Originals
Jesse Draxler

I had to get back because I have a show coming up and a book coming out and all that shit. Once we finally finally nailed down dates on all that I had to get back and get my ass back to work.

Misophonia.

It's when someone has a really negative reaction to sound, when you hear something and it gives you an over-the-top extreme reaction. We all experience that sometimes. But that's misophonia. When sounds give you an extreme overreaction in a negative way.

I don't know. The same as everybody's. It is one of our five senses. It's one of the five ways that we experience the world, so it's pretty important. Just as important as the other five of four, I guess.

I use it like a tool if I'm not sure what I'm doing, if I'm not sure how to make what I want to make. I'll listen to music that sounds the way I want a project to look, if that makes sense.  I’ll almost piggyback on the music to get to the goal. If I know a feeling can be produced by music, through that music I can create a visual that matches.  Sometimes, it's easier for me to understand my own feelings through music than it is through a visual medium.  Then, though, I'm able to understand a visual better through music, you know what I mean? It's like a conduit.

That instinct is huge. The times that I've noticed I needed to step away, I do step away for a set period of time. Like two to three weeks. I force myself to slow down. If I didn’t do that, I think I would spontaneously combust, split into pieces, I don't know. 

When I look back after a break, I realize how deep of a place I was in, how deep down my own rabbit hole I went.  So yeah, it’s really important.

No, I don't think so. I don't like putting absolutes on things, but personally there's a big difference between the city and the woods or the wilderness.  That’s something I've been exploring a lot lately. City seems like an extension of the self, of the ego, of everybody's ego.

When I go out in the city, I don't feel like I'm even outside.  Even when you're outside, you're inside. You're inside the constructs of somebody else's idea. When you're in nature, there aren’t not those constructs anymore. So when I go out and bike through the city I'm gathering inspiration, I feel like I'm very much still doing art, but it is a relief. The simple physicality of that is a huge help to clear my mind, but doesn't release me from my own self the way that going into the country or the wilderness does.

The last time I was out there in the woods, there was an ego dissolution. That sounds pretentious but I lost myself in a way for a period of time.  I almost got scared because I just didn't care about art. A snow storm hit and it had been a while since I experienced something like that, so I was out walking and taking photos for a few days just being mesmerized by how beautiful this was.

After a few days I realized that I hadn't been thinking of my own art and then when I started to think about it, I just didn't care. It didn't seem important. It seemed to pale in comparison to what I was experiencing.

I was like, ‘Shit. How do I make myself care about this thing again? Because if I don't I won't have any money to survive.’ I don't have any other ways to survive, so it was scary for a moment. That’s what inspired the idea to bring a project with me and work on it out there for a month and see what kind of work I produce because I don't feel like the same person after a while. It would be like a different person making it, but I'm hoping to strike a balance at some point between the two.

I don't think those are mutually exclusive; seeking counsel or not seeking counsel implying that you’re confident in yourself. Being an artist comes with a certain degree of self-doubt no matter what. And if there isn't...I don't know. The counsel is when you doubt yourself. Then I really start to dig in and think why or I don't know.

It should be a very organic process. I'm not I'm not the type of artist who works in one style and then all of a sudden decides that I'm going to try something I've never tried before and go completely off the map. I don’t even know what that would be anymore because my process has led me to try almost everything I've ever wanted to try. 

The diversity is really important though. I switch mediums often and I use a lot of different media and painting collage drawing digital. I take photographs and do a lot of different things.  I rotate through those in this sort of ritualistic way. They go in these cycles where I'll be collaging for a long time then the next thing I do will have to be a painting or a drawing. Again it's not really like this purposeful knowing what I'm doing it just comes naturally.

If you're trying to try a new thing, that's kind of an oxymoron. It's not the right way to go about doing anything.  You should have it built in organically.  You can build rituals into your processes, then switch up the medium through the processes and rituals.

Have you heard of imposter syndrome? A guy told me about it once, then I looked it up to make sure it was a real thing and it's a real thing. Then, I was at my therapist’s office a while ago and I saw it on the cover of a mental health monthly. My self-doubt, my blocks are always tied to mental health issues in a way. I don't like that term mental health issue. I don't know if it's a chicken and egg scenario, where the blocks come because I get depressed or I get depressed because the block comes. After a while, they flop back and forth where they are one in the same. They feed into one another.  It’s a vicious cycle of wondering whether all you do is trite and meaningless, if it's saying enough, if it’s saying too little, if it's saying too much, I don't know. It's all those things that feed into it. To get perspective you have to step outside yourself and see yourself from an objective point of view as much as possible.

I'm always trying to chill out so I do exercises when I can't get away and take a long break. I try to stop myself whenever I remember that I have two seconds and listen to binaural beats or meditate as ways to get away without getting away. There's a quote from this a nun in Chef’s Table. Season 3, episode one, this nun talks about freedom and what real freedom is. She says it’s the ability to go inside of your mind and outside of your mind then inside your mind. That's real freedom. I'm nowhere near being able to do or even conceptualize what she means. But that idea is exactly what I strive for and will continue to strive for until I get it completely. That's where I try to find balance: when I have self-doubt and question myself, I just try to dig in.

I'm the only thing in my way as far as being fulfilled with my career. It doesn't get any better than this. I'm literally fulfilling dreams like having a book coming out and being released on you know one of the best independent record labels in existence ever is a literal dream come true. If I told that to myself fifteen years ago and I would have pissed my pants. I would have lost it.  Once those things start happening you expect to realize, ‘Oh shit, this is my life. I'm in it. I'm in the middle of it. I'm not waiting for it to happen anymore. It's not the anticipation for things to come it's actually these things.’ But then you realize, ‘Oh shit I'm not 100 percent fulfilled or whatever.’  I don't like to use the word happiness because it's just so trite and clever-I don't know if I even believe in such a concept-but you realize the yearning, the hole inside you doesn't go away. Then you realize the only thing that could make life better is improving myself and the only thing in the way of that happening is me.