ON BEGINNING THINGS

Carter, you’re already a media mogul, a titan of industry. You are to half-funny Indie Music on TikTok as Cornelius Vanderbilt was to the railroads. Why, then, do you feel like you need to start a music blog? Are you not spread too thin as it is?

Yes, my dear reader (whoever you may be), I am.

Last week I finished the mixes on my upcoming EP, The Interstellar Tennis Championship Vol. 2, which should be a cause worth celebrating, but inevitably feels half-baked. I pass it along to the mastering engineer in an email that reads like a teen mom leaving a baby on a fire station stoop; 

“I know you’ll be able to do a better job than I would have, I just want what’s best for it. His name is Felix after his Pa.” 

The process of mixing your own music is less like the ups & downs of a rollercoaster & more like riding a scooter down a mountain. Exciting & manageable at the beginning, terrifying & bad at the end (could use a better word than bad, won’t).

You start off thinking ‘OK I can make this sound good by the end, it’s just faders & knobs, it can’t be that hard!’ and by the time the deadline arrives, you’re talking to yourself like you’re solving the Da Vinci Code & self flagellating over half a decibel on the tambourine. It’s a race to the bottom, baby.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it, and it’s one of the most satisfying parts of the job. If a big-wig mix engineer came to me tomorrow and said, “Carter, I’m gonna mix your record pro bono, and give you a big kiss on the mouth,” I’d take that kiss on the mouth and tell ’em to hit the road, Jack! Mixing is the best. It’s terrible, but it’s the best.

With the mental scars of the mixing process still healing, I drove to Trader Joe’s, passing a coffee shop with a ‘Help Wanted’ sign on the door. In what may be the most disconnected, “Let them eat cake” moment of my life, I began romanticizing what life working at this coffee shop would be, and that maybe I would work there a couple days a week just to do something else. 

I don’t know what Julia Roberts movie I thought I was in, but for a brief moment I was a big city gal moving to the country for a simpler kind-o-life and realizing that, just maybe, I can find love & perhaps being a corporate big wig isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

*for the record, I have found love despite being a corporate big wig, I am not looking for love*

Embarrassed by my Rom-Com-Marie-Antoinette fever dream, I realized that I didn’t want to be a barista (nothing wrong with being a barista, mind you), what I wanted was a low stakes creative endeavor (now & forever coined LSCE, pronounce either “Lice,” or “Le-Such-E.”)

For the last few years, I’ve made several attempts at this fabled LSCE, but have fallen into the same pitfall, the side hustle. I’m a side-hustle guy. I start things for fun, but at some point in the creative journey, a small part of my brain goes;

“Hey Carter, this will be great for your brand”

And from that point on it’s not for fun, it’s for work. My TikTok began as a LSCE, and wouldn’t you know it, TikTok and its various competitors have become my main job. As soon as the first video got some traction, my mentality switched to “this is now my job & how can I optimize it & how can I do this everyday?” I don’t want that for this.

No, The Interstellar Tennis Journal is my lowest stakes endeavor yet. I have never in my life been accused of being a good writer (music not included, I’m lit at music), but here we are, writing the first essay I’ve done since college.

Knowing me, this little blog will slowly become a part of my ~brand~. I’ll try to optimize it, monetize it, euthanize it, etc. Right now, however, it just feels like fun.

I’m going to build a little website and write some little articles and probably no one’s going to read them, but hey, maybe I get a little better at writing (which I was always bad at in school), and maybe I’m forced to be a little more thoughtful about why I like stuff, and maybe down the road I become a this generation’s Condé Nast and create a multi-generational media monopoly and take over the world.

One step at a time baby.

-The Interstellar Tennis Champion (Carter Vail)