Ask 100 musicians what ‘success’ means and you’ll get 100 different answers. Some nuanced and smart, some pointlessly nostalgic and impossible. But your journey is yours, and you need to start by asking the best questions you can.

Find other people - musicians, thinkers, academics, ‘industry people’ - who care about art, who care about you, who care about the journey - and use them to get better at asking questions. That’s the only journey that matters.

Steve Lawson (p. 28, “The 360 Deal”)

(Source: wilkinsky.us)

Effective musicking is built around making contacts, strengthening and maintaining those contacts in sincere and organic ways. Try to be the face of what you are trying to do, get out and tell people what you are doing and sell what you’re trying to do. If you get a good response you might be onto a winner, if people don’t care, what you’re doing might not be interesting enough. Ask yourself the difficult questions, ‘why should people care about what I’m doing?’

Stephen Hutton

(Source: wilkinsky.us)

Aspiring and emerging artists need to be aware that they share a common goal with legions of hopefuls, all hurling themselves at the same venues, media spots, labels and audiences. The common mistake is thinking all these people are in competition. They are not. This isn’t gladiator school. Your peers are your potential co-conspirators. No artist can exist in a vacuum; inspiration simply does not survive in such an environment.

Listen to what others are creating. Get to know them. Help one another, recommend one another and share contacts. Collaborate! If you get a break, share that progress and take someone with you. And don’t stop at performers. Promoters emerge the same way artists do. So do labels and magazines and radio shows and websites.

Too many artists pitch themselves to the establishment, to the existing success stories, hoping for a short cut. That kind of ambition is as transparent as it is boring and often the best you can hope for is becoming a chapter in someone else’s story.

Find the people who have recently started out. These people are trying to build something they are passionate about and they need help just like you do.

Louis Barabbas

(Source: wilkinsky.us)

As human beings we are storytelling animals. We continually share stories about the experiences we have and the people we meet. What stories do you want people to tell about you? What do you want your legend to be? You were rude? You were late? You were unrehearsed? Be self-aware. Try to see yourself as other people do. Craft your legend through how you act and what you do.

Ed Waring

(Source: wilkinsky.us)

To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.

Pablo Neruda

A leader is best
When people barely know he exists
Of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say, “We did this ourselves.

Lao Tzu

I am glad it isn’t a lion - the cheetah is much more calm.

Usain Bolt after adopting a cheetah, the fastest animal / November 2009

(Source: BBC)

There were guys like a Brett Favre that you’d try to mess with, and he’d just slap you on the butt and say, ‘Try to hit me harder next time.’ You knew no matter what you did, you weren’t going to affect him, so you were better off trying to get in somebody else’s head.

Bill Romanowski

(Source: wilkinsky.us)