We recently connected with Adrián Duran-Salcedo and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Adrián, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Competition— and that ain’t no competition with other people, its the competition with myself. I have been trying to master my own mind during the past few years, shit has been hard…a lot of mental battles that have left me in moments of not knowing how i will come out on the other side. As raw as I can be in the moment, its amazing how much i have prevailed during my deep moments of disconnection from the rest world (shoutout my therapists) to gather everything and start working on my craft. That’s my recipe of survival on a day to day basis, being creative, whether it’s films or music. I remember the days I would grab the family laptop and go to my room to record music on GarageBand, as I was trying to improve my sound quality my brother and dad suggested that i use a cardboard box to isolate my vocals, I been running up DIY’s since birth and thats on god.
Nah but in all seriousness, during those moments of hitting record my mind would expand into different levels of power, I felt power when i spoke my lyrics into existence, my voice as an artist grew bigger by each breath I took, that was about 6-7 years ago.
In these last two years, i fell out of love with everything. I’ve had a bunch of people asking me, “Man, when you gonna drop another song?” or ” You still making movies”. My response is always “just wait on it”…knowing damn well i only had a couple songs to my name and unfinished film scripts that haven’t seen the light of day. Yet, I remind myself that this shit ain’t meant to be easy, I could sit here and feed you all the bullshit projects I have thought about and sell them to you. But i rather tell you i haven’t found my purpose and my true intentions with my craft just yet. I think that’s beautiful. Because you and me are about to witness how i build myself from the ground up to fall into my purpose. That’s art.
The one thing i can tell you is that I know my art has something, i know it means something and i know people feel the same. But its now up to me to find how to perfectly connect all points to build a box (Much like the cardboard box i would use to record music), how to perfectly fold it from the inside and outside to build anything of my creation. So, I’m about to show you how we find purpose from nothing to something. and that’s no bullshit.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
One of my biggest focus while creating art is finding the connection between myself and the viewer/listener. To me that is the most important thing I can do as the creator of a film or song. Yet, how do I build that connection? How do I make my viewers seen? Just a couple days ago I released my first song on Apple Music and Spotify, I was shitting myself. Around 1 am after the song was on streaming platforms I had my homie Dennis expressing how much he loved the song and started asking questions about the lyrics. At one point during the conversation I expressed how as a person I decided to put myself out in the world with this single and he replied with ” People do not want to be alone, they want a connection….that is why they turn to music, to build a connection with the artist”. In that moment I realized that I did make a connection.There was purpose in that conversation. Building a connection with someone who has lived through what I talked about in my songs/films is life changing. Nowadays the world has become such a heavy place to digest alone, sometimes people cannot find the right words to express how they feel about life, I would like to think that my music allows people to reflect and breath.
As mentioned before I recently released my new single on Apple Music & Spotify, titled: Rumination. My lyrics are not words thrown together to make it sound cool for the normal listeners, my lyrics are carefully thought out passages that make listeners reflect and see a different POV on life. This song talks about my thoughts when I hyper focus on my anxiety and fears. It took me months just to build up the confidence to release it, because there is a lot of emotion bleed on this record and I feared no one would understand it and would not think my music was worth a listen. But multiple of my friends gave me the courage to release it because they believed in me and the track. So to those people (Y’all know who you are) Thank you! I could have not do it without your support.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three qualities to always carry with you are: learn how to fail, learn how to take criticism and surround yourself with people who will help you learn anything and everything.
By learning those three qualities you will see how your perception and attitude will change for the better. Do not get me wrong, shit ain’t easy but taking small step into implementing this in your day to day life will translate to anything you do.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
Man… my biggest challenge now is digging deep into myself to pull out emotions to write another song following up my new single. That shit is hard, I have to break everything down once again to rebuild it back up. I been trying to write lyrics but at the moment the right words are not flowing onto the page, and thats the writing process, sometimes I can write a whole verse in 10 minutes and other times It takes me 10 days to write one verse. I still need to find my groove in how to write a song and record it properly. I been doing this since grade 9 but I still find myself learning new things every time I sit down at my computer to compose anything. The new thing I been noticing that has been helping me focus more, is treating my music like a meditation, making sure I’m breathing and my mind is clear while I focus on one thing. It has helped me out majorly! Whenever that new song comes out….which is soon, y’all will see why I take my time with my music.
– MAADOG.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://untd.io/r/AvL8Rd5YmsVn
- Instagram: Adrian_durana
- Other: Go stream my new single!!!
Image Credits
Maya Sullivan
Kyle Lee-Savage
Paul Ruzira
Connor Parsons
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
