Grimes On Indie Success, Sacrifice And Following Your Dream
Claire Boucher aka Grimes recently shared some thoughts on the pressures facing indie artists and what she gave up to reach her current level of success. In the process she discusses why you should focus on creating a life that allows you to do the things you love. Boucher's comments are sobering but also inspirational in an honest and personal way.
Grimes
is an artist around who such labels as indietronica, electro pop,
experimental, witch house and industrial circulate. She takes a creative
and distinctive approach to her work which also appears in other genres including writing on her Tumblr blog.
In a recent post Boucher wrote about what she gave up to make Grimes work as an act:
"I lost my family (temporarily), the relationship i had been in for three years, and a lot of my friends because I decided to put my art first. At the beginning I toured with a tent because I was playing shows for like, ten people and not getting paid, so we had no where to sleep. Granted, this was incredibly fun but sometimes it got really dark. Especially if you’ve abandoned everything else in your life to the point where if it doesn’t work, you’ll have lost everything."
"I think Grimes succeeded because I had to discard everything else in my life in order to do it. I was so fucking desperate to make it work, I don’t think I could have possibly allowed it to fail. I can’t stress how powerful the human mind is. If you want something bad enough, you can probably find a way to make it work."
In related comments she discusses, in a down to earth manner, pursuing a life focused on things you love doing:
"The way I see it is that very few people on the planet have the opportunity to even follow their dreams at all. Most people live in poverty, or in communities where the repercussions for behaving how they want are a lot worse than just people talking shit. If doing what you want is an option for you, you should do it, because your one of the few lucky people who can."
"And even if you fail, you will be in a better position than if you’d never tried…Bad things can happen, but every horrible thing that has ever happened to me has added integrity to my art and improved my understanding of the human race."
In other recent posts, Boucher raises some interesting points about major label artists being marketed as DIY and follows with related gender commentary about the music industry. Too bad she's so busy being Grimes. It would be nice to see her do more in-depth writing on such topics.
Via NME who rated Visions no. 2 on their 50 Best Albums Of 2012.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/App.net) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
