A few months ago, I had the privilege to chat with French electronic musician Joris Delacroix about mental health.

We were talking about our creative processes, the blank page syndrome, and how awful we can feel, when we don’t manage to “make progress”.

I found his advice so relatable, so inspiring, and Joris showed so much vulnerability that I decided to write this blog post. It is so rare to see representation of men struggling with their mental health in the creative space. I think it’s important to share this!

Thank you, Joris.

Visible artists can feel the same as you

During our conversation, the first thing that struck me was how someone as successful and accomplished as Joris could feel as stressed, anxious, and even as bad as I do, sometimes.

Here’s what he shared with us:

• feeling discouraged, when not making progress on creative projects
• showing up to the studio and not feeling motivated, or productive at all
• feeling guilty, blaming himself

I asked him if he had any advice for people like me, who end up having strong emotions about not creating much, so much so that I can end up feeling paralysed, at times.

His answer was so kind, so full of empathy, and self-reflection!
Joris shared that he had been going to therapy, and worked on his relationship to his job, his music, his creative process.

It is so refreshing to hear a successful (male) artist like him open up and be vulnerable about his mental health like this, especially in relation to creating stuff.

I compiled a list of advice based on what he shared¹, from his personal experience:

• Be realistic, be kind
  • If it’s not today, it’s not today
  • Any kind of output is output
  • Rest the mind
• Remember the big picture, remember the journey
  • Think years, not days
  • Remember the love
  • Remember the facts, celebrate your achievements
  • Appreciate what you have
• Have routines, but forgive yourself if you break them

Be realistic, be kind

If it’s not today, it’s not today

“It often happens that on Monday I show up to the studio, and I’m not very productive.
But where before I blamed myself, where I was stuck on the blank page, thinking ‘F**k, you haven’t done anything today’, now I really have the reflex of thinking ‘Okay well it’s not happening today, it’s not happening today. It isn’t a big deal, and it will happen tomorrow’.”
- Joris Delacroix

We all have days where we’re not motivated, where ideas just don’t flow, where we cannot focus. Sometimes, there is little you can do about it.
What we can do, though, is choose how we react. We can feel guilty and annoyed, or we can accept the situation for what it is, and try again tomorrow.

Any kind of output is output

“And there are other times, you know I wake up and I tell myself ‘yeah I know I’m going to go [to the studio] but not right away’. I’m going to clean my house, I’m going to do my invoices, my taxes, and once it’s done, I tell myself ‘ok now I’m going’. For example today I said I was going [to the studio], but then I had other things to manage, and then I was a little tired from the weekend… and in the end I got to the studio it was 5:30 p.m. But it doesn’t matter, I did other things.”
- Joris Delacroix

Remember this. Work:

• recording guitar tracks for a song
• finishing mixing a track
• editing and releasing a video
• writing this blog post on my computer and clicking “publish”

Also work:

• sorting video files from a shooting day
• doing backups
• admin and paperwork
• writing a draft on a notebook with a fountain pen that I will never use
• cleaning my desk
• brainstorming ideas for my next 3 posts
• reading a book about productivity or that relates to the stuff I am doing
• doing research

Rest the mind

Sometimes, you have to allow yourself some downtime. You have to recharge your batteries.
You know what? When you don’t actively think about this thing you’re working on, when you’re spending time with friends, when you’re watching a movie, when you’re asleep… your brain keeps computing in the background. Let it do its thing, and get some rest.

“In fact I realized that there was no point in pushing through, because when you push through, you don’t rest your mind. And so you push through one day but inspiration doesn’t come, or it comes a little bit and since you pushed, the next day you have to push even harder.
Whereas sometimes if you call it, and you just say ’no, you know what, today f**k it, I’m not going to do anything, I’m just going to have a good time’ and then, okay you may have lost a day, but the next day you are twice as productive.
I had a lot of phases like that, so that’s what allows me to accept the fact that yeah, sometimes there is no inspiration but it doesn’t matter, if there is no inspiration there are other things to do.”
- Joris Delacroix

Another thing that can help rest your mind is good times with people, or making connections with others. It can be having a drink with a friend, or it can be having a casual 30 second conversation with the barrista at the coffee shop. Random acts of kindness to strangers also feel very good!
We’re not robots, we are social beings :)

“What allowed me to put things into perspective was realizing, once again with experience, that in fact there were times, like a studio was booked, an entire team that showed up and everything, and you get there and… inspiration isn’t there, and in fact no one wants to produce. It happened to me, and when that happens, well what do we do? Well then we do something else, we chat or we have a little aperitif, we make ourselves something to eat, or we play a game of PES² or whatever…
And in fact the thing is that in those moments, you create a connection that you don’t create when you are in work mode, well not necessarily anyway. And from there, you had a bit of fun with a group of friends where you had a good time and it freed your mind a bit, and afterwards you’re more productive.”
- Joris Delacroix

Remember the big picture, remember the journey

Think years, not days

I regularly get stuck because when I look at how little I accomplish when I work on a project. Joris’ technique is to focus on wider timescales. Think years, not days.

“I think it’s trying to see things as a whole. You know, rather than telling yourself ‘ah, today I wasn’t productive!’, ask yourself ‘well, this year, what did I do?’.
I’ve had years where I didn’t do anything, you know. But when I was thinking ‘this year I didn’t do anything’ then I asked myself ‘but what did I do the previous years?’. And tell myself ‘well, I managed to do this or that - well f**k I put together a live show’.”
- Joris Delacroix

When I’m on a walk, I sometimes stop to look at a big tree, or a floor covered in moss (I’m in my moss phase). It must have taken decades to get to that point. It moves every single day, just very slowly!

