December 28th, 2023
A year ago this week, I announced — in celebration of a decade publishing books and comics, and twenty years of making music as The Next Step — that I would be focusing on a different Sleeping Kitty Productions project every month for all of 2023, taking you behind the scenes and talking you through my processes.
And I did it.
And people kept asking me why the hell I was doing it.
When I was a kid, I was an idiot. I can’t count all the ways in which I was a stupid boy, but I know I needed a lot of help to understand art. I knew what I liked, but I couldn’t articulate why.
I had to be spoonfed ideas like metaphor and symbolism and theme by very patient teachers and friends. Once those ideas were unlocked for me, however, my life was changed. My obsession with art, and consuming it and creating it, grew exponentially.
And so that’s what I’ve been doing this past year.
I was creating a key.
I don’t want my art to be one-sided. I want what I do to be a conversation.
Through the internet, we are submerged, drowning under the weight of all the new art, words and images and sounds, released in the digital waters daily. And while we do talk about cultivating artists, what we really need to do is cultivate communities that care about and understand the art we make.
There’s an argument that art should speak for itself and artists should be mysterious. I don’t agree with that. That’s not who I am, and I have always gotten more from art through context, through history and intent and reaction.
I became a better artist and a better person by having these conversations throughout my life, and I wanted to have a yearlong talk with you. I wanted to make you the key to my work so far.
You might not need a key. You may already be curious and insightful and throw yourself into artistic exploration. This wasn’t for you, then; this was for someone like me. Like my work itself, I made a key to inspire curiosity and insight and exploration, to incite empathy, to ignite compassion.
And it worked: I sold more books this year than any other. More importantly: I can’t remember a year when so many people told me they actually read one of my books. And we talked about them. Stories I released years ago got new life, and deservedly so; I can’t express how grateful I am for a story like Theia finally getting the love I hoped for it over three years ago, even getting itself its own little book club at a dope coffee shop.
Who knew that talking about what I do at the most personal, honest level would be the best kind of promotion I have ever done?
(Well, I did, but you know what I mean.)
This year was about celebrating what I am, at the deepest, darkest core of me: a storyteller. And it was about celebrating those of you who have supported me in telling those stories, who have been reading and watching and listening to the words and images and music I’ve been making all this time. You might say I did the Eras Tour before Taylor did (okay, you might not say it, but I definitely am).
Next year, I’m going to be telling many more stories, in even more ways. I’m hard at work doing that right now. So I might be a little quiet around here for a while (I’m sure you’re devastated), but I’ll try to make it worth it.
I know every year is different for every body. But I hope you’ve been able to be present in your own life; to be able to find joy among the sadness, to find light wrapped up in the dark, to find laughter through the tears. I hope you were able to celebrate what you are, what you’ve accomplished, and what you’ve survived.
I’ll see you all next year.
The Den 