“The only reason for seeking a reward is to know what to do with that reward”
It had never really crossed my mind. In all the hours I’d spent making music, I never considered the purpose of my creation.
I know that music brings me joy, and that my ultimate goal is to make my living from this joy. But what is to happen when that goal is achieved? Where do you go when you’ve reached the summit?
I’m sure you can picture it, the artist toiling away in his studio, sequestered from humanity, creating his masterpiece. But… why?
Why is he working?
Why does he subject himself to such isolation?
and finally,
What does he think will happen when his masterpiece is complete?
In all the mythology and romance around the artist and his work, it seems the entire concept of purpose has been omitted. Perhaps the thought of assigning a purpose to ones’ creation was to jinx it. In my particular case, I understood, or thought, that chasing a purpose was wasting time. It wasn’t until a train ride home over the holiday that the wheels started to turn. I’m here to present my recognition on that trip: perhaps by consider our purpose as artists, we give ourselves a new platform from which to operate, and from which to create.
It was December, and like many across the country, I found myself on a packed train heading towards my childhood home in Michigan. I had just finished reading Paulo Coehlo’s The Pilgrimage, a story chronicling Coehlo’s trip along The Road to Santiago. The climax of this story, as Coehlo reaches the end of the Road, is realizing why he walked the road at all. The entire trip and it’s experiences were not about reaching the end, or the finish line, but were about why and what one would do once reaching it.
This was a lightbulb moment.
I realized, as I quickly searched my bags for a notebook to start writing, that perhaps the days where I found myself idle and unable to work were just symptoms of a lack of purpose. A lack of definition in what I do. A ”Why?” as I wrote. It has become apparent to me, in the weeks that have followed that writing, that this was perhaps the most important idea I had missed in all my musings on creation. Knowing why we create can arm us with the tools to better serve ourselves and our art. Knowing why suddenly illustrates a roadmap with which we can guide ourselves along each step of the way.
If you know why, suddenly the what just happens. I know that I want my music to bring happiness to people across the world, I know that I want my life to be devoted to the idea that everyone can let go on a dancefloor if provided with the right moment. So now, with that why, I have a launching point from which I can perform to my greatest effect. All I had to do was clarify my vision.
That we can access the powers that we secretly know we possess.
That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.
This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years. We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/ children/ teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous. We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of stare space, with nothing and no one to hold on to. Of course this is exactly what happens. But here’s the trick: we wind up in space, but not alone. Instead we are trapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness and companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. We find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they’re better, truer friends. And we’re better and truer to them.”
- The War Of Art
As someone who pursues the dream, you must be prepared forthe fear.
You can call it the ego, resistance, or the lizard-brain; but you must be prepared for it.
I treat my fear like a compass. it always points true north. It always points to what matters.
The stronger the fear, the closer you are to your goal.
I’ve chased my own dream of being a ‘professional’ musician for some time (I use the term musician loosely here) - and as I’ve gotten older (again, used loosely), more practiced, and closer to my ultimate goal, the sleepless nights, anxiety and fear have become stronger. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation at first, and while I can’t say I particularly enjoy the tossing and turning of apprehension, you can muster forward movement from those butterflies.
For some, The fear may not always be clear and present
For me, fear takes it’s form in different ways; procrastination, rationalization, boredom, hunger. It’s taken some time to learn my triggers, the signs, the onset. There are some days where I don’t do anything, and saying that is kind-of painful. You know what? Those days - the days where I’m sucked into an endless youtube loop, or clicking through fashion blogs, or just doing nothing - they leave me with a lot of guilt. There’s a voice saying “you should be working,”
“imagine if you could finish a piece today, maybe two,”
“someone else is getting better, practicing, growing, and you’ve been reading the Sartorialist for an hour”
Sometimes we have to give ourselves a break. The fear means we’re getting closer.
This is my first post in what I hope becomes a diary and dialogue on creation, process, and the trials of the artist.
The artist, in this context, is me. I am Gianpaolo Dieli, and I release records and perform under the name Savile.