Remember the love

When you feel down, it’s easy to spiral into thinking that no one cares about your art, that it doesn’t matter.

Take some time to remember what you have done in the past. Remember how it was celebrated, how people showed you their love for your stuff. When you focus on raw numbers and statistics, it’s hard to remember that it’s human beings at the other end!

“At one point I told myself ‘I do DJ sets that people like, I do live shows that people like… I released tracks and people come to see me and tell me they got married to this track and everything’”.
- Joris Delacroix

It’s not easy for everyone. Not everyone has an audience, big or small. Yet there will still be people who resonate with your stuff, even if just a few.

“I’m lucky to have this kind of feedback too. But you know, to think back to all this stuff… I know it’s on the scale of my career, I know that it’s not everyone’s scale, I know that there are also a lot of producers who have a more modest situation, and who are confronted with that too.”
- Joris Delacroix

This reminds me of this piece of advice from Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon, and musician in Pomplamoose and Scary Pockets. He says you should have a “love” file, where you keep records of nice things people said about your art.

I have one. A while back, I was feeling down, and I took his advice. I took screenshots of nice YouTube comments on some of my videos. The ones that said it inspired them to make music, especially.
And you know what? It pumps me up. It feels good to look at it, every once in a while. It helps me remember why I do this: I get a lot of energy when I can inspire someone to create stuff. It fills my bucket.

Remember the facts, celebrate your achievements

“But the thing that I’m really proud of is… You know, nobody taught me, I taught myself just with passion, and I put a lot of energy into it, and I realise that I’m capable of doing things that when I was a kid I didn’t think I would be capable of, and just fueled by passion, today I’m capable of doing these things. And there are days when [I’m feeling stuck, I’m not producing anything], but overall I tell myself ‘well f**k I managed to get where I am today’. And that puts me at peace with myself.”
- Joris Delacroix

Memory is a funny system. It’s quite unreliable. We think we remember something vividly, and it turns out it didn’t happen that way at all. Keep a journal and you will find out: just re-read about an event from a year before.

When you feel stuck, when you feel like you’re not moving forward, be factual. Look at what you’ve been doing, really.
What this might look like:

• I wrote, produced, mixed and released an EP
• I released a video a week for about 21 weeks (on top of my full time job)³
• I covered the NAMM show in Los Angeles, one of the biggest events in the music and audio industry⁴
• I learned how to make sounds I really enjoy with a synthesizer
• Over the years, I accumulated all the gear I need to produce an music album, or a video documentary
• I made 2 videos that got more than 100 000 views⁵

Appreciate what you have

It’s easy to worry about what could’ve, what should’ve, the stuff we don’t have that we wish we had. And what about that witty comeback that you thought of two days after that conversation?

One way to ground yourself in the present is to look at what you have, and engage with it. Forget what you don’t have. Make it a game, an exercise.

“You know my mother always tells me something, it’s a stupid sentence, she always tells me ‘you have to learn how to appreciate what you have’.
And you know sometimes you’re in your studio with your gear and everything, you’re going to say ‘yeah f**k, I suck, I have loads of gear and I can’t make music’.
Yeah but well, you know, at some point you made sure that in your life [you were able to acquire] that gear.

Again, I try to talk about these things with sincerity, at the same time I know that I have a relatively privileged position because I have an artistic career and everything, so I get access to things that I know everyone doesn’t get access to… But I don’t know, you have to appreciate what you have, it’s a stupid sentence but when you manage to really apply it… It allows us to forgive ourselves, and to say, ‘well, sometimes I can’t do it but it doesn’t matter, I can’t do it today but I’ll do it tomorrow’, you know. It’s okay.”
- Joris Delacroix

Take a beat. You managed to get where you are today!

Have routines, but forgive yourself if you break them

Contrary to popular opinion, the “Lone Genius Myth” is what it is, just a myth. You can wait to be struck by lightning or inspiration exactly during your writing session on Saturday morning between 10am and 11am. Or you can set up routines, and put yourself in a position where you’re holding the pen more often.

“I need to apply discipline to be consistent, to put a healthy lifestyle around it and everything, to be able to be productive on a regular basis…
But it’s also important that I keep some freedom, you know, that I don’t have feel much pressure or tell myself ‘ah f**k I said I’d be [at the studio] at 9am and now it’s 9:30am, I suck!’ you know. No, I need to be able to tell myself [when thinking about going to the studio]: ‘well, it’s now’ or ’not now’ you see. It works much better.”
- Joris Delacroix

Routines are super helpful, but it’s also really easy to feel guilty when we are not consistent with them. Be kind to yourself, they are a tool, a stick to lean on, not to beat yourself up with!

Outro

I loved this conversation. Finally, I had found someone like me! A creative, who had been struggling emotionally with his process, and who wasn’t afraid of talking about it, in public. Someone I can learn from!

I found Joris very open, when answering questions. He wasn’t trying to shine, or to save face. He was genuinely trying to help. This wasn’t in private confidence, this was live, on Youtube, with at least hundreds of people watching. I find that quite special.

What a humble and kind guy. I felt seen, supported, and my hope is that people watching the livestream felt the same. I related to him, a successful musician. I loved how open and vulnerable he was with me, with the audience. That’s priceless. People will talk about the gear they use, about what frustrates them. But this? Emotions, impostor syndrome… that’s rare.

Thank you Joris!