Creativity Quote by Jules Shear

The charm here is how casually Jules Shear compresses an origin story into two small moves: self-reliance, then difference. “I taught myself” is the classic musician flex, but it’s also a quiet declaration of necessity. It hints at the pre-YouTube era reality: no infinite tutorials, no algorithmic encouragement, just obsessive repetition and whatever scraps of instruction you could steal from records, friends, or sheer trial-and-error. Thirteen is doing a lot of work, too. It’s old enough to imply intention, young enough to suggest hunger - the age when a bedroom becomes a studio and awkwardness gets converted into craft.

Then comes the tag: “I’m a lefty.” On paper it’s trivia; culturally it’s a signal. Left-handedness in guitar mythology carries a whiff of outsider status (Hendrix, McCartney), but Shear’s delivery reads less like legend-building and more like an unforced explanation for why his path had to be self-made. Left-handed players often deal with scarcity - fewer suitable instruments, fewer teachers who can mirror techniques, more pressure to adapt. The subtext is that learning wasn’t just personal choice; it was structural friction.

The intent feels modest, almost throwaway, which is precisely why it works. Shear isn’t selling a tortured-genius narrative. He’s sketching the kind of practical, early stubbornness that actually produces working musicians: learn the hard way, embrace the mismatch, keep going.