Saturday, December 02, 2006

A Presence on the Web

So my official website is finished, and it was launched today, much to my excitement and relief. It has been an interesting process to put a website together. I shied away from it for a long time, because I always felt that personal websites were sort of masturbatory, in a way. I also delayed putting it up, because I wanted to save up the money to do it properly – I really wanted it to be done the right way. I figured better to have no website at all than to have something that looks like I did it at home with construction paper and glue (I simply lack the technical savvy and patience to do something like this on my own). I realize now that it is an important tool for publicity purposes and to have a decent sound clip or two online.

Still, in line with Kim Witman’s insights on singer’s materials recently, I have found that putting so much energy into selling yourself is exhausting, and it is really distracting from the primary task – making music. I am so grateful that I had a designer to do the bulk of the work. The little that I had to do I found exhausting and mind-numbing. Constantly looking at, listening to, and reading about myself was toxic after awhile. I know that being a singer and artist requires a lot of alone time and concern with oneself, but there is an introspective quality to that time that is productive and fruitful. Spending time immersed in headshots, sound clips, and other publicity materials is not introspective – in fact it is quite the opposite. During the times that I was trying to assemble materials for the site, I found myself more concerned with what other people were doing, and I felt myself getting a competitive edge. Doubts began to creep in and jealousy started to rear its ugly, green head. Oddly, even though I was immersed in materials all about me, my focus shifted from me and my work to what other people think – a very precarious place for an artist’s focus to drift.

As a result, I’ve decided to keep this blog a separate entity from the website. This blog is a very introspective exercise for me, and its purpose is not to market myself or push my career ahead. It is my effort to understand my life and the world around me and to not feel quite so alone as I travel.

I am so excited about the website – I am really pleased with the way it looks, and I am happy that I have a professional presence on the web now. I am also immensely relieved that the process of designing it is over, and all I have to do for now is simply update it from time to time.

The photo above is one of my new publicity shots - they were taken by Balance Photography.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your website is fabulous. It is well done and easy to navigate. You and your designer did a wonderful job.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with projects done with construction paper and glue and in fact, you spent many years here doing just that!

Love you!

Lou said...

i think it's great how u're keeping this as a separate and unique entity. i was looking for it under the links section. the website looks absolutely fabulous. easy to navigate and just cool looking as well. u and your designer did really well. i'm considering making a website out of construction paper and glue...just those materials. i don't know how well it will work. hehe. congrats on the website!!!

Anonymous said...

Hi, I came across your blog, which led me to check out your site, whilst I was surfing around for advice on website creating and designing. Your site is very nice! I wish I could do something like that...

I recently created a personal website and it sure looks like what you said -- using construction paper and glue haha.

Did you use flash on your site? Could you enlighten me on a summary of what you did to create such an eye-pleasing site?

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on a very elegant site. I do have one request/suggestion. Perhaps you could include a little more specific information in the Calendar section? A link to the actual concert, not just the organization's main page; your role; the repertory for the concert; things like that. It would be interesting and also might prompt people to actually go to the concert. For instance, I'd like to go to the Helicon Society recital, but I have no idea where it is (and when I tried to Google them their website seems to have been hijacked by a job-search site).

Paul G. McCurdy said...

A beautiful website -- and it's not just in the design, but also in the high quality recordings (thanks for sharing these!) and stunning photographs.

nick said...

Many thanks for all of the kind words about the site and for the feedback! I am so glad and relieved that it has been so well-received.

nick said...

Squareface - My designer did use flash for the site. He did the bulk of the technical work, I mostly gathered/produced materials for him to put together and edited/wrote all of the text on the site.