There is a person who never seems to get the right kind of tools, and is often busy contemplating and planning the accession of the next upgrade at any metaphorical cost. At times, that person is a friend, a colleague but more often than we would like, it is you, yourself!

“… only if I had this …” – this dialogue is redundant, and has harmed more artists than record labels. And before uncovering this redundancy, let us do a simple exercise. Take your time to answer this question –

What makes you an artist?

Think, not just for the sake of getting to a right kind of answer, but take this as a thought experiment, turn it into a dialogue, implore, and don’t be satisfied by anything that feels too superficial, pretentious or wretched in an ideology. This dialogue might be the only one you may need to get involved with.

For me, I think it is the freedom that art invokes – freedom – what makes me an artist is this experience of real, absolute freedom, the one which is not bound by the material, but a spiritual, sleep-like-a-baby kind of implications. And if my voice should sound original, honest and true, exercising this freedom without any hesitations or dilemmas is the only right process and vision for me.

If you develop a deep desire for drawing and painting – would you wait for the delivery of fancy-schmancy pencil set or would you just start?

It is not about the type of pencil or kind of paper, it is the incessant inherent desire to draw, imagine and create. Either a metaphorical hell or a transcendental meditation, the artist actualises when they realise their medium is not the voice – that voice transcends media, genre, type, style, tag, label, tool, material; the voice is the humanity that the medium translates.

The tool and the medium is just a method, a way to materialise an idea, and there is no other purpose of a tool or medium. Preferences, choices and biases are generated and perpetuated through hundreds of iterations of an illusionary code based in either morality or the rejection of so – we like certain things and what we like keeps on changing. A medium or a tool, although a very objective analysis of quality and scope, is not the justification for any act of making art.

Pulling your focus away from stories and expression to tools and scales is a form of self-inflicted artistic suicide. Leave it for those who find muse in study of tools. As an artist who has something to say, say it, don’t wait for the perfect guitar – take your old, rusted, cheap, hipster guitar and write more songs, better songs, songs that move, songs with emotions, guilt, regret, joy, bliss, anger, songs with a soul. Let the luthier do her thing, and you do your thing.

Create with whatever you have access to. If you stay honest, sincere, persistent, consistent and disciplined, the gods of art shall reward you with the exact tools that you need. And one day you are in a bus drawing the old lady with a purple flower in her hair in your custom hand-made sketch book with paper imported from Japan, and an award winning pencil social media is hyped about, and yet you feel the same ignorance towards tools and the pursuit of material more. You don’t just need to draw, you HAVE TO.

No one cares if Rafi sahib recorded his voice on a Shure or a Neumann. No one cares about Jeff Beck’s pedalboard. It is the story, it is the soul, it is the expression, the familiarity that we feel from which all other kind of curiosity is birthed. If the song didn’t hit you in the right kind of place, why would you care for the tools otherwise. And even today when genuine legitimate art finds you, do you really care for the tools, or do you care for what emotions it triggers inside you, where does it hurt, what unresolved issues have resurfaced, or would you care more about the effects chain they used on the singer.

Today industry-performance-level gear is as accessible as it has ever been, and it is a miracle what you can get done with just a smartphone and an internet connection. It is obvious, of course, but still ask yourself sincerely – why are you not finishing that song? Why are you not able to finish any song? Is it the microphone, the guitar, the interface, the headphones or is it that you are too scared – that this way of complaining and dreaming is easier than the pursuit of a genuine story – that you are in love with the idea of being in love.

These inquiry of layman questions are critical, and an objective dialogue needs to be served. Such intra-personal experiments are crucial to develop a mindset that makes art a sustainable life choice. It is about lifestyle at the end of the day. And as artists, we are subject to fall in love with naked sunflowers, wet with the overnight drizzle, basking in the glorious light of the early morning sun. And why shouldn’t anyone? How can you not!

We are subjective to the core, we feel too much, hyper-sensitive, and at times not caring at all, and the decisions we end up making – let’s not even start, perhaps this sensitivity and fickleness of our being is what makes us write those songs or paint those dreams, but a discipline needs immediate upholding.

The purpose of you as an ego now deepens to only that of a manager. And you are here to manage only two things – behaviour, and mindset, never should one hamper with how stories come to life, doing so is a cardinal sin.

Tearing off this illogical mindset of scarcity of tools and material from a genuine and valid artistic expression is an objective task of the ego, in fact, the most important, both morally and objectively. The sooner you do the better, because it not just is sheer nonsensical wastage of time but also a postponement of success, and an act of self-inflicted brutality. How?

Because we stand in our own way, we block our vision ourselves, we lay buried among biases and notions about the material world. You complain. Once a promise of deliverance has succumbed to life of regrets, misery, and rage.

It doesn’t matter, nothing really matters except the truth your art withholds.

Don’t wait. Just write a song and share it with people. Then write another, then another… another… another… and hopefully till one day, when it all starts making sense.