New songs out on SoundCloud! Please give them a listen.

https://soundcloud.com/aarynjackson/city-nights

https://soundcloud.com/aarynjackson/runaway

Home EP out now :))

Letter To My Mirror out now, please give it a listen! :)

my cover of "too close" by sir chloe.

Concrete Jungle.

My EP is now on youtube! :)

New Music Out!

https://soundcloud.com/aarynjackson/sets/subway-ep

New York City.

some photos from a little skate adventure yesterday. #photography #urban

the trees are in bloom 🌲🌍

quarantine blues.

On Burnout

Artists can generally relate to experiencing burnout. One of my songs is even based on it (https://soundcloud.com/aajthemusician/burnout).If anything, even non-creative people can relate to exhausting themselves productively and falling into a state where it feels like you’ve ran out of energy forever. For artists, it means different things for different people, generally referring to a similar feeling of feeling like you’ve ran out of ideas. But this can occur differently in different artists. Here’s how it happens for me.

I think that in the modern world people have tried to find ways to preserve the moment in any physical way possible. Historically, people did this through writing, through statues and art. In today’s world I think the most common form of this would be photo taking. I originally had an idea for a mini-doc on photo-taking in young people; the oversharing culture of the internet and how it correlates to photo taking; and for that doc, I got responses from several friends of mine about when and why they take photos and how it makes them feel. Here are two of their responses that I feel are relevant to this post.

“I take photos for a lot of different reasons. If you were to scroll through my phone, you’d see that I take a LOT of photos in one day... maybe too many. It feels like I take photos in an attempt to collect memories and be able to save them, utilizing my phone as a way to freeze time. Also, I take photos to cheer my future self up when looking back at the photos I’ve taken, as I definitely know looking back at old funny photos of my friends has cheered me up when I’m feeling down. However, I am also very serious about photography and in that way I take photos more traditionally — to communicate the things on my mind, to express myself, or to bring certain issues I’ve thought about out of my mind and into the world.”

“i take photos to be able to look back at a day and smile. to remember why life is so amazing, sometimes, or to see how much i’ve grown. i usually take them when something cool or significant happens. or when i want a cool lock screen lol”

Preserving the moment through photos is often about connecting with friends and family. From the cliche ‘photos of your great-grandma’ to Instagram posts from parties, these photos are seen as a form of interaction, just not as conversational. In a way, they feel like preserving interaction. A way of being able to see, smell, touch, feel, or hear the fun you’ve had. The things you’ve done, the people you’ve met, the places you’ve been. And there’s something to be said about the value of memory over artificial means of preservation, but that is for another post.

As for how this ties to burnout: in my musical creative process, I often try to preserve the creative spirit of the song through my environment. Some of my songs I felt needed to be recorded on days with certain weather. For example, my song “sunday” was written, surprisingly, on a Sunday. The sun was out, entering my bedroom through open shades. 

It felt like I needed to capture that morning. That feeling. The way the clouds were in the sky. The smell of my room that day. I felt like I needed to get the way my environment felt that day into a song before my environment changed. So the piece was rushed. I needed it out and uploaded onto my computer ASAP. 

And this happens often. I can name at least 3 songs where this scenario repeated itself, and many others where something similar occurred. But overall, I’ve often felt like my creativity was fleeting, and that ideas need to be taken advantage of while they last. And because of this, I’ve created large amounts of work in short amounts of time, and then experienced anywhere from a week to a month of burnout, with my longest delay being between the release of my song “Queens” before dropping an album an entire month later. This isn’t a ridiculous amount of time, but during that month I had nothing in my head and not as much time with school in the way to come up with something new. Coming back to now, I am experiencing some level of musical burnout as I try to avoid creating songs too quickly. This week alone I released two projects, a total of 17 tracks. I’ve created over an hour of content since starting to release music in December. It’s hard to not automatically recreate or add on too old songs at the moment. I need time. That’s what my burnout looks like.

My email is [email protected]. I would love to hear anyone else’s stories of burnout, whether it’s creative or otherwise productive.

in this project, i slowed down a good amount of my released songs in an effort to create a new atmosphere. some of these songs carry entirely different emotions, but with the same base, like an odd dream after a day in the city. in the dream, you can see the elevated train you pass by daily, the teacher you remember often, the friends you call in the afternoon, but all combined into an odd set of scenes loosely connected that lack any strong emotion. these dreams only exist in memory and seem impossible to describe. that’s what this album is.

the title “end credits” reflects the pessimism many feel right now, including myself at times, and the feeling that comes with large amounts of external uncertainty that go beyond the superficial day to day decisions we make. sometimes our days feel like our last.

On Coronavirus. 3/23/20.

