We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yoshe Li. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yoshe below.
Yoshe, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
I feel that it is very easy for musicians or artists from other fields to have imposter syndrome because with social media nowadays, we often see others online with more followers, more views, and opportunities that lead them to greater places. But that doesn’t mean that we’re less worthy. We have to understand that the music industry can be very organic and each artist has their own unique career path that can’t be replicated. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and starting points, so I’d say don’t compare oneself too much to others. Also, adopting a growth mindset can be very helpful. I believe that abilities and skills can be developed through dedication and hard work, so if what I’m doing is making me happy, I just keep doing it and I try to seek fun out of daily practice! And don’t forget to celebrate all the little achievements!
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Hi everyone, my name is Yoshe. I’m a musician and a digital creator. A little bit of background about myself: I was born and raised in a small city called Yixing, located in southeast China. I moved to Canada for high school and later attended the University of Toronto to study Architecture and Cinema Studies. I stayed in Toronto throughout the pandemic, making music in my home studio and growing my social media platforms in China. Now, I’m in NYC and in my final year at Parsons School of Design, pursuing my MFA in design and technology, which I will complete this summer!
I feel that storytelling and self-expression are two major themes in all of my work. I’ve always had this fear of being misunderstood by people. Making music allows me to continually refine my lyrics, sound, vocals, and all the visual aspects until I believe it’s ready for release. When people hear and see a collection of my works, I think they can get a vibe of who I am and my set of values and beliefs with minimal misunderstanding. I also enjoy posting my music and art content on social media because the profile showcases me in this full image, and I love interacting with people on all these platforms. It really feels like a small community filled with music and art lovers.
The recent 1.5 years living in NYC have been really inspiring and fun! Studying at Parsons has also given me a set of new tools to create exciting projects in game design and new media art. I’m also very honored that my installation project ‘Poetic Fighting’ was featured in the 22nd Annual IA Current Exhibition, ‘All watched over by machines of loving grace’.
My most recent single, ‘Brandished,’ is now available on all streaming platforms. It will also be featured in a larger project that I’m currently working on!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think one thing I did that has been quite effective is that you really need to showcase your work to people! I used to write music on my own, keeping it in a folder on my laptop. When people asked me what I do, it wasn’t convincing to tell them that I make music. However, when I started posting my guitar-playing videos, music contents, and other production process videos on social media, and releasing my songs online, I didn’t need to explain myself anymore because people saw these contents somewhere. At least your friends and family know, which is very important!
The second thing would be to try to ignore certain opinions from other people. Everyone has a different background, and everyone has an opinion. I think it is a key lesson to learn to filter out opinions or advice that is not constructive to you or would have negative influences on your mental health. Imagine! Someone trolling on the internet might just want to seek fun by trolling people that day. It has nothing to do with your content!
The last thing I think has been impactful is to keep practicing. I’m a super forgetful person; if I practice a song today, I’ll likely forget it by tomorrow. But my muscles will remember whatever I have practiced, and keep doing it will just make these muscles stronger! (This advice is really for myself!)
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
Haha! That’s a very interesting question because I think about it all the time, but more like, ‘what if I died today? Is that okay? Do I look good enough today?’ And then I would literally go do my makeup and dress up a little for the day just because of that thought. So I think it’s good to think about questions like that once in a while because it pulls me out from the hectic schedules, and I can look at my life from another perspective and understand that I need to always be prepared for things. But if I knew the next decade was going to be my last, I would still be doing things that make me happy, just like what I’m doing right now, making lots of projects, and seeing if I could write 10 albums. AND I’ll probably pre-make an art project for my own funeral!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yosheli.me
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yosheliyosheli/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yosheliyosheliyosheli/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@YosheLi
Image Credits
Yuhan Pan Jiajie Lyu Eric Juu Fiona Hua Yoshe Li
