Written a year ago, and recently uncovered



 

Art Through the Dark 
 

I’ve been volunteering lately with the charity Nami Davidson (National Alliance for Mental Health) here in Nashville and wanted to share a little bit about my story and why work like this hits close to home. 

We all deal with something in our lives. In fact we will all be dealing with ‘somethings’ forever. Whether it comes in the form of anxiety or depression, aspergers or schizophrenia, poverty or systemic injustice, heartbreak, sorrow, death, loss, lies, deceit, or just not understanding why we can’t ever seem to be content with the seemingly random and unfair cycle of life and the cards we’re dealt. 

My story began when I was very young. I had parents who weren’t American and had spent most of their lives traveling and developing a sense of the world.  I was born in Hong Kong and somehow with all of that ended up growing up (the first 10 years of my life) in a middle upper class suburb in Massachusetts. Life there wasn’t real and I can only imagine it still isn’t. Their way of dealing with a homeless population was to put them into a police car and drive them to the next town over, dropping them off as though they were a bag of trash on the highway. I grew up detesting a lot of the authority figures in my life. I refused to say the pledge of allegiance in school (yes that was still a thing when I was a kid). I refused to accept anything I was told (and still do). I was a thinker and for all the benefits that can bring, it can be an absolute curse in a world that cherishes and rewards surface level conversations and lowest common denominator connections. This was and still is at the root of a huge amount of the anxiety I deal with on a daily basis. 

Most of the people I encountered saw life as a riddle. A game they were trying to figure out. The end result of that game was to get all the money…or all the fame… or all the some other distraction. And yet as a child all I could do was over analyze everything I heard or saw, good and bad. That overanalyzing led to life long anxiety and depression that I’ve never been able to completely shake. 

I was also surrounded by a lot of addiction my entire life and witnessed people close to me fighting demons that seemed unnecessary for a child to have to deal with. That left me in a place where I spent a lot of time alone trying to understand how all these people I grew up thinking were ‘perfect’ were so very flawed. 

When I was younger I would tell myself that as I grew up these things would change. That my innate anxiety and depressive tendencies stemmed from a simple lack of knowledge. So I yearned to learn and travel. I pursued my dreams, travelled the world, read books, met people of every walk of life. I lived in absolute squaller and incredible mansions. Every year, month, day and minute of my life was a constantly changing journey to calm these emotions that appeared to rule my life. At times I thought it was working, until I realized that all of that was a bi product of the real solution which was the catharsis I found through art. 

So what is the point in a story if it doesn’t apply some thought to a solution. That was where music came in. All through my life people, both in a personal and professional sense, were worried about my mental state. I was always away in the clouds. I thought about every little thing until there was no detail left to discuss. I was never content, but then who is? And none of this has changed to this day. I’ve just figured out how to better deal with it. From the age that I could hold a pencil or press a key on a piano, I understood that music was the color to life. It was an untouchable transcendent energy that could bring change to peoples lives, myself included. I also began to understand the beauty in words. Writing down your thoughts in a journal, as cliched as that sounds, became a way to feel like the bad experiences in your life weren’t a waste. I realized that when I’m gone these thoughts and experiences don’t just evaporate. 

In order to get past the idea that we don’t matter, it’s important to find a way to feel like you can create a positive out of the negative; that what comes out of your experiences holds longevity. To take the utter crap we all deal with on a daily basis and turn it into something that will improve someone elses life, either right then or years down the line. That’s how I deal with anxiety and depression. 

I’m not writing about this to gain any pity or praise, because I’m extremely lucky and grateful to have found a passion/vocation so early in life that literally gave me a sustainable way to calm the demons in my head. From it I’ve put out a lot of music that I’m extremely proud of and every week receive messages from people who say one song or another has impacted their lives in a way that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone down this road. 

So what’s the point? The point is that most artists deal with mental discrepancies that cause us to gravitate to art in the first place. That’s the math behind when people talk about “real” versus “fabricated” art. If you are a young person dealing with this feeling of hopelessness, just remember you aren’t the only one. You’re vocation is out there and whether or not you have found the passion that drives you, it’s out there. All those horrible experiences aren’t a waste. If nobody ever turned hardship into positivity then we would have no Ghandis or Martin Luther Kings. The world would be a vicious spiral. Just have an awareness that passion is what keeps things rolling so be open to finding yours and be willing to work every day to create something that’s bigger than you, more important than you, and transcends the measly amount of time we spend on this earth. 

K

Dear Musicians, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. 

