Jlin on self-affirmation and pushing through creative roadblocks

I’ve never had one “moment”; rather, I have a repeated moment. And that moment is self-affirmation – the times when I know deep inside that something is just right, and I should trust how I feel. This is super important for when I’m creating a piece – this feeling. That affirmation now comes from trusting myself, but years ago, I didn’t know what the sensation was – it was almost in my way.

The first track I ever wrote was awful. I sampled Sade and it was just terrible. I was frustrated because I couldn’t do what I wanted to do – what I was hearing internally. I simply wasn’t able to reproduce it sonically. I knew what I wanted to say, I just didn’t know how to pull it out of me. In moments like those, different things happen. It’s possible to get beat in the middle gear and become completely blocked – that has happened to me many times since. I hit a dead stop and have no idea where I’m going any more. It’s like my inner compass starts to spin out of control. And when that happens, I just have to wait, and regain trust in myself.

To get out of this, it’s important to let myself go and give myself affirmation to unlock the flow. I have to know myself as not only an artist but a human being. It’s a constant evolution, a continuous cycle of “moments” every day. You change, your moods change. But in that mood switch, in that information switch, something else can open up – a new perspective (no pun intended). The biggest lesson throughout these micro processes is putting my ego back. Realising that the purpose of climbing the mountain is for you to fall back off so that you can find another peak to scale – it’s not for you to stay at the top. Like life, nobody is going to clap for you every day. Not everybody is supposed to like your work – that’s not the purpose of creating, or self-affirmation. If everybody liked you all the time, how boring would that be?