Last night I bumped into my old friend Jim at the local watering hole, a successful Indianapolis musician who’s been slugging it out for more than a decade, a frequent Indy In-Tune guest, and one of those “reliable/solid” bands I could plug into almost any bill without derailing the audience’s groove. Two moments from our reminiscing stuck with me as perfect fodder for this sacred blog space where I nobly strive to be unhelpful to other writers.
He brought up the night we first met at an open mic run by our mutual friend, Kolo, and the place where I shamelessly mined for podcast guests. It was popular, full of regulars, and boasted several better-than-average acts (which, in open-mic terms, is basically Carnegie Hall). On his first night, Jim refused to let his partner sign them up. They just sat quietly at a table, watching everyone else. Why? He wasn’t sure they were even good enough for a local pub’s open mic. A pub. Open mic. The bar was set so low that you tripped over it as you walked in.
Of course, the next week they came back and blew the doors off. The lesson? I’d somehow missed that self-doubt and imposter syndrome were chewing on most of the artists I interviewed. I was an early podcast adopter with exactly two local competitors, and both were friends who claimed to love my show. I was in bands, but they were already successful when they brought me in. I was just cornstarch to thicken the sound, I wasn’t there to move any needles.
Imposter syndrome can be lethal when you’re trapped in a DIY aesthetic, where you do everything yourself while being applauded by no one except your cat, and your cat only sticks around because you’re warm and occasionally drop food. I watched bands claw their way up to having their first half-dozen fans, painfully selling one CD at a time out of a falling-apart merch box because they couldn’t afford Jeff DeHerdt’s tupperware filing cabinets.
This initial optimism phase is adorable. “This one could be the breakout show!” they’d say as they haul their own amps into Birdy’s, only to discover the audience consists of me, the other two bands on the bill, the owners, and a sound guy who is only there because of a paycheck and rigorous work-release requirements. Still, they’d play their little hearts out for forty-five minutes, fantasizing that tonight will be the night it all becomes worth it. (Narrator: It wasn’t that night.) The ROI? A round of drinks on Indy In-Tune … and not even the good ones. (Read your fine print: nothing from the top two shelves.)
Eventually, reality staggers in. You’ve been at this for a decade. There are kids. There’s a mortgage. You’re playing better than ever, but time and energy for the DIY grind ran out years ago. One band told me they handed out 300 free download cards for their new album and got three downloads. They wanted to thank me personally because they knew I was one of them. I was spinning their tracks on my station. Another time, I won a free CD in a raffle or some such thing. I already had a copy I was spinning on the air, so I thought I’d do my “inject chaos thing” and slid it under a random windshield, thinking maybe the person would grab it and give it a spin on the way home. That artist would have made a new fan without having to supplicate himself to earn a sale. Turns out it was his car. He read it as rejection. You really cannot win with these people.
When I pivoted to writing, I thought, “At least I won’t be hauling mics and laptops up narrow staircases or begging people to tune in on Saturday to justify my existence and my guests’ drive up to Studio B through Fishers’ endless construction zones.” Yeah, writers suffer almost the exact same grind with fewer roadies and more paper cuts. Every reader is earned one awkward plug at a time. “Er… I wrote about that on my blog last week,” you shout into the void. The void replies with silence, or worse, an AI cam-girl pastes her URL in your comments.
Downloads or Wattpad hits? Two last month. One of them was me testing the link. This actually doesn’t bother me … yet. Right now, I’m just posting drafts, soft-recruiting alpha readers, and drumming up organic interest in a blog so I have something of a following should I one day go hunting for an agent.
The masochism is that all creators live for the tiniest hit of recognition. My friend Dean says he loved the twist in “Perfidy” and didn’t see it coming! I was warmed and gratified. Then he keeps talking and keeps misunderstanding my intent in the last three chapters, so I spend the next two weeks rewriting all of Act 3 to be less subtle. It’s like panning for gold and getting excited that you found a shiny gum wrapper. It is technically reflective, emotionally worthless, yet somehow motivating.
The reality of the “DIY aesthetic” is that it just means you’re the unpaid intern in your own company. You get to handle marketing, shipping, strategy, and janitorial services when the merch box finally disintegrates. But hey, congrats on your promotion to Artisanal Misery. It reminds me of making my own bread. It’s wholesome and satisfying, but it took sixteen hours, two emotional breakdowns over bad yeast, and I burned myself twice. Wonder Bread never did that to me.
Despite the imposter syndrome, the microscopic engagement, the exhaustion, and the unpaid labor, everyone keeps going, everyone gets better, and that one tiny connection with some rando who didn’t hate your work is awesome. It outweighs the futility. I didn’t know that when I was the rando, I was just being nice. I get it now.
To my fellow DIY masochists, I say proudly: we’ll never be rich, we’ll never be famous, and the closest thing to groupies will be GeekGirl6969 dropping her link in your comments at 2 a.m., but someday our grandkid is going to stumble on our SoundCloud or WordPress page and think, “Huh. Grandpa was weird.” Which, frankly, is the highest form of legacy art can hope for. Now, go download a Dead Squirrels album and make their day too!
