Mattering & Not Mattering

I finished the record. It only took me 6 ½ years. I’m not going to dwell on that any more than I already have. It took what it took. Time passes no matter what you’re doing or not doing. I released four singles in that time. (All four of them were supposed to be on the record – lead-ups to the full release – but I won’t dwell on that, either.)

Now I’m in the business stuff. It is not my favorite, and I am bad at it. I am bad at it, because I want to be done immediately. I feel like I already did the thing I was doing – making the thing – and so the formal sharing of the thing turns into a long list of technical problems to be solved. I rush. I miss things. When I released Queen of Everything, I forgot to credit MY MOTHER, who played cello on “Wild Things.”

(My mother played cello on this one, too, along with my son. I did not forget this time.)(I will screw something else up, but not that.)

For the last two weeks, I have obsessed about these things (sometimes at 2 a.m.):

1 - album art (physical CD jackets + digital art for streaming singles)
2 - how many singles to release before the full album;
3 - which ones;
4 - in what order;
5 - how many is too many;
6 - will too many ruin the whole thing;
7 - and how many weeks should pass between singles.

Yesterday, my bones said, “Stop it” and refused to budge one inch. I didn’t want to go for a walk or eat a sandwich. I didn’t want to drink water or clean the kitchen or convert my album cover into the Tunecore-approved SQUARE dimensions. I didn’t want to put on a bra or exercise or write a poem or play with my dog or feed the turtle or scroll social media or read a single page of anything.

I remembered hearing someone on a podcast (can’t remember who or which one) say, “When you don’t know what else to do, either go outside or go to bed.” So I went outside.

While I was outside, I picked a weed from the flower bed. And then I picked another one. And then I just kept going. And then I sat in a chair under the silver maple. I didn’t bring my phone with me, because I also remembered reading that another thing you can do when you don’t know what to do is just put your phone away.

An hour passed, and I did nothing but watch the neighborhood. I also studied the dead branches in the trees and wondered which one would fall next. I wondered what those trees looked like when they were baby trees. I wondered what my house would look like when they came down (if my house would even still be there), because everything falls someday.

And in that hour of nothing (but everything), I had my answer: IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Write the album name on a sticky note with a Sharpie and take a picture. Album art. Done. Release 1 single, 0 singles, 10 singles. Release one per day, one per month, one on your dog’s birthday. NONE OF THIS MATTERS, P. Not a scrap.

It just doesn’t matter. And its matterlessness is not because the world is on fire. If the world were calm and peaceful and governed by goodness, it also wouldn’t matter. And it’s not because I am small potatoes. If I were big potatoes, it still wouldn’t matter. And it’s not because I’m 51. Being 21 would not make it matter.

It doesn’t matter, because it just doesn’t.

Not that the art doesn’t matter. The creation matters. The doing matters. But also, it doesn’t. And I think maybe being an artist – or really, just being a human at all – is settling into the groovy niche where nothing and everything matters both at once, and doing things anyway. Just for the doing. Because time will pass anyway.

Trees grow and drop their limbs. Sometimes there is nothing and then there is something and then there is nothing again. What I’m trying to say is this: My friends and I made something, and now I will complete the tasks required to share it so we can wonder together in the mattering and not-mattering of it all.

(SINGLE Release #1: The Bride - July 22, 2025.)