Christian French continues his successful year with a new EP, “good things take time.” His latest release focuses on his growth as a person and as a musician. During a short but meaningful interview, French shares more details about his journey to becoming the best version of himself, showing us the trials and errors.
“make or break up” centers around your own experience with miscommunication and misunderstanding in a relationship. As you learned to make a relationship work, what are some takeaway you’ve had from it?
I learned that communication and honesty are the most important things. There were times when I wasn’t seeing where she was coming from, and she wasn’t seeing where I was coming from, so we both felt that the other was at fault. It wasn’t until we gave each other some time to calm down so we could hear each other out before we came to an understanding and were able to move past it. In the end, we decided that we’d always be transparent with each other no matter how bad it hurt because honesty is synonymous with love and respect in a relationship – it’s the only way to continue to grow and can make or break any relationship.
Being able to make a compromise is very important in any type of relationship. For you, how do you know you should compromise? And, when is it okay not to do it?
Like any good relationship, it takes time to truly understand your partner. It’s so important to express what’s on your mind and talk through problems with your significant other so that both sides can continue to grow rather than fizzle out with misunderstanding. For me, it’s all about this open communication. If you don’t communicate your feelings and frustrations, then that little bit of tension that you feel can snowball into a whole fury of emotions that can come out later in ways that you don’t mean. Being transparent allows for the other person in the relationship to understand why you feel a certain way, and gives them room to grow and correct their mistakes. If things don’t change and you’re having the same conversations over and over and over and there’s no progress, then the tension will build and eventually break. So you have to remind yourself of the good times and when there was love in the relationship and if you can see that again in the future with this person, or it’s past the point of repair.
In “good things take time”, the following line “It’s ok, it’s all going to work out one day” reminds us that the bad times won’t last forever. How has being patient helped your self-growth?
It’s allowed for me to keep pushing forward in growing as a person and an artist even when it feels like I’m wasting my time. Sometimes it’s really hard to dedicate time to self-growth because it’s a slow process, and we live in such a fast-paced society that wants instant gratification. Allowing myself to fail over and over again has shown me what works for me and what doesn’t, and in turn, has allowed me to learn from it and grow.
Self-growth is not always linear. There are good days and bad days. Of course, it can be hard to keep going. What has kept you motivated to continue working yourself and following through with your goals?
A vision of where I want to be – I know what I’m capable of, and although I might not be there right now, I know that it’s something that is very possible to achieve if I keep working for it. Giving myself the time to sort of meditate on these future goals has given me the energy to keep working even when i really don’t want to.
People are utilizing quarantine in different ways. How have you used this time? And, how have you been coping with the pandemic?
Quarantine has been a pretty essential down-time for me to learn and try new things. I’ve gotten to spend more time alone than I have in a few years, and it’s allowed me to really dive into what I want to say without distractions. One of my 2020 goals was to learn how to play guitar, so I’ve spent a lot of time learning songs and new chords to get more acclimated with the guitar, and with that, I wrote a grip of guitar-based songs. While I was at home in Indiana, I had the bare-minimum setup for a music studio, and have been producing out my own ideas as well. I’m really proud of how I’ve spent my time during quarantine and it has opened my eyes a lot as to what puts me in the best headspace to write music.