Creative Work/Career Archives

Artistic Values for 2025

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming, Writing

I’ve done some work on consciously prioritizing my values, and that work has served me well. I know what I stand for, and that makes decision making easier.

But when I found myself in a creative/artistic lull at several points during 2024, I realized that I hadn’t ever thought about my values specifically in regards to creativity.

Maybe, in this age of AI-generated slop, it’s more important than ever for artists and creators to drill down on the WHY of their creative process. It’s a way to push back against the capitalistic, soulless, unconscious, theft-based, royalty-dodging, exploitative, human-devaluing “values” of the AI industry.

So for what it’s worth, here’s what I’ve come up with so far. I’m going to focus on these values in 2025:

1. Daily practice/habit

I’m not as fanatic about “write every day” as Stephen King, but I do try to write most days. I know I’m generally happier on days when I write (and/or make music), and of course there’s always the possibility that something I create might be halfway decent. But if I don’t put in the work, I get neither of those benefits.

2. Exploration

One of the great benefits of the act of creating something is that there are almost limitless possibilities. Prevailing norms of genre and style provide structure, but even those boundaries are meant to be broken–or at least tested. So you can pretty much do whatever you want. I like the analogy of making art as an exploration of possible spaces. For each work there is a universe of possibility, and the artist has the privilege of poking around to see if there’s anything good in there.

3. Service

My dad challenged me to ask this question: “Who do you serve?” Does your work serve the shareholders of a corporation? The owners of a privately held company? The mission of a nonprofit? Your family? The people in your community?

As artists, if we only chase commercial success, there’s a possibility we’re following the agenda of some corporation that’s trying to sell the most lowest-common-denominator “content units.” But if we ignore all markets and only serve our own artistic sensibilities, there’s a possibility of getting lost in the black hole of our own belly button.

So maybe there’s a Goldilocks space in between, where we serve others with our artistic efforts, but we don’t try to please everybody, or make the quickest buck, or force ourselves to work in styles and genres we don’t really like.

That’s it! What are you own artistic values?

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!

New Progressive House/Deep House Jondi & Spesh Album

By J.D. Moyer

On December 2

In Creative Work/Career, Electronic Music

Just a quick post here to announce a new album: Jondi & Spesh – REFLECTIONS

This is my sixth full-length electronic album with my longest-term collaborator and one of my closest friends, DJ Spesh. Way back in the day we hopped on a young genre called “progressive house” and rode it a long way.

Spesh and I had a long moment of fame in the late nineties and early 2000’s when we were hosting the most popular electronic dance music party in San Francisco (Qoöl at 111 Minna), touring the world in support of our releases on Spundae Records and our own label Loöq, getting voted among the Top 10 DJ’s in San Francisco by the Nitevibe poll, getting ranked as one of the top albums of the year in Muzik Magazine (right next to Madonna), licensing music to prime time broadcast shows (CSI), and composing music for the most popular dance game of that time (Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution). I can’t really ask for any more musical success or fame than all of that, but Spesh and I–all these years later–still enjoy making music together and sharing it with the world.

It’s all gravy at this point. Gravy I hope your ears enjoy! Available on Beatport, Spotify, Apple Music, and most other music streaming services and stores. We’re also on Instagram.

Purpose Is the Fifth Idol

By J.D. Moyer

On September 16

In Creative Work/Career, Culture Rants/Shares, Utopian Speculations

In Tim Ferriss’s recent interview with Arthur Brooks, Brooks discusses the four false idols, what Thomas Aquinas called “the four substitutes for God.” Aquinas named those substitutes as honor, wealth, pleasure, and power, but Brooks uses fame as an Instagram-age stand-in for honor.

In this short, Brooks uses U.S. cities to demonstrate each of the four false idols, or vices: New York is money (wealth), D.C. is power, Vegas is pleasure, and Los Angeles is fame. He asks which one motivates you? Which one leads you to make poor decisions?

That got me thinking, what’s the main vice of San Francisco? Historically, pleasure has its role in the Barbary Coast sense. So does wealth (gold rush, tech booms, etc.). But I would say SF’s main vice is purpose. A lot of San Francisco’s ambition is funneled toward meaning, vision, and progress. This can become pathological in a number of ways. San Francisco’s Summer of Love had a dark, druggy, rapey, violent underbelly. Visions of improving society with technology can easily tip into Panglossian techno-utopianism.

And maybe that’s what Aquinas meant, at least partially, by honor. Because there’s a performative aspect to the pursuit of purpose and progress. We (especially San Franciscans) want to to appear as if we’re doing good deeds and making the world a better place. So sometimes we virtue signal more than we act virtuously. It’s not for want of fame, it’s the desire to have a good reputation, to be seen as honorable, that can get us in trouble.

And then there’s the true believers, who get a dopamine high by pursuing their dreams for the future of humanity and society: a colony on Mars, self-aware computer programs, fleets of self-driving electric cars, fusion power that provides unlimited electricity at negligible cost. What could go wrong?

Even the artistic side of purpose has a dark side. Putin’s dark reign is greatly inspired by the science fiction works of author Mikhail Yuriev. Purpose is my own main vice–my desire to write science fiction is largely purpose driven. And while I don’t think my science fiction works have injured anyone, it’s always possible to put bad ideas out into the world. And the blind pursuit of purpose via art can easily lead a person to personal and financial ruin.

