Hi Reader,

I've been ill this week.

Nothing dramatic, a cough and a cold that took the legs out from under me and left me horizontal, well, sat in a chair, at an agle that is, for longer than I'd like. No studio. No writing. No creating anything worth the name.

What I did do was read, listen, and think.

I finished Iain Banks' Use of Weapons, which I'd been making sure I read at least 15mins every day for a few weeks now. And well you know what the end of a book is like, it gets harder and harder to put down.

I also spent a lot of time with a record that my old guitarist, we still write together occasionally, has just put out. His first album. He's around 60. It's doing things I don't think either of us expected: 30,000 views of the full album on a single YouTube video in the first 7 days. One of the singles pushing 16,000. On playlists and getting mentions in the scene and beyond.

I found myself listening to it the way I used to listen to records before making music became my job. Properly. Following the arrangements. Noticing the decisions. Wondering what I'd have done differently, and then deciding I wouldn't have, because it works. He tracked a lot of the guitars at my old studio back pre-pandemic, and had massive setbacks after that, but yeah, it is out and it is doing damn well. Just wanted to add a little feel good story.

And somewhere in all that stillness, something clarified.

I think we've got the intake side of creativity badly wrong.

Most of the conversation, and I'm as guilty of this as anyone, is about output. Finishing. Producing. Shipping. Getting it out of your head and into the world. All of that matters. But it assumes the tank is full.

Reading a novel and drifting off with ideas of where something needss to go next on a side project. Listening to a friend's record three times in a row with nowhere to be, just time to be. Lying on the sofa thinking about a project instead of opening the DAW. These things feel like not working. They're not. They're the work that makes the other work possible.

I came out of this week with a clearer head about what I'm building, what needs to happen next, and which of those next steps will move the most with the least effort. I didn't get there by pushing through. I got there by stopping.

The tank needed filling. I filled it.

If you've had a week where life got in the way and nothing got made, I'd gently suggest it might not have been as wasted as it feels.

Take care, Mark The Quiet Rebel

P.S. My friend's album is called White Lies Black Truths by Midgenuun. If you want to hear what a 60-year-old making his first record sounds like when he's not trying to sound like anything other than himself — it's worth an hour of your time.