On Releasing Your Art to Silence

The drop in numbers makes my stomach churn, so much so that I’ve stopped checking my stats.

There’s something poetic about spending two years and nearly every dollar you have making an album, only to release it into silence. PROTAGONIST has been out for over a month now, and the momentum I built leading up to its release has flatlined.

Your music won’t make noise unless you’re constantly behind it, putting in just the right amount of effort to make it seem effortless. Don’t ask me the science — there is none.

I’ve spent December planning how to get more eyes and ears on this album in the new year. Meanwhile, I’ve watched my numbers drop lower than they were before I even released the album. I’ve taken a break from setting up free-standing doors in the city, inviting random New Yorkers into music venues for three-minute private concerts, and busking on park corners. The drop in numbers makes my stomach churn, so much so that I’ve stopped checking my stats.

I’m trying to reframe this narrative. Maybe the quiet around this album isn’t failure. Maybe it’s an opportunity to appreciate what I did for myself. So much of the language surrounding this record — and much of my focus when performing live — has been that the music stops being mine the moment I release it. It becomes the listeners' to shape, to write their own story to.

Maybe this moment is for me to spend just a little more time with it — to savor the investment, both financial and emotional, that I’ve poured in. The vulnerability it took to write in this form. The mountain I had to climb to gather the clarity needed to share it like this.

So, for now, it’s mine. I love this album. I really do.

And I think you will, too, once I figure out how to get you to hear it.

October 2023. In the lobby of my then 6am nanny gig. If I got there with some time to spare, I’d listen to the mixes Stephen had sent my way the night before. He was on mountain time, I was on EST, so I’d often wake up to find a new attempt at finding the album’s sound waiting for me. I took this photo as I listened to an early version of Lighthouse, reminding myself that it was these miscellaneous part-time jobs that funded the record. Between running around the city, I’d find moments to reconnect with the reason I was doing all of this.

How do you handle the quiet after the hustle — and what helps you stay connected to your art when the world doesn’t seem to notice?