“ORACULAR”

AUGUST 2026

Lovelies,

I don't usually start newsletters with news. So on the nose! But there’s been so much these past weeks I can’t help myself. (Then I’m sure I’ll get into some impossibly inward something. So bear with and the Real Rachel Efron will be with you again shortly.)

This month's news:

• I produced basics for the highly anticipated new David Hobbes album over the course of an ecstatic three day lockout at 25th Street Studios. 

• I started pre-production on the debut EP of Toronto/DC duo Made from Nowhere.

• I implemented the most major Muzi update since we launched — a rework of not just language, not just function, but the entire curriculum.

• I devised a Muzi Practitioner Training Program. (I’ll be doing my small part to fill the world with creativity-savvy coaches and therapists.)

Finally, and this one escapes its bullet point, I write you from Delphi, Greece (yes, of the oracle @) where I just delivered a workshop on creativity and dreaming to a mostly European, entirely gorgeous group of scientists, therapists, writers, dancers, etc.

(It was great!)

And now, with so many compelling options, what I choose to explore with you is this: the plane ride here.

Because for a very long time I didn’t imagine I’d get on another plane, let alone embark on a twenty four hour doorstep to doorstep journey from Oakland, CA to Galaxidi, Greece.

For our purposes, a hurried summary: I got sick in college. Arrived at total compromise in my early thirties. Then shaded life’s exit for eight years. 

I'll say I’m now 80% well. (I first wrote 75% but I’m looking off my balcony at some gorgeous mountains so: optimism!) At this point in my life, the only thing that makes me feel actually scared is physical exertion. It’s what scares me about a three day lockout. It’s what scares me about relationships. It’s what scares me about eating dinner. Risk has always been and will always be my love language. But I’m wary of the immensity of my bravery: will I over-risk and slip back to a time I couldn’t walk down a flight of stairs, let alone board a flight to Greece?

I will this from my mind — yet it’s an imprint on my racing heart, a catch in my breath, a numbness in my feet.

But this morning I walked those feet to where an oracle used to wail riddles to men about whether they should go to war.

And it was foretold: my most risky battles are behind me.

With love,

Here I am with my brothers turning voice memo demos into sick jams. And speaking of risk, I took a few, which I itemized in last month’s newsletter, and I’m that special post-session mix of elated and relieved to tell you they went great. Even: I anticipate my three biggest risks (ahem, Imagine Dragons, ahem, fast bluegrass, ahem tribal drums) will be the album’s hits.

Are you interested in creative health? 

Next month I begin the pilot of my Muzi Practitioner Training Program. It involves four two hour sessions, private consultation with me, and access to the complete Muzi library. I’m especially interested in working with coaches, therapists, teachers — people who are actively serving other people. That said, I am open to discussing options with anyone who is interested. The Program will ultimately cost $1200 but for these hand-selected founding Muzi practitioners we’re charging just $200 — and ask only that you share feedback with us about how the methodology serves your work for the next year. 

Any interest at all, reach out!

For the Muzi-curious, your Courage Mission if you choose to accept it:

Gold

Courage asks us to address painful experiences from our past: To acknowledge creative losses. To integrate creative disappointments. To dismantle harmful mythologies.

All of this is important. Every time we resolve hardship, we are freer.

But our pasts are more than a repository of pain. They also hold our joyful memories.

Think of a time you felt competent. A time you felt excited. A time you felt celebrated. A time you felt peaceful.

Think of a time you experienced yourself as vibrantly creative.

Our joyful memories are lived proof of our strength. Our value. Our belonging.

And when we remember them, our joyful memories are the stuff of courage.

Psychologists tell us that we have a negativity bias: Difficult thoughts, emotions, and events have a greater effect on our psychological states than neutral or positive ones. This means that, to protect us, our brains scan for the problems in every situation. They send us warning signals about potential threats. They imagine the worst possible outcomes.

They keep us swimming in our worst memories.

How lovely to have such a concerned friend!

And what a shame to be kept from the reservoir of courage that is our joyful memories.

But we can combat negativity by vigorously inhabit our joyful memories.

In GOLD you will recall and inhabit a moment of your life where you felt shiningly creative. 

Scan your past. Your memory could be a big event: the completion of a project, a showcase, an award. But it could also be subtle: the train ride where you suddenly understood the premise of your new song, the smile of a collaborator when you offered a great idea. 

Be sure to walk yourself through your memory as if it's happening right now. “I’m looking out upon listening audience.” “I’m on the phone talking to my favorite creative ally.” Also be sure to speak your memory out loud. Let your voice tell you both what’s happening and what it means to you.

Most of all, let yourself have fun with this — choose your memory like ordering off an emotion menu.

