An Old Dream + A New Year’s Resolution, 01/06/2025
January 6th, 2026
Happy New Year! Woohoo!
I don’t know about all of you, but I absolutely love this time of year. The frigid, stinging New York January air feels cleansing and refreshing to me after the typically disruptive and stressful holiday season. New Years resolutions are fun too. I always come up with way too many but its surprising how many of them come unconsciously to fruition in some form or another by the end of each year anyway. In 2024 I resolved to learn how to enjoy cooking– that was one of my most successful resolutions of all time. I love chopping vegetables now. Anyway, I tried going back through my journals to see if I had noted what my 2025 resolutions were but unfortunately I could not find any. I almost certainly made some, and I now simply choose to believe that I accomplished them.
In searching through my journals, though, I found something even more interesting than an old resolution. On January 2nd, 2025, I had this dream:
“I was in a classroom trying to pay attention to the lesson but there was really loud piano from another room playing over the teacher’s voice and I couldn’t understand what he was saying at all. A fellow student turned to me and told me that it was a piano student playing. Once the piano student learned and memorized all of the best music of all time, the teacher would give them a totally original song that only that pianist could ever play. That was what the student was practicing now.”
How about that? I paraphrased a little bit because I’m currently writing from home and my journal is stuck in the studio, but I’ve been thinking about this rediscovered dream a lot this week. I think it says something about my priorities and encapsulates an internal struggle I was feeling for much of last year… A struggle between a desire for structured education/institutional approval and a desire for true, free, original expression. Maybe the fact that the original piano piece was playing over the classroom lesson suggests these desires were somehow at odds with each other in 2025. Can I hold them both in equal standing in 2026? Or does one need to take precedence? The piano piece was incredibly loud, I remember that.
I wish I could dream it again and see what the teacher was teaching or what he looked like. I remember feeling frustrated by the pianist’s loud practicing of his original music– I wanted to hear what the teacher was telling me. I felt held back from learning all of the best art of all time so that I could then create something unique and original for myself. Although it’s interesting that the dream specifically notes a teacher “giving” the original song to the pianist. I sometimes feel like I’m waiting for permission to make my ‘real’ work— the stuff that’s going to be really important or really true. Or that the work can only be really important and true if someone else says it is. Isn’t that actually how it works, though? The work means little unless it’s recognized by someone outside of yourself. It has to resonate somehow. That’s what spreads the ideas, what makes a piece of art stand the test of time, and what makes it meaningful.
That’s something I am resolving to work towards in 2026. I want to find an audience. It does not have to be a committee of prestigious faculty members at an accredited institution, as I may have believed last year or all of the years before that. No, my work does not need institutional approval to be important or true, but it absolutely needs an audience. A true expression of the artist’s consciousness needs other consciousnesses to reflect off of before it can be called complete… maybe the audience adds a dimension to the work that the artist can’t provide himself. I don’t think social media counts.
So, that’s what I’m thinking about as I re-calibrate from a hectic holiday season and settle into the New Year. How will I cultivate an engaged audience for my work? Can I give myself permission to play a unique and original song extremely loudly, so that people will have to pay attention? Can I get back into the studio and play around and actually make something new? I haven’t been able to do anything substantial since mid November of last year.
I’ll discuss this further with my analyst and get back to you. In the meantime, back to chipping away at the studio.
-Finn
A doodle I made a few weeks ago… something’s been on my mind for sure!!
