The Artist’s Manifesto: On Creating, Curating, and the Courage to Ship

Raw thoughts on art, music, and the compulsive need to create

Art is Permissionless

There’s something beautiful about the permissionless nature of art. You don’t need anyone’s approval to create. No committee to approve your song, no board to greenlight your painting, no authority figure to validate your vision. Art exists in the infinite vector of possibility, and you can move along it wherever your taste and courage take you.

The internet has made this even more true. With a guitar, a voice, and a WiFi connection to upload to Spotify, SoundCloud, and Instagram—that’s all you need. The barriers have never been lower, which makes the question not “can I create?” but “will I create?”

The 100 Song Theory

Here’s what I’ve learned: you need to write 100 shitty songs to find your voice. That one brilliant song everyone remembers? It’s built on the foundation of 100, maybe 1000 mediocre ones that came before. Volume teaches you things that perfection never can.

Better to release one brilliant song than 100 mediocre ones, but you can’t get to that one brilliant song without going through the 100 mediocre ones first. It’s the paradox of creative work—you have to be prolific to be selective.

Create. Curate. Elevate. Repeat.

Music as the Perfect Metaphor

Music might be the perfect metaphor for life itself. Every note is both dissonant and resonant with other notes, depending on context. We’re all songs listening to each other, trying to find harmony in the chaos.

Music bottles time, place, and feeling for later retrieval—like emotional time capsules. A song from five years ago can transport you instantly back to who you were then. Making music every few years becomes a beautiful time capsule, showing you how far you’ve come while honoring where you’ve been.

The Art of Stealing (Like an Artist)

None of what I collect is original, but the taste that collects them is uniquely mine. Your taste—what you choose to pay attention to, what you choose to combine—that’s where originality lives. Not in the components, but in the curation.

Stealing like an artist means recognizing that everything is a remix. The Beatles influenced everyone who came after, but nobody sounds exactly like the Beatles because everyone brings their own taste to the influence. Cover songs reveal your authentic voice precisely because you’re not trying to be original—you’re just being yourself with someone else’s framework.

On Creative Compulsion

If the creative does not create, she withers. Creativity is almost compulsive—like a plant that needs water, like breathing. It’s not about money or fame (though those can come); it’s about the need to express, to say something, to leave a mark.

True art grips you and doesn’t let go. Whether it’s a song that stops you in your tracks or a painting that demands your attention, authentic art has a magnetic quality. It’s transformative truth—the kind that shifts something in you permanently.

The Long Game of Bodies of Work

All it takes is one creation to point to an artist’s whole portfolio. One brilliant song can make people dig through your entire discography. One viral reel can expose years of accumulated work.

Bodies of work are kindling waiting for fire. You’re gathering wood, building the pile, staying ready for that moment when lightning strikes. At the end of a career, all the individual pieces form one long painting—an odyssey of expression across time.

Art as Offering

Artists are priests and priestesses in the temple of human experience. We point to infinity, to the divine, to whatever transcends the mundane. All art is an offering—to beauty, to truth, to the mysterious force that makes us want to create in the first place.

Music heals souls. Writing untangles thoughts. Visual art makes the invisible visible. We create what is needed and remove what holds us back.

The Courage to Ship

Real artists ship. This might be the hardest part—not the creating, but the releasing. Putting your work into the world where it can be judged, ignored, or misunderstood. But keeping it hidden serves no one.

Art done for yourself feels like play. If you create it for yourself, it’s art. If you create it for others, it’s business. Both have their place, but the art that comes from authentic expression—that’s the stuff that lasts.

Living Like a Song

Life itself is a work of art when lived intentionally. You design the equation and act it out through time. Every choice is a note in the composition of your existence.

The question isn’t whether you have artistic talent—everyone does. The question is whether you have the courage to honor it, to create consistently, and to share your unique perspective with a world that needs more beauty, more truth, more authentic human expression.

Music was my first love, and in returning to it, I remember why. In a world of artificial experiences, creating something real—whether it’s a song, a painting, a story, or a life lived with intention—might be the most radical act of all.

---

The art is all that matters. Everything else is just noise.