“my creative spirit is first and foremost my lifelong playmate and ally, not just a dancing monkey there for the enjoyment of others”

photo credit: Joel Gale @joelgaleimaging

What’s your name, what is your art form and how long you've been doing it for.

Anna Mērnieks-Duffield. I’ve been playing shows and releasing music since I was 15.

What’s something that you've created that you are proud of or that you consider your biggest accomplishment.

Part of me always feels like my most recent work is my biggest accomplishment - it always represents growth of some significance. But what comes to mind as something I’m most proud of is my band Beams’ third album, Ego Death. I had just come through a ‘dark night of the soul’. I was newly committed to owning my role as band leader, and with everyone’s bravery and goodwill, I led us into a new sonic world. After we finished recording, the pandemic hit, so we couldn’t release the album as we’d done in the past. Rather than freak out, we used the opportunity to take our time with the release, film a concert documentary instead of touring, and strengthen relationships with our community through social media. I’m so proud of how we worked through all of that as a team, and the musical arc of the album is adventurous and exciting.

How do you access your creativity? Tell us a bit about your process.

I access my creative process by “digging” (or “scrabbling around”) - when I first started writing songs, my friend Beej told me “you have to dig through the dirt to get to the gold”: don’t stop if the first thing that you play isn’t the most amazing thing ever - keep going and write the next song. My process is usually to noodle on the guitar and/or write stream-of-consciousness poetry until I come across an idea that hooks me.

Do you experiment or take risks in your creative practice?

Now that I’ve written a handful of albums, I’m starting to take a bit more of a meta approach. On my most recent project, The Cross Sea, I built the album from a few old songs and then added a few more, experimenting stylistically in areas where I felt like the album needed more of a certain vibe. That whole project is a bit of a creative risk, investing energy into something new when my resources are already low for my existing projects, but I felt like I needed to give myself that space for experimentation. After exploring several sides of myself in different bands over the years, I felt the process of uniting them was a necessary ceremony before entering the cocoon of new motherhood. Our first single, “The Me that Waits”, is actually about the creative risk of undertaking the project itself.

At what stage of the creative process do you notice your inner critic appears or is the loudest?

My inner critic is very loud at two stages - when we’re arranging parts with the group, and during publishing. If the group has trouble finding the arrangement, I often blame myself for not writing a good enough song or being a good enough leader. Then my inner critic gets loud again when we release the music. Whenever there’s disappointment in the band over unmet expectations, I internalize it and blame myself for having messed up somewhere between writing and release.

What type of things does your inner critic say to you? What’s the meanest thing your inner critic has ever said to you? How does that affect you in your creative Journey?

My inner critic is endlessly creative with its insults. It tells me I’m too eccentric, but also too vanilla. It tells me that people don’t have the time or desire to listen to my music, so why bother? It chastizes me for being a poor leader, for failing to create a positive feeling within the band. It complains that everything is too hard, my skills and energy are inadequate, I can’t bear the financial load, no one wants to hear it all anyway, it’s a silly pursuit and I should just stop and focus on improving my stability. As you can probably imagine, that whole line of thinking really dampens my creative energy. I’ve persisted by just putting one foot in front of the other and taking small steps for my art each day. It helps that I work in groups, because when I want to quit, there are always people around me who keep me accountable.

photo credit: David Bastedo @david_bastedo

What coping mechanisms tools or techniques do you turn to, to help you overcome your inner critic? What are some unhealthy/ unhelpful habits that you turn to? What are some healthy or supportive tools that you have discovered?

Well, I definitely spend a fair amount of time moping, hiding, and entertaining the voices that shut me down. But at some point, I get around to journaling and possibly (a bit less likely) telling someone how I feel so that they can help me reality check. On the topic of reality checking, years ago, my therapist shared with me the “four fear questions”. I can’t remember who to attribute them to, but they’re these:

What am I afraid of?
Can I be 100% sure that it’s true?
What’s the worst thing that would happen if this fear did come true?
Who would I be without this thought?

For whatever reason, these prompts are amazingly helpful for me.

It also helps me to just sit down and create something, even if my inner critic is still yelling, because my creative spirit is first and foremost my lifelong playmate and ally, not just a dancing monkey there for the enjoyment of others (though it’s fun when it works out).

Do dreams play a role in your creativity? Do you keep track of your dreams and have you ever had a dream that impacted your life? Is there a dream or dream image that you can share?

My waking dreams or visions definitely play a role in my creativity. I usually get to experience these when I’m in a state of meditative openness, like during therapy, or your yoga classes! The cover of Beams’ Requiem for a Planet is a vision I had during camel pose of a stag bursting from my chest. Or the second single from The Cross Sea, “Just Like Adrianne,” has a line that references a cosmic weaver that I met on a deep journey to the caves within. I feel like she’s the calm, ancient wisdom in the eye of the storm of my life, and finding out that she lives there was life-shifting in a subtle but profound way.

What are you working on now, how can people find you,. and anything else you'd like to share?

My own instagram page @existomatic is the hub for anything I’ve got going on. Right now The Cross Sea album is scheduled for release in February with a release show on February 20th! Ace of Wands has an album finished that’s coming out in the spring, preceded by a couple of singles. Beams has an album recorded which we are going to take our time with and hopefully release late next year or 2027 - there’s no way I’d have the energy for all of it in 2026!

@TheCrossSea - thecrosssea.bandcamp.com

@BeamsTheBand - beamstheband.com

@AceOfWandsBand - aceofwandsband.com

Photo creds:

Joel Gale @joelgaleimaging - Anna in red w/ mic, Anna & Deer, Anna playing guitar by lamp

David Bastedo @david_bastedo - B&W Anna & lee

Unknown friends - red vid of AOW rocking, vid of Beams at the hideout in Chicago

Heather Mazhar @prettypleases - vid of me in the rehearsal space with francis, vid of me recording with the acoustic guitar

Band leader/song writer Anna Mernieks digs in the dirt to find creative Gold.