I hereby offer my third set of provocative questions for musicians -- and all creative people, really -- based on my reading of David Byrne's book How Music Works. See 30 August 2020 and 13 September 2020 for the previous sets.
What cultural space does my work occupy?
What spiritual function does my work serve?
What moral good does it accomplish?
How does it embody/enact my context — this time and place and circumstance?
What forces does my work disrupt?
How can my work fuck up the system in beautiful and unexpected ways?
What rituals do my performances enact?
What do they heal? What do they consecrate?
I don't tend to think of my songs, my singing, my guitar playing, my performances as accomplishing a moral good, or serving a spiritual function, or working as a disruptive force, or serving to heal or consecrate. But when I do, when I take these questions seriously, when I slow down and think hard about what they are suggesting, what they are asking me to consider, then suddenly I feel a lot more like an artist, like I am making art (or trying to).
If I want to keep this up long term, if I want to keep it new for myself (and anyone else who is paying attention), if I want to continue to develop, I need to know what the higher stakes are, and I need to have some skin in the game. Byrne's questions all incline toward this goal.
Asking how my songs fuck up the system in beautiful and unexpected ways, for instance, is illuminating and invigorating and gives me an entirely new perspective on what I am doing and why.