J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

How My Relationship with Making Music Has Changed

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On July 17

In Creative Work/Career, Electronic Music

First of all, to get it out of the way, I have a new release with Spesh out on Beatport. The release includes two new melodic house/progressive house tracks, “Starfall” and “Sixes and Fours”. I’m really proud of both of them, and also of how Spesh and I collaborated to make both tracks the absolute best they could be. We had an unusual number of opportunities to test early versions with big sound systems in front of actual people dancing on a dance floor.

But that’s not what this post is about.

When I first started making electronic music, I was fascinated by the process. This was well before YouTube, and I didn’t yet have a community of fellow music makers. It was just me in my shared dorm room with a first gen Mac and a Roland D-70 keyboard. Eventually I added a drum machine, an EMAX II sampler, a DAT recorder, and a few other pieces of gear. The first track I ever signed to a label, “1-900”, was made with that bare bones setup.

Eventually I started collaborating with Spesh, and later Mark Musselman (as Jondi & Spesh and Momu, respectively). I’ve recounted my musical history elsewhere, so I won’t get into it here. Suffice to say we wrote, signed, and released hundreds of tracks on dozens of labels, including our own label Loöq Records. We toured the world, had some minor hits, and gained a fair bit of notoriety.

The main feeling I had during the early part of my music career was a strong desire for respect and recognition from my peers. Above all else, I wanted to feel artistically relevant.

But at some point I realized that chasing relevance (or trying to hold onto it) was an unwinnable game. I wrote about the topic in 2013, but my thoughts have evolved since then. The desire for artistic respect, though it might seem more noble than the desire for money, power, or fame, is essentially the same. It’s a thirst that can never be fully quenched, no matter the degree or number of your accolades. There will always be somebody who dismisses you, disses you, or simply doesn’t know who you are.

A recent interview with Roger Waters illustrates my point. Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) is concerned about the fact that no reporters from any Toronto newspaper were assigned to review his concert. Waters asks the question in a slightly conspiratorial context, but it’s not hard to see that he’s salty about it. He’s concerned with his own artistic relevance, and puts down The Weeknd in the process.

If Roger Waters doesn’t have full confidence in his own relevance, who can?

The answer is nobody, of course. All artists, no matter how much we boast, strut, and preen (or humble-brag, in the case of most writers), are plagued by doubt. Maybe not all the time, but definitely some of those times when we’re out of the spotlight, between promotion cycles, between gigs, creatively blocked, etc.

What’s the emotional solution? Focus on the work, focus on the mission/purpose, try to enjoy your own creative process, try to keep learning and getting better, help others improve. Like anything that involves tremendous amounts of uncertainty, focus on the things you can control.

With music especially, I’m getting better at this. I’m back where I started, fascinated with the process of making sounds with synthesizers and computers. But now with the added benefits of collaborators, a community of fellow producers, a record label, a distributor, and all the skilled producers on YouTube teaching me new things.

I’m not saying that I no longer care about artistic success and respect. Of course I do. I’m not some enlightened being who has conquered desire. But I’ve learned to put those insatiable desires in context, and not give them so much emotional weight. Those feelings are farther away, and no longer drive my artistic process as much as they used to.

What Is Civilization? What Is Progress? (Roe vs. Wade)

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On June 26

In Culture Rants/Shares

This week the Supreme Court rolled back an important human right: the right for women to unequivocally control their own bodies, the right to never have to give birth against their will.

To me and many others, it felt like a huge step backwards. So what does that mean, to move backwards, culturally and socially?

It’s a trap to view civilization and culture in terms of linear progress. Human history and pre-history includes thousands of diverse cultures, each contributing unique and valuable ways of speaking, thinking, moving, preparing food, celebrating, crafting, etc. Many cultures and civilizations have fallen or disappeared that were more civilized, by many measures (quality of life, cooperativeness, personal freedoms) than any human system of living that exists today.

But it’s also a trap to not acknowledge that some ways of living are more civilized than others. Civil rights–the degree to which at all members of a society have equal freedoms and protections under the law–is a worthy metric. So is nonviolent conflict resolution, the degree to which we can coexist and mediate our disagreements without stabbing or shooting each other.

This morning I watched a video on YouTube about a pride of lions, six brothers, that came to dominate a large swatch of territory in South Africa. They did so by hunting buffalo, slaying their rival males, killing the cubs of those rival males, and impregnating the females. As the lions aged, they died, one by one, mostly from gruesome injuries inflicted by prides of younger, stronger lions.

Totally natural behavior, for lions.

Human civilization, at its core, is an attempt to move away from this “natural” way of living, to introduce more safety and security, to create and distribute wealth and abundance, to create and enforce the social constructs we call “rights”: the ability to go through life with certain entitlements (food, shelter, relative safety, freedom, access to education, access to healthcare, etc.).

But there will always be people who feel that we are too civilized. People who feel that the strong should dominate the weak, and that only some privileged members of a society should be afforded full rights (the right to vote, the right to healthcare, the right to not be murdered by police).

So while human civilization, in its broadest sense, is a tree with a million branches, a marvel of sociocultural evolutionary complexity, there are also linear metrics by which we can and should judge progress. Technology and science can help us pursue more civilized ways of living by increasing our understanding of the world and making us more powerful and wealthy, but the important metrics are ethical ones. How are we helping and protecting each other? How are we collectively improving our lives?

When we choose love, when we choose acceptance, when we choose equal rights under the law, when we create and implement greater human rights, we move civilization forward.

We progress.

How I’m Using My Distance Vision (through time, in life)

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On May 29

In Metaprogramming

Walking along the Embarcadero every day, I have long unobstructed views. I can look east across the bay, north toward the Ferry Building, south toward the ballpark. Sometimes I try to identify people and pick out details from 100 yards away or farther. Since I spend most of my time looking at screens from about two feet away, using my distance vision is a nice break. It feels like it does good things for my eyes and my brain.

