The Unbearable Lightness (and Weight) of Creation (or why you should make music)

Dan: This blog post is a departure from our usual music technology and product fare. After 23 years in music technology, and in the face interesting but disruptive AI tech, I’ve been thinking deeply about the true nature of music technology and music tools. Both what our products do, and what aspects of music and music technology are most important to humanity as a whole. I don’t claim to have found the answers, but I think talking about these topics is at least as important as talking about DSP. In case philosophy isn't you're cup of tea we'll have plenty of DSP in the future.

1. We're all doomed.

That seems to be the mood anyway. Read the news or scroll through social media, and it’s hard to escape the sense of dread: the climate crisis, political instability, economic uncertainty, the rapid advancement of technology threatening to leave us all behind. And honestly, there’s a grain of truth to that feeling. In the long run, we are all doomed. Civilizations rise and fall, the progress we make can be undone in an instant, and one day—billions of years from now—the sun will expand, and our Earth will become nothing more than cosmic dust.

It sounds bleak, right? But, there’s no sense in pretending otherwise. That heavy truth hangs over all of us, and for musicians and artists it can feel like a suffocating weight. Why create anything if, in the grand scheme, we’re all on a sinking ship? What’s the point of pouring your heart and soul into music, art, or expression when the world feels like it’s unraveling at the seams?

But here’s the thing: we don’t live in the long run. We don’t live in some hypothetical, distant, and predetermined future. We live here, in this very moment. The truth is that the future we sometimes dread remains unwritten.

The future that will actually exist is written in real time by all of us. The choices we make today matter. The art we create, the music we compose, the raw emotions we capture in sound and words—all of it contributes to the world unfolding around us. The future doesn’t just happen to us; it emerges from the millions of acts of creation that define the present.

2. We’re here to create.

It’s one of the most essential truths about being human. Throughout history, we’ve always made things: art, music, stories, communities, technologies, cultures. Even our spiritual beliefs reflect this urge. Most religions include the idea of a creator—someone or something that brings existence into being. We revere the act of creation because we recognize its sacredness. Creation is an act of defiance against the void, a flicker of light in the darkness, a reminder of our shared humanity.

And yet, the act of creation carries its own paradox. We don’t create for accolades or legacy, even though those things might follow. We don’t create with the sole purpose of saving the world or single-handedly rewriting the future. We create because we must. Because there is something in us—something urgent, restless, and profoundly human—that demands expression. The songs you write, the beats you produce, the melodies you bring into existence: they are manifestations of that irresistible need to make something out of nothing.

It’s easy to get lost in the weight of expectations. The music industry constantly dangles metrics of success in front of us: the number of streams, the potential for virality, the idea of breaking through and making a permanent mark. But creation doesn’t have to bear that weight. It isn’t always about building a better world or leaving behind something monumental. It’s about the process, the moment, the now. And yet, paradoxically, these small, seemingly ordinary acts of creation can have an extraordinary impact over time.

3. The future comes regardless.

And yes, it will be shaped, at least in part, by the work we do today. But let that be a byproduct, not the primary reason you create. Because if you wait for the world to be safe, secure, and predictable before you make your art, you’ll never create anything at all. We can’t control the future. We can’t even predict it with any real certainty. But we can control how we show up in the present. We can choose to create, to express, to add beauty, chaos, and meaning to this bewildering existence.

So let your creations out, you must let them out. Release them from yourself, and if it feels right, release them into the world. March boldly forward, not because you know what’s ahead, but because the act of creation itself is an essential part of what makes life worth living.

And in doing so, you are helping to create the future for all of us.

Keep it together,

Dan

Check out Newfangled Audio on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.