A Shtikel of Music
At some point over the past week I randomly hit play on the show Formula 1: Drive to Survive on Netflix. I was almost immediately caught off guard by how fascinating this sport is. While I went to the Molson Indy races a few times as a little boy and loved seeing the cars speed by as we stuffed our ears with cheap earplugs and snorted exhaust fumes, I wrote it off as an adult as something not very interesting.
This show has changed that for me. Even from the idea of the technology and engineering alone it’s captivating, but from the standpoint of teamwork it’s a whole other level. If you thought you were ‘above’ car racing I recommend you give it a shot. Something I didn’t realize about myself before starting this show is that I happen to enjoy the idea of sinister Europeans, which you get plenty of here.
This week’s podcast episode is a feature on my new single Detach. It’s 8 minutes long in case you have commitment issues.
As I finished this episode and uploaded it, I found it kind of funny that I am the media outlet that covers my own work. It would be like CNN running a story about how great its anchors are.
But this is the way things work for a lone wolf. The story has to get told somehow, and to wait around for someone to care is kind of pointless. Self-promotion is a way of getting out of your own way and letting things unfold. Releasing your grip on your work and finding out what’s what when people actually hear it.
You have to be motivated from within, from start to finish - to take the time to capture your work (for me that means recording a track), all the way to finding a way for people to experience it.
I’m not saying it’s always easy to get out of your own way but at some point you wake up and realize that no one cares. They are worried about themselves. So go ahead and enjoy the free space of doing creative work. Record a track or start a business doing something you care about doing, it’s all the same problem in the end.
That’s it for today. Long weekends are a good time to get some extra bagels in if you’re anything like me.
Elliott “Shtikel” Fienberg
* Shtikel is Yiddish for a small amount, as in “there’s a shtikel of cream cheese left, you can have it”. But this is funny because if you improvise on this word you might be left with something that translates to either small penis or warm smile.