How to break up with your phone...

and immediately fall for a new one

Picture taken during rehearsal at premises studio by Von Noire Photography.

As I write this it’s 2am, I’m at my desk and I’m wondering why I didn't get control of my brain earlier today so that I could be sleeping right now. Sometimes I think I have both a social media addiction and ADHD, and then I talk to Sula - a literal psychologist - and she laughs and says no to the second one. Thing is, everyone has ADHD if you ask Tiktok, maybe there’s some correlation there… I’m starting to think that the answer to my problems might be to stop looking for answers on Tiktok. Easier said than done when being a musician who is trying to limit their social media use in 2023 is kind of like working as a cigarette taster while trying to quit smoking; engaging with your vice is key to the job. Viral TikTok content can be so vital to achieving streaming success that TikTok are now launching their own music streaming service to compete with Spotify et al. They came to the conclusion that Spotify needs them more than they need Spotify and announced “TikTok music is coming soon!” and how did Spotify CEO Daniel Ek come out fighting after this announcement? Well, he didn’t. He panicked and sold $100million of Spotify stock 2 days later, the music streaming model does pay, if you own it.

Since the pandemic I began to notice that my balance between social media content consumption and social media content creation had gradually tipped away from where I wanted it to be and was starting to pretty significantly impact my ability to focus, not helpful when making music. Songwriting requires hours and hours of sending your brain into overheat mode trying to solve all of the lyrical, chordal and melodic puzzles that present themselves, and production is frankly quite boring for long periods in between sparks of inspiration, so you have to get comfortable with the boredom. There’s actually a whole creative network in your brain that switches on when you get bored, if we’re never bored it never switches on. So here I am still constantly creating and developing my art and putting it out into the world but I’m now hyper aware that my pre-lockdown brain used to do so on a less stressful and anxiety inducing timescale, it was far less of a constant struggle to control my own monkey mind and its thirst for more dopamine.

As mentioned in previous posts we’re self managing and self-releasing now so there’s just no time to waste therefore I’ve been taking steps to combat the distraction.

Firstly I meditated more, the idea being that the more I controlled my focus and ability to sit with anxiety in the moment, the less I’d need to escape into a scroll hole. This definitely helps a lot, but when fighting against algorithms engineered by companies that pour billions into social engineering and psychological research to fine tune them to hypnotic perfection, I realise that meditation alone is kind of like bringing a water balloon to a knife fight. Next I turned on screen time to measure just how many hours I was spending looking at my devices…next I turned off screen time in horror. I found an app called ‘One Sec’ which allows you to set up an interruptor where every time you open up a problem app it’ll make you wait just long enough to stop and think “Do I really want to scroll right now” genius and another keeper. I read a book called ‘How to Break up with your phone’ which told me to remove all of the social apps off my phone and only use them on desktop or iPad. Sadly that idea doesn’t work when you’re live streaming regularly and trying to keep fans up to date by sharing behind the scenes on Patreon while engaging on Discord chat etc. I’d still recommend the book as it’s full of tips like the ones above and worked a treat for me in breaking up with the phone I had. The issue now is that upon finally disconnecting from that phone I immediately found a loop hole and fell into a relationship with a different phone which arrived Saturday morning, I spent most of the day setting it up, taking pictures of Maya with the fancy camera and convincing myself they’re way better than the old ones.

iPhone 12 image. Just primitive, can barely make out that she’s a dog. Yuk.

Iphone 14 Pro image. Now we’re talking, just leagues apart aren’t they. Totally worth the money. Look at the detail in the erm… wrist hairs. Just wow.

Tonight the plan was to solely do 2 things - design cover art for the album and book ferries and trains to Europe and back and then back to Europe and back for a tour I just agreed to play acoustic support on next week -

Home>London>Paris>London>Amsterdam>Berlin>Hamburg>Home.

I did do both of those things (alongside doom scrolling), but man did I drag it out. I’ll keep you updated on how the mission to regain control of my mind goes in the next couple of weeks, I think I’ve settled on a plan so here goes;

• No looking at phone before 11am

• Start each day with 20 minutes of meditation, set intentions for the day

• No sleeping with phone in the bedroom

• SHAME myself by leaving my screen time metrics on my home Screen

• Use the One Sec app to interrupt autopilot app opening

• Leave books I’m reading everywhere, so I’m more likely to pick them up than my phone

Kind of ridiculous lengths I’m having to go to here, is this the lamest musicians addiction of all time? Maybe so. Do you struggle with screen time at all? Any tips? I’m making progress and my screen time is down 50% this past week but keeping it there and getting it down even lower is going to be a longer process. Fuck you Zuckerberg & fuck you Musk.

For the tour I’ll be driving myself across Europe and staying with as many friends as will let me crash along the way to make a tight budget work. Keep an eye on socials to see who I'll be supporting and when we’ll be playing as I don’t have the OK to announce it here or anywhere else just yet. I’ll try to document it as I go but generally I don’t have the above issue when I’m in an intense period of activity like a tour, or when making an album and tend to go the opposite way, forgetting to record any of it at all. I’ll continue to try to find the balance as I continue to make things

Wish me luck 📵

-Matt

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RELEASE UPDATE

On behalf of all three of us, thank you for your support on the new songs. It’s been tough at times coming out as an independent, self managed band again into a world where 100,000 songs are released every day… but having such a passionate fanbase waiting for the songs and amplifying them when they’re released has made a huge difference in helping us to cut through the noise. That became more apparent than ever with the last two releases; Clio is our most streamed song of the last 2 months on Apple Music (By a long way) and Feathers has already hit 50k streams in its first 2 weeks on Spotify after getting our best playlisting support for years. Feathers even hit #1 on the iTunes Spain singer/songwriter chart and we almost missed it!

Our Patreon is growing every month and we’re now at 28 patrons (We’re going to start a podcast at 50) and having a great time getting to know everyone in the patron livestreams and Discord chat. This year we’ve gone from feeling like we’re fighting against the tide alone as an independent band to now feeling like we can thrive with our own fan community and wondering what it would take to make us ever want to sign to a label again when it’s so much more rewarding to build together this way.

Much love 🖤

Matt, Ben, Chris.

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Belle Mt. Patreon fan community; It’s been a lot of fun to get to know our fans more closely this year and to share way more of our process. Social media gets in-between us all and we’d love your help to keep on making music ✨

Click below to find out more about our Patreon community👇 if you join now, not only can you jump right in the discord chat and attend the live streams but you get the benefit of all the previous posts we’ve shared, including an exclusive full live show video, free cover art wallpapers, and previously unheard song demos.

Belle Mt. Patreon membership comes with access to our community discord chat group, a monthly zoom hang concert with our community and other unique tier dependent perks. Most of all it helps us to stay independent and to keep making music🤘

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