Preamble to a Directional Shift
New project, new platform: An invitation to artists of all types to participate
Hello Friends,
It’s been awhile. I have a new project that might interest you – mostly because you’ll be involved too (!?).
I’ve been in transition lately, feeling like I’m entering a new phase of my life – personally, professionally, and creatively. A new direction is starting to take shape. It needs a lot more work before I’m ready to fully share it, but it involves a large directional shift.
Last weekend, I was trying to articulate this new direction to my wife/life partner over morning coffee out on the porch. At that very moment, an orange oriole appeared.
Sightings are rare in this area, especially orange orioles – so I’m gonna take this as a sign that I’m on the right track. The universe will give you signs if you open the receiver to all channels and pay attention to the signals.
Orioles are migratory, so they signify transition. The orange color in particular is a symbol of creativity. I try not to get too woo-woo, but this type of signal is too clear to ignore. It’s only happened to me a few times over the course of my life where it’s been just too slap-you-in-the-face obvious to write it off as nothing. The signal and its timing.
The new direction is about transformation through creativity. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a number of months now, and it involves more than just a new set of songs.
When I audit the my own growth over the past decade in particular, both personally and creatively, it looks like this:
Stage 1: Unlearning
Stage 2: Healing
Stage 3: Rebuilding
My most recent work has been about awakening and unlearning (not that my process is done, by any means). I am a post-punk student of Dylan, Bragg, Strummer, and countless others who taught me how to illuminate what’s wrong.
We are waking up one by one. I see the lights go on, point by point. I see artists of all types rising to the occasion and helping light more lights. I see you and it feeds my hope.
I’m not done with the first two stages, but I want to start building on them anyway. It’s more obvious than ever that the current system doesn’t work. It needs rebuilding.
Conditioned by decades of propaganda, we accept the current system as if it’s inevitable. But the moment we challenge it, defenses go up. The algorithms kick in. Those with power behind big platforms are certainly not going to allow you/me to challenge that power.
But it’s not just our media environment – internal fear kick in too. The amygdala floods our system with epinephrine. We back down and give in to routine’s orders.
Flip the Script
Transformation is actually what’s inevitable – especially if we can amass enough souls to generate the creative and emotional energy to catalyze a tipping point. As the saying goes, it happens slowly... then all at once.
Like I said, I’m not ready to share my full thoughts on this – they are too unformed to survive any well-armed counterattack. And we need more artists lighting more lights, coming together as a collective force. A couple things of note:
This will be a collective effort and will involve you in due time.
I will be running this project here: https://patreon.com/boezi (free).
I get it – another platform. Sigh. But from your perspective, it’s just an email, same as this one. I’m consolidating and reducing for my own mental health. I feel like I’m doing some of the best work I’ve ever done, but too much energy is squandered managing multiple profiles and platforms.*
As a rule, I’m backing away from sharing my best stuff to social. The Bigs don’t serve us – in fact, they actively suppress & limit us. We as artists and creatives have to get into smaller spaces. “Reach” is no longer a thing on the majors – you can’t GROW a community without meeting new people.
With that, I’m probably not going to be using this platform going forward. I’ve not gotten a lot of traction here. I tried Substack Notes in earnest over the past year or so, and I can’t get it to come to life. Plus, given the COLLECTIVE, LEADERLESS nature of this new project, I really need a platform where artists of all types can convene and coalesce.
So I hope you’ll accept this invite and stay with me. I’ve been in the studio tracking 11 new songs that I’m really excited about. They’ve been stage-tested over the past year or so and I think they’re really strong. I share my demos and process shots on Patreon too, if that’s further enticement. Join here and:
That’s it for now. I appreciate you 💛 and I thank you for your interest and support.
With love & respect,
Michael
*Cleaning up, what a mess: https://michaelboezi.com/social
Image credit: 4Me2Design from Pixabay