Can I still be enigmatic?

Oct 28, 2008

In the last post, a lot of interesting issues were raised and contentious points made. This is exactly what New Music Strategies should be about and I’d like to thank everyone, including (indeed, especially) those people who did not agree with the points I made, for their valuable contribution.

One of the themes that emerged over the course of that discussion was one that comes up rather a lot, so I thought I’d throw it into the mixed bag of Questions I Keep Getting Asked About Music Online.

It’s the one about revealing things about yourself personally. On the internet, what should remain private? Can you still be an elusive and enigmatic artist if you have a blog? Is Twitter just a step too far into an Orwellian world of mutual surveillance? And should blog comments ever be anonymous?

Short answer: ‘What do you feel comfortable with?’

After all – if you’re on Twitter, then what you decide to make public about your activities and movements is entirely up to you. Not wanting people to know what you had for dinner is not a reason to avoid a really useful piece of social media technology. That little fact about your diet can remain the object of deep mystery, should you wish.

The longer answer is one I often give about storytelling.

I do not really exist
As a media person (which is, like it or not, what you are if you make music for public consumption), your public face is something you get to have a say over. Essentially, you are telling a story about who you are and what you do everytime you go out there into the public realm.

You can call it PR if you wish. Or you can call it perception management. Engaging your audience might also fit. I just think of it as storytelling.

I like to imagine that you and I have got to know each other a little bit over the time you’ve been coming here. So it may surprise you to learn that the Andrew Dubber whose thoughts you read here on New Music Strategies, on my personal blog, at Dubber & Clutch, and on Twitter does not, in any concrete sense, exist.

I am essentially a fictional character devised by a man of the same name, and that character plays different roles in different contexts.

That is to say, what you read here is a construction. Everything I write on the internet is – at least in part – designed to portray a version of myself I am trying to convey.

Now of course, the Andrew Dubber (the character) that you read online is based in no small part on the Andrew Dubber (the author) that actually exists in the real world. The one that does all the mundane stuff like take out the rubbish, pay bills and go grocery shopping. But when I write, I am conscious of narrative, continuity and – above all – character development.

It’s a slow arc, certainly – and it took me a long time to figure out what I was doing here – but I have developed some rules about blogging that help me decide what to write. These rules may not necessarily be true, but I believe that if you act as if they are, you’ll get much better results.

1) Blogging is storytelling. That means that it has a beginning, middle and end. There is conflict and resolution. Small particulars point to larger universal truths. Nothing is incidental. Everything moves the story along. Characters learn, grow and change over time. They are a little bit larger than life, and – like the Queen – hardly ever go to the toilet.

2) Most good blogs are soap operas.Stories are always about people. People care about characters. The ones they like – they want good things to happen to them. They don’t necessarily wish harm on those they dislike, they usually just stop reading about them. But things have to happen to people. When I have bad travel experiences (as I so often do), I always think – “ah well – at least this will play well on the blog…”

3) You are not bound to the truth. On being asked for the thousandth time ‘Is blogging journalism?’ recently, my friend Paul Bradshaw responded simply ‘Is ice-cream strawberry?’. Your blog need not necessarily be an unassailable document of factual record. To put it bluntly, you can make shit up. My blog posts are usually mostly representative of what went on. They have, as Stephen Colbert puts it, qualities of ‘truthiness’. But if a fact threatens to spoil a story, story wins every time.

4) Stories are journeys. The simplest way to tell a story is through a sequence of events. One thing happened and that led to another thing happening, which then led to this other thing happening – and so on.

5) People equate self expression with selves This cuts both ways. If people like the storytelling, they will tend to like the storyteller. If people get to know the character and care about them – they’ll tend to translate that to that character’s music. I have friends whose music I wouldn’t ordinarily be drawn to, because it’s not in the genre areas I ordinarily hang out – but I love their bands, because I love the people and know their stories well – and this maps perfectly onto their music, which I now, of course love.

So – while you may not feel comfortable revealing things about your personal life – or even letting your fans peek behind the curtain from time to time, I’d suggest that the more you do that, the more your fans will engage. But you get to decide what they see, and how much of that is documentary truth.

