We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicole Colbath a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nicole , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us a story about a time you failed?

While consuming my weekly media diet I watched the Hot Ones interview with Bob Odenkirk, at some point in the interview he says something about how great art is made by aiming at failure. That those big risks, the important ones, are the only ones that reap big rewards. If failure is not on the menu then neither truly is anything exceptional, new or daring. Henry Ford once said that if he asked his customers what they wanted they would say a faster horse. We have to take risks or we will land at mundane every time or at best, a faster horse. Someone has to turn and take direct aim into the abyss. Failure is perhaps the true American enterprise, success is the anomaly. We have to aim to fail in order to succeed. And this folks brings us to baseball.

I love Chicago, I love living in Chicago. And I love the White Sox. They are underperforming even in an underperforming Division. They are in so many words, failing. And yet…and yet. Baseball is a sport predicated on failure. Even the absolute best batters fail to get hits way more often than they get even to first base. Getting hits 30% of the time is considered genius, because hitting a Major League baseball pitch is considered akin to defying the laws of physics. These balls are hurled at hitters at the very limits of how fast an object can move in space, so fast in fact that the human eye cannot actually track it. MLB hitters are ostensibly guessing at where pitches will be. And yet…and yet. Every swing is an act of faith and a practice in hope. Every once in awhile, comes great and exhilarating waves of success. Everything I love about Chicago, about America and everything I dislike, find frustrating and disheartening too. It contains our multitudes. Everything I need to know about making art is here, it’s heartbreak, the losses, the defying of insurmountable odds, all the class conflicts and structural inequities, the ability to overcome all of that in one singular transcendent moment when *crack* the bat makes contact with the ball. But most of all, it has a beautiful acceptance and humility in the face of almost constant failure. It’s all there to be witnessed on the upper deck at Comiskey on 35th and Shields, on a piece of land that baseball has been played on for 113 years, for the very not current price of less than $10. Step up to the plate and leave it all in the batter’s box, maybe even have a little fun.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Nicole Colbath

Artist/Writer/Musician
Chicago, Ill

I am a musician in the band Soft Kill from Chicago Illinois. We’ve always built expansive worlds around our music, found ways to make and create around the themes of our songs and records that tell a larger story. Often a tragic one, lives lost to drugs, the pain of loss, the impermanence of feelings. The hope is that the merchandising and art and imagery feels like a place you can continue to live the experience of the music itself. I’ve tried to build something that both exists inside the music industry but is also wholly separate from it. I write often and make art, I also am a bit of a fashion obsessive and post regularly my fashion content.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I was a heroin addict and alcoholic for the first many years of my life. When I got sober my focus became trying to sift through the meaning of all that, mourning the loss of loved ones and trying to build something out of nothing. Everything I do I try to do in honor of the people that didn’t make it out of our circumstances. I believe that art and creative expression is the truest form of celebrating our collective pain around loss and feelings of grief.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I really believed that only certain people got to make art and music. I wasn’t raised to believe those things were possible. Art school or business school were just not possibilities for me. So I had to teach myself that the things I learned just from surviving were unto themselves a skill set, that maybe I had a voice in this world and something to say/something to offer. When you have nothing it’s easy to be trapped in the mentality that you don’t have value but those are often the most important stories to tell.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Softkillsoftkill.bigcartel.com
• Instagram: https://Instagram.com/reko.case

Image Credits

Bryanxphoto