Blog: Rediscovering The Joy In Your Passions

This past week I had the utter privilege of spending some time with a few fellow artists & friends in Arizona at a songwriter’s retreat put on by the Songbird Society out of Adelaide, Australia. This camp was centered entirely around two concepts; tension & release.

The first point of interest, tension, was meant to help us as songwriters find the points of tension within our creativity that keep us from creating to our fullest. We each were given a series of prompts at the beginning of the day, after a morning yoga session, & asked to think about them throughout the day & bring them with us into the sessions we were given. The rules were simple regarding the songs themselves. Whoever’s idea the song started as had right of first use. The sessions were also meant to be open, honest, & vulnerable & established a safe space for expression & transparency. The songs that each of the two groups of writers produced were organic & an amazingly natural flowing process of creation. When snags were reached, they were easily talked & worked through without allowing the session to get bogged down & turned into a grueling task. The art that was created in these sessions was free, personal, & inspiring.

Following our sessions on the first day we sat down to engage in symposium. Each of us took turns discussing the areas of our lives that we felt carried tension, be it personal or creative. From there we were prompted to see ways forward through our lives & creative process that would allow the alleviation of said points of tension.

The second day focused on release. We started the day with a five AM double black diamond hike up the side of a mountain & then spent the remainder of the morning in ease while contemplating the prompts we were given post hike regarding the release of our points of tension. Sessions took place in the early afternoon after we’d regained our energy & footing & were once again an inspiring free fall into the depths of what it is to be a songwriter & to create amazing, personal yet still widely appealing, art. Both sets of sessions ran into often outright painful points of tension for the focal songwriter but both groups worked through them in a loving & understanding manner. The evening concluded with us showcasing our songs & once again engaging in symposium.

On the third day we shifted course a little. We ended up setting two rooms in which the producers/engineers on the track were given a prompt that would put them out of their comfort zone, allowing them to experiment through trial & error in an affirming & encouraging space. The writers for each of these rooms were not set but instead kind of ended up happening by happenstance & once more, beautiful, innovative art was created!

My point in bringing up my week & telling the base story around it is not to showcase or showoff how great & amazing a creative experience I was privy to, but instead to encourage. You see we all left this week (there were more days that just the three where we did other engaging & creative pursuits) with a new found sense of purpose, with a newly established spark of creativity. Songbird took a group of individuals, a lot of whom knew each other very well, & fostered an experience that expanded & fine tuned not only our interpersonal relationships but also our creative spirits. We all left the camp with hope & optimism & a joy for the art of songwriting that I personally had lost.

We’re all led to do the things we do out of passion. We’ve all heard the saying “do what you love & you’ll never work a day” but so many of us end up resenting the thing we started doing out of love & enjoyment because it becomes work & loses all sense of fun. I know I can speak to this personally by saying that a lot of the writing rooms I’ve left in the past few years have left me almost with an icky feeling stirring around my gut, because that love of what was being done & what was being created was absent. Now, that’s not to say all writes were like this but there was truly something different about the writing that was being done & the spirit in which it was being created that made me feel reborn.

So often we go into our work with the purest intentions & somewhere along the way lose sight of the reason behind why we started it in the first place. I mean, to be honest, I was really starting to question whether or not this was something I even wanted anymore because of how grueling it had become. I knew, deep inside that the answers was ‘of course’ but I could for the life of me find that ember that was still holding on to the hope of what I love doing.

How does this apply to you? Well I ask you, when was the last time you felt inspired & in love with the work that you do? When did you lose that & why? These are not things that are irreversible, you got into the rut somehow & there’s always a way out whether that lies in the past or in moving forward towards the future. In all honesty, I spoke to my father about the week & he said something rather jarring to me. I said that for once writing doesn’t feel like work, it feels free & creative & fun. To which he replied that work should feel like work, that’s what it is. Which then led me to this blog because I know so many people who are miserable doing the things they set out to do with the purest intention because they’ve lost the spark that brought them to where they are now.

