As I approach my fifteenth year at The National in which I published nearly 4,000 articles, most of them built around at least one or two interviews gleaned from adventures here and abroad, I still ask myself, despite the many amazing moments experienced, the same question at the start of the year: what is the point?
While technically and in terms of craft, I have become a better and smarter journalist, it doesn’t always feel that way. And yet, like most creative fields, something keeps happening that reminds me of the joy and purpose of what I do.
Whether it’s seeing a history-making concert performance, Metallica in a Riyadh desert, or The Rolling Stones' maiden visit to Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Park, the dread of manoeuvring the crowds and security falls away and I remember why I do this and feel useful again, even if only to myself.
It is a cycle that many aspiring and seasoned musicians know all too well, but sadly these gnawing questions have intensified.
Fifteen years ago, the top of the mountain was to get your CD on a shelf at the local Virgin Megastore. Now you bypass that and can upload a song in minutes, only for it to disappear into tens of thousands of tracks released every day.
This is why I am always first to put my hand up and talk to the so-called elders of the game. Artists who are decades into their careers, not because they are free of doubt, but because they are honest about how they deal with it. When I interviewed Herbie Hancock in Abu Dhabi in 2014, he spoke about his early days playing with Miles Davis, and the fear that came with a young buck playing with his hero, who just happened to be ruthless and mercurial.
“You are here, paid to try new things,” Hancock recalled, adding that if something did not work, Davis would gruffly say: “don’t worry, I can take care of that.”
Hancock also said something else that stayed with me. Every project he has taken on, even those that later became part of the modern jazz canon, began with the same question: “What is the purpose of this and why should I do it?” He explicitly said it only begins with doubt and the results come from the search that followed.
What has changed for the current generation is how success looks from the outside. Before, it made relative sense: demo tapes to albums, small clubs to theatres and stadiums, street posters to billboards.
Social media does away with all that trajectory and packages it as instant, even when it is not real.
I know so-called successful regional artists and those involved in the industry whose online lives, the flights, the gigs and the exhibitions bear little resemblance to what is actually happening. They spend enormous energy curating their life’s greatest hits online, sometimes at the expense of the work itself, which inevitably creates doubt and causes some people to stop early, sometimes after a third or fourth attempt, when the work might only just be beginning.
I have also fallen into the trap at times. I have written pieces I believed were important, only to see them read by a very small number of people. Having that data in front of you can be corrosive, and I sometimes wish I had never seen it at all.
Metrics can describe activity, but they can’t describe motivation or impact that lasts.
I am reminded of this every January, when I compile a list of songs turning 20 that year. I realise many were huge in their moment but went on to be forgotten entirely. That does not mean they were worthless. People did dance to Barbie Girl and The Macarena, and for a time they mattered.
It is a lesson I was taught early on, as a reporter in Australia, with the famous industry dictum “today’s news is tomorrow’s fish-and-chips wrapper”, and that very little work truly lasts.
And you know what, that’s totally fine, too. If someone reads a piece of mine on the day it is published, learns something or feels prompted to do something, that is enough. If they forget it the next day, that is also fine, because how long it lasts is not up to me.
Creative work, I have learnt, is a message in a bottle: you put something of yourself inside it and throw it into the ocean, without knowing who will find it or when.
This is exemplified by an English teacher I had when I was 11 years old, Mr McCardle. I used to write short stories, often ridiculous, violent things that read like third-rate action films, and he never told me to stop. He just told me I was enjoying it, so I should keep going. I forgot those words for years, but I think about them every now and then. I doubt he knows who I am now, if he is still with us, but he left an indelible mark on me.
Every time I go back to Melbourne, I drive past a grocery store not for what it is, but for what it used to be: a rehearsal space for young disenfranchised kids to play and create. Years ago, I wrote a story for a local newspaper arguing for the need for spaces like this in our neighbourhood. Years later, after returning from Abu Dhabi for a visit, I learnt the rehearsal space had opened for three years, after the article was passed from person to person until it reached someone who decided to fund it.
I see that store now, and I feel genuine amazement and feel lucky that someone was able to let me know that I made some kind of impact, even fleetingly.
It also taught me that nothing is guaranteed, nor is the chance of seeing your work come to fruition. What I can only point to is the act of continuing, to finding the reason to start each time and to what Quincy Jones once told me: "Live a life that gives you something to say”.
So put your message in the bottle and let it go, as that is what creative work is for.
