pleasefindthis

I'm in my mid 30's and it's kind of this strange nexus point in the middle of life - my father died about 2 years ago and my daughter was born 4 months ago. People are dying, people are being born, the friends I thought I'd have forever are gone, and what 'normal' or 'forever' actually is seems to change too fast for me. So right now this one:

"I hope that in the future they invent a small golden light that follows you everywhere and when something is about to end, it shines brightly so you know it’s about to end. And if you’re never going to see someone again, it’ll shine brightly and both of you can be polite and say, “It was nice to have you in my life while I did, good luck with everything that happens after now.” And maybe if you’re never going to eat at the same restaurant again, it’ll shine and you can order everything off the menu you’ve never tried. Maybe, if someone’s about to buy your car, the light will shine and you can take it for one last spin. Maybe, if you’re with a group of friends who’ll never be together again, all your lights will shine at the same time and you’ll know, and then you can hold each other and whisper, “This was so good. Oh my God, this was so good.”"

Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Ablom. I read it in college, around the time I first got a big scare about my father dying - he was sick most of my life with Multiple Sclerosis and when the threat of him dying became very real, that book offered me a lot of comfort. He ended up living another 15 years and I gave it back to him as an audio book (he couldn't read by that point) as a gift right before he went.

The album August & Everything After by The Counting Crows. Considering Bob Dylan just won the Nobel, I think it's ok to answer with music in this instance. There's this complete innocence in the music, a kind of purity in the lyrics and I believe it's the kind of album you only get to write once.

There's some kind of genius in the writing.

Thank you for your kind words, and for reading.

In interviews you come across as an incredibly controlled individual, you choose your words very carefully and it's rare that you'll give a passionate response, unless it's in a controlled way that sounds like you've reflected on it quite deeply.

Do you think your music reflects this kind of self control, where while the music is quite often dissonant, it never descends into just noise and remains music?

Secondly and on that note, how do you feel about more, for want of better words, chaotic artists like Ben Frost or Tim Hecker?

There's a recent interview with me here where I talk about my interaction with him but in terms of what the bond was like, he was an island of non-conformity in a very conservative environment. I went to a whites only, boys only school, that was nearly 100 years old by the time I got there. My nickname was 'Satan' because I was more than a little different. He was the only teacher who had time for me. He'd tell us stories about being in art collectives, about travelling across Europe in an old Beetle, just this crazy stuff that was very at odds with the environment. He restored my faith in humanity when I had very little.

I think sadness is an emotion that often drives me to write, I've struggled with depression quite a lot and while this has been very successful for me, it's also always functioned as a kind of therapy. I find that once I can articulate what I'm feeling, I don't feel it as much.

My favourite sentence?

It changes but because I've just had a daughter, right now this is resonating with me:

"Everything has changed and yet, I am more me than I’ve ever been."

In terms of advice, I started out as a bad writer, and then became a better writer because I was ok with being a bad writer long enough to become a better writer. Don't look at the end goal, just focus on writing something - anything - every day. Also, if your head is full of thoughts but you're struggling to put them down on paper, consider painting, or music. All that's important is that you get it out of your head, the how of it doesn't really matter.

Sure, I can try from my perspective of what worked and how I got here.

In the first year of the blog we had, according to google analytics, about 10 readers a day if we were lucky. Once we got 100 readers in one day and that blew my mind. At some point, someone shared something of ours on tumblr, and it got a few thousand shares. Then it shot up. Then we put a Facebook page up and we had a few hundred fans. A few months later, it became a few thousand. Now it's at around 72 000 I think. There were little spikes here and there but otherwise, it's a few people a day.

Basically: There is no overnight success unless you're the guy who wrote The Martian and I guarantee you even he wrote a hell of a lot before he wrote that. Specifically in terms of building an audience, you have to forget about it and just let it tick over in the background. Keep making stuff and if you can, keep it as regular as possible.

People will read something of yours, go looking for more of it (which is why you should be building that archive of stuff for them to find) and come back for more of it, if it's predictably available.

TLDR: Make stuff regularly, share it, repeat and don't be in a hurry.