What Do You Really Do?

An essay on creative labor, legitimacy, and the work that becomes real only through time.

---

Every so often, someone asks what I really do.

Not what do you do?

What do you really do?

The question usually arrives with a smile. I understand why. My work doesn't fit neatly into a title. It moves between music and art, logistics and relationships, creative projects and long conversations that may not produce anything visible for months.

For years, I tried to explain it.

I would describe the budgets behind songs, the planning behind collaborations, the emails and contracts and spreadsheets behind things that looked spontaneous from the outside.

I wanted people to understand that the work was real.

Early mornings. Late nights. Funding gaps. Language barriers. Fragile partnerships. Decisions made without any guarantee they would lead somewhere.

There was always something I could point to as evidence.

Eventually, I stopped. I realized I had been trying to make the work understandable before allowing it to be valid.

What I do involves business, although not always the kind that fits neatly into conventional frameworks. There are budgets and deadlines and deliverables. But there is also trust. Attention. Time. The willingness to keep showing up before there is much evidence that showing up will matter.

Much of creative work happens there.

Voice of Maasai taught me this slowly. A recording session might begin with months of messages, introductions, transportation arrangements and conversations across languages. A song might take years to find an audience. A relationship might matter long before it produces anything that can be measured.

From the outside, very little may appear to be happening. From inside the work, everything is.

I used to think legitimacy arrived when other people could recognize what I was building. A title helped. A finished project helped. Money certainly helped.

Now I think differently.

Some work becomes real long before anyone knows what to call it. It becomes real because someone keeps returning to it. Because people begin trusting one another. Because an idea slowly acquires enough weight to stand without being constantly held up.

So when someone asks what I really do, I don't work very hard to explain it anymore.

I make things.

I build relationships around them.

And I stay long enough for the work to take shape.