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…
Read MoreI'm a sucker for a crossroads. Tell me you're at a crossroads and I'll drop everything.
I'm not in it for the pros and cons. I'm not even in it for the hopes and fears. I love a crossroads for the forced reckoning. Which version of yourself do you choose? Who does this crossroads reveal you to have ALWAYS been?…
I used to write by running.
My writing process looked like this: I'd sit at my piano, trying really hard to write a song. I'd get nowhere. Then I'd take a break and go for a run. Three miles out, I'd hear it completed and run really fast back home to record before I forgot it…
A few years ago my work was divided in two: the service part (I taught piano lessons) and the creative part (I was a recording/performing artist). This is not to say there was no creativity in my teaching and no service in my artistry. Of course there were glimmers. But for the most part I served students by relaying my knowledge of Bach Inventions and Jazz standards. And I delved my creative depths in the words, melodies, and chords of my songwriting…
Read MoreTwo times in my life I recognized a calling.
The first was when I wrote my first song. I thought, "This is what I do." The second was when I first gave a songwriter feedback on a song-in-progress. I thought, "I didn't know callings happened more than once in a lifetime!"…
I am very driven.
I love the ache of striving. Of solving. Of alchemizing from ideas of ideals the crude, shining, tangible stuff of creativity.
But 6 months ago something happened. It's not that I was stopped in my tracks. I won't be that histrionic about it…
My most newsy news this month is that I'm a writer on the just-out Narada Michael Walden album, Euphoria. In honor of Narada's release, I figured I'd devote this, the streamy/dreamy portion of my Newsletter, to an abridged list of what I've learned from my now 3 year, rockingly formative collaboration with Narada. But somehow that list proved lengthy and a bit technical…
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When I was a kid I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Odd choice. Odd circumstances. Odd test. The whole thing was odd.
The results made some sense to me. Introvert. I mean, sure. I hung out with trees a lot. Intuitive. Indeed. I could tell you how you're feeling but not your eye color. Thinking. Duh, what else am I going to do?
Some of the greatest losses of my life have been losses of illusion.
The past few weeks I've looked upon a constellation of precious illusions. Watched spellbound as every few days one of them burns bright. Lights the whole sky. Explodes and is gone…
I'm about to do something ill advised.
I'm about to tell you about a dream I had last night.
I know, I know! A dream is endlessly interesting to the person who had it! And deathly dull to the person nodding politely along!…
There's a stage of songwriting I call the hot potato. You're minding your own business, working away at whatever pre-chorus knot needs untying, when all of a sudden the song becomes so hot to the touch you have to put it down…
Read MoreThe first place I ever found myself was writing a song.
There I was, thinker of thoughts, feeler of feelings. Beneath the scaffolding of chords and melodies I was free to wander about. For three and a half minutes at a time I could breathe…
Read MoreTwo things stand out to me about being a music producer.
First, producers must be artists. They must attune to songs and figure out what they need. They must audition parts in their minds then audition those same parts in their Protools sessions. They must follow their thoughts and emotions down the winding path of how they want the music to sound…
Creativity has seasons.
Not that I can tell you what they are.
Because really, I think, every creative outing has DIFFERENT seasons. Song A wants 6 months under ice before sending its first brave sprout. Song B is a windstorm and you'll be raking leaves long past the moment you press record…
Creativity is a boundary-less space.
You're not you. I'm not me.
In service of the song we are disappeared. Subsumed. Weightless. Needless. Miles in the sky and rising…
Creativity is a boundary-less space.
You're not you. I'm not me.
In service of the song we are disappeared. Subsumed. Weightless. Needless. Miles in the sky and rising…