#sparkchamber 110617 — Ezra Vancil

A big-as-Texas #sparkchamber welcome to Dallas-based singer/songwriter Ezra Vancil. Though music is his primary focus, Ezra has a varied curiosity in many artistic mediums. He has garnered numerous awards and accolades for not only music and songwriting, but also for graphic art, multimedia, photography, writing, and video production. You can see a lot of that talent in the video for his song Peace on the Morning. His new album, “You,” explores his own history of love, and starting today, patrons at Patreon can get an exclusive sneak peek of the record here.

Get to know him better and hear more at his website and Bandcamp, and follow him on social media at Twitter and Facebook.

1.] Where do ideas come from?

I imagine that ideas are a result of my unconscious mind trying to solve problems. I think of my conscious mind as computer hardware and my unconscious mind as the software.

My experiences, thoughts, and feelings, without my awareness, are entered into the hardware as a question, problem or a curiosity [i.e., Question: why do I feel awkward in this large group] and then the software begins searching databases and calculating the solutions in the background [Answer: you were moved from school to school as a child and took on the lone-wolf attitude as a defense].

In the same way, my unconscious is always calculating in the background the interactions I have had and questions that are posed to me in everyday ordinary life.

There seems to be a space between the transference of this information where the artist can grab pieces of the raw “data” and create something tangible that represents this process in a material form.

I think this internal solving process goes on inside of everyone whether “creative” or not. That is why art fascinates us; we recognize it, because the same process is going on in us.

2.] What is the itch you are scratching?

My motivation is very simple. It makes me feel good. I feel like I belong when I am in the creative space. This simple desire to spend time in that space can have like a domino effect in my artistic ambitions because I want to spend more time there, to go deeper and be more immersed in that space of belonging, so I push myself into projects that take more of me to complete each time.

3.] Early bird or night owl, tortoise or hare?

There is a saying that really defines the way I think of processes. I forget the originator and exact phrasing, but in essence, “it's easier to keep a bird in hand than to catch one.”

I have learned that I must always have a routine. If it becomes stale, it is the immediate priority to reinstate a new routine in its place. If I let it go, even for just one day, then it’s like the saying above, I end up chasing a bird around the house for weeks trying to get myself back into a productive space.

Though saying that, I do have a house full of my family who are also artists. We all work from home so I try and create routines that allow for me to be accessible during the day times. For an intensely creative time, early mornings are the best, but in my business, late nights are sometimes unavoidable.

4.] How do you know when you are done?

That is the eternal question.

I have a general stopping place I always aim for. It is “one step further than I can go.” I don’t just want to do “all that I could do” within current circumstances and funding, I want to do what I couldn’t do — if that makes any sense.

That is not a very well-defined stopping point, but It makes a little more sense when I set self-imposed deadlines. Then, it just takes me being honest with myself. Have I really done all that I can do? Have I gone further and pushed myself further than I thought I could go? That, in combination with the deadline, helps me put things down and feel good about my efforts no matter the outcome of the project.