It makes me think about using my distance vision through time. What future events can I see coming, not as fated events, but probabilistically, as likely outcomes? For the scenarios that are problematic, what can I do to mitigate those probable outcomes, or steer my fate in a more favorable direction?

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Play Yourself as a PC

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On April 27

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming

Sometimes I catch myself living my life as an NPC (non-player character). Doing the same thing, day in and day out. Making safe but boring choices. Focusing too much on distractions that don’t really matter, and not enough on areas that can provide real leverage. Not being the main character on a major quest, but instead farting around with insignificant side quests and fetch tasks.

I like my life much better when I play the game of life as a PC (player character). When I play role-playing games, I don’t take the life of my character too seriously. I try to make interesting choices. When my character faces a problem, I have them try to solve it quickly and creatively. While I usually don’t play recklessly (I want my character to survive), I don’t worry too much if I’m making the “right” decision for my character. A multitude of possible choices can result in fruitful outcomes. There is no single right choice for any given situation.

I first wrote about this topic back in 2010 (here and here). Since then, this approach to life has provided the perspective and mental freedom to take on ambitious projects and changes, including:

  • Working my ass off to become a published science fiction author
  • When my consulting work started drying up, retooling my tech skills to become super employable as a freelancer
  • Moving to San Francisco (a project that included remodeling our house to rent it out) for my daughter’s education and to change things up for our whole family
  • Learning how to produce music in new genres

In hindsight, these paths and choices seem easy, almost as if they were inevitable. But before committing to each of the choices above, I faced an enormous amount of doubt and insecurity. Was it worth it, in each case, to invest the time, energy, and money to pursue the new direction, with no guarantee of success?

Zooming out and considering the possible outcomes of each choice, not as myself, but as a neutral observer examining my life, provided clarity in each case.

We usually know what other people need to do to improve their lives. But making big, good choices for ourselves is much harder. The key is to make the choice as if we were someone else. The “PC” method is just one window into that headspace.

How do you know if you’re playing as a PC, instead of an NPC?

  • You control your own life. You don’t let anyone else make decisions for you.
  • You’re focused on one or more major quests that align with your values.
  • You make creative, fun decisions that result in interesting experiences, with the possibility of great rewards.
  • You greatly value your party members (family and closest friends). You share your bounty and joys with them, and would do anything to protect them.
  • You are willing to take reasonable risks for great rewards, and don’t worry too much about losses or setbacks. There’s always another dungeon to raid.
  • You 100% realize that your life is finite, that you could die at any moment. So you make the most of it, and don’t take anything too seriously.

These days I’m laying the groundwork for my next adventures. I’ve been fairly quiet lately because I don’t have any new books, stories, or music releases to promote. But that’s not the point, is it? For over ten years I’ve shared my creative journey, every step of the adventure, including my hopes and dreams, failures and false starts, victories and successes.

I should continue to do the same, even if I make a fool out of myself.

Who Am I Trying to Impress?

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On April 3

In Metaprogramming

In my twenties and thirties I remember being very motivated by wanting to impress and/or outdo other people. I’ll show them, I thought to myself. I would achieve this or that, at which point those people would be forced to acknowledge they were wrong about me in one way or another.

Spite is decent motivation. The best revenge is a life well lived. For those that have wronged or disrespected you, nothing is sweeter than succeeding and rubbing it in their faces.

Except that this way of thinking is also ridiculous, immature, and ultimately hollow.

I started to realize this at some point, and made a list of the specific people I’d been working so hard to impress. Making the list was a kind of dredging of my subconscious, bringing that spite-ambition into the light of my conscious mind.

But once I completed the list, I laughed out loud at myself, at my own pettiness and the fragility of my ego. The power those people had over me was instantly diminished.

Russell was one of my first bosses. As a teenager, I worked for Russell as a cook and cashier at his food booths at various festivals and fairs. One time when we were driving to a site he asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I told him I wanted to be a science fiction author, but was also interested in making electronic music. In addition, I wanted to share my philosophical and spiritual ideas with as many people as possible. I must have sounded all over the place, painfully idealistic and hopeful. I don’t think he laughed at me exactly, more like a dismissive chuckle. But I held it against him for a long time. I did eventually become a science fiction author. I’ve published hundreds of electronic music tracks. And I write this blog about metaprogramming and other topics. Does Russell know or care? I highly doubt it.

M was a college girlfriend. We both wanted to be writers. At one point I think we even made a bet about who would be published first. We broke up and didn’t speak for years. But eventually we became friends again. She’s a professional writer, working with business clients, and has published both memoir and nonfiction. She’s been nothing but supportive of my writing, and vice versa. All the competition dissolved decades ago. But some of it had still been lurking in my subconscious, from our college days when we both had a lot to prove.

At UC Davis I worked at a pizza parlor with a kid named Josh. He made hip-hop mix tapes on his four track. I was just getting into music myself, making bad synth music with my MacPlus and Roland D-70. Josh and I were both DJs at KDVS, the local college station. Eventually my music improved and I signed a house track to a San Francisco music label. I was really proud of myself. But Josh’s music career completely blew up. Josh Davis, aka DJ Shadow, went on to become a superstar. I was happy for him, but also envious. I always wanted to impress him, since we had similar beginnings.

There are a few other people on the list. Some of them I wanted to impress for reasons that are too embarrassing to publicly confess. But making that list helped exorcise some of those toxic emotions. Ultimately I realized that the people I care most about are already sufficiently impressed by me. And the others, like Russell and DJ Shadow, don’t think about me at all. And I’m okay with that.

Who’s on your spite-motivation list, and why?

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