“ELSEWHERE”

NOVEMBER 2024

Lovelies,

At 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.

I feel the delight of imagining people's reactions; I feel the dread of imagining people's reactions.

I feel immortal potential reduced to a single mortal question: What the heck did I make?!

But this release also feels WHOLLY DIFFERENT.

Never have I released something so devoted to service. Whether or not this app helps anybody (I hope it does!), I chose every word, every function, every image with the winds of service beneath my wings.

Never have I released something that required so much of me. I don't mean effort. You know I leave it on the field every time I create. I do mean this app required me to use every aspect of myself. Even aspects of myself that didn't yet exist. I had to develop a discerning eye. I had to develop a business savvy. I had to develop the courage to insist on my vision.

Never have I released something unfinished. You release an album and hope to god you made good choices. But an app? You KNOW you didn't! Sharing Muzi is but step two of infinity in its becoming. And now is the interesting part where we get feedback -- and iterate.

I really hope you'll give it a try!

And tell me what you think so I can make it better 💓

With love,

Rachel

DOWNLOAD MUZI!

(But do make sure to download on your PHONE! She's a mobile app y'all!)

Muzi Launch Party!!

At the Muzi launch party I mentioned I was an introvert a grand total of too many times. 

But surrounded by friends, colleagues, and artists I've coached, I was so submerged in community I couldn't help but grasp at a sense of myself in this misting way.

So there I was, an introvert in love with her community, pulling it together just barely enough to present on what she'd made in deep service to her community.

It was a night for the ages and I shall not soon forget it!

Special shout out to Jay Clemens, teacher of bizness words, co-founder of pure-hearted dreams, and partner in song and other technologies. 

Deep thanks to 25th Street Recording for hosting us, Karishma Kumar and Collin Purdue for impossible seamlessness, Philip Gelb for converting 49 more people to veganism, and Sierra Alyse for destroying us in the length of two songs.

Thanks, too, to you who were there with me, and even more, to you who will be there with me in the missions and reflections and meditations of this app.

Photographs by the exceptional Cherlyn Wagner.

“INVITATION TO A PAUSE”

january 2025

Lovelies,

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 is ricocheting between Apple App Store and Developer as they check every box, including nonexistent boxes, for registration issues. I've bided my time, but it comes down to this: IT IS GETTING FAR TOO LATE INTO JANUARY FOR ME TO BE WISHING YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So here you go: A Newsletter about something much less comfortable than a new app.

A newsletter about PAUSE. 

My first couple weeks of January were like my last twelve of 2024... an unfathomable race slash juggling act to finish the app. I recorded fourteen creativity meditations on such topics as creative disappointment, anchoring, and forging new creativity relationships; I created an image for every assignment from beautiful original sketches; I began working with a social media consultant on a strategy for vlogging and memes. That's a few of about twenty immense and interesting things I did.

And it all culminated in a BIG PARTY!

Then... pause. As mentioned, the app did NOT launch. And as not mentioned, I got a flu that had me literally in bed for eight days. Full disclosure, I am still more in bed than not, including at this very moment!

I didn't welcome the pause, but whoa the pause welcomed me with the intensity of NO ALTERNATIVE. To go from 100mph to 0mph was... FASCINATING. Maybe the only thing more fascinating than the work I'd been doing.

First: How quickly the race is over, how easily the balls fall to the ground. Second: Void. Third: Soft re-emergence of emotion (Oh, THAT'S how I feel?). Fourth: Recalibration (bridging the distance between my values and choices). Fifth: Resolution (I'm going to have to do the rest of the year differently). 

January 24th: Happy New Year! 

May all of us do it sustainably.

All my love,

Rachel

“I MADE AN APP”

DECEMBER 2024

Lovelies,

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. 

Well, it's the moment you didn't know to wait for!

I made an.... APP!!

Um, what? 

That's right, for the past TWO years, alongside (and underneath and on top of and between and through) my music, I have been making an APP.

Muzi

Backing up...

You know I'm obsessed with creativity.

Creativity is top-shelf human experience: It's communion with yourself. It's your irreplicable voice. It's alchemizing the ether into the tangible. It's the history of beauty. It's giving the world what only you can give. It's spiritual practice. It's intimacy with others.

It's my favorite part of everyone. 

I love being creative. I love helping other people be creative.

I REALLY WANT YOU TO BE CREATIVE!

Muzi is this... My love song to the creativity in all of us.

It's a PERSONALIZED GUIDE to help you explore, develop, and expand your creativity.

It's the work I do with songwriters -- the attuning, the coaxing, the supporting, the challenging, the celebrating -- in your pocket. A creativity coach available at all hours, and at every step of your singular creative journey. 

What I love most about Muzi is that it's not ME. I mean it is me. If ever there was an extension of my mind. But it's not me in the sense of being a book of my experiences. Rather it's YOU. It helps you discover YOU, so you can finally give your creativity everything it needs to thrive. 

I'll say more about it in the months to come, but know this: We're releasing it in January!

And it will contain specific tools to help you vision the most creative year of your life.

For now, the action items are just this:

LET ME KNOW if you want to receive MUZINGS -- the Muzi Newsletter wherein I will offer creativity thoughts, approaches, and exercises.

BE THE FIRST to follow our BRAND NEW INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT -- wherein I will offer content on all nature of creativity experience -- profound to absurd, serious to deadly playful.

I am truly so excited to share this with you.

All my love,

Rachel