Your work shouldn’t be draining, especially if it’s something you love doing. It should be life giving & inspiring & if you find that isn’t the case I would challenge you to take the time to figure out why. To find your points of tension & release them so that you can spend the time living in a place that brings you happiness & satisfaction, not just potential profit & gain.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Writing The Hit

I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve walked into a session & had another artist or a writer say “are we going to write a hit today?” to which the proper response is always “of course” or “I sure hope so,” because let’s face it, nobody wants the negative energy of a “statistically, probably not.” Lately I’ve been convening with a lot of different writers, most of the time over drinks or a meal, & this topic of “I just need to write a hit” has come up time & time again. If you’re someone reading this who isn’t in the music world, I don’t want you to tune out, because in actuality, the broadness of the topic at hand may surprise you!

When the notion of ‘writing the hit’ is presented to me it automatically stirs up feelings of commercialism, of pandering, of conformity, & that’s not to say that there aren’t things you should strive for in your art or expression, to an extent. I think that if any of these feelings detract from your art or minimize your personal experience they are a hindrance, not a leg up, & should be avoided at all costs. If, on the other hand, these sentiments match who you are & what you bring to the table, fire away, the goal here should be, after all, authenticity.

There naturally has to be some for of commercial viability for something to be successful, but I often think that the idea of what is successful based on what has been successful pigeon holes us into a narrowed scope of thinking. Instead of allowing the imagination & the self expression to run wild, we end up worrying more about whether or not what we’ve created or plan to create will fit into the already etched out niche of what has been successful in the past. I would argue that playing into the hand of the road well trodden may lead to limited success but it also stumbles readily into the realm of the forgotten.

People who are trail blazers, in any industry, are seldom, if ever, those who followed the status quo. They are those who followed their gut & pushed the boundaries of what was deemed commercially viable. Let’s use an example from a few years ago. When Billie Eilish exploded onto the scene & immediately became popular, every label & their mother scrambled to find the next her, instead of continuing the search for something just as unique. They all sought to capitalize on that which was already raking in the capital. This happens not only in the music industry but in literally every other industry I can think of where something is successful & everyone else hops on board to try to ride the wave that sensation has created.

A lot of those who I was talking about this concept of ‘writing the hit’ with this week are also artists & are looking for that one song that will break them, something I’ve heard for years & years & years in this industry but I find in doing so, in chasing the monetary or status based success, we diminish what makes us unique & interesting as artists & individuals in favor of a brief minute on the well worn path instead of carving our own niche & finding those out there in the world who relate to us as we are, not how we think they should.

People are pretty good at sniffing out a phony, call it the uncanny valley of expression, & their ride in the limelight is often short lived because usually the person who blazed the trail they dipped into is already making the trek better than anyone else could. Why? Because it’s authentically who they are. If you are an artist, an inventor, a painter, a poet, a writer, a speaker, a ceo, a whatever, you have a unique outlook on the world & life that literally no one else shares because no one else looks through your eyes & has the lived experience that you do. No one else has the same genetic make up, the same voice (literal & figurative), the same neurological mapping, the same beats of their heart, the same chemical values, the same stacks of cells that you do, so stop trying to fit into the mold of someone who will never be you & someone you will never be. It’s a lot more interesting to create something novel & authentic than it is to be just another wanna be copy cat.

I hope you all have a great week or weekend whenever this blog happens to find you!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Forcing Creativity

As songwriters the message that we seem to have drilled into our heads over & over again is that in order to be successful in the writing realm, or in music in general, you have to be able to force creativity at any given moment. While on the surface I don’t entirely disagree, you do need to “show up” to do your job. You need to be able to walk into a room, especially when writing for a major artist, & pull a quality song out at the drop of a hat. It’s a scenario I am sure a lot of us are familiar with even in the non-musical world, the need to tap into the creative on the fly, but something I’ve found that is next to impossible to get on demand is that of inspiration.

Inspiration & creativity often go hand in hand, especially where the art world is concerned. It tends to hit like lightning & fade quickly. The trick of striking while the iron is hot can be a difficult one. Inspiration, unfortunately, often comes exclusively from life experience. It comes from living, failures or successes in love, stories that invigorate you, adventures that flex your sense of wonder, etc. Inspiration is not something that can be faked or forced & when an attempt is made to do either it ends up being abundantly apparent.

