Life and Death of The Amateur

You're naive. Cherish it.

In recent interviews, drummer Josh Eppard has emphasized that he recorded the first couple of Coheed and Cambria records without a click track. He claims this endearingly. “We were kids! We didn’t know what we were doing. We just wanted to make music.”

Coheed and Cambria performing at the Equal Vision Records showcase. (2001)

The amateur has a superpower that is undervalued. Many a think piece will glorify beginner’s luck and “embracing the suck” (i.e. enjoying your own inadequacies while doing something new), and theoretical mastery has been quantified by the ambiguous 10,000 hours metric, but what about that period of time between? Amateurs are better than beginners, but they lack the refinement and consistency of the professional. Professionals, on the other hand, have lost touch with the youthful energy of the amateur. Professional work is too calculated for its own good, too formulaic, and often too cold.

Keith Haring doing the damn thing.

Amateurs harness their ambition clumsily. They are reaching for too much, and too far. Amateurs are ten steps ahead of themselves, rushing through projects to chase down rabbits that appear halfway in, like apparitions. Amateurs understand that process is invaluable because they have experienced flow-state directly. Viscerally. The amateur is addicted to the act of creation. The beginner fantasizes about losing themselves in their work; the amateur has lived it. The amateur has seen the duende. They are invigorated by the making, not by what is made.

PTA made Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), and Magnolia (1999) in the maniacal timespan of four years.

In looking at the career of any successful artist, a pattern emerges repeatedly: for a brief period of time, they will create in disproportionate quantity. They will make so much shit, and so fast. This is evidence of the obsessive amateur en route to becoming the esteemed expert. The tremendous reality that all aspiring amateurs must face is that of self-awareness. Once the amateur knows how to work efficiently, once they see the destination without having to make the trip, once they are good enough to anticipate all the bumps in the road, they will slow down, come to a crawl. They will begin to hate their work. Some will even start to dread the process they once thought sacred; they will seek to strangle the goblin of inspiration. Riding the wagon through the same dirt trail creates divots, tracks, ruts.

The professional will eventually come to envy their amateur selves. What a horrible irony! They will long for the uncertainty and agitation that carved the pillars of their success. They will record their albums methodically, to a click track, in professional studios with engineers and sound-proofed vocal booths and a rigid production schedule. There will be no noise. In time, the jagged edges that made their art beautiful will be rounded out by efficiency, a certain innocence lost.