We recently connected with Borin Doulos and have shared our conversation below.
Borin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
The biggest risk that I have taken is also the biggest risk I’m still learning to take: being truly authentic as a creative.
I’ve found that it is very easy to filter my creative process through the presumed expectations of those who will hear my music — both the people I know personally, and the people that I do not know. It’s safer to do what is expected, or at least what is perceived to be expected. As a creative I naturally want my work to be accepted and cherished as an extension of who I am, so it is natural (though ironic) to compromise what seems daring or ambitious in order to level out the likelihood of meeting people’s expectations. Creatives will cater to their perceived listeners’ desires, and mostly do it subconsciously. On the flip-side I can often find myself being overly ambitious and trying to create something even more out-of-the-box in order to avoid catering, but this can just as easily be in-authentic as well.
One piece I wrote that felt the most true to my creative nature is a song called Where is “No Further”? (under my artist name Assay). This song expresses some very vulnerable tension in my faith both lyrically and musically. In fact, it took me 2 1/2 years to complete it.
The song opens with clashing melodies in a rhythmically tense orchestration with alternating time signatures (17,18,17, 22/16 and repeat). I chose to have two cellos, each hard-panned to the left and right. They each only play two notes, but each note played is a half step apart from the other’s simultaneous note, creating lots of tension. As the main “band” instruments come in (drums, bass, guitar, keys, etc), I maintain these oscillating time signatures with new melodies that create a sense of purpose but with no clear landing.
Lyrically, one line says, “if I reach the end of me, would I find You there?”. Throughout the song I am expressing a lengthy season in which I felt that I was being pushed the very limits of my faith with my weakness and frailty being exposed. I was wrestling with believing that God really would be on the other side of my death to self. These are questions that are not only difficult to share in word-form (with the world, but also with myself!), they were also very demanding when deciding how to express these things in the music.
This song is at the top of my list of favorite things I’ve written, and it has a lot to do with the risk I took in bringing my full creative nature to the table and giving allowance to whatever was wanting to be expressed. While releasing that song seemed like a great victory to me, and indeed it was, I find that I’m still discovering the depths of my creative potential and all this risks associated with it. That creative expression is increasingly terrifying… but I know that leaving the imagination unhindered in the writing process is incredibly rewarding after the pain of stepping into the unknown to bring it to light.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I have known that I was created to make music since I was 12 years old. Before then I didn’t feel like I had a landing spot in the world, but when I picked up my sister’s new beginner guitar it was like color was added to my canvas for the first time. Since then I’ve attempted to (and always successfully, given a little time) learn any instrument that I can get my hands on.
Playing music doesn’t do for me what writing does. That’s been my ambition from the beginning — to somehow get the sounds that I hear inside of me to vibrate out into the world.
I write music of various genres and for different purposes. I love to score for film, to write instrumental music for relaxation, technically adventurous and experimental indie-rock, contemporary worship music for corporate settings, and the list goes on. Because of this variance, I typically have to release music under different titles (i.e., “Assay” for the indie-rock experimental music, “A Journey in Rest” for relaxation piano music), but ultimately it all ends up under one umbrella — Borin Doulos Music (me, of course).
Also, I play instruments and sing for professionally for organizations including IHOP-KC.
What sets me apart from many artists is that I write and record my own music. This gives me the ability to express what I’m envisioning without having to try to communicate it to other instrumentalists/singers who would express it for me. I also have a rich imagination and am often striving to bring novel themes and ideas to musical life.
Mostly, music is a life-sized adventure for me. I am grateful to be able to make so many different kinds of music and am learning to push the boundaries and write concepts not heard before. Two projects I am working on right now that are not released are a contemporary worship album singing with my wife, and a very ambitious project of story-telling music. In the latter, I have chosen to use no genre or framework as a limit, but to truly express each line and each “chapter” with as much raw musical life as possible.
My music can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, and generally anywhere music can be found. I am also on Facebook and Instagram (@borindoulosmusic).
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My ultimate goal is to be found faithful in the eyes of Christ when this age is over. He created me (and not me alone) as a musical being, and I know that carries with it the responsibility of freely creating and sharing with authenticity. I hope that my work inspires others to embark on an introspective journey where they experience God within themselves, and I hope that I will do it without hinderance in creative expression.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
A lesson that I’ve had to unlearn is the lesson of how music is supposed to be made.
Who has the definitive idea of how music should be made? Music itself is not a human construct, but it is the very essence of what we are as humans. Literally, all creation is made up of atoms that vibrate at frequencies determining what anything is at any given time, and no atom in all creation is “frequency-less”.
Because of this, I have frequently found myself writing in the realm of what is expected, taught, or replicated, and I find myself lacking in novelty and rawness when I think through those filters. I’ve been on a constant journey of picking up the tools that others have shared in order to create music, while also not following any blueprint but the one that was put inside of me. I think this is where the truly great artists got it right — their ambition was not to replicate a feeling or a tune from outside of them, but to share the unique song from within.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @borindoulosmusic.com , @assaymusic.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/borin.doulos.3/
- Youtube: Assay: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Exfpdi7VaHHW11jUv5ueg , A Journey in Rest: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXyss9K7Z2orkE3CMdr9D3Q/featured
- Other: Email: [email protected] Latest music from me on your preferred platform: A Journey in Rest: https://ffm.to/ajirqm Assay: https://ffm.to/intomystery
Image Credits
Jordan Vanderplate