13 January, 2026

I call it “sequel-ism". Don’t fall for it. It’s when you start focusing on replicating success instead of just continuing to focus on the things you were focusing on when that initial success came about.

Someone makes a great movie. And then they start thinking, how can we do that again? What made that movie so great? Let’s do more of that this time. And then the sequel ends up being a letdown.

The trap is in thinking that you have a better conscious understanding of your own success than you really do.

From Vocal Tracking — Field Notes

I’ll be recording vocals for a song I’m working on. This is the part of the process I most dread—because I know myself. It’s really difficult to put your name on something as your best—and therefore final—take when you could always record just one more. It’s a hellish landscape for the perfectionist.

But every now and then I’ll sing something that I really like, and I get excited. Okay, now I just need to sing the whole song like I did that one line. I hit record. I think I know what I did to get that particular sound out of my voice. Now let me just focus a little more on that this time and we’ll be golden.

Except we’re not golden. This take is worse across the board. It’s choked, over-engineered, and above all uninspired. This is when I know to step away for a bit. It’s when I start to care more about how I did something amazing, than I care about doing the amazing thing itself.

It becomes more about the control, the “understanding” of what I’m doing instead of just doing it. It’s like I don’t trust myself to be able to do it again. I have to intervene, come up with some theory about how it works, and try to reverse-engineer what I fear may be a one-off success.

It’s like cracking an amazing joke with your friends and then immediately breaking away for analysis: okay, why exactly was that funny? If I can get to the bottom of that then I can be funny on command. Those are the insane musings of someone who doesn’t trust themselves to be themselves.

And while you’re in your head trying to take apart and replicate your own sense of humor, you miss out on dozens of opportunities to say something twice as funny, if only you were there to say it.

To You

Would you rather do something amazing and not know quite how you did it? Or spend twice the amount of time doing half the amazing things, but getting to cling to the illusion that you know why?

I’ve spent a lot of my time as an artist on the back half of that deal. And now, I’ll take the first offer almost any day of the week.

It’s alright to let go and let things be a little magical. You don’t always have to see under the hood. There’s a time and a place for that. But you can’t see under the hood while you’re driving.

So sometimes you’ve got to ask yourself: do you care more about watching the engine and making sure that it’s running? Or being in the driver seat while it is?

I like that.

And all the rest,

— David Kennedy