On Clearing the Path

I remember sitting in the pub with a friend of mine on the composition course a while back, and our conversation eventually got onto the subject of PRXLUDES, and why I’ve been so driven to create the platform over the past year — particularly, as it seemed at the time, at the expense of my own composition work. I remember being asked something along the lines of “Why is it important to you to do this thing for other people? Is there some kind of altruistic motivation behind the development of something like this?” — and that whole thought process really got me thinking about why PRXLUDES was so important to me, and what kind of underpinning philosophy grounds me in my work with the platform.

It was after quite a lot of (relatively drunken) deliberation that I found my answer — and I realised I’d already discovered it a few years prior, when I first read Ryan Holiday’s book ‘Ego Is the Enemy’. I first read Ryan Holiday at the social media recommendation of a producer friend of mine back in 2017 — and while I feel that 21-year-old me was maybe a bit immature to truly take to heart all of the themes that Holiday puts forward in his books, since my first reading of ‘Ego Is the Enemy’ and ‘The Obstacle Is the Way’, I’ve found that that particular brand of Stoicism that Holiday preaches has found its way into a lot of different facets of my work.

In ‘Ego Is the Enemy’, Holiday mentions a role in Ancient Roman society known as the ‘anteambulo’ — literally translating to “one who clears the path”. The job of the anteambulo would be to travel ahead of their patron to make them look as good as possible, through running errands, carrying messages, and generally anything that would make their life easier — quite literally “clearing the path” for their patron in life. And after a lot of thinking, I realised that this is the space I’m trying to occupy through my work with PRXLUDES; while I don’t feel yet I’m able to truly “clear the path” for composers in the sense that Holiday has mentioned (though I have tried!), I have aspired to create a place in which the work of emerging creatives can be promoted and celebrated, and through that present those creators as rightfully validated as they deserve to be.

Holiday also calls this process the “canvas strategy”; the idea of supplying the metaphorical canvas for others to paint on. Through the process of interviewing emerging composers, building a platform to publicly promote their work and network and community whilst doing so, I see myself and my website as functioning as somewhat of an anteambulo for new music creators. The main thing I want to do is make people look good, make space for people to be good, be the best versions of themselves as artists and as creatives. If I’m able to cement the work of these incredible creators through PRXLUDES as a platform — if it can be the canvas that new music practitioners can paint on — then I think the principal goal of PRXLUDES will be attained.

I also don’t believe that I need to sacrifice any elements of my composition work to keep the platform running. Whilst there have been practical issues with timing — particularly as I try to stick to the “two interviews a month” formula — the amount of novel perspectives and truly groundbreaking work I’ve discovered through the interviews I’ve conducted by far offsets any of the time I’ve set aside for it, and every single composer I’ve talked to thus far has had a huge positive effect on my musical output. It’s through osmosing the ideas and encounters I’ve had through PRXLUDES into my own oeuvre that I feel I’ve come up with my most personally impactful work. I don’t think being an anteambulo is putting yourself down by any stretch — I’d say it’s necessary, no matter what you’re building or what career field you find yourself in. And it’s only from this foundation, and with this philosophy, that I feel I can build PRXLUDES into something those in the new music world can feel proud of.

I’m happy to be the person who clears the path. I’m happy for PRXLUDES to be the canvas that emerging artists paint on. As Ryan Holiday writes: “Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.”