A New Chapter

I sold my studio, ditched social media, and moved to a farm. Welcome to my newsletter, Musings From The Middle.

Like clockwork, every seven year stretch of my life has surprised me with a new search for purpose and meaning. I can’t explain why it happens — although pure coincidence is most likely the culprit—only that it does, and when it does, my priorities seem to shift altogether. Maybe you’ve experienced this, too; the story of our lives seems to unfold in leaps and bounds.

Seven years ago, I first came to Los Angeles on a Hollywood residency for Postmodern Jukebox, the experiential “pop music in a time machine” musical group I started out of a basement in Queens. I spent the next seven years growing the project into a perennially world touring act, established a music studio that acted as home base for the entire project, and produced lots of fun videos featuring extremely talented singers, instrumentalists, and dancers (and a Sad Clown).

Seven years before that, I moved to New York City from Hartford, Connecticut, to pursue a career as a musician of some sort. My chief concern at the time was simply to earn enough money each month to cover both the rent on my Astoria basement apartment and to whittle down the impressive mountain of student loan debt I had built up.  Through a bit of grit and determination — not to mention hours upon hours of cocktail piano gigs, days spent traversing the city to teach piano lessons, and some accidental viral YouTube videos — I eventually did. The mountain of debt remained a mountain, but I finally felt worthy of calling myself a “professional musician.”

Seven years before that, I left my childhood home in New Jersey to pursue a college education at the University of Hartford — which sounded a bit like “Harvard,” if you said it quickly.  Truth be told, I didn’t really know what I was pursuing at the time, I just knew that I liked jazz piano, I didn’t want to live at home, and that any school that was willing to look past my poor grades was a school worth a second look, indeed. As the Summer of 2000 ended, I packed up my worldly possessions — some clothes, the obligatory CD wallet full of ‘90s jams, and an 88-key Yamaha P80 keyboard — hugged my loving family goodbye, and spent the next, somewhat unfocused seven years experimenting with starting weird “concept” bands that generally played to single-digit crowds. Somehow, I managed to make it through to the other side with a diploma and a portfolio of maxed out credit cards (“debt” being the common theme of my twenties).

In each of these cases, staying put wasn’t really a viable option for me.  I’m of the opinion that trying to move against the natural seasonal winds in one’s life leads only to misery; just think of the trope of the aging high school quarterback that wants only to relive his glory days on the gridiron, as his peers grow up and move out and start families of their own.

I don’t want to be that guy. So, it’s time for a change.

To finish out 2021, I got rid of my studio in Los Angeles and stopped using my social media accounts. Both of those things played a huge role in my career as an artist, but both of them eventually overstayed their welcome. The studio was beautiful and grandiose, but it was far from home. Social media was exciting, but superficial. As a fan of other artists, I’ve always admired those that demonstrated authenticity in their own lives, and these two facets of my life had been feeling anything but as of late.

I never got that comfortable in Hollywood. I’m an East Coaster by birth, where the unrelenting cold winters inspire a level of cynicism that is very much at odds with a place built on the spectacle of red carpets and award shows. I’ve never been much of a joiner, either, so having a studio in such close proximity to the networking center of the entertainment industry was no doubt wasted on me. Still, I am grateful to have made so many great friends there and for the opportunity to work with so many insanely talented folks on so many cool projects. I even met my fiancé there — although she is technically another East Coaster, like me. The past seven years were, above all, a very exciting and productive time of my life — a time that I will cherish forever.

On the flip side, I felt entirely at home on social media. Among musicians, I was something of an early adopter of these virtual communities. I marketed my college band on Myspace back in 2005 and sold a couple dozen CDs by mail. My first viral YouTube video happened in 2009, when YouTube was mostly cat videos and not much else. I sold my first piano album in 2010 by taking song requests live on Reddit. I booked a world tour in 2014 by posting song covers on Facebook. I gave talks about using social media to build a brand at institutions like Oxford Union in 2017, and scored a book deal with Hachette to put it in writing in 2018. In a bizarre twist of fate for a musician that was a bonafide starving artist only a few years prior, I was soon asked by everyone — established celebrities and record executives alike — just how I used social media to such great success. It was all very satisfying to the ego.

