With aviators perched on her nose, Pagel saunters over and poses on a patch of grass, 15 minutes late and haphazardly double-parked in the Health Center lot. She is similarly double-parked in her life. As the winner of Battle of the Bands last spring and opening Shabang on Cuesta Ridge, Pagel, is (was) a busy gal.
After an era of creating intently (two quarters) and intermingling personal events and alluringly good mental health inspiring her writing, sh*t hit the fan. Writing became painful… familiar. We sit across from each other, the SLO luminary straining her neck aiming for my inline headphone mic that’s not quite long enough to reach her comfortably across the grass. Her inflection drowns out shrieks of Robert Plant from the climbing wall.
“Not that I meant to, but I was just enjoying the writing process so much and then I felt like I wrote everything that I needed to say. Mostly maybe because I am doing well, mentally?” she laughed. Her teeth complemented her face like jewelry.
Like most songwriters, Pagel has the gist or intention of a song in her mind in silhouette, often becoming stuck flushing out exactly how she pictured it.
She feels this is mostly a causation from the “same old same old” approach to writing the uniform way she always has, suggesting reason for change.
“I feel like sometimes you have to change around your methods, not change around your ideas.”
Writing lead and frontman for an all-male rock band can be a tricky maze to navigate. The pressure to create something for the entire group rather than for herself with pressure to spin songs in a new way every time has her constantly wanting to reform and recreate.
“I don’t want to be the same always.”
Pagel fears writing inside the box, willing to sacrifice structure and safety for failure — and the potential to create something greater. She advocated for taking a step back and listening to other artists while not being fearful to experiment and potentially fail.
“I think that one thing I’ve gotten comfortable with is failing. I have so many failed attempts at songs.”
For Pagel this is brutal. “It’s like the last thing you want to do is put yourself in a situation where you’re going to fail. But I think that being uncomfortable is something that people don’t do enough.”
Artists like myself and Pagel become so encapsulated by the outcomes of writing that we can’t even pick up the pen, or when we do it is heavy, making a mess of the page. For Pagel, the process is something that’s meant to be repetitive, but too repetitive eventually the ink won’t flow.
Creating with expectation is a danger zone. A small man in a construction vest waves furiously as others like Pagel and I fly full speed, plummeting off the tracks into immidietism valley.
A mentor of sorts told me a while back to stop writing with “my head but with my heart” and when I was worried about the timing of releasing tracks he spewed god-sent tongues: “lyrics don’t go out of style, production does.”
We transition to the concept of thinking “too hard” vs. simply doing. Laying waste to the disillusionment that thinking harder may spin a better tune. Pagel, sharing her writing time turns overthought and overturned, “if I’m sitting down like, ‘I have to write a new song for my band’” she says robotically.
Pagel and I stumble upon the alarming consensus and equally as jarring realization, breaking bread over the importance of authenticity. The fragility of authenticity falling when pressure is around, pressure to record, succeed or impress.
“It’s not going to be as authentic if you’re like sitting down with a certain goal you have to do. I think for some artists they like that structure, but I think for a lot of people it just kind of creates stress.”
Sacrificing personal writing for band practice, she’s willing to be flexible for the music. She’d rather have a successful show than regret not practicing enough.
Pagel, spread and scooped into an overcooked batch of college hobbies, responsibilities and social events baking at high heat, sports a double life (without the blonde wig). After Shabang, the songstress left her guitar to the corners of her room for weeks at a time, taking the space she needed to live life. The experience, stressful, but well rewarding. Sometimes space and time (like most) is what heals but hurts like hell.
“I think, I think I’ve had a lot more like complexities with—” she stops her thought, “um sorry, I just saw my ex-boyfriend walk by.”
Taken aback by her sighting, Pagel slides her sunglasses up her temples and through her Winehouse-adjacent ringlets (clearly he had been an inspiration for her songwriting).
Pagel continues shaking her head:
“Now I almost like write songs about how I’ve changed and that’s really cool too. So, there’s always something to write about.”
Read the companion free flowing, creative narrative writer’s block poem here.
This story originally appeared in the Burnout Issue of The Peak. View the full issue here or more stories on our page.