Oliver Tree
Sad about Oliver Tree.
I only learned about him a few months ago but I was immediately inspired by his relentless creativity.
So. Much. Art.
Was his brilliance about quantity or quality? Kinda both, but more accurately I think it was about breadth. He tried so many things, and did them well.
It’s hard to say whether songs in the traditional sense were the main point for him… I think performance, and living an artistic life, might have been his true medium.
Whatever the case, he covered a lot of ground, and he makes me more excited to make art, even while the world he occupied feels lightyears away.
I think that any artist, at any level, can look at his life and be encouraged to make make make. Make more stuff. Try a new medium. Invent a character. Change your appearance. Be ugly. STOP thinking that presentation and packaging are a chore to begrudgingly complete. It’s all part of the opportunity to excite yourself and try to make something fresh. An opportunity!
If your current approach isn’t clicking (to you, let alone an audience), roll the dice again. The slow-motion death that eats so many artists, maybe even more than drugs or self-destruction, at least among the people I know, is a lack of exploration. The idea that you can make a tiny amount of things all in one style and count on the world to eventually come around to them—that virtually never happens. Oliver Tree was the antithesis of getting stuck. Compare the 2012 “Karma Police” cover to his 2017 pink-and-purple windbreaker era to his present-day globe-trotting long black mullet. There’s a core personality, a himness you can see all the way back to Vine-style videos from the 2010s, but the particular dish being served and the presentation of it were always changing. No “set it and forget it.” Yes “what’s next?” (And he actually served the dish. You have to serve the dish!)
He used “the system” to realize his visions. He said he sought out a major label deal and took it because he wanted the funding and the “army of people” to help make his dreams come true. Architects don’t build buildings alone. Directors don’t make films in a bedroom, etc. It’s ok if your dreams are single-person scale. But if they’re not, try to go for scale. Make it all possible! The gates aren’t easy to hop, but if you dream of building something big, at least try to find the gate.
Best of all he seemed to have been a great friend. I asked the algorithm with my heart to show me more tributes, videos of Oliver all night and day, and it obliged. And I see what a generous person he was to his collaborators and basically anyone who crossed his path. All the songs and videos mean that much more, that he seems to have treated people well in daily life.
He was a circus creature, like most of my heroes. He rode into the world on a gigantic kick scooter. And we’re lucky he used his powers to tell people to love themselves. I love myself more, having watched him love Oliver Tree.