jack manley is on unmeasurable terms
how does music help you cope?
When I was a kid, it helped me escape feeling less than and an almost guaranteed life of misery, mediocrity, and generally overwhelming or unsafe conditions. It gave me a safe place to “play” and explore my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Later, it helped me make friends, find a community, and an underground world largely inaccessible to most people. Eventually, I got consumed by some of the trappings of even modest success and lost all those things and more. Music has once again become a sandbox to play in, to explore, to ask questions, and more recently to reflect on past experiences while processing current or suppressed pains. Looking back at my older lyrics it’s clear I’ve always seemed to intuitively understand and process whatever I was dealing with subconsciously through my music, often years before it becomes a working part of my conscious mind.
What do you do to take care of yourself?
The activities change, but the basics don’t. I tend to wake up everyday restless, irritable, and discontent so I’ve learned I need to take care of my mental, physical, and spiritual health or else I’m setting myself up for failure. Right now that looks like therapy, sauna, exercise, getting 8 hours of sleep, and eating healthy. I’m in recovery so I’m fortunate to have a framework that helps keep me from going too high or falling too low and a community of similar people who share their own experiences, strength, and hope with me. I had to take a lot of different medications when I first began my journey. If you’re unable to function and live life, you may need a little help and that’s ok! Would you tell someone who just broke their leg to suck it up and go run a mile?! Of course not, and it’s the same thing. Everyone’s different but some people require pharmacological support/interventions and no one has the right to make you feel less than if it helps you.
best Tips for a beginning musician?
1: Be quiet and listen- you don’t know anything and that’s ok! (People will inconvenience themselves to teach/elevate you IF you listen, display humility, and passion)
2: Listen to a wide range of sounds and develop your own sense of taste. Watch a variety of different types of music live. Combine sounds that “shouldn’t work” together.
3: Practice in public- I spent years working on my craft until it was “perfect.” Shocker, it’s not. It never will be. The gap between what’s in your head and what you’re able to communicate musically just shortens.
Best advice you’ve ever received?
It’s not so much what you play as what you don’t. Especially in a band context, you need to create space for each other and the listener by not overplaying. Playing simple straight forward melodies and rhythms with precision is extremely difficult and counter intuitive to most aspiring egomaniac musicians and songwriters. No one cares about how technical a thing was you did. It’s about the songs. As yourself, “what does the song need” not “what do I need to feel good about myself.”
3 things you would tell your younger self?
Be present, be humble, be of service
3 things you would tell your future self?
I hope it was worth it you fuck!