organizing an accident is a weekly newsletter where I leak home demos of unreleased songs, first draft lyrics, thoughts on the creative process, & dispatches from music life in Paris.
Listen to “On the Run” (demo):
This song was written on August 3, 2023
This is demo leak #72.
Last night, I was flipping through sections that I had highlighted in a book called Joan Miró - Selected Writings and Interviews, in which the reader gains insight into the Catalan Spanish painter’s work journals, letter correspondence with friends and business partners, and other writing from the course of his career. Below is one such highlight that I found relatable both in reflecting on the ambitions of my younger artist self as well as in my projections for the future.
To J.F. Ràfols, Mont-roig
August 10, 1919We must make every effort, Ràfols my friend, to do good painting. If we only do “interesting” things we will soon run out of resources. With the little bit of talent one has at age 20, the hell with “interesting” things. What we have to do is learn to paint—look at that devil Picasso! If we keep wasting time and being content with doing interesting things—it won’t be long before they are not talking about us anymore. We must forget about that and keep on always searching and digging deeply and preparing ourselves for the day we are mature enough to start doing really interesting things.
I love this excerpt. I love a fiery, young artist who is trying to make their mark on the world. I also love the self-awareness that Miró emanated and thus propagated amongst his creative comrades. What I most appreciate is the final line in bold, wherein he perfectly expresses a sentiment shared by so many artists in the early stages of their careers: that point at which our own callow techniques cannot meet the standards and taste by which we judge our work.
It is at this juncture that an artist accepts the cross they bear: to work tirelessly toward a bar of immeasurable height and which ultimately is never to be reached. It’s a mad decision to commit to years of artistic output that may, in retrospect, have only been a dress rehearsal. And so it goes.
With organizing an accident, I have shared over 70 home demos, works-in-progress that were churned out over years in a similarly devoted and often directionless compulsion. When I look back at my catalog of songs, I see within it phases during which I happened upon a particular theme, style, or just generally better writing, which then led to EPs, albums, and other “official” releases. But I first had to live, write, and then sift through it all to finally grasp any such awareness about the material and myself.
What we learn is that there are times to create and there are times to curate. Moments to improvise and moments to edit. In her incredible podcast series Sonic Symbolism, Björk speaks about her belief that these phases tend to come every three years in an artist’s life, which is more or less the length of time between the inception and release of an album, novel, or film.
While it’s not a science, many artists would attest that this is relevant to the time it takes to innovate within our own practice and later in our completed works. Presently, organizing an accident is my first experiment in opening up that thought process in public with the hope (now validated) that I might receive ever louder signals highlighting any through lines within my years of writing.
If nothing else, it has allowed me to shine a light on songs that would not otherwise be resurrected from their resting place. It has allowed me to see and respect their utility as modest explorations and curious bursts of the heart. I love them because I love the process and because I love where they have transported me. I love them even if I do not choose to hang them on the walls of my exhibition.
One final thought from Miró in a 1937 interview with Cahiers d’art:
It’s just as well not to attach any importance to our works. The less we look for some beautiful success, the better we succeed: I mean, the greater our chances of obtaining an honest result. A painting, after all, comes from an excess of emotions and feelings. It’s nothing more than a kind of evacuation, and you don’t turn back on it.
With love,
Ryan
“On the Run” Lyrics
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From the vault
What I’m listening to this week
What I’ve been reading
Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.
Read the previous post.
Really appreciating this create/curate dichotomy to help with that pervasive sense of guilt I tend to feel for not being creative enough...