What you see online of me is the tip of the iceberg. What Moses Mastering is online is strictly the fruit of my labor. It's the fruit of hard times, struggles, ups and downs, successes and failures, taking one step forward and two steps back. I want to be really clear with everyone that what you see online is mainly my highlight reel.
It's a lot of good things. You get to hear and see the final product, but you rarely get to see the artist that struggled to pay for the studio time, the engineer who fought tirelessly to get the right microphone placement on drums and the mix engineer who did revisions until he hated the song.
The perception of what you see of me and my work is often a final product. A final product that you will decide whether or not you like or don't like in ten seconds or less. If we get more than ten seconds then most likely you will move onto another artist after the first chorus. If we get you to listen to the whole song then we are probably going to be famous.. or you're my mom.
I have accomplished a lot of my goals, but what you see of me online is not really who I am as a whole. What you see is a lot of gear, success and accomplishments but what's going on underneath is planning, worrying about work, fighting to get clients, having months where it feels like no one is even making music, and months where I miss my financial goal. There are times where I play with the idea of getting a different job, where I want to give up, and then there are moments where I feel like I have accomplished nothing, that none of it matters.
There are also times of great joy that trump all those moments. When you get to be apart of a song that literally impacts people and they change their life. When a song gets someone out of depression or a song literally keeps them alive. A song that makes people get up and dance. A song that is at someone's wedding. Those moments crush all the struggle.
In life most of us live in the in-between. We live in this space of where we are and where we want to be.
Rarely do we practice contentment and just being. We don't really appreciate who we are currently. When we all live this way it kind of makes it difficult to really get to know someone as the perception gets blurred.
I want you to perceive me as a person, who cares about people and the music industry. A person who works hard and has difficulty just like everyone else in the industry and life. The only way to live your life is to be honest and if I have learned anything in the music industry it's that everyone wants everyone else to think they are just crushing it.
Everyday, just swimming in work, that they have plenty to do, that everyone wants a piece of them and they just got done writing the next hit song that will be cut and go number one. This industry has been built on greed and politics and smoke and mirrors. If you can keep it together long enough and fake it till you make it then it may actually work. The funny thing is, is that it does kind of work, but it's exhausting.
Living your life as someone else during the day and online is exhausting. When you go to bed you have to come to the reality that you are not who you portray to most people. I have worked very hard at presenting myself as a professional who does give a professional product. All of this is true. I do believe I give a great product and that my quality is professional. Within this though, it's very easy for a wall to build up that begins to separate me from others. I never want this to be the case. I never want anyone to think that I'am on some other level as a human or that I walk in the light and get lucky. I want to be real and honest. That's what this blog is for. To hopefully help demystify someone who is having success but also is real and struggles daily to keep it all afloat. This is normal. Anyone who has success has to work twice as hard to maintain it. That's the name of the game in business. Creating the hit record is easy, but keeping that momentum going is where the real work begins.
Anyone that reads this, I value so much. I can't say thank you enough for reading these blogs. The fact that you give me five minutes of your day is humbling. So thank you. I want you to know as readers of my blog that you're important and that you can be and should be transparent with yourself and others.
We all perceive people differently then who they really are most the time and that's not totally fair because it creates a false reality. It can make it feel like you are behind, missing out on something, or that you just have bad luck. None of this is true. We are all humans and we desire the same thing at the core.
So next time you're scrolling thru social media or meeting someone new, just remember that what you perceive is just the tip of the iceberg and underneath it all are layers upon layers of wonderful things that make them unique, but also human just like you. Spend time trying to get to those layers and you will have fulfillment beyond what you thought possible and relationships that flourish.
I will always fight to be perceived as a human just like you.
Much love to you all!
Peace