the iceberg melting dept.
and what to do about your spaghetti
my new mantra, i’ve decided, is send emails and believe. if you’re wondering how my hurricane ep happened, that’s pretty much it. that’s how I found my original producer, my collaborators/musicians (some thru instagram dms instead of emails), my photographer and videographer, mentors, pr person, launch show venue… some of them were facilitated by personal connections but some of the most exciting and rewarding collaborations came about from just emailing someone i didn’t know from adam, entirely out of the blue. that’s how i met ben, who took this photo:
now i’m on a different project (well, several), and am back to that point where i just have to send emails blindly and hope someone bites. they always do, but it’s just a case of sending the right email to the right person, which means sending a lot of emails to a lot of people.
the space between the plan and the realisation of that plan is always a scary place. it’s like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. it’s like jumping off a cliff and waiting to see who catches you. and, when it feels really dire, it’s like throwing spaghetti off a cliff.
after all those emails flitter from your outbox, when do the results come through? and from where? at the moment i am at the point where i am losing a little of the ‘belief’ i carry with me. it comes and it goes, which is fine as long as we keep reaching out. but right now i’m hearing a few ‘no’s and a few more silences on top of that. so how do we know to keep going? where is our spaghetti now?
this question often makes me think of a story that alexandra franzen told in her newsletter, about a melting iceberg. i’m going to paraphrase it a bit, but the story goes like this:
you’re in a freezing cold room with an iceberg in it. it’s a small iceberg (i don’t know if you’ve been to dynamic earth in edinburgh, but they have a hunk of ice in there which they call an ‘iceberg’ or ‘glacier’ and everyone touches it with their warm scottish hands). every day your special job is to melt the iceberg, but the thermostat dial is really old and stiff and you can only turn it by 1 degree each day. all of the numbers on the dial have been rubbed off as well, so you have no idea what temperature it is.
so, every day you turn it up a degree. every day, you come in, heave the dial up a notch, and wait for something to happen. every day, the iceberg just sits there, chilled.
as the days go by you think, phew! it’s been like two months and you are putting in SO MUCH DAMN EFFORT turning this dial up! but the iceberg isn’t melting even a little bit!
then comes a regular tuesday which ends like every other godforsaken day in this iceberg room. you crank the dial one more time, hang up your special hat (which says ‘iceberg melting dept.’), swing your coat over your shoulders and switch off the light.
goodnight, iceberg.
the temperature goes from 0 to 1.
the next morning, something feels different. there’s a buzz of activity in iceberg headquarters! as you head into work you see people flurrying about. and then you understand.
the room is flooded with water. the iceberg melted overnight! people are running in with buckets, sloshing water around, saying things like ‘i never thought this day would come!’
everyone comes to pat you on the back — you’ve done it. you melted the iceberg, and it’s all gone in a matter of hours! an overnight success, if you will. but you know the real truth — it’s been those little changes every single day to the thermostat which got you here. all the effort you put in when you had no idea when the results would come.
alexandra’s version is perhaps less dramatic and makes wayyyyy more sense, but you get the point. you have to just keep going, because every day you are getting closer and closer to making it happen.
SPEAKING OF ICE this whole story makes me think of a very exciting geological event which we should all know about (and i may write a song about) — the ice age missoula floods. i will write about these next week because there is much more to say, but for now i can promise you it involves gigantic floods, a place called the channeled scablands (which you have to say in a bruce springsteen voice like SCABLANDS YOU GOTTA LIVE IT EVERYDAY) and ancient lakes.
until then,
music news
my iceberg is currently melting. check back soon.
things i liked
✶ it’s been a big week for enjoying music! first of all, my chemical romance (which were my first ever gig on my 16th birthday) have released a new song and it’s pretty much exactly what a ‘my chemical romance comeback’ should be.
✶ eurovision had some great moments, but sweden sealed the deal for me. and i know that if this song had come out during any time i’d been going through a breakup, i would be AbsolutelyBesideMyself.com, cry-singing this every day in my bedroom.
✶ here is the official theme song of ‘send emails and believe’.
✶ and here’s some more dan fogelberg! this album is so great. so many amazing moments delivered thru eagles-style backing vocals. my favourite is now ‘changing horses.’
✶ i’ve just found an app which might be my new favourite thing. it’s a walking tracker which puts you on the journey from the shire to mount doom. only 2800km to go! they also give you a fake competitor called mr underhill like hobbit strava. he apparently is impossible to beat and is kicking my ass right now by walking 40km a day.
✶ billy nomates is a fantastic artist who had some things to say about her experience with the great escape festival in brighton. it highlights a lot about the way musicians are treated by industry. things need to change.
✶ this illustration feels like dreams i had when i was kid:
goodbye, goodluck, and see you next week for some ice age floods.
melt that iceberg,
olivia 🧊