And in we jumped… But without the comfort of being in a swimming pool surrounded by lifeguards, buoys or any guarantee of us being able to swim to safety. It was more akin to jumping off a cliff at night into a inky black lagoon. Whilst I knew that each and every member of the motley murder of crows was capable, there was no guarantee of cohesiveness as a team. Least of all me. I had been laid out to fallow years before being put out to pasture by my cancellation [ooh thats a better word for it ‘pasturisation’]. The art of growing a business is growing the ability to delegate to people who knew how to do stuff better than I did. My role there had been a valuable one for the business I think, but not taxing on my own abilities or growth. Basically I was the expert end user, the more I composed, the less I managed, the more I was able to sense if things were what us tarty journeymen composers needed.
Which is a long winded way of saying I was rusty as fuck. At a time where I needed to make decisions that were the right ones because of the non-existent budget, the flux-capacitor defying schedule. Writing marketing prose, giving directions on UX, on design. These felt like alien needs required from a man shrouded in imposter syndrome. I kept on saying to myself, and the team “I’ve done this before and made the right decisions that have proven success”. But without any distinct memory of the decisions, nor indeed the comrades I had historically taken advantage of, taken for granted!
With hindsight I think this was the juncture when I threw half of my ambitions into the sea. Not knowingly, it was simply through creating certainty within an abysss, a vacuum. It all became about getting some money into the till. The absolute worse way of setting up any business. Something that flew in the face of my core, self-penned mantra of business. “If you don’t put money last, your business won’t last”. In this instance we were putting it first. Or face oblivion. Again with hindsight, a fork in the road that would take me months to realise we had taken, and in turn something we would have to pay back fiscally with a self imposed drought of our own making. In future. For salvation, but of a very different nature. But that is months off. For now… get some awesomeness on the shelves and hope that the goodwill of YouTube and Instagram followers would help us find shore.
“21st August – Good good day today. A bit of a return to old CH. Up at 3.30, nailed #120*. Hyper as fuck round the house. Slept like a dog after lunch then went into intense R&D for murmuration. I seem to have gone a bit backwards on it as a concept & need to realign my own head with what I know, what I think I remember & what is the ACTUAL use-case that I devised – what is it? – 6 years ago. Imaginine it’s like a musician interpreting a composition not changing it! It means I’m back to the drawing board, but I went deep nerd today. Reckon some simple structure and analysis as a composer is gonna make this rock! I pity my hotel neighbours waking up to a flacid sample of a string band cobbled from offcuts playing sample charts out of my laptop speakers. Lots of great stuff going on Slack. Sooooooo excited. Now down to London for support!”
*Where you see weird meaningless numbers I am referring to episode numbers of a multi-episodic TV series I was working on at the time.