#then because of it both her and tora get some much needed therapy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alexrobshaw · 3 years

Text

I think there's gonna be enough 2020 reviews out there for me not to need to write a 2020 review generically.

My year reviews have always been about Everything Robshaw, because us indie musicians need to make our own media, and this is still in effect this year, despite it all.

I can say this: the coronavirus is real, wearing masks in no way hinders your human rights (like, at all), capitalism is gross, and it's high time we switched our gears to putting the well-being and health of humans first, before profit. If society doesn't do what it has to do to change itself, the Earth will make sure it does.

Let that be clear: the Land will always win. The will of the Land will always be stronger than the will of any/all humans.

Rota Taro Orat Tora Ator.

This year, I watched the 2012 version of the Ramayana. It was not intended, as I wanted to find the Mahabarata. Not only was Ramayan my introduction to Bollywood series, but it also allowed for lovely colour and wisdom therapy as I settled into the Montreal confinement from March through May. It's a pleasure for me to invite you to discover the Ramayana for yourself, if it sparks your fancy.

I will say this: later, much later in the story, mother Kakeyi goes to Lord Indra, the King of the Gods, and asks him why she was the one bestowed with the harshest role. Why she was the one who had to do that, all that.

Indra says to her "Because you're the toughest one of the three. You're the only one who could handle all of that. You're the only one strong enough to be able to go through that. The others wouldn't have survived".

It's not exactly that, mind you, but it's mostly that.

And as I look back at myself over the past months, and I look at myself now, I've wondered quite a lot why I had to, and still have to, go through all that, and maybe, just maybe, it's because I'm of the few who are tough enough to handle it all, and still be able to smile.

There are, of course, many, many more people who’ve had it much worse. And then there are those who’ve had it easier than most. Perspective. But this is my review.

Obviously, as I was working in the service industry, I lost my job in March. Obviously, before CERB was announced, lots of anxiety built itself up because of that. I’ll say this though -I welcomed the break. I welcomed the confinement. I welcomed the pause. My schedule was erratic. I was working 2 jobs and was finishing my yoga teacher training, which had its own overwhelming load of work. It was too much and I frankly was on the verge of a 2nd burnout. We’re talking scheds like going to work at 8pm, working a club night and getting back home around 4:30am, sleeping 3 to 5hrs and going to my YTT intensive for a full day, coming back home at 5pm, then doing it all over again. Erratic. Erratic madness. I cried A LOT during my YTT. This was why. I was exhausted and had no solution. I had to pay everything on my own, including my YTT. I had to work, I had to make the money. I couldn’t afford not working. I did it for a bit, but eventually I couldn’t and had to constantly sacrifice either a work shift or hours of my training.

So yeah, I welcomed the break, and mostly took the first month of confinement to recover -and then I had to move, and I had 5 days to find an apartment, and I wrote an extensive piece about that which you can go back to on this blog.

8 months into the lease and I still hate this place, and everything about it, and you know, when the one positive thing you can say about your apartment is At least I’ve got a place to stay, it’s pretty bad. But 8 months into the lease means I’ve only got 6 more to go, and maybe less if Lady Luck is on my side.

After settling in, in May, I took an online training to get certification as an Ayurvedic practitioner. I also completed my YTT, and received both certifications in June. You can follow my instagram profile @ zoralvx, and check out my website www.zoralvx.com, which I’ve made all by myself. This whole business is quite important to me, and I pour into it as much of my soul as I pour into my music. If you’re into holistic health, and if you love yoga, do check it out, and sign up for my online classes -it means the world to me.

Summer happened. I went through my to-do list of the past 2 years, scored a job in a studio, and did what I could to get through each day. I was interviewed on the podcast Inciting a Riot, which incited me to incite a conversation between independent musicians about the state of the industry, and our reality. As confinement settled itself, I had noticed just how many of my fellow indie musicians were becoming more and more vocal about our ordeals, and of how much of it was out there. I began organizing an online conference about it, and held it at the beginning of October. It was called Reclaiming the Value of Musicians, and it was a great success. I’m grateful for the musicians who took part as panelists, offering the most wonderful insights and making it clear to me that exposing our reality is a necessity, and that we have to keep this going.

What we have to do to get our music out there is insane. What we have to do to be able to do our dharma is becoming more and more out of control and irrational. Art is work. Music is work. Music is life, and for many, it’s actually what keeps us alive. It’s what keeps me alive, anyway.

The good thing is that these issues are becoming more and more revealed to the public, and that we can see the towers of capitalism starting to tip over. The whole controversy over streaming revenues and how music creators are getting paid for their work is swelling more and more, with many established artists making it very clear that something is wrong -see, it’s not just us indies, it’s everyone making music that’s getting screwed- is making for what I am foreseeing to be a pathway into new ways artists can share their work, and get paid for what they do, and be able to resettle ourselves in this business without burnout and bankruptcy becoming mandatory rites of passage.

To keep the conversation going, I’m thinking of maybe starting a podcast, or a vlog. Or both. Or I might just keep hosting online conferences. The idea’s been brewing in my cauldron, I’m not pressuring myself with it too much. Everyone and their grandmother has a podcast right now, and I don’t want to load myself with something else I already have no time for. But we’ll see. Time happens and things get done, and probably I’m overthinking, but I know it’s better to do it than not do it -so stay tuned for that. I also got interviewed by Todd Smith on CKLV 100.7FM. That was incredibly awesome, certainly the best interview ever. Yet.

As Autumn rolled in and lockdowns came back in full force, I found myself writing music again. Or rather, I allowed myself to write music again -and that’s where some massive shifting started happening. It might have been the leaves turning, or the darkness brought about by the equinox, but something about this Fall had me fully, and finally, feel comfortable about being a musician again.

