, it hasn’t been a transformative launch in the sense that my life looks any different following release weekend. And my life right now, well, it’s in need of transformation. My job went out of business at the end of the last year, and my current gig isn’t paying enough for me to even leave the house outside of the day I work. Which is all to say, I can’t really afford to continue sitting in the “For Boston” project, at least with its current performance on streaming & stores.

This is why I’ve decided that I want to expand the site. I began my website journey as I was looking for an alternative to sharing my remixes online. I never had interest in monetizing those, but platforms like Soundcloud & TikTok consistently blocked and muted what I shared. They were convinced I was trying to get away with something, when I really just wanted to show the world my Kesha mashup lol. But even in the last year, it’s grown to encompass much more. My love for gaming is represented here, my love for composing instrumentals has a page, and of course, I’ve now found a home for my passion to sing here, too. I always imagined lush.wav to be the “section” of my life that pertained to my creative interests & passions, so I was thinking… why not extend that to my passion for writing, as well?

Cuz look, I love to write. Back in the day, it was my thing. Essays, journals, reflections, retreat speeches, you name it: It’s honestly the reason I majored in Philosophy. However, I don’t do it enough these days. I’m constantly writing music, sure, but that feels like a bit of a different muscle. I realized this while preparing the For Boston site, where I created a “Wiki” of sorts by giving myself a few prompts to write about each song. After turning my story into music over the course of the recording & production process, it was refreshing to get to explore the themes a bit more concretely through… well, my words. Now, as I sit on the other side of the album process & think about what’s next, I feel inclined to make that writing exercise a larger part of my process as a creative. I think it’d be good for the brand, too.

Writing - What would it look like on lush.wav?

My mission with lush.wav has been, always, to create out of what I love and feel. Whether it’s the album about my PTSD or a Donkey Kong remix, I find that I have a tendency to make something that communicates or expresses an emotion. Likewise, I’m really good about making my art about me. My music, my writing, even the characters I dream up for the imaginary game I’m definitely going to make one day… they’re all coming from some facet of self that I feel the need to explore outside of myself for whatever reason. With this all in mind, I was thinking that the best way for me to go forward with a full writing project is to maintain that level of personal voice & emotional catharsis in a blog as well. This is why I want to call it “Jack’s Music Journal.” I think my experience, as Jack, is going to be ever-present in what I write about; and I have no plans to shy away from engaging in personal reflection as part of this project. Hopefully that blog name will let readers know what they’re getting into.

However, I also want to start engaging with the parts of writing that I left behind back in college. I studied Philosophy, yes, but also Economics & Marketing. I took plenty of classes relating to Politics & Sociology, too. I think that I have a valuable perspective and analytical mind that can use this platform to create insight about music or the world around us. I think this will look like more traditional journalism: Album reviews, genre explorations, analyses of favorite songs of mine that explore history & production, artist deep-dives, maybe even discussion about the industry… I could go anywhere with it. The point is to bring together the part of myself that likes to engage with media through an analytical lens with the part of me that loves to explore the depths of emotion.

To bring together my Aquarius Stellium with my Pisces Sun & Rising.

Or for the gamers, to bring together Intelligence & Wisdom (with hopefully some Charisma, too)

Going forward -

So, what’s the plan for the blog? It’s all still a new idea, so I’m not setting any boundaries yet. What I will do, is write. For the next week, or so, I’m going to prepare a few reflections on a few of the songs off of “For Boston.” I know that I’ve already done the wiki, but I’d like to explore how I’d format writing done in the spirit of journalism / analysis and think that getting a few pieces done of my own songs will give me a good framework for how to tackle larger projects that come from other artists. I’m going to be writing with this same personal voice but going into things like my sonic influences and the history of the songs that I’m covering. My assumption is that I’ll be publishing a written piece daily, as I plan to incorporate this part of the site into a concrete schedule that I can commit myself to as the summer approaches. I hope you’ll stay tuned!