Dear Kellie,

You don’t need to know who you are to become an artist. Art moulds us into the shape it wants us to be and the thing that serves it best. As a songwriter, I have come to understand that the more I try to make art that somehow reflects what I perceive myself to be, or the identity I wish to project upon the world, the more my art resists. Art doesn’t like being told what to do. It doesn’t like me getting in the way. When I attempt to impose my will upon it, the work becomes diminished and art takes its better ideas elsewhere.

Art is a divine and mysterious force that runs through all of us. It is a thing of supreme spiritual potential that only comes into its true and full being if we abandon all those cherished ideas about who we think we are or are not. Art is entirely indifferent to our self-annihilating excuses, special case pleas and circumstantial grievances. We must cease to concern ourselves with our unique suffering — whether we are happy or sad, fortunate or unfortunate, good or bad — and give up our neurotic and debilitating journeys of self-discovery. Art of true value requires, like a jealous and possessive god, nothing less than our complete obedience. It insists that we retract our ego, our sense of self, the cosmetics of identity and let it do its thing. We are in service to art, not the other way around.

Kellie, if you want to create, sit down, lower your head in deference to the task ahead and get to work. But get out of art’s way! Art will, in time, show you who you are. One day you will be labouring away, lost in the flow, a glorious and unfathomable thing unfolding before your eyes, and art will suddenly and outrageously turn to you and, like a master pleased with his vassal, say, ‘Look. Look who you are. You are an artist.’

Love, Nick

If you ask for it, you might get it. But you also might not. When you fully accept both outcomes you’ll actually start getting what you want.

It’s probably not you, it’s your choice in people. Or it’s because you’re chronically insecure, which leads to your bad taste in people.

Accountability is the most important thing. Someone who does what they’ll say they do, who has self-respect. Yesterday I was trying to articulate this to J as a relatively small delta between how you act and how you want to act. It’s not that that’s the only attractive quality, but I know it’s the most necessary quality. Without it everything else becomes redundant.

That guy gushing about his best man doesn’t go on trips with his friends and notice when two friends go out for coffee without him. He don’t take notes on how other people are failing him or backing away. He doesn’t take people’s temperature constantly to see if there’s enough love there. He doesn’t slowly and meticulously document other people’s flaws inside his mind. He shows up for fun and maybe he even asks good questions and listens to the answers. Maybe he’s full enough to let the world in, to let people in, and to love them consistently, and that makes him a model of HOW TO BE.

Live in the city where the largest number of your good friends are. I pretty much moved back to SF strictly because of this.

ask for what you want without shame

You can’t get away with half-heartedness in making art. You can’t believe that something, someone else will be a solution. It never is. If you’re fundamentally ambivalent about yourself no one else can change that relationship. Everything you’re reaching for is just a mirage.

If you want to be loved, find something you love. People can sense it when you have something you’re dedicated to. No one wants the burden of being the answer to your dissatisfication. When you’re unsure of yourself, it’s easy to be obsessed with the idea of love—the idea that happiness will arrive when someone else loves you. This can lead to you ignoring your own life.