“BIG POEM”
MARCH 2026
Lovelies,
Every once in a while, life demands you stop creating poems and start creating it.
I mean this:
You're writing a poem. You're in deep. It's vexing you. It's delighting you. You're dizzy but holding on, at the very least to a pencil.
It's all that's real, and in that realer-than-real poem way.
(What are poems but life experiences distilled to the hyper-real?)
And then you get a call.
LIFE calling. The normal-level-of-real version.
And LIFE would like to take its turn at vexing and delighting you. Life would like to make you dizzy with loss or love or failure or crossroads and no, a pencil won't help.
What a mess.
And yet.
I've come to understand creativity is uncertainty training. A creative project is 1,000 questions you don't yet know the answers to. Also a creative project 999 questions you don't yet know the QUESTIONS to, since the questions only get parceled one per creative step.
I think at this point I've created so much it's altered my disposition: now when life presents me with uncertainty, I end up treating it like just another poem.
Life calls and I think, that's a Big Poem.
The difference, though, is that I cannot (for the life of me) sit down to work on it. The Big Poem is too bright. It's like the sun. Even as I feel its warmth on my skin, even as I sense it raising the seeds to sustain my next chapter, I cannot look directly at it.
And so I turn all the way away. I return to my little poems. I give myself permission to do this.
And I trust that between lines three and four of mussy villanelle, my mind slips upon something it direly needs.
With all my love,
Rachel
I'm so proud to share the new Adam Alviso EP, Dear Myself.
Adam and I recorded this album a year ago. And because then 2025 required my attentions toward other projects, I didn't listen for about a year. Imagine my joy when last week my freshest of ears discovered it's... GREAT!
I was also flooded with the joyful memories of working with Adam. He's so talented, so soulful, and the trust he showed me meant I did my best work.
I want you to hear every one of these pop-fabulous songs, but most especially the poignant Where We Left Off (mandolin!), the so-fun Man's Dream (bouquet of hooks!), and the epic Dear Myself (so poignant).
I trust you've missed my co-conspirators: Jason Slota (all the hits in all the pockets), James DePrato (place your bets of how many sounds can he get out of a single guitar), Daniel Fabricant (keeping it deeply real), Max Cowan (keyboard fascinations), Shaina Evoniuk (gorgeous string arrangement), Erik Jekabson (BRASS!), and Cory Wright (REEDS!).
I produced, co-wrote, arranged the horns, and did a little singing. Yes, that is me impersonating Stevie Nicks on Told Me.
I couldn't be happier to introduce phenomenal young artist, Frankie Rae. Frankie stole my heart the moment I met her... when she was but fourteen! We spent a couple years honing her love-drenched songs and now here they are, in the form of an extraordinary debut EP.
Come for her voice, stay for her depth. Check out especially the haunted Grieving, the slow-but-hot-burn Here's to Hoping, and the sweet as sugar unbreaking.
It was such a joy to work with Frankie from start (picking melodies on my upright piano RIP) to finish (pushing the limits of how many vocals you can layer on a single track).
I am for one so excited to hear whatever she's writing next.
Again, the usual suspects: Jason Slota (drums), James DePrato (guitar), Daniel Fabricant (bass), and Max Cowan (keyboards).
I produced, co-wrote, and played piano.
“(DIS)AGREEABLE”
FEBRUARY 2026
Lovelies,
Art requires a level of conviction I find unsettling.
In a Muzi meeting everyone shares an opposite opinion — and I have to somehow trust myself that I have a clear vision. On a call with a co-writer I'm told the song was finished two edits ago — and I have to somehow trust myself that until my nervous system settles, something isn't right.
I've been thinking about this ever since I had the gorgeous opportunity to interview Muzi Featured Artist, author and personality psychologist William Todd Shultz. Todd's book, The Mind of the Artist, is a how-could-you-know-that accurate exploration of "artist personality." I'd remembered the main point: artists are preturnaturally high in "openness." But I'd forgotten a searing sub-point: artists tend to score low in agreeableness.
As Todd put it to me, "To be creative you need to be a bit — or more than a bit — not nice."
Because art is inherently subversive. Because art reveals more than is willingly shown.
Because art requires conviction, even, often, in the face of dissension.
So of course I'm stressed. I'm agreeable! Not HOPELESSLY agreeable. I can stutter an occasional "no." But agreeable ENOUGH that it renders my artist life a bumper car match between wanting to please and wanting to do right by the work.
These days I 95% choose doing right by the work. And I'd say I suffer 20% less for it. Clear progress as an artist if not a liked human.
At this point I'm not sure I have less agreeable in me. I think we've arrived. But I am finding my new awareness helpful. I'm telling myself, conviction is some of the most uncomfortable and important work I do.
Seditiously if reluctantly yours,
Rachel
Speaking of my interview with William Todd Shultz, please enjoy it here! And while you're at it, subscribe to the new Muzi YouTube channel, where I'm posting creativity interviews and insights on the regular.
“FOLLOWING”
JANUARY 2026
Lovelies,
I asked very little of myself the last weeks of 2025.
I wanted to give my mind the space to process the year. To inventory my current values and goals. To vision out my important moves for 2026.
Ok, so yeah, now that I mention it, I asked a whole lot of myself the last weeks of 2025.
What I discovered was this. 2025 was an immersion in details: Six part vocal arrangements for three minute pop songs. The most evocative questions for an artist interview. The most rhythmic word order for a sentence in an article.
App design and glitches and keywords and video edits.
2025 had me using my mind like a tool, hammering wherever I needed results.
To ease up on this felt divine. I let my mind wander down back alleys and overgrown paths and I followed behind, skeptically, bemusedly, taking notes.
A lot of the notes are bizarre.
But who am I to judge? In all my 2025 close-focused effort I made mistakes. Granted, many were just my year's quota of mistakes. But others were clearly born of ALL THE EFFORT.
So now here we are, January 14th. As you might have guessed, I have not achieved my intended clarity. If anything I've scared up more fuzzy questions.
But I'm heartened. In my stepping back I stumbled on something important. I remember that this is actually how my mind works best. When I effort half-way. When I let her lead our impossible tango.
And the best part? I'm now excited to think my way through 2026.
Off we go.
Love,
Rachel
2026 has arrived with a personality and it is INSPIRED. I woke up on January 5th inexplicably obsessed with a song I had started then forgotten three years ago... and spent the next two days finishing it. I am saying yes to production gigs and already starting their song and sound-scaping. And I had the great pleasure of accompanying Mira Multari's live versions of her songs, Freeze and Everything Has Changed at 25th Street Studios this week. The studio EP drops — along with these shining extras — soon, and I can't wait for you to hear it.