The truth about being a singer songwriter living with chronic illness

Chronic illness affects my musical ability in so many ways. Here are the most annoying ones….

Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash

Hi friend,

First of all, real quick: After much consideration I started a separate newsletter for my abstract art. At first I thought I would combine them, but it just didn’t work for me creatively. So here it is: Madelleine’s Studio.

I’ll be sharing my abstract art, my process as well as stories behind the artwork and what it means to paint while living with limitations.

There is one post over there right now (I’d love it if you would give it some love), but I will be sharing lots more.

Ok, so back to being a singer songwriter while living with chronic illness.

The gist of it: It ain’t easy.

Chronic illness comes in so many different forms and varieties and levels, I am not writing this on behalf of all singer songwriters living with chronic illness. While I’ve gotten better I still live with a fairly severe form of illness (although it’s slowly leaning towards moderate).

My biggest hindrance is fatigue. While it does affect my muscles in a big way, it actually feels like it mostly affects my brain and especially the part of the brain that tells the body what to do. There have been studies on this and apparently with ME/CFS, the part of the brain that tells the body what to do is severely affected and slowed down.

So one thing is the general fatigue in my body, but moving my body takes extra effort from the brain because that specific communication pathway is so slow.

That makes singing an arduous task. Singing is already an athletic sport.

The brain-fatigue also affects my musical memory. I can’t just sit down and play my songs off by heart. I have a process for memorising songs, but that process doesn’t always work with this brain. I may have a good day and go through my process, but then can’t practice it for many days and then everything I memorised is gone.

I do a lot of inner work to not let this affect my identity as an artist… but it does. I often feel ‘less than’ because of this.

My songwriting has also changed since this illness has gotten more severe, and it hasn’t changed with my recent improvement unfortunately.

My songwriting process is a lot less ‘magical’. My brain just doesn’t create stuff anymore, it’s quite empty inside. I used to constantly write down words and sentences in my journal, I was almost inundated by it, but now it’s too quiet.

The way I write songs now feels laborious, but still wonderful once I have a song. I am fully reliant on external inspiration… but I can’t digest a lot of external inspiration (like books or art or poems or real life) so not a lot happens naturally.

This also makes me feel ‘less than’, because a songwriter is supposed to be constantly creating.

I do remind myself that being a disabled artist has intrinsic value, even though I can’t do a lot of the same stuff as others can.

Tell me…

Do you live with limitations and if so, how do they affect your creativity?

Do you expect musical artists to be perfect, or would you rather have a bit of rawness?

I’d love to know in the comments!

Have you listened to Powerful People’s Anthem?

Powerful People’s Anthem is a song in 5/8. It portrays the inner turmoil of powerful people and how they really need therapy rather than microphones.

All proceeds will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. Please consider purchasing on Bandcamp to support the cause.