You can be as real as you like; you can join Eminem, Marilyn Manson and Simon Cowell in the realm of pure fiction – or you can come and hang out somewhere in the middle with me.

What are you not comfortable about revealing online? Do you always sign your name to blog comments? Is your ’stage’ persona the same person as your ‘real’ persona? How do you use construction of identity to build an audience, or keep it at arm’s length?

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14 Comments. Write a comment or link to this post

Universal Indie Records

My blog was started to detail my experiences as an average guy, running a label from paycheck to paycheck, trying to record and then gain exposure for his work.

I started the blog with the intentions of being brutally honest whether or not it always showed me in the most positive light. One reviewer who had visited my blog stated…
“Make sure to check out the blog of the Hoodgrown record label – I’ve never seen so much transparency in a record label before. If you are looking for a perspective on how weird the music business can get for an independent label – check this out.”

I find that my audience relates to the fact that I’m not perfect and just as flawed as they are (or might be) and that I don’t feel a need to embellish the truth for the sake of a good read. Fact, in most instances can actually be a lot more interesting than fiction.

Note: Since I’ve changed the name of the label from Hoodgrown to Universal Indie, and moved to a different host.. i’ve lost all of those original post that made my blog compelling.

Oct 28th, 2008
Darren Landrum

For Porcupine Tree’s first album, they had invented an entire back-story about the entire album being an artefact from the late sixties from this forgotten band, which then recently surfaced in the underground music markets. A little bit of fiction can be fun, sometimes.

I’d given some thought to completely inventing a character that would be blatantly fictional, like being born on another planet or something, to portray the musician creating the music. I could go so far as to build up an entire story behind the character, and any continuing adventures. A steampunk-inspired group called Abney Park already do something like this.

Oct 28th, 2008
Jim Offerman

I try to be as real as I can be. My music is very personal, so I believe it would simply be inappropriate for me to have my artist persona be a figment of imagination.

Oct 28th, 2008
I Have Clones

I definitely haven’t figured this out yet.

Oct 28th, 2008
Dubber

Just for the sake of clarity, I do want to point out that you can be honest and ‘keep it real’… but that doesn’t mean you’re restricted to just relaying facts.

Be interesting and have a story to tell is all I’m saying…

Oct 28th, 2008
Jim Offerman

“Be interesting and have a story to tell”

I absolutely agree with that. Don’t be a boring list of facts! The point is to spin a good tale. Whether yours is a work of fiction or based in fact is entirely up to you.

Oct 28th, 2008
Universal Indie Records

“Just for the sake of clarity, I do want to point out that you can be honest and ‘keep it real’… but that doesn’t mean you’re restricted to just relaying facts.”

I get it.. but it also depends on the kind of blog you’re doing. I think what DARREN LANDRUM is great! That definitely works for him. Hell, just reading about it in his post has me hooked, it just that for what I’m trying to do.. it won’t.

Oct 29th, 2008
Tom Wilkowske

Kind of a tangent, but Andrew’s observations about storytelling are also applicable in the act of songwriting itself — people care about (well-drawn) characters, whether they appear in novels, short stories, movies, blogs or three-minute pop songs. Musicians and writers get asked all the time — “Is the guy you in this story?” But if it’s a good story, what difference does it make?

Oct 29th, 2008
Milton

I have made the potential mistake of having to many alias’ regarding my musical work. I have recently been trying to reign it in.

On the blog I have been keeping for several months now my main focus was filling it with media content (audio & video) and “useful links” in the side bar. The actual posts were very random and I consider it to be my learning and development phase. Thankfully readership is minimal and i don’t exactly promote it currently because it is kind of a testing ground.

Now that I have begun to get direction and focus I am presently setting up a Wordpress blog to try and implement what I have learned. I plan to stick with one main artist name and make the blog posts personal up to a point. I have never been good at trying to be guarded so I anticipate the posts will be a mix of information about my music and general information about my life outside of music.