I moved to Chicago one year ago, and after using the internet as my primary tool of networking and promoting myself, my arrival in Chicago thrust me into a world I had been chasing for some time, the world and people of dance music. Over the last 13 odd months these experiences have proven to be an integral part of not only my growth as a musician but as a person. This is all well and good, but, after attending countless club nights, loft parties, and the occasional sunrise afterhours, I’ve realized that the only real fuel that I can draw on comes from inside myself; from my own creative practices, processes and, lest we forget, real work.
This brings me to the present day.
Day one.
I’ve been out of work for about a month now. I left a full time job at a prestigious, nationally ranked restaurant, where the breaks were few and far between, and the pay meager. While I would like to say I left to pursue music full time, it simply isn’t an option at this time. Of course, money is the issue.
There is a bright side to all of this, of course. In the six or so weeks I’ve been unemployed I’ve been thoroughly exploring and examining every avenue of my creative work in the interest of discovering new and different ways to stay inspired, to stay fueled, and to keep working.
“Keep Working”
I suppose it seems like a simple idea, to keep working. It’s harder than it seems. At times, the last thing I feel like doing is actually working. Turning the machines on, sitting down at the desk, and getting to work. The funny thing is, when you actually sit down and start creating, it all flows out as it should. This isn’t, obviously, the end-all-be-all or the perfect answer. There are a million other questions: What sound to use? What drums? Should I add vocals? Et cetera. But in the end, in the times of least inspiration and least motivation I’ve found it best to just sit down and do it anyway.
“Let the muse appear when she wants to… I’ll be working, either way.”
The reason I create, and the reason I assume we all do, is out of, or in the pursuit of, love. What makes each of us unique is our relationship with this pursuit. For some, it’s fueled by sadness and conflict, while for others, by passion and enthusiasm. For me, for Savile, it’s that I have nothing else. No other thought nor pursuit has held my heart as house music has. The movement of the floor and the relentlessness of the bass bin are my kiss and my muse.
Consider me lucky. I grew up in a desolate factory town in Michigan, where success was working 40 hours with steel and a double-wide trailer with two kids. Fortunate to have a dial-up internet connection, I stumbled into forums and file sharing with boundless hunger and downloaded my way to an education in music. I’ve since thought of nothing else as my future.
After working within the strict confines of hip-hop and pop music for several years, I found house music and its pursuit of freedom and escape to be an entirely refreshing perspective; one without the borders or preconception to which I had become accustomed. I began with rudimentary experiments in ‘house’ and ‘techno’ around 2007, and between filing applications for art school and temp jobs, I started to find my footing amongst the melody of Chicago and the percussion of Detroit.
I soon realized art school wasn’t the proper step, and shortly after abandoning that avenue I signed my first single to Norman Cook’s Southern Fried Records. Just a month before the release, I packed everything I owned and moved to Chicago, the city of house music, where I began splitting my time between 40 hours in the kitchen and long nights on the dance floor.
One year later, I’m still working full time, still juggling the passion and the pursuit. Along the way, I’ve shared the booth with the likes of Damian Lazarus, Lee Burridge & Danny Howells, Radio Slave and the venerable Derrick Carter. I’ve played Chicago’s Smartbar, Spybar, Vision, and legendary underground spaces. I was featured with Amon Tobin & Eskmo on a Ninja Tune release this past spring, and have pending releases on Moodmusic imprint Wazi Wazi and Detroit’s Hej Records, among others. My productions have grown increasingly dense, with the Detroit-influenced percussion and organic synth work leading me through a myriad of thick and thoroughly reverbed avenues. I sometimes joke with my friends that my sound is as if “Radiohead were making house.” Maybe.
I know there are still many moves to make. The “to-do’s” and the “done’s” grow and shrink in parallel. If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt curious as to who I am, or who Savile is… This changes every day. What I know is that through the creation and the playing of music I’ve touched a high that I cannot replicate. The love is there. My hope is that you can get a taste of it, too.