Disclaimer: many of my points in this post are very Eurocentric and reflect the experience of many middle-class Americans and Europeans who experienced privileges that have been somewhat diminished as a result of Corona. I am not more educated nor thoughtful than anyone else speaking on this topic at the moment. I am sure this isn't the only thing most people are focused on in many regions. I don’t know that anyone needs to hear this. I just wanted to get my thoughts out into a medium. This is mine.

This morning while doing my morning [high school] assignments from home, the topic of the black plague came up during my Global classwork. The destruction, the death, the end of the Mongolian empire - it all felt eerie at a time like this. Historians have found entries from many philosophers, scientists, and those labeled ‘thinkers’ at the time. One was written by a Renaissance scholar Francesco Petrarch, an Italian man (extra eerie) who had to bury all five of his children. It goes, “When at any time has such a thing been seen or spoken of? Has what happened in these years ever been read about: empty houses, derelict cities, ruined estates, fields strewn with cadavers, a horrible and vast solitude encompassing the whole world? Consult historians, they are silent; ask physicians, they are stupefied; seek the answers from philosophers, they shrug their shoulders, furrow their brows, and with fingers pressed against their lips, bid you be silent.”

I hate to compare a pandemic that we can’t truly know the outcome of to a historically tragic widespread plague that ended in the collapse of the majority of civilization at a time with significantly less medical technology because then I, like many sources of media at the moment, would be contributing to the fear many feel right now. But beyond any logic, reason or predictions, which could easily fail us in coming months or years, it simply is unproductive. As a good friend of mine explained to me, I want to share here. At this moment we have two options; we can either drive ourselves crazy with the threat of societal collapse on an unprecedented scale, economic collapse that could potentially lead to war and political unrest; or we face reality - we have no control over what happens now. We never did, we probably never will. We don’t have as much control over nature as we do influence. We can pollute the oceans that sharks swim in, but if we jump in, the shark can still bite. The shark can still rip us apart, limb by limb, and swallow us whole. So don’t jump in. Don’t allow yourself to dive into this polluted ocean of media and so-called journalism that promotes fear and unrest. The shark will leave you in your bed, unmotivated, depressed, missing a time when it seemed as though we had freedom and joy. The shark will swallow you whole, and the pain will drive you insane. Stay ashore. Do what you can from home.

But with that being said, it is interesting to think about the history of pandemics. When looking back at the most historical plagues (i.e. the Black Plague, Spanish flu, the Influenza of the 1930s, etc.), you realize how common they are. While some did more damage than others, they all shared this theme of widespread economic downfall and a ‘collapse’ that goes beyond shallow ideas of a government being dismantled or anything. The ‘collapse’ of people, the ‘collapse’ that is felt in the hearts of those affected. That could easily be the result of Corona. I’ve had family and friends say things that go along the lines of ‘when this is all over, people will be so much happier to go out and have fun’. My mother used the example of 9/11, how here in NYC many people became nicer to each other in her eyes. And it has been politically shown that collapse is a phenomenal springboard for powerful leaders to arise (the most infamous being Hitler’s rise to power in Germany after WW1). But this ‘collapse’, the crawl out of the cemetery of previous civilization (which may end up being dramatic if this goes well) into a changed world is defeating. It is painful. It is a tragedy. Because regardless of what happens next, the world will be different, in one way or another. And that’s fascinating to me to think about.

Another thing I’ve thought about recently is the faults in the way things are structured in America. I am not an economist, a politician. I am a high school student. But when you have a stock market like ours where the wealth is unevenly distributed to this extreme degree of billions of dollars, when there is a major loss (most historically commonly the result of either a war or a pandemic), the entire economy fails. And it fails to an extreme. Overall, our economy is unsustainable, like our energy, like our technology usage, like our hyper consumerism. And there’s never been a time in the West where this hasn’t been a problem, however, there’s also almost never been a time where this hasn’t led to Collapse. This hyper consumerist and elitist culture with people so far at the top they aren’t visible from the bottom and such an overflow of consumers that our Earth can’t healthily take it has never been and never will be sustainable. Something has too change. But I don’t know what.

But the only thing that can only universally be said is that no one has the answer. You ask epidemiologists, they’re terrified. You ask politicians, they’re uncertain. You ask historians, they know how the story goes. “Seek the answers from philosophers, they shrug their shoulders, furrow their brows, and with fingers pressed against their lips, bid you be silent.”

during this time of a rapid and recent social quarantine in the West, many creatives who're essentially stuck at home are given the oppourtunity to consume and create media with the extra time provided. i've taken this time to make music (soundcloud.com/aajthemusician) and express myself through fashion (especially when i'm never out nor get to wear things other than pajamas and workout clothes).

so here's some content :)