Two years of quietly tinkering in private. One deep breath. One upload. Now it exists in the world whether I am ready for that or not.
I finally released a song I have been quietly writing, rewriting, and generally sitting on for close to two years now, a genuinely nerve-wracking step I kept finding perfectly reasonable-sounding excuses to postpone, one more small tweak to the bridge, one more attempt at getting the mix slightly cleaner, one more round of telling myself it simply was not quite ready yet, until this week, when I finally ran out of both patience and legitimate excuses and just uploaded the thing before I could talk myself into yet another delay.
The actual writing process, spread out across those two years in fits and starts between teaching hours and everything else that fills up an ordinary working week, was genuinely enjoyable for the most part, the specific pleasure of slowly shaping something out of nothing, discarding whole verses that were not working, stumbling onto a melodic line during an entirely unrelated practice session that ended up becoming the song’s actual emotional centre months later. That part of the process, messy and unpredictable as it was, never felt particularly frightening.
The actual release, by stark contrast, terrified me considerably more than I expected going in, a specific kind of exposure that writing and rewriting privately for two years never once required me to confront directly. There is a real difference between a song existing quietly on my own laptop, endlessly adjustable, entirely private, and that same song existing publicly, finished, unchangeable, available for anyone to listen to and form whatever judgment they choose to form about it, completely outside my control once it is actually out there.
I spent the morning of the actual release refreshing the page more times than I would like to admit, watching the play count creep up slowly, each new listen producing a fresh little spike of anxiety I had not fully anticipated given how long I had been theoretically preparing myself for exactly this moment. A few friends messaged kind things almost immediately, which helped enormously, and a couple of my own music students, genuinely touchingly, asked if they could learn to play parts of it themselves, which is possibly the single nicest response I could have hoped for from this specific audience.
I think there is something worth naming honestly here about the particular fear of finally finishing something you have used as an ongoing creative outlet for a long stretch of time, the way an unfinished project can function, without you fully realising it, as a comfortable, permanent work in progress that never has to face actual judgment because it is never technically done. Finishing it, releasing it, forces a confrontation with the actual finished work exactly as it is, flaws included, rather than the considerably safer, endlessly perfectible version that only ever existed in private.
It is out now, properly, permanently, and I have already, somewhat to my own surprise, started sketching ideas for what comes next, a considerably faster turnaround than the two years the last one took, which I am choosing to interpret as evidence that actually finishing something, however frightening, genuinely does make the next one easier, rather than harder, to eventually begin.
A few of my students, once word got around, have started asking whether I might eventually teach them the actual song itself, which is a genuinely lovely, slightly disorienting request to receive, watching material that existed privately in my own head for two years suddenly become something other people want to actually learn and play themselves. I have not fully decided yet how I feel about handing over something this personal for other hands to interpret, but I suspect I will say yes eventually, if only because there is something quietly fitting about a song that took two years to release finding its next life being taught, imperfectly and personally, the exact same way I teach everything else.
I keep coming back, writing this entry, to how strange it feels that something I spent two years keeping entirely private now exists permanently, publicly, outside my control. That specific feeling has not entirely faded since the release, and I suspect it will take a while longer to properly settle. For now, I am simply glad it is finally out there, imperfect and finished exactly as it actually is, rather than endlessly, safely unfinished the way it existed in my own head for considerably too long before I finally let it go.
A few of the students who asked about learning it themselves have already started, entirely unprompted, sending me their own rough attempts at picking out the melody by ear, which is possibly the single most touching response to a piece of my own work I have ever received, watching something I made in private quietly become raw material for other people’s own learning almost the moment it left my hands. I did not anticipate that particular consequence of finally releasing it, and I find myself, somewhat unexpectedly, genuinely moved by it each time a new one arrives in my inbox.
I think that specific, unexpected response has done more to settle my own nerves about the whole release than anything else that has happened this week. Whatever else the song accomplishes out in the wider world, entirely beyond my control now, it has already, within days, quietly become something my own small community of students has started to genuinely engage with on their own terms, and that feels, on reflection, like exactly the kind of outcome worth two years of quiet, private tinkering.
More from this author at Hannah Miller, prat.uk.