We were lucky to catch up with Brynne Filer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Brynne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Learning the craft means learning how to have a healthy relationship with time. I have had so much time to develop myself as a writer, a visual artist, production artist, and most importantly, have had time to understand what the point of me pursuing music is. Yes, I taught myself how to play guitar, went to open mics, performed on local stages, but those were just me developing the tools of being a performer. The aspect of becoming an artist as an identity and an archetype, that became the craft, which I think is about having a daily practice. To me, my craft is not just about the end product, the tangible thing, it is the question. I needed to learn how to wait and develop my identity as an artist around what perspective do you keep coming to, why that perspective, what does that mean in terms of your participation in the landscape of this profession. Because of the time I’ve spent waiting and developing who I am as a person and as an artist writing comes fairly easy, because I have a perspective I can write from; I feel as though I have a very intuitive ear when something sounds right because I’ve spent so much time trying different music styles and listening and studying music/genre’s. My ability to speak on the music I make feels natural and most importantly true, because the crafting of the music has taken it’s time to come from an authentic place.

Brynne, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As a little girl, I always knew I wanted to be a singer. When I graduated college I felt complete in my academic accomplishments and ready to pursue my artistic one. I’ve tried every avenue from being in a band, being a duo, working with composers, beat makers, signed to an indie label, signed to a production company, working for a major label and even writing commercial jingles. None of those lasted because they were about a confined since of artistry and through the “failures” of each avenue I began to understand that what I am searching for and wanting to do is be a dimensional artist. Once I finally found my sound, my writing technique, and my creative community I was and have been able to make music that occupies the space of expansion. The work is about thinking; it is about asking the question how am I this way, how can I be different, what else can I ask of myself, my lover, my family, etc. and finally the music is meant to be soothing, to land on a place of healing and of calm and of rest. I feel so proud and lucky that I have found my authentic voice and perspective that can participate in the bigger question within music, which is how are us artists today truly reflecting the internal and external changes within a collective. This is the space I hold for myself as a person and it is the space I hold for any listener of my music. To come to this periphery and gently ask yourself some hard questions and then love that you fell apart and my music is the love that comes when you put yourself back together.

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

A lesson I had to unlearn is the idea that there is only one way to become a working artist. I think because of the nature of the industry being an industry, the idea that what you see as “success” is a one, maybe two, ways of happening and that is simply not true. I tried to follow the rule book to a T. I went to open mics, started performing with a guitarist, sent out demos to radio and labels, signed with a label, performed around the State, made visuals, built a small fan base. The day that that ended I was absolutely nowhere in my career externally. And I would do this 2 more times before I realized I am spinning in a hamster wheel in an empty room. No one was making a career like that anymore and as of today no one is sustaining a career like that anymore. I was looking at the careers of indie artists whom I both loved and then envied and I was trying to copy their exact trajectory move for move. I had to realize whatever prototype I had in my head about how I would become a “successful” working artist was not real and in fact would not exist because the journey I wanted to have could only be had by me. And that is the most frustrating part, it’s the most fearful part and yet it is what makes choosing this profession so exciting. There is no exact path, exact age, exact look, that one needs to have to become a working artist, you just simply develop at your own time, at your own pace, within your own world and when the time is ready for you to be shared in a larger way, that time will happen, it’s then a question of are you you when it does or are you still trying to be something else.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

There is a never ending reward to being an artist. I think for me the most rewarding has been how healing for my own mind and sense of self it has been archetypically. What I mean by that is, how I am as a young woman has been shaped by countless experiences, those experiences embedded in me color the way I see and show up in the world. Through the practice of being an artist/creative I get to have an outlet where I can safely and fully express myself and what those experiences have made me feel and I can look at them outside of my own self and possibly understand them. I think having any creative outlet, no matter how trivial we may think it is, is fundamental to development as people. I feel sometimes we think we turn 21 and we’re done developing into something; we are never complete and we should always have something or somewhere where we can create. The act of creating, of bringing something new into the world that only your eyes, your ears, your hands, your mind can do, that is magic and it is essential because it allows us to feel, subconsciously, the joy of possibility. I get to do that everyday and I get to bring that to nearly every aspect of my life. Being an artist is not just what I do, it is sincerely who I am, and it is an identity that I’ve grown into the more I create because the more I create the more I understand myself and then the more I fundamentally understand people.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brynne.other/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb15IaNKfx5R0Y7YNS5eflw
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5lTcdmuqRFZP4i0dsGOHcI

Image Credits
Servando Vargas, Russ Hamilton, Nesanet Teshager Abegaze, Mae Koo, Jaime Ballesteros, Bueze, Tawnyonelove