When The Music's Over
Maybe leave the light on
For so many years I saw this idea of where my career would go, the picture seemed clear to me but somewhere along the way, I lost sight of it. Not out of ignorance, but the goal didn’t seem like the goal anymore.
All of this was spurned when recently someone questioned why I referred to myself as an ex-composer. It’s an odd feeling saying goodbye to my life as a musician having pursued it for so many years. It started, as many things do with a choice about education. When picking my GCSEs, it came down to Drama or Music and a big deciding factor was that I had no interest in analysing Shakespeare scripts (it felt like English Literature again) and was big into Metal at the time. So one seemed infinitely cooler than the other. At the time it wasn’t much of a choice. Then came my brief stint at 6th Form before dropping out. I had some time to think and realised that the traditional path of three A levels wasn’t for me so I enrolled in a BTEC in Music. Something that didn’t come without protest from others. I specifically remember being told I was wasting my intelligence by abandoning the traditional pursuits of the intellectual and instead choosing the arts!
College was exactly what I needed it to be. It was warm and nurturing and exciting. I loved it. One module was called Sound for Moving Image and in that we took a piece of film and replaced all of the audio. I enjoyed elements of sound design & dialogue recording but it was writing the music that I really fell in love with.
In the interest of widening my possibilities, and wanting to spend more time in that blissful place where music meets video, I went to Uni and studied Sound & Video Technology. During that time it became clear I was much more comfortable with the Audio side of things and not particularly great with cameras (ironic as I now work as a Video Technician).
After graduating and working for a year, I felt this pull to go back into education and study something I really wanted to. I enrolled in an MA in Composing for Film & TV at the University of Bristol. It ended up being one of the most transformative years of my life. We were expected to create work of a very high quality and I got to work alongside many skilled composers, both student and professional. This was it, a city I loved and doing engaging, meaningful, at times challenging but joyous work. If only I could’ve just kept doing this forever. Despite being skint and nearly having to drop out due to lack of funds at one point. It felt like the romanticised version of a creative’s journey. And maybe I view Bristol with rose-tinted glasses, but it still remains one of my favourite places.
From there it felt like a natural progression would continue, right? I’d graduate with a strong portfolio and while I may have to work other jobs to make ends meet, it would all be with the intention of nurturing my creative career and eventually becoming a full-time composer. Despite the constant reminder it was a tough gig and a hard career path, the optimism was there. Even when I ended up living back at my Mum’s for 6 months, unable to get any sort of job. A low moment of that experience was being turned down for a 10 hour a week job at a Next warehouse on the basis of failing their personality quiz which had ‘no right or wrong answers’. Somehow, I chose the wrong answers.
As I entered the world of work, I kept plugging away, releasing music at least once a year until 2022 and scoring a number of short films along the way. The two seemed to work hand-in-hand for me, the scoring and the writing music. So when one stopped, so did the other. Now I sit having scored a film since 2023, and not released music since 2024. Somewhere in the two years that followed, I couldn’t work out what I wanted my music to sound like. And every time I tried to write something, I felt immense frustration that I wasn’t as good as I used to be. That and the shame of my diminishing abilities lead to me finding no joy in it at all.
Somewhere along the line, the desire to write crept in. I replaced one creative outlet with another. I’ve written all sorts, spanning prose, film, TV, you name it. I’ve had pieces of work produced and been shortlisted for a playwriting prize. The progression I had hoped for as a composer, entering endless competitions and schemes was something I was finding in another art form. Maybe I was meant to be a writer after all?
If one were to reflect, I never was very good at practising playing an instrument. But I always had a way with words. A friend of mine once told me of a quote relating to composers writing music because they don’t have the right words to say what they wanted to say. It was likely Hans Christian Andersen’s quote of "Where words fail, music speaks". But I do have the words.
It would be easy to lament the time wasted in pursuit of the wrong thing. But who’s to say it was wrong? It felt right at the time so I did it. Maybe I would be further ahead in my writing career if I had started writing sooner, but it doesn’t do well to dwell on what could’ve been. And it is perfectly reasonable to assume I wasn’t ready to write either. I needed to mature and understood the stories I wanted to tell, and how to go about telling them.
Then there’s the matter of all the transferable skills (by becoming a better composer, I also became a better video editor) and experiences I had along the way. I doubt I would’ve got my job working for Red Production Company if I hadn’t had my year in Bristol. And without that job in TV, I doubt I would’ve started writing. Following working on It’s A Sin, I was emailing Russell T Davies to say thank you for making such an amazing show and allowing me to work on it. But also for showing me that bold storytelling would find an audience and that had inspired me to write.
Will I ever write music again? I’ll never say never. But for now, I am content with being a writer.
Should we all endeavour to take the most direct route? Or is it important to get lost along the way? Ultimately, you never know where the road will take you, but it’s important to keep taking steps in some direction, any direction!