360 deals
when a contract comes full circle
original draft Nov 21 2023 from Brisbane, Australia
As we inch closer to the end (and I do mean “inch”- slowly, painfully) I feel a need to strip myself bare. Turns out, completing a 20 year mission set out for you by a former, ahem, 15 year old, version of yourself is not all that relieving. It’s thick… muggy… covered in something like hair. It feels impossible to untangle or shed away without losing more than you’ve intended.
The grief has surprised me. For a full year I’ve had to make space for all sorts of new angers and fits of rage or disenchantment. My body’s been torn a new asshole. No, really, I have a “second asshole” (as I’ve lovingly named it). It all started with a bad steroid shot for pain on an exceptionally achey day. A perfectly circular crater in my left glute is just one of the more obvious casualties of Rock. My neck has felt all but broken, my immune system ravaged… What do I have to take with me out of this marsh?
A couple Grammy noms? Well, sure. The thing is with or without wins, anyone this side of Fiona Apple’s “This-World-Is-Bullshit” knows awards will do next to nothing to enhance the actual quality of a life. I don’t say this from an ignorant or arrogant place. I’ve got first hand experience. The same year we won our first Grammy was also the year I was supposed to get married. Instead, I found out my partner of 9 years had been cheating on me with a friend of ours, the whole time. Sure, I kind of knew about the foul play. But. This time I could prove it and so I did the thing that any strong, independent woman would do: postpone the wedding a few measly months, along with my suffering, and then get married anyway! That same year was also the year I lost a close friend of mine… not to death but to what I can only chalk up to as arrogance and mental illness. The latter which I am at least a little more equipped to navigate these days. I wouldn’t get diagnosed with PTSD and depression for another 3 years. Our first Grammy amounted to a handful of celebratory tweets, a few industry headlines, and a dusty trophy that has my name on it but in fact, I do not own. (They are actually just loaned so that recipients cannot legally sell them off).
If I can be totally candid— and I can because this is my little place and so far, no one even knows of it: I am tired, resentful, restless, a little thankful (today) but a little more afraid. The contract I signed at 15 with the wide-eyed hopes of being able to support the dream AND the reality of mine and my friends’ band is going to be completely over. The fear isn’t of being without that particular support system. We probably would’ve cut ties a long time ago… It’s the shaky-kneed anxiety of having too much possibility out in front of you. It’s the not knowing. Some people really get off on infinite possibility. I would’ve thought that’d be me. Now I’m not so sure.
What if I want off the conveyor belt for good? What if I don’t want to “expand”, as that psychic I spoke to earlier mentioned? What if I do want to expand but don’t want to kill myself to do that? Does it still happen then? Does any of this even matter?
Some people tell us we’re at the peak point of our career here and now. It’s funny, I kind of feel like we’re still at the kid’s table. Arrested development, maybe? I don’t “feel” more successful. Sure, I can see numbers and stats but not without looking through a number-dyslexic lens. I couldn’t give a shit about numbers. Never have, never will. That might be one reason the label never did view me as a good business man.
It should go without saying, though I know I’ve said enough: I am more than ready to dissolve my contract. It was the first 360 deal in the record business and now it’s coming full circle, to a close. We’ll dissolve the company and all the presets that came with it. We’ll start over on our very own grown up terms. It’ll be something that 15 year old me - precocious but so very naive - would be proud to know she laid some sort of groundwork for. She believed in this very moment, for herself and her friends.
For the last few weeks, while I’m wearing this body down the very last of itself, I’m going to try and find ways to energetically untether. To let the fumes of all my elapsed rage and wonderment exhaust from me. Can I belong, once again, in such a long time, to only me?
Someone who changed my life for the better once told me, “you’ve got to cut the dead parts off so that new life can grow”. I think I’ll chop off all these heavy (FIGURATIVELY) tresses, carry them home in a ziplock, and dump them into a bonfire. Gives a whole new meaning to the “flame-haired” banner forever pinned to my name. When we’ve waved goodbye and the last crowd is heading home, I’ll be running with scissors, nervous and giddy and free at last. I’m ready for new life to grow and I almost don’t even care what it could look like.