What’s Your Worldview?
Venting vs. Processing
My friend Max shared this quote from a book with me:
“Once we can distill complex experiences into more understandable packages, we can begin to move beyond them.”
While I don’t love the language of “moving beyond” experiences in life (I’m more in the “move onward with them” camp), that quote was shared in the midst of a conversation that has stuck with me.
We were discussing the difference between “Venting” and “Processing”.
Venting is the expression of frustration at an experience. It is generally not self-reflective and, if left as such, is usually harmful in the long term.
But - it can turn into Processing.
Processing makes sense of an experience through the often uncomfortable reflection on our thoughts, feelings, and actions around that experience.
Processing is what helps us put complicated things into understandable packages so we can move beyond them (or, move onward with them).
For me, I have found that painting is a usually an exercise of processing. It helps me draw out all sorts of feelings - usually sadness and joy - and understand them in often quite simple visual packages.
Songs that I write, on the other hand, are usually born out of venting. They’re the knee-jerk response to the same types of feelings bubbling up involuntarily in my life.
But - through the process of putting individual songs together into a cohesive album - I have found it to a processing experience. It was an emotional experience that I was excited about and am excited to do again.
This (virtual) exhibition is an advance presentation of my upcoming debut album in its entirety. Each song from the album is paired with a painting created over the same time period.
I’m interested in the perceptions of “venting” vs “processing” on individual levels, and how those concepts may evolve over the course digesting the album in its entirety.
I’m also interested in how your different modes of self-expression in your life may lend themselves more one or the other.
Are there things that start as venting for you that you’ve learned to build upon into processing?
Thanks a million for checking this out, and massive thanks to Drake Ritter for his production work (instrumentation, backing vocals, and mixing) on this album and Andy Beargie for his studio mastering work. These songs would be 10% of what they are without them.
PS - It’s my actual birthday so instead of getting my any presents it’d be super tight if you could “follow” my artist page on Spotify jejeje :)
Stay precious,
Matthew Anderson (b. 1989, Indiana USA) is a visual artist, musician, and software director based in Mexico City.
His work focuses on making complex feelings and our often generationally inherited innate emotional responses accessible for processing, both for self and audience, through the playful expression of paint and song.
His upcoming debut album ("What's Your Worldview?") is composed of songs written through most of his 20's (2012-2019).
In this collection, released under the moniker Charles Arizona, he grapples with the "what" and "why" of new felt anxiety and depression, resulting substance dependence, love come and gone, and the role (and validity) of the version of Christianity deeply imprinted upon him by his family during childhood.
Charles Arizona was the email address of his grandfather.
