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.
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.
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:
Read MoreThere 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.
This month I took my songwriting to Jamaica.
I was thrilled to reconnect with a wonderful Jamaican artist I've collaborated with for years. I could only imagine what a few more days together would reveal.
There are moments that stay with us forever.
In some cases it's clear why. Something massive took place.
But sometimes it's like, what? THAT moment? I barely noticed it WHILE it was happening!
I've been on autopilot lately.
By lately I mean for a year.
I all but cry to disclose this. I value the examined life. The inhabited life. The RADICALLY LIVED life.
For nineteen years my creative life consisted of writing, recording, and performing original songs.
Then 2020 brought a deluge of fantastic and fantastical suggestions to do other things. Would I produce songwriters? Sure! I'd produce over a hundred songs in the first three years. Would I write for other artists? Sure! And my first placement would be for Journey. Would I build a creativity app? Sure! And that situation went live mere months ago.
There are times it's dangerous to ask for feedback. Yes, we're banging our heads against the walls of a project and would love nothing more than to be helped. But really we're passing through a Vulnerable Moment. Any thoughts other than our own would confuse us, if not derail us altogether.
Read MoreMy summer of 2024 was creatively charmed. I had so much to do -- songs to write, albums to produce, most notably an app to complete. And I was doing it! I walked blossoming streets and felt my ideas crystallize. I approached my piano and notes delighted to meet me.
Read MoreA few years ago I didn't think much about these Newsletters. If anything, I dreaded them a little: the muscled extroversion, the embarrassed self-promotion. I sent them as rarely as possible -- whenever there was a project it would be irresponsible not to mention.
Read MoreAt long, app-store-review-process last, MUZI IS LIVE!
For those who missed last month's newsletter, the gist: I spent the last two years making Muzi, an app that helps you access greater creativity.
There are ways this release feels familiar:
I feel the squirmy transition from creative cocoon to public airing.
This was GOING to be a newsletter about my new app launch.
"Hey everyone my new app launched," etc., etc.
I even wrote the newsletter!
But then, BEHOLD, my new app DIDN'T LAUNCH!!
It's been a great year of producing albums, writing songs, and coaching songwriters.
And there's something else that's been going on.
I've alluded to this "something else" numerous times. You could almost say I've teased it. But it's been a teasing so unfocused, so opaque, that I doubt you even noticed.
I fell in love with liminality on a bus headed to southern Costa Rica.
I was eighteen, my memory and the calendar inform me.
But the point was I was ageless. Also history-less. Persona-less. It was as though between departure and destination a crack formed and I fell through. I watched a fiery sunset through a dusty bus window and felt, in the absence of everything I was meant to be, who I was.
After the fire on 7/30 I had no interest in home.
I didn't want to look at new places. I didn't want to so much as look at listings. Peace was promising myself a year without an address -- traveling, visiting friends, everywhere and nowhere.
It was as if I'd just gotten out of a relationship and wasn't ready to date again.
I haven't felt like creating this month.
Before the fire, I was on fire. I mean creatively I was on fire. I mean before the fire, I was creating a lot.
And thanks goodness I was! I'm in the midst of an immense project. One that has a TIMELINE. One that has a rapidly approaching alleged FINISH LINE. Before the fire, I kept saying: I don't know how I'm possibly creating this much, but we NEED me to be creating this much, so NOBODY MOVE until this thing is over!…
On Tuesday, 7/30, I woke pre-dawn to the feeling that something wasn't right. I told myself to go back to sleep but the feeling lingered so I could not. I wondered if maybe someone was breaking into our cars again and cajoled myself out of bed to look through the window -- and saw a strange orange glow. What happened next was undoubtedly fast but feels held in time. I put on the nearest clothes and headed toward the door, thought better and went to the bedside table for my phone, stepped toward the kitchen for my keys, but only when I saw flames moving toward me did I realize my apartment was on fire…
Read MoreI was ten when I used a blender for the first time. I was with my friend Danielle and we'd decided to make what I can only imagine were meant to be smoothies. We loaded fruit, closed it up, and pressed start. And I held the top down for dear life. A minute later we were done, and as I released my arm Danielle exclaimed, "Oh, did you think you had to hold it down? Your arm must be so tired!"…
Read MoreI just connected with a friend I hadn’t seen in five years.
I was under the impression it had been two years. (In general, I’m under the impression things happened two years ago. My brain does the absolute LEAST to differentiate history from present.)
I would have done well to check the calendar before we sat down. I was prepared for it to have been two years. Meaning, aware as I am that friends, in addition to being the most exquisite of human experiences, serve as TIME CAPSULES of who we were the exact last time we saw them, I was prepared to encounter Rachel-two-years-ago…
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