Author: Dan Steven Erickson

On Music

This new site will include music from any one of my several musical personalities. Yes, I’m a bit of a musical schizophrenic. Although my main gig has always been as Dan (Steven) Erickson, the singer-songwriter, that has changed in the past few years.

Currently, I’m creating more experimental and electronic music than music from any other genre. Keep in mind, that could change any given day. Remember, I’m schizo. I might even develop a new musical personality.

I have two electronic music aliases. My main alias is Anderhill, but for my darkest electronic music, I go by A Cult of Lies.

I recently introduced you to Anderhill, and then I shared the first EP, The Beginning. If you take a gander at my music page, you’ll see that I’ve composed quite a few albums, EPs and long-play singles. You can click any of those titles to get to the Anderhill BandCamp page.

In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be chronologically posting short blurbs about each of my musical titles here. Each post will include a BandCamp music player for your listening pleasure. – dse

Quirky

It’s only been through my attempts to conform that I’ve realized that I’m quirky. Some of us spend years, even most of our lives, trying to fit in. But what if you’re the square peg in a world of round holes? What if you were made quirky from the start?

There’s nothing wrong with that.

In fact, maybe there’s more wrong with a culture that tries to keep us from being our quirky selves.

When I was a six-year-old kid, I saw a rock floating in midair. I’m sure of it. I never told anyone else because I knew they wouldn’t believe me, that they’d think I was a peculiar little boy. I kept it inside. Later, after being a child victim of a religious cult, I just wanted to fit in. Read my story.

That’s how we spend much of our lives. Fighting quirky. It’s what we’re taught in school, at work, in church. If we do something a bit strange or different it’s often frowned upon. But I’ve come to realize it’s not conformity, but our quirkiness that really matters. It makes us uniquely who we are.

It’s those unique characteristics that make us interesting and help to create our story. Seriously, how many great stories are about the person who is just like all the other people?

It’s okay to be a little weird. – dse

Writing and Hope

It seems to me that in order to write, we need hope. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Hope is a funny thing. It’s not really something we can touch, taste, or feel. It’s something a little mysterious. A semblance of hope can be manufactured, marketed and sold. But honest-to-goodness hope is simple. To have hope means we have something to look forward to, something to live for. Manufactured hope is short-lived. Even religious hope begins to feel a bit too manufactured to me.

For me, hope comes in many forms. Some things I live for include family, travel, and the ability to express myself through creative arts such as writing and music. Yet, these are dark times. Between COVID-19, forest fires, and dark skies full of smoke, life can become dreary. Some days it feels as though the world is coming to its demise.

On the darker days, writing provides me with hope. Although I can’t speak for all creators, it’s my experience that the act of making something new, something that wasn’t there before, brings with it a sense of hope. There is an excitement and satisfaction in the process of creating. It gives the creator one more thing to live for, even when the world seems nearly hopeless.

To me, it’s odd that some great creative writers and artists have ended their own lives. Because even when everything else is going wrong, writing is one thing that I always have to look forward to. For me, writing and hope are indelibly intertwined.

If I were to stop writing completely, then it might be time to worry. – dse

The Beginning

I introduced you to my alter-ego, Anderhill. It’s time that I introduce you to the music. Let’s go back to The Beginning.

The Beginning was my first recording under the name Anderhill. As a lifelong musician, I’ve studied and played a variety of musical styles and instruments, but I was primarily a guitar-slinging singer-songwriter until about four years ago.

I blame it on technology, but shortly after buying my first iPad, I started experimenting in recording music on the GarageBand app. Slowly, I began to move away from traditional songwriting and toward experimental electronic music. By late 2018, I was becoming so intrigued with electronic music that I decided to create a musical alias, Anderhill.

Anderhill has since become a wonderful journey in experimenting in a variety of electronic musical styles including ambient, drone, deep house, minimalism, and neo-classical. – dse

Self-Help Addict

Nearly anything done in excess can become an addiction: sex, drugs, gambling, and yes, even self-help. These days you see self-help advice everywhere you turn. Some people get so caught up in the culture that they spend thousands of dollars on books and courses.

I was talking with a colleague about blogs and self-help and the success-driven lifestyle, and he said something that stuck with me. Maybe, all the people writing self-help books and blogs are addicted to the process. Maybe, they have a need to continue to create things in order to make up for some inadequacy or stressor in their own lives. Wow!

Maybe that’s my problem. Could I be using writing as a way to cover up other issues in my life? Could I be a self-help addict?

To be clear, I don’t buy into most of the rampant self-help obsession these days. Yet, I can’t seem to keep from writing my own self-help perspective. Are all these articles and essays just a cover up for my own deep-seeded problems? An escape? My writing isn’t really advice for others. Maybe, I’m just acting as my own self-help guru. Is it all just a giant feedback loop?

And so what if that’s actually the case? I’d rather be addicted to my own self-help than to video games and alcohol. If my writing serves no purpose other than to help me cope with life, what’s wrong with that?

At least it’s free. – dse

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a way of understanding how something was created, usually things like art, books, poems and other writing. Deconstruction is breaking something down into smaller parts.

This is what I’m doing with my writing and my online presence. It’s a simple concept. I’m tearing apart my work and analyzing it. I want to understand how I can continue to create high-quality content in a smaller and more direct way. How can I share the same thoughts using less words? How can I be clearer and more concise?

The act of deconstruction helps us to see the strengths and weaknesses of what we do, what we write. By breaking down the last ten years of my writing journey, I can analyze which strategies worked and which ones didn’t. The results won’t lead me to becoming a master of the English language, but they will help me to improve as a writer and an artist.

Improvement in any field is really the ultimate goal, not to compete with others, but to better oneself, to excel in your field. Art becomes new and unique through deconstruction, understanding, and editing with passion.

So perhaps my new website is not under construction as much as it is the result of deconstruction.

Here’s to tearing things apart. – dse