I guess the story I will be telling will have me as the main character with my peers and family as a supporting cast. It will be the story of an isolated composer trying to make some kind of living from creating music he loves. All the while trying to balance raising a family, turning 40 in the music environment, etc. etc.

Hey, it just might be compelling? Maybe? I will work on it.

Cheers,
Milton

Oct 29th, 2008
karen

I am using my own name for everything and have accepted long ago that the ‘karen hunter’ creature has it’s own mythology.

I got to this place years ago through gigging – through people ‘knowing’ me through my songs – irrespective of the artistic license I take in composition. Peeps will think they ‘know’ an artist if they have heard them sing and listened to their stage banter. I do keep those stage stories much more controversial and ‘interesting’ than I like to keep my personal life…………..these days.

Re – blogging – I don’t have enough opinions that I feel really certain about to let them loose anywhere but in song form – so I have made a blog page at http://www.karenhunter.com and uploading tunes from recent gigs and photos as blog offerings. I record all my gigs on a cool digital recorder and love being able to upload new tracks.

I’m fine about commenting on other peoples blogs ( in case you haven’t noticed ) – but the ‘karen hunter’ creative creature is definitely exploring non-textual self expression in her own world.

Oct 29th, 2008
Leon Live

enigma

/inigm/

• noun a mysterious or puzzling person or thing.

— DERIVATIVES enigmatic adjective enigmatical adjective enigmatically adverb.

— ORIGIN Greek ainigma ‘riddle’.

I think any person who isnt shallow can remain an enigma even to their closest friends and family.

The only time i ever feel like i’ve truely expressed my inner pain or most difficult emotional feelings is through my lyrics when i song write.

I just cannot verbally express in conversation my feelings/anxieties/fears, i get frustrated because the words just arent there to convey whats in my head.

when i write/compose there is no pressure of time, i can dissapear into my own head while strumming chords and leet my mind form the words in its own time.

When i converse with my partner or friends or family members, a conversation requires a constant flows of words, there is a pressure of time. Feelings dont care for time, and when time forces me to try and find words for my feelings, my feelings get pissed off and frustrated!

Blogging is currently hit or miss for me, I dont read many, and I still havent found my own ryhtym and subject matter for my own, so its currently disjointed.

Like all things in life its a learning process, but just like real life, you’ll only give as much away in a blog as you would to people you just met in a pub (unless you create a genuine alter ego and remain anonymous)

I am me, this text is me, text can be more widely misinterpreted than talking face to face but that is beyond my control, i write as me, not as anything else.

Oct 29th, 2008
Lee J

Haha, excellent stuff. I totally agree that (character name) is ‘in no small part’ based on (author name), and it’s important to keep the two apart, in the sense that no, I do not wish to know what you had for dinner.

Mainly because that probably doesn’t appeal to Lee the character and there’s a very slim chance it would appeal to the real Lee (even if it did, the real Lee has no time for a heated debate about smoked Haddock unless it’s 3am and we’re drunk in my apartment).

Oct 29th, 2008
Darren Landrum

I’m still debating the whole “creating a fictional character” thing, because it does come across as being a “schtick” unless I can do it exactly right. And look what happened to David Bowie when he did essentially the same thing for his first album.

On the other hand, my big dream is to play prog rock at science fiction and fantasy (SFF) conventions (talk about a niche market!) and creating a character and back-story just might be the ticket. It’s worked well for Abney Park, who have now played at DragonCon, arguably the biggest SFF convention in North America. Talk about a dream gig…

Oct 29th, 2008
Chris Conway

Another reason I blog is not just for an audience but also for myself to believe in the dream a little more. The dream being an environment where one’s music matters to folks and the upper end of one’s musical life is perhaps all there is, thus pushing the everyday 2bit piano gigs in a bar back a bit and accentuating the posh gigs.
Keeping certain projects rolling and ongoing in the mind and blog amongst life’s noise is also a part of the dream and helps keep their momentum..
Believing in the perhaps slightly eggagerated reality of the blogworld me is, I find, good for creativity and productivity.

Oct 31st, 2008