A release is a doorway, not an endpoint

This week we’ve been catching up with friends and people in our creative community. Each person we’ve talked to has brought up Metalabel. What people appreciate about Metalabel, they tell us, is that it celebrates the small and the unusual. It gives them permission to think and act differently in their own work. Because of that, it’s a space they want to be part of.

We’ve been happy to hear it. That’s what the heart of this project has always been about. Creating a new path of collective self-legitimization where we, the people around us, and increasing circles of others can lift each other up. Where our collective presence and co-mingling brings increasing meaning, opportunity, and sense that our work matters for ourselves and the world at large.

We focus on releases because they’re the most visible way to engage with these ideas. But the financial exchange is a doorway, not an endpoint. A threshold of commitment that connects us more deeply with what we believe in and who we are at a moment in time. 

On either side of that exchange is magic. The magic of creating and manifesting the piece, whatever it is. This isn’t always easy, but it does provide endless depth. And then there’s the magic of discovering and submitting to something that moves you, maybe the best feeling of all.

My hot take is that the feeling the artist has when they make the work and the feeling the audience has when they take in that work are the same thing. They are a physical property, a manifestation of the Oneness, a current of God in the real world. This is what I meant when I told Spike magazine that: “Information is an echo of truth. Art is a stalactite of God.”

Whatever the trend forecasters label this belief in metaphysics, that’s the level we’re on here. Making and celebrating the work because we want to. Because we have to. Because it’s fun to. Because we ache to. Because even though we don’t always know what’s happening, we have no other choice but to.

We each come with our reasons, all valid. We want to be a place that helps make them real.