“GLOAMING BY GLOAMING”

DECEMBER 2025

Lovelies,

A few years ago I had a panic episode on the summer solstice.

I'd spent the prior two months watching sunsets. Every night — and I mean I didn't miss one — I made my way past "no admittance" signs to my building's battered roof. We know sunsets are beautiful but I believe they are also serious: scheduled loss, primordial neglect. Like going to work, I'd watch and locate feelings. I'm proud to say gloaming by gloaming I collected myself into an entirely more intact person.

But then the summer solstice came! And the thought of tomorrow being just 1.5 minutes shorter was, apparently, too much to bear.

I was, as they say, anxiously attached.

Well now here I am, in my least favorite month, having the inverse experience.

I'm digging this darkness. 

I suspect it's because the past year has been impossibly bright. I've said it before: your home catching fire and releasing an app are both, more than anything, SOCIAL experiences. And your devoted moody songstress is nothing if not wildly introverted. As far as I'm concerned this darkness can be as deep as it likes and take me with it. I'm expanding into the spaces between street lights. I'm curling up in shadows with my secrets. I'm doing my workdays not just in my bed but UNDER THE COVERS!

I'm also trusting this dark's fertility: I see the year I had, I see the 2026 I want to have, and I may even have the beginnings of a (bold-choice-requiring) plan. 

With light,

And all my love,

Rachel

If you could see inside my mind it would look like this. I've vocal-edited nineteen songs over the past sixty days — nine of which are POP songs meaning they have up to ten layers of background vocals. If that seems daunting, believe me it's a terribly satisfying journey from myopic (quieting mouth noises, aligning breaths) to grand (there is nothing like ten layers of pop vocals!!). Somehow all four of my current projects are finishing at once so prepare yourselves for a 2026 release deluge. 

Finally, YOU. It's been a heady joy to write you for another year. It means so much to me to distill experiences like making you (ill-advised) pipe-cleaners and glue presents, to be read by you, to read your thoughtful responses. 

Incidentally, if there's something you'd like me to write about, I probably already have, and you can find a backlog of introspection on my website blog page. 

And if I in fact haven't, let me know. I love a prompt.

“WHAT MUSIC MEANS TO ME”

NOVEMBER 2025

Lovelies,

All four years as an undergrad I’d once-per-week make my way across the Charles for a piano lesson with Berklee prof Jeff Covell. He’d meet me at the top of a little pull-shut elevator, fill the gaps of my classical study with seventh chords, and laugh heartily at what he felt to be the ridiculous education I was getting. 
 

One of his favorite jokes was this:
 

I told him I was taking a writing seminar, Creative Nonfiction. “So what’s that?” he asked. “What Music Means to Me by Rachel Efron?” 
 

Picture my cool cat jazz piano teacher slapping his leg in hysterical laughter. 
 

I told him, no, that wasn’t at all what I was writing. But he’d revisit his joke nonetheless: “Hey Rach, you figured out what music means to you?” 
 

Well I'm sitting down today to tell you, all these years later I think I have.
 

I suspect it’s because at the moment so many OTHER things mean so much to me: Serving artists via my homemade creativity app. Catalytic relationships. Not just physically but psychically moving into my new home. For the first part of my life music was singular connection amidst chronic alienation. I loved it like oxygen. Now I feel the beginnings of fluency with this business of being human. But STILL, I love it like oxygen!

I spend more and more hours of my day breathing, then create music and GASP, “I can finally BREATHE!” 
 

It’s the part of my day that makes me feel at the end of the day that I’ve lived a day. 
 

I’m glad I no longer make music like smoke signals for please anyone to witness something real in me.
 

But my god will it always and forever be the top of my inhale.
 

With all my love,
 

Rachel

“VOCABULARY OF A DREAM”

OCTOBER 2025

Lovelies,

There is a fascinating relationship between my songs and my dreams.

Let alone that songwriting and dreaming FEEL the same (subconscious thought surfacing on the wings of metaphor).

What I mean is these two worlds actually INTERACT with one another.

I've been noticing it more lately. I'll write a song and then a couple weeks later I'll have a dream that uses one of its metaphors. It's as if my dreams want so much communicate with me they choose metaphors they know I'll understand.

For example, I wrote a song with this lyric: "I know time adds water / But life gets thick and it won't rain." A couple weeks later I dreamed I was at a restaurant. I was terribly thirsty and drinking cups of water. But every cup of water had a chalky taste. My dinner companion told me that from now on, all the water I drink will carry a trace of ash. I woke up and understood: The passage of time will both dilute and bring loss.

I find this so intimate. So beautifully collaborative. That my songwriting and subconscious make contributions to a sort of dream vocabulary and then use it to speak to one another. 

But I've got to tell you something even witchier at play. I also from time to time write a song like a prophetic dream. Meaning, I write a song, and then later, sometimes years later, I'll live the experience of the song. Sometimes I'll live the ILL-ADVISED experience of the song, and it's like, wow, all the info I needed to choose well and I still did what I was going to do!

I don't actually think these songs are prophesy. I think, rather, that my songwriting has become so unabashedly attuned that I locate things in myself that may not yet even be realized — but are so true as to be inevitable.

So there you have it. This month's newsletter is none other than a highly nerdy account of my song/dream life!

If you write me back with your dreams I won't be mad at all.

All my love,

Rachel

This month has been everything I love about producing: connection to artists, synergy with my team, great songs, VARIETY. This week alone I held rehearsal for Kristin's Hall's gorgeous folk concept album, added guitars and lead vocals to four of Mira Multari's epic piano pop tracks, added sythns to five of Frankie Bengtson's infectious pop songs, and added organ to David Hobbes's heady pop EP. 

I am so happy I get to spend my days creating beauty.