My nice, she’s a student now, told me recently very proud that she has a part time job in a destruction company, and how she loves to demolish old furniture. It’s exciting to play with danger, with destruction. It brings diversity in our predictable lives and it creates space for new creations.
As a musician, you usually don’t have to worry, you life is not predictable. Still, many musicians flirt with destruction. The audience expects it, it’s what sells. Though when flirting with destruction, you always play with fire. It’s always risky, with very high stakes. The audience plays for safe, they want the excitement without the risks. That’s why they use you as a proxy. As a musician, they let you take the risk of flirting with destruction. In the next step, they idolize you. Now it is safe for them to identify with your dark side and with your flirtation with destruction.
Flirting with destruction can show in many different faces for musicians. Some musicians explore the dark sides that are within themselves and reflect it in their music. Musicians in several genres put from this well. In metal you can hear the reflected anger of the musicians, in punk the outrage, in ballads the sadness.
On stage you can see how some musicians not only flirt with destruction, they embrace it. Nirvana was famous for smashing their guitars at the end of every show. It doesn’t matter much in which form you are playing with destruction as a musician. When you come too close to the fire, you might end up destroying yourself.
That’s what I see in many of the musicians allegedly forming the ’27 Club’. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix did reflect their dark sides in their music. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana also celebrated destruction on stage. That Amy Winehouse was embracing destruction becomes very clear in her hit song ‘Rehab’: “They tried to make me go to rehab, but I sais, “No, no, no” “.
My nice is creating space for new houses in her work at the destruction company. Destruction is a tool, not the goal. The goal is to create. It can be houses or new songs. When flirting with destruction, you need to know the dangers, and how to deal with them. I don’t mean that from now on you have to write love songs only. On the contrary!
Dealing with destruction means, that you keep an eye on the bigger picture, on using destruction as a tool. It also means, that you have to take good care of yourself, your physical and mental health. You need it in order to create new songs. And that’s what using your darkness as a tool is all about: making more space for your creations.
When flirting with destruction, you need to grab a thick rope that connects you to the constructive and creative aspects of art and music. Be careful when you make a choice for darkness in art or in life, you need to keep the bigger picture in mind: The goal is always to create.