Why I took a break from music.
By: Gareth Howatson
Tags: Creativity, Music, University, Lockdown, Writers Block

When I gave uni a crack second time round, it was the best thing I ever did. It was that good, I might one day soon write a post solely dedicated to it, just not today. Instead, this post is about a writer’s block that I chose to avoid.

Brewhouse (Cardiff).

I was gigging a fair bit during my first and second year of uni, earning myself slots at some amazing venues and festivals. Places like Festival №6 where you could find Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Bastille headlining; former venues such as Sound Control in Manchester which had hosted bands like the 1975 and Catfish and the Bottlemen, or the ever so memorable Gwdihw in Cardiff. Yet, in the background, whilst all this was happening, I could feel my writing deteriorating a little as time went on, yet I refused to acknowledge it.

The last album I had released and remains the case to this day is the Waiting for Nothing — LP back in 2016. It was now 2018 and I was coming towards the end of uni, I had about 4 songs to my name which were worthy of recording, but it wasn’t enough considering it had been two years since my last release. I wanted to record them anyway, to give myself options. Normally, I would book some time off work to do this, but I was refusing to do so. The pressures of leaving uni started to kick in. I was under the impression that I couldn’t take a week off in my current job, and that I had to prepare to find some ‘real’ work ready for when I leave uni. It was at this point I started to acknowledge that I wasn’t prioritising my music. I stopped booking gigs, I stopped writing songs, I was losing inspiration.

The Masons Arms, Denbigh (Photo Credit: George Frost).

At first, I was fine about it, I thought, maybe I don’t need to write my own music anymore? Maybe I can just listen to music I like and not think about writing my own stuff, and that will be enough? But it’s funny the feeling you get when you try and distance yourself from playing music as a writer. The best way I can describe it is, it’s almost like there’s a magnetic force between your body and the instrument, with hope that when you pick it up and play, you start writing again, almost by accident. But it doesn’t always work that way. This time round, I would pick the guitar up, last about 5 minutes maximum before putting it away again. It was like someone had stolen my emotion, my vocabulary and my attention. I would frustratingly place the guitar back in the corner of the room and think to myself “just not today”. Little did I know at the time, it would carry on like that for over a year. Forcing songs out was not an option, I couldn’t do it if I tried. If you were marking me by the book, I’m pretty bad on the guitar. Because of this, it often meant, and still remains, that my writing relies on feeling, so without any feeling towards my own music anymore, I could barely play anything. So that wasn’t going to happen.

Theatre Twm or Nant, Denbigh (2019).

I’ve always worked. Before uni, during uni, and now after uni. It was never really a problem for me in the past. But there’s something about leaving uni that makes working full time different. You start trying to teach yourself to be okay with living life the way you always said you wouldn’t. Uni has its ups and downs, but what it does do is; it gives you a taste of what life can be like if you don’t have to spend 80% of your time trying to support yourself. When you leave, you start questioning why you’re investing so much time in something that you don’t enjoy, but for whatever reason, go along with said thing anyway. I convinced myself that paying the bills was nearly the most important thing to do in life at the time. What I didn’t realise is, that there’s a balance to doing that, and then doing what you love. Therefore, because I was so preoccupied with what you’re expected to do, rather than what you want to do, I didn’t even take my guitar out of its case for about 4 months solid. It’s the longest I hadn’t played a note since I began playing 10 years earlier. My passion for music was really deteriorating. This writers block was now a result of the general monotony of life distracting me from the things that I said I would never give up on, and to make things worse, I was convincing myself I was okay with that. It was almost like I was saying to myself “you’re meant to be grown up now, music isn’t an option anymore”. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?

With the world currently in lockdown for reasons that do not need explaining, I think a lot of people have begun to reflect on how they spend their time. I know a lot of my friends have begun pursuing their creative side, a side which I had only seen a glimmer of before, and they’re really excited about it. Life itself in terms of how we used to spend most of the hours in our days has well and truly been paused. And it’s meant that people can truly find out what they enjoy doing and make sure that they find time to do that. Who knows, when lockdown is over (if it ever will be), people may begin to really pursue the things that make them happy in life.

As of roughly 8 months ago, I’ve began writing again, hallelujah. It’s been 4 years since my last official release, and that’s still bugging me a bit. But my mind has so much more space in it now that I’ve been able to actually think about what I enjoy about living. I’ve learnt, writing is something that deserves attention from me, and I mean proper attention. This means being able to push aside the things that are falsely drilled into us from a societal point of view to be important, when these things just aren’t as important to us as we may think.

I have gathered roughly 21 demos on my hard drive in the last 8 months. This means preparation for the new record is under way, and more importantly, I feel passionate and motivated about music again. That fills me with the upmost excitement. Better late than never.

Music Links Below

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5KpGgp3RUKppQYbAzu0iUR?si=VPTIDq5BR9qFjGSEY5uIiw

Waiting For Nothing LP https://open.spotify.com/album/4RGG4R0e4Lj2a2Fg5EsbDS?si=0rxv3_iuRcGxyiX5RS5ADQ

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