ANDY is a personal project that I started in February of 2021. I wanted to find a way to explore my creativity and musicianship without allowing a looming lack of self worth to stop or hinder me…. it’s been a journey! I am keeping updated posts on a dedicated Instagram which is embedded and linked below.
I came up with the name ANDY from a show I have loved for a long time, “Cowboy Bebop”. This show dabbles in philosophy and the life of a handful of bounty hunters who look to find their own meaning and way in life. Each episode offers a view into the lives of the bounty hunters and the people they pursue, often leaving the viewer with a sense of contemplation for their own meaning in life while being accompanied by one of the greatest anime soundtracks to grace the 90’s.
One specific episode, Cowboy Funk, always left me feeling particularly inspired. The TL;DR version of the episode is that the main character, Spike, meets his match in a cowboy version of himself, Andy, and proceeds to have a great conflict with his cowboy self. His fellow bounty hunters think the resemblance is amusing while he continues to fight Andy and his existence. This used to make me feel an loving kinship with Spike because I find myself fighting with myself in a similar way. What this episode ends up revealing is how frivolous and defeating self competition can be. This revelation is reflected in the show and in my own life. The fights don’s always have to be over bounty heads and money, they can be as simple as not believing yourself to be capable or thinking less of yourself in comparison to others. Why would anyone fight with themselves in this way? Why was I fighting with myself in this way?
At the end of Cowboy Funk, Andy decides that he has met his match in Spike and decides to leave his life as a cowboy and instead become a samurai. Some would call his transition a shallow character development and I might agree, except up to this point Andy is the ONLY character to really piss off Spike and the only character to leave the episode with the entire series’ catch phrase “See you space cowboy…”. Spike walks away from this experience with validation of his superiority to Andy and Andy leaves with a new identity. Did either of them win? If so, which would you want to be?
I hope to release an album in the next year and do so on my own! I will have friends to talk to and to help me complete this, but I will use my own recording tools and software to bring it into life. This is a HUGE project but one that I know I can manage. If this year in quarantine has taught me anything, it’s that I can do anything.