Use this Mission to make the most of your past.

Pull every last bit of its fortitude, optimism, and radiance into your present.

To do this and more Missions download Muzi for free in the Apple App Store

“DIARY OF A MUSIC PRODUCER”

JULY 2026

Lovelies,

Monday, June 15th — Sixteen days until July. That means three weeks until I start production on the new David Hobbes album. I open the David Hobbes folder on my desktop.

Tuesday, June 16th — I play two songs a few times each. I listen for my mind to offer up ideas and nothing happens. I wonder how I'm going to fit ten big songs in my one little head.

Wednesday, June 17th — I print charts and look at them. They're very quiet. It's existential. 

Thursday, June 18th — I co-work in Pinole with my friend, Beth. Singing along to a metronome click on my phone I figure out what to do with three songs. 

Friday, June 19th — I sit at the piano with Heart Says Yes — because I consider it the troublemaker and I consider myself brave. My mind says "Hozier" and nothing else. I listen through two Hozier albums before I realize which song my mind means. I play Dave's chords on top of a practically tribal beat. Oh, this one is going to be very cool. 

Monday, June 22nd — I suggest to Dave that we get rid of two of his bridges. He says "Sure, no problem." I could have slept more last night. 

Tuesday, June 23rd — I wake up to two words: "Imagine" and "Dragons." "What?," I say to my mind. (I don't like Imagine Dragons.) Brushing my teeth I understand. The sea chantey that wants to be more. Three hours later I'm playing Vancouver (E minor, 6/8 time) on top of Radioactive (B dorian, 4/4 time). It is an offense to both. My boyfriend sits unfazed working on his laptop ten feet away. I'm concerned he isn't concerned.

Friday, June 26th — I realize this album has a second sea chantey: Don't Mind Being Alone. My life's work is turning sea chanteys into radio hits. My mind flips through its rolodex of references and lands on... Billy Joel's Piano Man. I promise no one in particular that I won't put another Piano Man into the world. Then Simon and Garfunkel's America. I've heard America two thousand times but now I listen as a producer. What's going on with the drums is actually insane. I decide to emulate as much of it as possible. 

Saturday, June 27th — I wake up to Dave's ballad, No Regrets, playing in my mind — with arpeggiated piano, fretless bass, and strings. It sounds terrible. "Thanks for nothing," I tell my mind.

Sunday, June 28th — I have no idea what to do with In Between.

Monday, June 29th — I work for three hours and figure out how to produce Miracles: edgy, live, the right amount of trashy.

Monday, June 29th (again) — I realize Miracles is playing in my head but now it's smooth and the quarter note subdivision has swapped for eighth note subdivision. It's better. "Ok fine, whatever," I say to no one. 

Tuesday, June 30th — I still have no idea what to do with In Between. I wonder if I could make it uptempo bluegrass. I go for a walk. "Stupid," I think.

Wednesday, July 1st — I still have no idea what to do with In Between. I wonder if I could make it uptempo bluegrass. "Oh my god, that's it!" I think.

Friday, July 3rd — I calculate if I have enough history with my band to faceplant and they'd still respect me. I decide yes. I'll try producing Vancouver like Radioactive. I press send. 

With love,

For the Muzi-curious, your Discipline Mission if you choose to accept it!

Responsive Discipline

Engage creative ideas the moment they occur to you.

A pianist wakes at dawn and goes straight to the piano.

A playwright sets a timer for three hours and doesn’t look up from her script until she hears the bell.

A painter sets a recurring meeting to paint every day at 2pm and come 2pm, paint he does.

This, we think, is discipline. And indeed it is. Powerful, enviable, get-things-done discipline.

Elbow grease deserves all the hype.

But in the realm of creativity, it’s not the whole discipline story. In the realm of creativity we rely just as much — or more — on another kind of discipline:

RESPONSIVE DISCIPLINE.

The truth is, we don’t know when our next great idea will strike. Perhaps it will happen at 2:10pm and there we will be, in front of our easel. But also chances are pretty good it will happen at 8am. Or 1:15pm. Or 11:42pm. And what happens then? Busy people that we are, we may be inclined to say, “Oh what a great idea! I’ll be sure to engage it when I have time tomorrow!”

But never is an idea so vividly available to us as the moment we think it. Tomorrow is one hundred creative years away. We may still have a memory of the idea. But it won’t carry the same clarity. It won't offer the same urgency.

It won’t tell us the precise coordinates of our project's next step.

To wait until tomorrow is to send our idea back where it came from.

In RESPONSIVE DISCIPLINE you will practice the most important creative hygiene: tending to a creative idea the moment it occurs to you.

