Oh man, tapping into the highest possible spirit is no joke. It’s a very delicate act, too. As far as I understand it, we artists aim to be in a radically authentic state while still being professional and executing our techniques. We aim to explode in a moment of purity, and hope we were recording, be it into a microphone, onto a canvas or on camera. To get to that state, call it what you want - flow state, zen, hype, indifferent, whatever it may be to you - it takes some serious work in the lab. It changes as you get older, too.
Aging is like a sunset. The distribution of light changes but dusk is no more or less beautiful than high noon. They’re equally gobsmacking, but offer different things.
It’s wild to make art with the young ones and see how quickly they can commit. They can abandon all inhibitions and take the moment by the horns. I’ll set up an iPad with wired headphones and ask them to throw down. The brave volunteer comes up and gets into character immediately. It’s worth reflecting - was I able to do that? Was I ever that excited that I could attack the mic like it was my last (or my first) time?
I’m grateful to have some of those moments recorded. My great friend Koju invited me to the inspiration lab at the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch. They have studios there for people to use, all it costs you is signing up with a library card. In the global west, we often forget our privilege, which is easy when we work 60+ hour weeks and can hardly afford olive oil, and yet, community services like a public studio will always remind of how lucky I am to be in Vancouver.
We all went in on those recordings. There would sometimes be 4 of us in there at once. With an hour booked, you better come ready and not be expecting multiple takes. We didn’t have concrete rules, per se, but we definitely had some mores about taking too many turns on the prestigious mic.
The pressure is what made it perfect. It was part of what made us able to record verses that we had written, and make them sound like live performances. This was partly due to the fact that they were; we had an audience of our peers, but it was also like a play in that we had one take, so send it with maximum effort or live to taste the regret.
The privilege I have now; my own recording setups, unlimited beats using whatever sounds I can fathom, and a life that gives me the time to execute these ideas, well, it's like a sunset too. It’s different, it's brilliant, but I’m not sure it’s better. It’s tricky to figure out how to make my writtens less robotic, without memorising them. I have been chasing the ability to make my recordings sound like performances since that Inspiration Lab era. I can count on one hand the times I’ve pulled it off, after trying literally hundreds of times.
The young ones are in that sprint. I observe their energy and they recognize the scarcity of the moment. I told them they could do several takes. Maybe one in 7 take me up on that. Mostly, they step up, like Koju, Puga, Rossi and I did in the inspiration lab, and they give it their all. They sprint, and I must say, looking at them with their expressions of relief and triumph when it's over, feels like a time machine to nearly a decade ago, throwing down, one take, with the gang, not to go viral, not to blow up, but just to do it.
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