However, just as the seasonal winds in our lives change with time, the rest of the world changes, as well. Social media in the present day has become less of a fun place to share creative ideas and more of a place that is actively harming our relationships with one another. The current crop of engagement-based platforms — driven by smartphone apps that are designed to keep us scrolling in a dopamine-fueled frenzy — don’t inspire us to be our best selves. Instead, they play to our base instincts, allowing us to be captured by simplistic narratives and turning us against one another. On these apps, there is little interest in honest debate, or for giving careful consideration to important subjects, or for attempting to bridge our divides through compassion and empathy. There is only the mindless tribalism and signaling that is part and parcel of the modern social media experience, with nuanced opinions rendered impotent at best, and grotesquely distorted into awful things at worst. To put it bluntly, in musician terms: social media has become a pretty shitty venue for any type of meaningful discussion. And — as is the case with any other shitty venue — I’d rather not play there, if I can help it.

Indeed, the world we see through the lens of these apps is all too often a planet of perpetual outrage; one that is growing increasingly unmoored from the real world outside our doorsteps, where the vast majority of folks we encounter are just decent people trying to get through the day. However, it’s clear to me that the spillover from the online world is actively polluting the real world, too. It’s as if social media has cut the brakes required to regulate our collective emotions; if we aren’t more cautious with how we use this tool, it could take us right off a cliff.

I won’t dispute that social media is something of a necessary evil for most of the people in my industry and others, that it is a fantastic networking tool, and that it absolutely was responsible for launching my career. To anyone that is seeking to build a brand or a following, I still recommend using it; it’s great for that stuff. I’m just ready for a change.

I don’t think I’m particularly unique for making this change, either. Perhaps, as better alternatives emerge in the years to come, the abandonment of these apps will become a social media trend in and of itself; a harbinger of the end of the glossy, manicured “influencer era” that has reigned since selfies were deemed to be socially acceptable. I think we are all growing collectively bored of our own vanity and grandstanding, and crave that which an app can not provide: genuine human connection and meaningful conversation. It’s impossible to extract either of these things from a quick post or soundbite. It’s impossible to converse with the world as a whole and truly connect with even one person.

This is a shame, because there’s a lot of conversation to be had these days. At 40 years old, I am what is now somewhat-unfortunately referred to as a “Geriatric Millennial;” the subgeneration existing in the weird, uncomfortable crevice between Gen X & Gen Y. I’m young enough to be excited about how my peers will shape the future, while also old enough to be horrified by that same thought. I have a feeling I’m not unique in this regard, either. Today, it is practically impossible to keep up with the news without feeling a general sense of unease; a vague feeling that there are no adults in the room anymore. Perhaps it’s always been that way, and we just never noticed it before. Or, perhaps we’re meant to be the adults in the room — a generation lost in cyberspace, with no time left to start again. It is a confusing time for all of us, and I’m not sure that will be changing any time soon.

At any rate, here I am, on a farm in the middle of the country. It’s pretty big change, but it’s also a bit reminiscent of the small town where I grew up. Of course, I’m still making Postmodern Jukebox videos; that’s my life’s work, after all. This is but the start of a new chapter, and this newsletter will be the only media channel I’ll be personally using — not counting my YouTube channel, where I do my Piano Request LIVE! live streams — for the time being.  I’m hopeful that unplugging from the almighty algorithm will allow me to focus my time better, to embrace simplicity where I can, to develop deeper relationships with the people I care most about, and to communicate with you in a more authentic way. My aim with this newsletter is to start some interesting discussions, share the stories and ideas that I find most interesting, and help you to find some joy, humor, and understanding in this crazy, mixed-up world.

Life is too short not to try, anyway.

-SB