If you’re reading a book, put it down and grab a pen. If you're driving, pull over and record a voice memo. If you're in a meeting, jot notes in your notebook margins.

Or better yet, launch into a bona fide creative work session. This will almost certainly mean adjusting your plans. Don’t worry, that’s the point! In order to honor our ideas, we must be willing to bend for them.

Use this Mission to build camaraderie with your ideas: "I honor you with my attention! I meet you where you are!"

Explore exactly how far a first wave of inspiration can take you.

If it makes you late to an appointment, tell them Muzi made you do it.

To explore this and other Missions download Muzi for free in the Apple App Store

“GLASSES”

JUNE 2026

Lovelies,

Last month I collected every last bit of Muzi content into a single document for copyrighting.

(Sixteen months after going live is a good time to copyright something, right?)

I expected tedium — but also a welcome break from my thought-heavy work of March and April. 

But downloading, organizing, I couldn't help but read.

And reading, I couldn't help but notice: Everything was wrong.

Exercises lost their center. Paragraphs sat stale. Introductions created false expectations. 

This will never not fascinate me: You set out to make something great. You labor until it's perfect. A year later you see a hundred errors.

Like time is glasses. 

So I promptly rewrote the methodology. Or I should say, I essentialized it. The foundation is still there. My conviction that creativity is our natural state. My belief that creativity thrives when we resource ourselves for it — with inspiration, courage, discipline, rest, and connection. But every Mission got a soul search. Every Reflection got a haircut. 

My favorite project was "First Aid": tools for key moments of the creative process. I revised Start a New Project and Heal a Disappointment. Then I tried something new, Integrate Feedback. I went on an evening walk and thought about the 11pm text messages from artists devastated by a friend's response to a poem. I ate my lunch and remembered the eight rules I instituted to keep people safe during song workshopping.

I lay in bed and recalled reviews of my albums, advice from producers, vetoes from co-writers, compliments from listeners.

I decided, as I have decided many times before, that feedback is a crisis.

It's a disorientation. It's a dislocation. 

Even if it's positive. 

(Sometimes especially if it's positive.) 

Feedback splits our creative trajectory. It can knock us all the way over or it can send us with momentum toward our sparkling creative futures. What makes the difference is us: our ability to sort, process, and land, ultimately, on our own feedback for ourselves. 

With love,

For the Muzi-curious, your Rest Mission if you choose to accept it!

Make Soup

Balance the wildness of creativity.

Remi owns a one-man business making soup in Oakland, CA.

Every Thursday he sets up shop at the Berkeley Farmer’s Market: cloth draped over a folding table, mason jars stacked with bisques, creamy split peas, chunky leafy green stews.

At any given moment there are six people gathered at his stand. A few to buy soup. But the majority just to be near him. His presence of calm and openness is utterly magnetic.

This is a man who was born to make soup.

So you’d be surprised to discover Remi’s passion is not soup making at all. Remi’s passion is music.

“I make soup for the music,” he tells me in a rare quiet moment. “Music isn’t grounding. Music is… woo-weeee!!” He whistles and gestures towards the clouds. “But I get a couple root vegetables in my hands, I chop chop chop. It brings me down to earth and after a while I can go up there and write songs again.”

Creativity, bless its heart, is not a grounding activity. It is electric. It is ethereal. It’s a sort of wild, unbridled, expansive energy that unfolds only into more of itself. It’s never going to suggest we dial it back. It's never going to suggest a slow, deep breath.

Creativity will smile coyly and lure us ever further into its dreamy chaos.

It is more than tempting to ride higher and higher. It can be actually addictive. You see evidence of this in how happy yet depleted many artists find themselves to be.

So it’s on us: Every time we create, we must know the power of the forces we deal. We must acknowledge the other-worldly creatures we are when we pick up our paintbrushes and autoharps.

And then we must make a point to keep a foot in the physical world.

We do this for our very survival. However creative we are, we must balance it with the embodied. The nurtured. The reposed. We must give strong and consistent shout-outs to this adorable earthly form of our bodies.

We must MAKE SOUP.

Or yes, you can make an omelette. Or a cake. But seriously, make soup. Choose some vegetables, the rootier the better. Hold them in your hands. Smell them. Chop them. Lose yourself in the rhythms. The textures. The smells. The utter sensuality.

Don’t distract yourself with anything as you cook. Just this once, turn off the podcast, put down the phone. Just be with the all-five-senses smash of a show taking place right before you.

Use this Mission to bring yourself back to earth.

And then enjoy your bowl of soup as a thanksgiving for your body — that beautiful vessel for the creativity that will course through you again soon.

To do this and more Missions download Muzi for free in the Apple App Store