#thismonthscity

9 months ago I set out on an adventure, and I'm not stopping now.

Sorry. Scratch that. I am stopping now.

I decided at the beginning of this year that I was going to make friends with the world one city at a time. I'd become a kind of traveling blogger battling through repetition and culture shock, while hurling myself toward a sort of musical glory, armed only with a guitar, a little charm, and maybe a deftness for songwriting.

I actually had a wild time and recorded 14 songs in 7 cities. I was working a month at a time, so I guess I must have lost a couple of months in logistics somewhere along the line... I'm always misplacing time.

Here are a couple of songs I wrote and recorded in Copenhagen recently (featuring a band called Death Machine), just mixed. They're called - A Cold Stare,  and Autofiction.

What happened this year?

The only real rule with the project was that I had to find other musicians by word of mouth and then we'd make the music we could, in the time we had. A new band and two new songs, for every city. I met a ridiculous number of people, and wrote, danced, and sang, my way around the world.

I managed to write and record a lot of music that I really care about. Definitely. There was a whole lot more to it than that though. It was a real gift to see how people care about their work and to see how people who choose music as a life, embrace it, often beyond rhyme and reason, even as other aspects of their lives might get in the way. It does infiltrate our lives and it speaks to our hearts, and sometimes when it really works, it can help to explain or soothe some of the chaos that comes with living.

Will I ever be in a band again?

Maybe. I do love bands. Not enough to be a band member in the way I was with Faker though. My old band (Faker), had 25 (at least) different band members over a seventeen year period. Over the course of this year, I've worked with 31  different band members. Something about that makes me very very happy.

I've learnt a hell of a lot about bands this year.

It might seem a bit obvious to say that you have to care deeply about your music to share it with people, but there are usually so many layers of protection you need to machete through (in yourself) in making music, that it's definitely worth ruminating on. It is a wonderful form of communication and well worth the fight.

Also, people who care about their music and are willing to be vulnerable for it, light up my life. It takes guts to accept people's ideas into your own. We're built

as receptors for basically everything, especially for what goes on with other people and we're also built as pretty functional communicators or transmitters. We're satellites. I love that part of my job.

Why am I stopping now?

My world has become fragmented in a way that I could never have imagined and I'm okay with that. I've made a bunch of new friends who I hope to remain accountable to, and who are now spread out all over this shimmering and at times messy globe. I guess that means I need to keep on traveling, right? My world has gotten smaller, but my version of a life has indeed become an intricate and expansive Map of Stars.

I fall in love a lot. With places, and with the way people interact with each other. With what people make. In perhaps some of my most audacious conversations with friends - I've said loudly that to be a half-decent songwriter you need to fall in love every time you write a song. To be clear; I don't mean fall in love then write the song about that, but actually, I mean, you need to experience the sensation of falling in love, while you're in the midst of writing a song. When that first spark happens with a song, I become exhilarated. I used to pace about in a fervor singing madly to myself (and a lot of things would remain unfinished or be lost to the fervor), but now I'm more likely to sit with it, in an attempt to keep focus, and to hear what comes next.

When I'm on the road, I find I get myself into bit of trouble here and there. I think this thing that I look for when I'm writing and focused, is the same thing I've been known to pine for when I'm adrift and out of focus in other parts of my life (which could be at least half of the time). With living in new city every month I've found that this uneasy pining gets amplified, significantly.

There are a lot of stories in this experience, that I'd like to decode for myself, and then retell somehow, in a medium that might compliment the songs I've written.

So this is what I have to do now, in my life. I need to sit with it and hear what comes next.

Incidentally, I don't know where I live now. My stuff is in storage in Los Angeles, so I guess there, but my heart is in a few different places. For the moment, I've decided to go to Lisbon for one month, to take stock. I'm gonna leave it all behind for a while. As I've said, I'm thinking about writing more fully about this experience I've had, and I'm going to take some time to figure out how I might best do that.

To be a little more candid, I don't yet know what I'm going to do next. When I do know, I'll let you know. I have more than a few ideas. There will be music coming, and perhaps something more. Kindly, watch this space.

It's been a confounding, but wonderful, ridiculous, confusing, soul-denting, and exhilarating time. Thanks for being there, and I'll keep you posted.

Here is a playlist link for the project as it stands. Check it out. See you soon. https://soundcloud.com/thisisnathanhudson/sets/map-of-stars