So yeah, purpose is the fifth idol. Fame certainly belongs on the list, but Aquinas didn’t know about Hollywood or Instagram. So honor should be subdivided into fame and purpose.

What’s Next? Post-Pandemic Expansiveness…

By J.D. Moyer

On July 26

In Creative Work/Career, Personal Updates

Guess which one bit me?

Over the course of the pandemic, I had a pervasive sense of deferment. I postponed many projects and activities with the mindset of “just trying to get through.” Which was appropriate, I think, given that the pandemic took a mental toll on me, as it did with most people. I prioritized the things that absolutely had to get done. For 2020 through 2022 that included:

Finding a better school for my kid and everything else that involved (moving, remodeling and renting out our house, adjusting to a new location)
Retooling my tech skills and taking on some new clients
Continuing to write fiction and make music
Doing my best to stay healthy and avoid getting a bad case of Covid (getting vaccinated, reducing social exposure, etc.)

But many things were backburnered, including:

Actively advancing my writing career (finding an agent, submitting new work)
Social plans, maintaining relationships with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances
Fitness and sport
Many of my hobbies (especially tabletop gaming and miniature painting, which I used to do every week)
Travel

The pandemic is generally considered to be over, but the world still feels chaotic, and the temptation to keep deferring things is strong. Climate disasters are unfolding left and right, fascists and bigots are on the rise in the US and worldwide, the war in Ukraine is far from over, and the US economy is iffy at best.

But personally, I do have more bandwidth. I’m trying to decide how I want to use my free time and attention. Generally I’m feeling more expansive. I want to see old friends and make new ones. I want to write and publish more fiction and more music. I’d like to travel to places I’ve seen as well as to locations I’ve never visited.

That said, I’ll probably take on too much and then feel overwhelmed. But for now, the plan is to DO MORE and SAY YES more often.

Oh, and one thing to share, a new melodic house music Spotify playlist from me and Spesh, just some tracks we’re enjoying at the moment.

And one more thing, I’m @johndavidmoyer on Threads, haven’t fully committed yet but I did tweet my first thread, or whatever. About the new secretly filmed BART movie.

New Novella Acceptance, Thoughts on Gender Dysphoria, Art and Money

By J.D. Moyer

On July 3

In Creative Work/Career, Culture Rants/Shares

Australian Giant Cuttlefish photographed by Richard Ling

Announcement

My novella “The Discovery at Alexandria”, a far-future triptych featuring cuttlefolk (uplifted cuttlefish), arcology-dwelling humans, and nomadic dogkin, was recently officially accepted by Sheree Thomas for Fantasy & Science Fiction. I’m delighted to have found a great home for this story. Publication date TBD (could still be awhile). This will be my first published novella. Inspiration came from the Murderbot series of novellas by Martha Wells, David Brin’s Uplift Saga, and Evolution by Stephen Baxter (among many other works).

Recent Thoughts and Speculations — Gender Fluidity and Anabolic Steriods

I’m not an expert on gender fluidity or gender dysphoria, but I’ve been thinking about testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) and anabolic steroid use, which is rampant not only among professional bodybuilders and MMA fighters, but also among teenage gym rats trying to get “aesthetic” and men my own age trying to recapture our fading youth. Should steroid use among men trying to appear (and feel) more masculine be part of the conversation around gender dysphoria? While “hyper-masculine” isn’t a distinct gender, it’s a very narrow band on the gender spectrum, and can only be achieved via unusual/rare genetics or the use of exogenous male hormones (combined with a great deal of strenuous exercise).

I think it’s potentially useful to bring “men trying to be more manly” into the conversation around gender fluidity and dysphoria. We’re all somewhere on the gender spectrum with a unique cocktail and ratio of male and female sex hormones and brain architecture, sometimes lining up with our birth-assigned gender, sometimes not. More importantly, many of us would like to be in a different place on that spectrum than we actually are. Sometimes exogenous hormones are the right choice, sometimes a dietary change might be appropriate (less alcohol and more cruciferous vegetables, for example, to reduce estrogen in men), and sometimes more self-acceptance might be the ticket.

Maybe some of the hysteria around gender-change politics could be mitigated if we included bro-dudes like Joe Rogan (who uses TRT) in the category of people who want to shift their position on the gender spectrum (albeit only slightly).

Art-spiration

I’m in a good groove with both fiction writing and music-making these days, and part of the reason why is that I have currently enough money. People make great art under all kinds of conditions, including extreme poverty, but it’s much easier to make art if one has the privilege of mentally divorcing time and money. It can take hours to write a good paragraph (or even a shitty paragraph). Same goes for a four-bar musical phrase, or a painting, and sometimes hundreds of hours of hard work don’t amount to anything tangible (like a sale, or even a completed work). From a purely economic POV, most art-making is a waste of time.

Even when financial security does come along, the mental prison of time=money can still hold us back. Time is time, time is us living our lives, and money allows us more freedom. But we still have to take that freedom, to use it, to break out of our productivity conditioning.

Hope you are enjoying the summer! Feel free to comment about whatever is on your mind.

sci-fi author, beatmaker

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