(abandoned substack draft)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I used to be a very active member of my local music scene. I\u2019d attend a lot of shows. I wrote commentary online about the gigs I\u2019d attended and about the state of the scene. I started and played in several bands of my own. I organized concerts myself. I felt very strongly about it all. Musicians were my people, the scene was my oasis in the desert. I was \u2013 and kinda still am \u2013 a True Believer in the possibility and potential of a music scene to invigorate people. In 2017 I wrote the draft of an entire novel about my experiences, which I will someday rewrite and publish when the time feels right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where things get a bit more complicated, because with all of that love comes criticism. And that\u2019s\u2026 always the case, right, for any thoughtful, honest, perceptive, open-minded, open-hearted person? It\u2019s rare that there\u2019s anything that we can love blindly. To hop and skip a little \u2013 James Baldwin said, \u201cprecisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience\u2026 you must find yourself at war with your society\u201d. My instinct is that this applies all the way down. Everything is conflicts. We\u2019re internally conflicted, too. So everything is about managing conflicts. A major theme in my book Introspect is the idea that \u201cthe hardest thing is managing your psychology, everything else is just moving things around.\u201d And, the hard thing about managing your psychology is that you will be faced with conflicts, and conflicts are scary, painful, uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yeah. I love music, I love musicians, I think of them as my family, I\u2019ve said before that I would die for them and I think I mean it, because they taught me how to live, how to love, how to express myself, kinship and belonging. I hope that\u2019s clear. Now we get to my conflicts, and I\u2019ve come to realize that maybe I am some kind of outlier on this, I have some strong feelings that not everyone shares, I might be a bit of a radical. I think that art is important. It\u2019s serious business. Karl Paulnack said in his speech to Boston conservatory, musicians are spiritual first responders, they heal people\u2019s broken spirits. I don\u2019t mean that it should be solemn<\/em> business and that we should be all uptight, pretentious wankers about it. Art is also silly and hilarious<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I talk about seriousness I\u2019m talking about real commitment. Skin in the game. Flesh in the game. Soul in the game. Knowing that you\u2019re going to keep doing it, day after week after month after year. And here I flinch a little bit knowing that I haven\u2019t performed live music in, gosh, several years. I do still play the guitar and I have some recordings of songs that have come together for me\u2026 and I would say that I\u2019m still open to music becoming the main thing in my life again at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the tricky things about writing about ideals is knowing that you don\u2019t live up to them perfectly yourself. So there\u2019s a bit of maneuvering that\u2019s necessary here. I want to be honest about the genuine feelings I have about bombastic goals and claims, about striving for Valhalla. And I also want to be honest about the fact that I don\u2019t always feel that way all the time. On my personal website visakanv.com, the header reads \u201cMy mission is to build the greatest social graph of friendly, ambitious nerds that the world has ever seen.\u201d This is true. This is my mission. I remember articulating vaguer forms of it when I was 19, 20 years old \u2013 back then the phrasing I used was something like \u201cthe legion of heroes project\u201d. In my mid-20s I remember describing it as\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\nideals are for striving towards; we can\u2019t embody them 24\/7<\/h3>\n\n\n\n