Why in My Post-Exit Burnout I’m Apprenticing Myself to Bon Iver

The story of the 5 years it took Bon Iver to write the first song of their recent album shook me up today. And it’s laying a blueprint for how I’m thinking my way back to creating. Burnout, loneliness, and a thousand false starts — turns out song writing is a lot like startup life.

Jim Marsden, one of the best leadership coaches and guides I’ve ever met, was kind enough to share this link with me this week. Jim has been a close ally in my transition beyond Twenty, and he is the kind of guy who only sends you stuff he knows will pierce your fucking soul. So when Jim sends you a link, you click on it.

What Jim sent me was the New York Times video series ‘Diary of Song’ episode covering the 5-year effort by Bon Iver to write the song iMi.

This short video spoke to me so strongly I had to write about it.

We sold Twenty20 in April. Part of the exit agreement for me was a commitment to staying on for 6–9 months and assisting with the transition. I told myself when we sold that I’d see that time through and then take a full year off before even beginning to tinker with what’s next. However, I think I’m a tinkerer at heart with a massive bias for action. So already, in my downtime, I find myself exploring what might be next for me.

But I’m getting hit in the face with stuff that wasn’t there 7 years ago when we were starting Twenty20. Things like burnout, exhaustion, fear. I’ll spend a few hours exploring an idea only to find myself overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the creative task at hand. I now know what I didn’t 7 years ago. How hard it actually is to create something from nothing. That there are a thousand steps taken in difficulty over years before you have any idea whether you are even arriving somewhere you want to go. That more great ideas, great products, and great teams fail than succeed. And that time is very, very short (life looks much shorter at 39 than 32 somehow.) But I also know something about myself I didn’t know then. I fucking love creating products and companies. I can feel I’m up for something big. And that this is the season of my life for it. If I can only find my way back onto the creative path. Through the burnout, the fear, and the uncertainty. This morning, watching this story of Bon Iver’s creative journey, I found a powerful guide.

How small it started.

What a nice reminder. Even global superstars need to start from a blank sheet when writing their next album. I love the idea of Mike and Justin messing around with the radio dial and a piece of cardboard. I love that the beginning of the first song of the album was so humble. So simple. And that that playfulness was the beginning of a five-year journey to create something beautiful and inspiring from nothing.

[Justin] is gonna be tinkering until the day he dies trying to figure out what else is a possibility.”

-Brad Cook (Producer)

So much time before knowing whether the song will even make the record.

I love that years were spent on this song before any words were written. Before it even was a song. Before Justin knew if he’d be willing or able to sing over the odd combination of sounds.

I love the way Andrew Sario describes showing up at the ranch to help produce this hatchet job of a song. As he begins to dig into work on behalf of these guys, his idols, his initial reaction was ‘I don’t get it. I want to figure out what the fuck is going on.’

The idea that brilliant writers and musicians can spend years on a single song only to have someone show up and say ‘I don’t get it’ is liberating to me. As I stare at a blank page and try to find the gumption to once again create a company and a product from nothing I very much need permission to spend time, waste time, to wander, to at times arrive at points where people I admire might show up and say ‘I don’t get it.’ And then, if I’m lucky, maybe they’ll even dive in with love and courage the way Andrew did and help me take my rough cuts to melodic execution.

The real experiences of fear. The scariness of isolation.

Writing the first version of an album, you get scared. You get in your head.

-Justin Vernon (Bon Iver)

Fuck yes. Thank you Justin. Thank you for the beautiful music that’s flooded my home many mornings over the last decade. Thank you even more for saying out loud what we’re all feeling. That when we sit down to create we are fucking scared. That we get trapped in our heads. That no matter what one has achieved, how many fans, how much money, how much fame (in my case next to none and in your case a shit-ton), this experience with fear is innately human. And it’s part of the creative process for all of us.

The difficulty of reaching out.

Justin had a hard time asking for help over the years…I think there was some real burnout going on.

YES. Me too man. Me too. Why is it so hard, even when you’re surrounded by people who care and will offer support any time, to ask for help. On the hardest nights, I find myself sitting in my car, staring at my phone, wanting to call. Wanting connection. Wanting someone who will understand. Wanting to not be alone in my fear and anxiety. But it’s so damn hard to pick up the phone that more often than not I don’t. I don’t know what that’s about, but when I heard that admission I related. Deeply.

Brad got me to relax and just saw what I’m feeling. -Justin

How integral others are to the creative process. I look back seven years to the beginning of Twenty20 and realize I wouldn’t have made it six-weeks without the people around me. We wouldn’t have made it without each other. That gives me hope today that I can make those calls. I can bring others into this crazy creative process. I can ask for help. I can make this creative effort the work of a village instead of a lonely journey in my own head. I must do so.

I was battling the isolation of where I found myself. -Justin

This is the daily fight I find myself in right now. Today. This week. This season.

I just threw the drums on there and that shit changed to a whole nother genre -Wheezy

Ha! I love the story of the way Justin created creative chaos by getting disparate people together. I love that he co-opted people who had never even heard of him and allowed them to contribute to his process in such a powerful way that it changed the genre entirely. There’s an openness and a courage to that that I deeply wish to mimic in my own journey.

Bon Iver is generally a little town of people trying to be good. -Justin

If that’s now exactly what the world needs right now, I don’t know what is.

So how about it Justin? I’m recently free and looking for a good internship. Let me know if I can get your coffee!

Thanks so much for sharing with courage and openness this incredible story. It changed my day today and will undoubtably leave fingerprints on my creative journey ahead.

Matt

P.S. What a song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7xcaurF9h0C7cRmybuVUES

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God I will never remember all the things we tried on this song. -Justin

Note: I did my best to capture the quotes include word for word from the video; please forgive any imperfections.