What Music Means to Me

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

Finishing four albums at once means my creative life is frenetic bliss. This week was: sending Mira Multari eighteen voice memos of background vocal parts to learn for her final vocal session; practicing piano parts for two Frankie Bengtson songs; reviewing Reto Peter's first mix of the David Hobbes EP — and realizing we'd better re-sing one song and put different piano on another; and starting lead vocals with poetess Kristin Hall. I didn't anticipate producing so much this year and I am beyond happy it worked out this way. 

Do you long for a more easeful and attuned relationship to creativity? Take my thirty question Creativity Quiz to discover the state of your five key creativity resources: inspiration, courage, discipline, rest, and connection.

And then send me your Spark!