every class/seminar/article on musical #entrepreneurship i've encountered has included a deeply incoherent segment on marketing that includes the concept (often even the phrase) "you are your brand!", meaning that the goal is to get fans who are invested in *you*, not just one of your projects; you should have a defined social media presence; being authentically *you* is how you will stand out from the crowd etc etc etc

but "authenticity" is exactly where things fall apart. "you are your brand" often carries the subtext (or even text!) of "therefore you need to curate your online presence lest you Sully your product with 'off-brand' content, "off-brand" ofc meaning: explicit politics, "too much" non musical content, negativity in general but also mental health downs, anything queer unless it reads as SUPER assimilationist/non-threatening — all the usual "professionalism" bullshit. basically: be a happy anodyne cog in the capitalist machine whose Marketable Quirk is making music of some sort(s)

but here's the thing: i am a mentally ill anti-assimilationist trans queer who hates capitalism and thinks silence on (explicitly) political topics is itself a deeply political choice and statement. if *i* am my #brand, my brand must necessarily encompass all of that. if my brand can't encompass all of that, if i have to curate and edit and hide parts of myself from my branded image, then my brand is clearly separate from me, i am *not* my brand, and all this talk about #authenticity is specious

(and like, i think you can totes make the argument that "authenticity" will always be a constructed façade w/o true substance and that "authenticity" is vastly overrated as artistic currency! but i don't think we need make those arguments to push back on branding talk)

i write music, music that sometimes reaches the empyrean sphere of profoundest emotion. i write that music as a messy, specific individual with all of my features, faults, and foibles. those things make some people uncomfortable! i refuse to sanitize myself for them. i refuse to grant strength to the notion that that empyrean sphere belongs only to the straight, the healthy, the Unmarked. (this doesn't only apply to homophobes and the like! it applies in every direction. ppl who are/do things you don't like can make art that moves you deeply. this is one of the hard, distressing truths abt the world i think we have to grapple with and doubt we'll ever "solve") (and also the obvious corollary of that is that i'm not a Perfect Unblemished Being Who Has Done No Moral Wrong — tho i don't think anyone capable of making moral choices is, and saying this feels very performative)

i think insisting that artists shear away the Marked aspects of their existence in order to gain access to the Realm Of #Art only serves to further stigmatize those aspects; it reinforces existing hierarchies of power. one can certainly argue that some things (like bigotry) absolutely _should_ be stigmatized, but that argument requires a rigor and specificity about what those things are that i have never seen in a discussion of curating a personal brand

anyway, that's why so many of my social media presences are uncurated streams of political screaming, puns, and shitposts from queer furries — i refuse to play a game where "winning" means i lose. (also i am lazy, and cultivating a "presentable" image takes way more energy than i have and also reminds me of being in the closet again so like ew gross no bye)