On June 1st of this year, I very quietly rebranded my name just slightly to Alex the Storyteller. Not too far off from my government name and what I was going by previously, so I didn't need to make it a big deal, but a rebrand nonetheless.
I'm in my Storyteller Era.
I'll be the first to admit that titles don't always make sense to me, especially when I'm trying to avoid that feeling of say, "Oh, yeah, I do that, too". Videography, yeah, I do that. Writing, oh, year I published a book, too. Oh, music, listeeennnn, hear me out: that, too. The list goes on and on and on.
"This is the sequel that prequels the Glory"
When I started this journey, I told myself my goal was to be a great storyteller. That is what was written down in the journal. That's what was written down in 2020, and I'm sticking by it. Videography is simply the discipline of understanding the technical craft of making video. It's not directing, it's not technically cinematography, and it's just one discipline among many.
Storyteller, though, didn't just appear out of nowhere. It was a revisited idea I had, ironically, from a song. And so, writing it down wasn't so much of a new discovery as much as it was confirmation or reassurance. Somehow, to be honest, all roads seemed to point to that when I was reflecting on how I was going to make a pivot in 2020.
"Storyteller" was song written in 2014 that became the lead on a project I would end up releasing in 2015 called, "MyRealViciousLife". To no surprise, the song, which I wrote while on a work break is a reflective song, acknowledging that the life I am living is, in fact, a story that I am the protagonist in. It's both reflecting on life as the narrator, and also acknowledging what has to be done as the main character in the plot itself.
See in 2014, I was at an uncomfortable crossroad. Somehow, the life of a creative was being constricted by the life of a professional, and the balances were so uncomfortably off, that I felt like I was ultimately actively choosing to lose myself. The main character saw the fork in the road and chose to go with:
"Go to school. Get a good job. Get a wife. And Support Your Family."
In itself, not a bad decision. It's the life we all really hope we can ultimately do. Except, this version for me involved a lot of doubt and treating the creativity like it was a third-place hobby. What I yearned for was space and a place to let my creativity land. Places to perform. People to share with. Spaces to be inspired, moved, and expand. It didn't take long for me to realize that I missed being a creative. I missed performing. I missed life being slow enough to sit down - anywhere, really - and write notes that became music. I missed having the creative elasticity to think of an idea, arrive home, and test out the creation process of the idea.
If you're a creative, I hope you understand.
Sometimes, the coolest part about being a creative isn't what you create. I mean, yes, it's cool. But sometimes, what you realize is that your brain treats creative ideas like mathematics. Like a physics equation. It's a problem that needs to be investigated and tested with no real interest in solving it. The journey through the calculations is what make us creative. My brain treats bars in the exact same way it treats Saas onboarding for 16 cohorts of new hires. I'm willing to try shit, and not rely on legacy data or information that isn't mine. It's not enough.
It's not satisfying. It's not feeding my curiosity and my strong desire to find something to overcome and create.
Struggling through that journey slowly sliding out of creativity, I wrote "MyRealViciousLife" - 13 songs that, indeed, told a story: I'm slipping away and losing myself, but I'm hopeful of a future when I find myself again.
Between 2015 and 2020 was an Odyssey of attempts at making a breakthrough. For two years, I struggled with creating. I barely wrote music. I barely produced. I had a podcast. Nothing felt like the high, or even the flow. I looked back at "MyRealViciousLife" like it was the ghost project of a creative that no longer existed, and tried to use that feeling as motivation to keep creating and it only made me hate what I was creating more.
Over 10 years later, there's a beauty in trust the process. Sometimes, you're not supposed to look back. And sometimes, when you do, you realize you were leaving very important trail markers for yourself. I've talked about it many times: "MyRealViciousLife" actually is the most important project I've ever created. It is the single source of truth for so many of my emerging creative projects and ideas because it is 13 individual stories that also double up as a single story with 13 chapters. And despite feeling like it was a complete failure, it gave me my first true music video.
And despite feeling like it was a complete failure, I performed on occasion. I performed at a lot of open mics, trying to recapture the feeling and overcoming the nervousness of being on stage (because somehow that came back). And despite feeling like it was a complete failure, it taught me the necessary patience of getting to know the work you create, intimately. Just because it's done, doesn't mean it's ready for release.
I practiced performances and I practiced iteration. I also reflected on what I wanted in performances and how to expand as a creative.
If you've ever heard of Human Design, I am what's called a Projector. Projectors do not have centered auras or motor-to-throat connections. In short, Projectors don't have the energy to sustain their own life force, but do have the uncanny ability to see inefficiencies and wasted energy in other people. Being a projector means that in a space with others, you will often create efficiency or, in short, bringing out the best in others.
With "Storyteller" being the lead song from "MyRealViciousLife" and a primary song that was performed, it also ended up being the song that helped the Tamp Bay Songwriter Collective decide to put on a show, with me as the co-feature at The Attic at the Rock Brothers in Downtown Tampa in 2017.
The irony of this era being that it really was a prequel, filled with early music and creative projects that still stand as my inspiration for creating more.
"The Perfectionist" would go on to become my first video I've directed. I've created short visuals for "Welcome to the World"; "Him" has inspired a horror project that will be in progress soon (currently only known as "The Bellevue Boogeyman"); "The Grown Up" has gotten a second life on The Summer 6ix Pack.
What I want for this Storyteller Era is for it to be defined by individual projects, tied together by themes that ultimately tell one, grand story. There's discovery. There's expansion. There are also connections and there is also a lot of being the conduit as the Projector, to not only tell my own story, but the stories of others as well.
Sometimes what feels like a failure is a very necessary and completed iteration that gives us an opportunity to prepare the sequel that prequels the Glory.
