How and Why Does Jesca Hoop's Musical Output Change over Time?

I’ve been wondering this morning if I suffer from a disorder called Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT). The symptoms kind of sound at least a little bit like my moment-to-moment experience. I often, for example, feel lost, and have a hard time keeping track of what’s going on around me.

But more than anything, when this morning I read the phrase, “sluggish cognitive tempo,” I just kind of sighed and thought, Yeah. That sounds like a thing that I’d have.

Sluggish indeed.

I loaf and invite my soul.

——

This morning I accidentally articulated what I think is my own personal metric for success as an artist.

I was writing to the person who is probably my favorite musician, or who has become my favorite musician in the last four or five years, since I found out she exists: Jesca Hoop. She’s American, and lives in England, and she released a new album recently.

When I first heard one of her songs, it was something similar to how it felt this morning to read about Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT)—but really it was the opposite of that. It was a good kind of recognition. It was something like finding a quarter on the sidewalk, except the quarter is a piece of yourself that you didn’t know you’d lost but you’re so happy you found it because it’s both a part of you and it’s not you at the same time. Someone else made it, but in a weird way it’s also yours, because they put it out into the world, and here it is, speaking directly to a part of you that mostly goes unacknowledged.

Jesca Hoop has a feature on her website called Ask Jesca, where you can submit a question and maybe she’ll answer it on her TikTok feed. Or maybe she’ll just think about it. Or her intern will?

Just how many interns does Jesca Hoop have?

That’s the question I should have asked her.

It may have been my SCT working against me once again, or it could be that as I age I get worse and worse and worse at concision. But I asked a question that took three submissions; I had to break it into pieces and hope she understood.

I told Jesca Hoop, first, that I find it remarkable how from one album to the next she sounds so different. A consistent sensibility carries over from one work to the next, and throughout it all she is clearly Jesca Hoop—but then, that means something different every time.

Establishing that premise for the question took up two entire Ask Jesca submissions.

I asked, finally, in my third Ask Jesca submission, to what extent the mutating texture of her music is the product of deliberate effort. Does she try to make every album sound distinct from the last? Or is the way her songs change from year to year the inevitable result of growing as an artist and as a person—assuming that that’s what Jesca Hoop is doing, over there in England?

I mean, let’s face it: not everyone grows.

I don’t think this kind of artistic transformation is truly inevitable. There are plenty of musicians, artists, writers, etc., whose work does not change in significant ways between novels, albums, sculptures, etc.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some artistic careers or endeavors demand consistency.

I mean, hell: if someone offered me ten million dollars to ensure that every novel I write—in a series, say—was utterly consistent, stylistically and otherwise, I’m not sure that I would say no.

I mean, I could still write weird short stories.

Maybe Jesca Hoop will answer my question. If she doesn’t, it will be okay—it was a long question. Mostly I’m just grateful she takes questions, because thanks to Ask Jesca I figured out once and for all how I define artistic success.

Because let’s face it. I’m forty-one, and in writer years that’s still quite young, but in lucrative writer years I am ancient. If lightning—and I mean money-lightning—was going to strike here, I think it would have done that by now.

I’m not exactly rotten-faced, but I’m not fresh-faced, and it’s been a while since I was. I still dream every other night that I’m scrambling to pack my bags and my furniture for a journey to someplace undefined that I know I will never come back from.

I don’t think I’ll ever live solely off my writing, which is how I know a lot of people define artistic success.

But I don’t think that’s even an attainable form of success, for someone who was born into the middle class in West Virginia, and who went to state schools and had anxiety attacks, and who came of age at a time when the pirates and financiers had long since fortified their positions and figured out how to cut artists out of most of the money they’re owed.

I guess I have Spotify in mind, here, most of all—they’ve created the perfect model for bilking musicians—but the publishing houses are all massive conglomerates, and they don’t even have to conspire to ensure the laborers get as little as possible. The independent presses can’t pay much, as much as I like them.

——

I’ve often thought that success, for me, as a writer, consists simply of being able to continue to do what I do. If I get to spend half an hour on a Monday morning writing this blog post, or spending even more time than that composing a short story, or building up this novel I’m working on, then while I may not have much to show for that, I am carrying on. I am doing it. I am, by virtue of that, successful.

And that is part of how I came this morning to define success. It’s an essential component, or prerequisite.

But it’s that willingness to let your hand be guided by forces you don’t understand, as you do your work, that I think is where the success I’m after comes from.

I want to be able to look back at the things I made years ago and see how plainly they differ from the last thing I’ve made. I want to reread an old short story and not recognize the work as my own—as long as the reason for that is that I’ve moved on, that I’m making things that come from another sensibility.

The new self has replaced the old one, and I can see it in what I have done: that’s what artistic success means to me.

Some more money wouldn’t hurt, of course.

The side effect of the kind of change I’m describing is that you often don’t like what you made long ago. If you read an old short story, or hear an old song, it may look or sound okay—but it doesn’t smell quite right. Something is off, and you don’t know if you can trust it.

That misgiving is to be ignored. It’s nothing more than a sign that the essential thing is taking place—that you’re getting somewhere; that you’re in touch with some mysterious force, in your own mind or in the ether, that’s informing all that you do. It’s happening slowly enough that as it happens you don’t even notice it.

You’re changing. You’re growing. You’re responding to something that’s outside of yourself, and with any luck it’s exactly the right thing.