To all of my musician friends, this actually happened the other day. Please take a second to absorb this… 

I’m at a show to see a band because of a strong recommendation from a friend of mine. He rounds up four people to go to this show at 20 dollars a ticket. We get there and walk over to the merch table. Two of the people with us bought t shirts and were telling the band how much they loved their music. The singer goes “that’s so awesome, how’d you hear about us” to which they answered “Spotify”. The singer instantly turned sour and went on a rant berating them for streaming the music, saying it only paid 25 cents for a million streams. (A million streams pays around 9 thousand dollars) 

Look.. because of Spotify, these four people just dropped over a hundred dollars on you in one night, let alone the hundreds of dollars they will give you by streaming your music in perpetuity…much more valuable than a single sale of a ten dollar cd. If you are a musician and you’re constantly giving people shit about using Spotify then maybe you should…hmm….TAKE YOUR MUSIC OFF OF IT. It’s not mandatory, and obviously the reason we stay on it is because it’s an incredible promotional service. The music discovery side of it is so valuable that they could easily pay artists zero dollars and it would still be worthwhile as a promotional tool. 

MySpace was a music discovery streaming platform that garnered me so many career opportunities that I never would have gotten otherwise. Nobody forced me to be on it. I just weighed out the benefits and they were worth more than money. 
Please stop treating fans and music supporters like shit because they found you on a streaming service. Who cares if they found your cd in a trash can? The point is they are a fan, they’re coming to your shows and they’re supporting you. 

Let's all think before we speak.

Common Sense, the song and the album, represented a few years of fairly constant nervous breakdowns in my mid 20′s. Until this new age, we had never had such easy access to ‘knowledge’. Before, you dealt with what was going on right in front of your face. Now, you turn on the computer and see a frail world constantly on the brink of war and violence, fraud and lies, and a greedy race to be king, which is so intense that it leaves a lot of good people in the dust. We’ve never had to process so much information at once.. You want to worry about it all but if you do, you’ll literally drop from the stress. Everything in the world becomes an option, but you can’t do everything and save everyone. So you pick your battles, hoping you made the right choice. 
Also, around that time you start dealing with multiple heartbreaks. At least I did. It tears away the early-life notion that things last forever. The fairytale gets edited slightly.. You still feel the rare, positive of falling for someone, but you don’t have that deluded childhood certainty that people and relationship don’t grow or change. You want Peter Pan, and instead you get Jack. The glass stays half full because you remind yourself that no time is wasted, and every time a chapter ends, it means you are that much more prepared for the next one. But it’s a battle.. One where you’re trying to delude yourself that everything doesn’t end someday. So let’s leave some knowledge behind for the next line of reinforcements. 
This song deals with multiple subjects at once to set the tone for the rest of the album. It hits on a fear of failure within the music industry after receiving years of rejection for not wanting to be puppeted; as well as the ups and downs of trying to give yourself a co-existing home and road life. 
Money also comes up here and in the rest of the album. I grew up in a very wealthy town and had a front row seat to austerity in my formative years. It pushed me out into the world with a resentment for wealth. So, coming to that point in your life where you can’t afford to just “get by” means you have to ignore that resentment and find your own success - hoping that eventually you will do right by it and help others in some way. 

Lyrics // Common Sense by Kiernan McMullan 

They say that I say too many words. I don’t remember counting every single verb. I’m just trying to be honest, document my losses. 
It’s a battle trying to find someone worth finding the time for. Another reminder that you’re free to find her up until the phone rings; say goodbye to the girl. Now you’re singing the songs you hate halfway across the world. 
I can barely pay my bill. 
What happens if I get ill? 
Pill after pill to sink the feeling. 
I’m beginning to see why men and women have a hard time staying seated. 
Travelled the world and I’m still broke. Did I do something wrong? 
I met a man who gave me a home, all I had to offer in return was a song. 
I fully understand I’ll probably join you when we spend intelligence like cash again. 
You’ll always have a reason not to do it. 
The truth is, I’m not sure where we lost our common sense. 
Sitting on the other side of the tracks, looking at the wear in my shoes. 
They say love is overrated, I turned and said well so the hell are you. 
I took a chance, on my friends, but then again what could they do? 
Nobody get’s it. They didn’t have a clue. 
I can barely pay my bills. 
What happens if I get ill? 
Pill after pill to sink the feeling. 
I’m beginning to see why men and women have a hard time staying seated. 
Travelled the world and I’m still broke. Did I do something wrong? 
I met a man who gave me a home, all I had to offer in return was a song. 
I fully understand I’ll probably join you when we spend intelligence like cash again. 
You’ll always have a reason not to do it. 
The truth is, I’m not sure where we lost our common sense.