You're Gonna Have to Serve Somebody
When you create something and things don’t go as you hoped, it’s natural to ask yourself where you’re effing up. The problem with such questioning is that it suggests some magic bullet that, once found, will make everything explode into a panoply of success —creatively, financially, or otherwise. A second problem is that when you go looking for where you’re failing, you have already done the heavy lifting for those negative internal voices by readily agreeing that you are, indeed, failing. Now, all they have to do is concoct some clothing in which to dress it all up:
You aren’t good enough. You don’t work hard enough. You need to market better. You need to change your approach. You're not interesting enough. These voices will let you know one thing: You’re doing it wrong.
I guess we all have to admit that, in some way, we are. Maybe your small audience (or mine) is because we aren’t good enough, or because we don’t market like we should. Equally toxic to always thinking you’re failing is to think you’re never to blame for where you are. But it is your motivations that should transcend such conversations. What is your motivation for creating the things you create? That is where things get murky.
A weight on my creative life has been that I often feel self-centered in my pursuit of these things. I am going to set my song here because I want people to hear it, be moved by it, and then bring me love, validation, and attention. That might not be my actual motivation, but my behavior suggests that it is. In a recent edition of Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, he writes; “We are artists and we labour in the service of others.” When I read those words, I can’t help but wonder if I am “labouring in the service of others,” or am I really just out for myself hoping that others come along for the ride? Is there even a difference? What does that difference look like?
What would I be doing differently if I were working in the service of others? Would I literally be reaching out to people and asking them what kind of songs and books they want? Would I be offering everything I do with no eye on financial gratification? Does the fact that I don’t do those things mean that I am less in service to others? Or is work created from a genuine space of curiosity and desire inherently an act of service?
On December 27th, 2017, I left Facebook. I subsequently succumbed to alternatives like Instagram before eventually abandoning them as well. I left these platforms because that feeling of self-centered glorification was suffocating. I despised the version of myself that I saw in those places (and all the ads I saw when it wasn't me), and the obsessive craving for attention and validation it created in me. I miss it sometimes, as there is a real social price you pay for not being on the playground, but I can more readily stand with the person I am without those things.
Such a vacuum amplifies many of the aforementioned questions, and gives rise to additional ones: If you are truly in service to others, are you expected to sacrifice yourself in the process? Is it really service if you stop the moment pain and discomfort start? Maybe it’s less how I feel about myself, and more about the service I am providing.
Bob Dylan wrote “Gotta Serve Somebody” for his album Slow Train Coming in 1979. Sitting at the dawn of his pretty public conversion to Christianity, the premise he’s building here is that the act of service is something that is inescapable. The song, outside of the larger narrative around his music of that era, is really just saying that even if you don’t want to serve someone, you are: “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna’ have to serve somebody.”
Which makes it an interesting specimen for the idea of “doing it wrong” in terms of service. “Gotta Serve Somebody” suggests that no matter how you do something, you’re doing it in service to something outside yourself whether you like it or not. We probably can’t avoid doing both concurrently all the time.
Confidence and self-esteem play a huge role in this, too —both of which I struggle regularly. The hiccup this creates is that you’re quick to accept that you are doing it for yourself, and are maybe even accepting that you are doing it for others, but fail to believe that what you’re doing is valuable to others, so the service doesn't really count. Having to constantly pummel those negative feelings into submission is tiring, and you inevitably have days when those feelings win out. The result is a lack of emotional consistency.
I am confident in this landing spot because I think that a lack of emotional consistency is the exact way I would describe my journey with creating music. Not a lack of consistent effort —I have always “produced” regularly— but a lack of consistent positive emotion in which to wade through the ups-and-downs that define these kinds of ventures. I get excited and hopeful, start expanding out, hit a period where that hopefulness and positivity wane, and then retreat.
I liken this destructive cycle to a boat out on the water springing a leak. Instead of taking the opportunity to plug the hole, toss out the water, and keep sailing, I decide that the boat is no good. It is best to just let it sink while I go back and get a new one. There are so many problems with this mode of operation, but I think the lesson to take from this is when those emotional inconsistencies happen, just hold the ground. Either start emptying out the water, or plug the hole —you don’t even have to do both, and you definitely don't need to worry about continuing forward in that moment. Tread water while that emotional wave passes. And once it does, you’ll still be out on the water, ready to serve whoever is out there with you --devil, Lord, or otherwise.