Because it gets rough, you know. Original Game is the greatest thing I’ve ever done, so far and still, and it took so much out of me that probably, what I had to do was take some steps back. Did I specifically intend on taking a break? Not really, especially considering the madness that my 2019 was, as I mentioned before. I wouldn’t call that a break. I was less active in music, but I took care of securing a sideline for myself that wouldn’t be destructive of my health as my previous sidelines had been. Being a yoga teacher and holistic health practitioner means that everything I do with my life resonates with what I’m made of. Doing this fuels me up. Feeds my soul. Gives me energy and motivation to keep being myself. It makes me feel right -whereas every other dayjob I’ve ever had made me feel SO wrong, all the time.

2020 was definitely not the best year to start my new career, especially as a yoga teacher, with all that lockdowns entail, and I’ve had this immense struggle with accepting it all and not seeing this as a failure. It still takes over me sometimes, but it’s not as bad as it was.

So I’ve been writing new music, and the songs are shaping themselves more and more everyday. I’m playing this game with them where they let me in on their secrets, and then I’ll let them in on my agenda or intention for this record, and then they’ll settle into the frame, a bit, and then shatter it and become these beacons of a much better framework. I have ideas and concepts, and the songs say Sure, that’s great, Robshaw, but how about you let us in? How about you listen to what we’ve got to say. How about you listen to what YOU’ve REALLY got to say. And then sometimes they get stoked on the concepts and dance together and intertwine and merge all the concepts together into One Great Whole, and isn’t that the most amazing thing, when you’re a songwriter? When you fully lock in with That Which Is Creation, and you know you’re not the one who’s coming up with this but clearly this was your idea, and then none of this matters anymore, and the songs are writing themselves, becoming themselves through you? Isn’t it great?

It is great. Us Creators see and hear, but above all, we feel. Real music will have you feel something. Real musicians will feel their way through the songs as they execute them. If you’re writing songs from a cerebral level, sure your song might be great, if you’ve followed the recipe, but in the long run it will not survive. It’s not a real creation. It’s not art. It’s just a product.

Real artists don’t call themselves artists, or they’ll joke about it. Insert dramatic I’m an artist pose here. I don’t need to call myself an artist. I know I am. That is enough. I’ll call myself a songwriter, a rockstar, a channel or vessel for Creation, or a musician, but I don’t need to refer to myself as an artist.

I’m hoping recording can happen in 2021. I don’t have the privilege to live somewhere I can properly do any form of recording right now, so we’ll see how that goes. For now, the music is still writing itself, so I’m letting it happen as it comes.

I’ll finish this off with the most important topic I can tackle: mental health.

Mental health is crucial. Mental health is the most important thing. People who do not have a history of mental health problems cannot ever understand what it’s like to have relapses. To have the monsters inside you become bigger than yourself again, to start hearing them doing everything they can to take you down and make it their prerogative to make you feel awful, as much as they can, every moment they get the chance, about everything you are and everything you do and everything you’ve ever done. When your brain is wired in a way that makes it so that by default, your perspective and take on life are based in negativity, it’s extremely hard to develop the opposite muscle. It is what you have to do, ultimately. You’ve gotta learn to know and conquer and tame and master yourself. And then things can get pretty fine for a while, and you might even believe the monsters will never come back, but that’s the lie, right there.

They never leave, and they’ll always come back. I’ve been told to experience this as a fight, and not as a fight. It’s all a part of you, it’s what you’re made of. You see and feel and hear and experience life in your very own unique way, through this remarkable awareness, sensitivity, consciousness and empathy. Fight, don’t fight, let it be, let everything unfold and be the witness, don’t attach yourself to a perspective, attach yourself to the counter-mechanism, all that.

In the end, I’m mostly working very hard at doing the best I can to make it to the end of the day. To make it through restless nights. To make it through another lonely morning. To make it through another day. That takes a lot of energy. A lot. I’m doing everything I can, and that’s the best I can do -and even as I write this, there’s a monster inside saying it’s not enough, and it’s useless, and generally commenting on how bad I’m doing, and that’s how it is.

That’s the reality. As real as Life itself, and as real as Death can be. People closer to me have been very loving in telling me how proud they are of how much I’ve accomplished this year, etc, which is beautiful to receive. I only wish the monsters would listen, and understand what it’s like to love, and be loved. As we strive to free ourselves from the worn-out chains of the capitalist dictatorship of hate, the best you can do for yourself is allow yourself to remember what it’s like to feel peace inside. To remember what it’s like to live without pain, and allow yourself to become that again. Painless, loving, loved, and free.

As a young girl, I never aimed at being strong. It was never something I intentionally wanted to be. I've only ever wanted to be happy, and it seems like, to me anyway, choosing to be truly happy means to go through excruciating pain, quite often and quite a lot, in the form of ordeals and trials and obstacles and walls I need to break with my bare hands.

I just want to feel something that's real. I just want my life to make sense. Most people can't deal with it. They can't deal with the lack of security and the loneliness and the level of work and the level of energy it takes to shape their lives in a way that resonates with the core of their soul. But I can't stay alive any other way.

Being strong is exhausting, especially when most of your primary energy is used to deal with the monsters in your head. But if that's what it takes to be free, somehow, someday, then so be my dharma.

I'm here for what's real. And I'm here for freedom.

#music #musician #2020review #independentartist #indiemusician #montrealmusic #montrealmusicscene #freedom #freeyourself #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #singersongwriter #womeninmusic #womeninrock

0 notes