I’m going to once again refer back to a writing camp that my dear friend Leena Regan put on, if you’ve read any of my other blogs you’ll know that bring up often. In said camp Leena really hammered in the point that if, in a writing situation, you feel like you’re pulling teeth, stop immediately. It’s a mistake I’ve made in the past for sure & I’m sure a lot of us who create have made as well. The problem that ends up arising when you force your way through painful creation is that it completely saps the joy out of creation. Your piece ends up being soulless, heartless, lifeless. It ends up being a stand in that you lock in a drawer & never look at again.

I was discussing this very topic with a producer friend of mine, Joshua Gleave, last night! We were both talking about how we feel it’s a complete & utter waste of everyone in the room’s time to try & juice a song from the pulp of your brain if the spark just isn’t there. He said that he’s had writes where he & his co-writer got a verse & chorus into a song, both looked at each other & immediately said “nah,” calling the session. I’ve definitely had the same, but I’ve often found that going from a different angle ends up igniting the fire of inspiration.

I was in a write back in October with my friend Frye & she & I had the exact same experience as Josh did above; we got a verse & a chorus in & were like “nah.” Nothing wears your creative brain out faster than writing something you’re not feeling at all or creating something you have no attachment to & know will end up going nowhere. We did end up getting a song out of that session but it was one that ultimately we both felt incredibly drawn to & inspired by.

I ended up getting burned out of writing for this exact reason. I stopped looking forward to writing because it felt like a chore, & not a fun one at that. I had always been told what I mentioned at the top of this post, write to write so you can write more & write better. I don’t disagree that we should flex our creative muscles on the daily, no argument there, but I don’t believe that has to take the form of torturous forced “mea culpa” style “inspiration.” You can be creative in other ways! Greet your day with some object writing, paint, draw, dance, sing, play an instrument, do something that gets the neurons of the left side brain firing. You can flex & maintain your creative muscles by broadening its definition for yourself & simply creating to create.

I’m sure that any of you in the virtual audience who are songwriter currently reading this can attest to the following; the best songs I’ve ever written were those I never planned to write & most of the time they were those that just came pouring out of me like lava. In addition to that, most of the best co-writes I’ve had were those where we’d either given up on writing, taking the pressure off, or had just been goofing around. Pressure, to me, brings instant death to inspiration.

Please, please, please don’t burn yourself out creatively the way I did! Find new ways to integrate your art into your life, to get the juices flowing. The songs will come when it’s time for them to, I promise, but you must be persistent & patient with them!

As always my loves, have a fantastic weekend!

-C

Blog: *Insert Number* Hard Challenge

I’m not sure if any of you have heard of the 75 hard challenge, it was a daily challenge proposed by Andy Fricella. It isn’t exactly a diet plan or a fitness plan, though that is a part of it, instead it is branded as a test of mental fortitude. The rules of the challenge are as follows.

• Follow one diet plan of your choosing (no alcohol & no cheat meals allowed)

• Two 45 daily workouts (one must be outdoors)

• Take one daily progress picture

• Read ten pages of a non-fiction self improvement book per day

• Take a daily 5 minute cold shower

• Intake one gallon of water per day

While I won’t go into the logistics of why I don’t think the 75 hard or for that matter Whole 30 lead to positive life changes or permanent ones, I will admit the challenge has its merits.

A few friends of mine have taken the challenge & completed it in its entirety & while I’m sure most would attest that they don’t regret the experience it’s not something they’re actively looking to undertake again. I aimed to create it in a better form, in a manner that personalizes the experience for me while creating lifestyle change that I could use moving forward.

As many of you can probably tell from a lot of my previous blogs I eat paleo quite often, following more of the primal side of the diet. One of the beauties of paleo/primal is that it has room for forgiveness asking you to partake in it 80-85% of the time instead of forever making you long for the foods you love but can no longer consume. Paleo also has the benefit of allowing some alcohols but those derived from paleo approved sources which for a wine lover like me is a major win. My modification of the 75 hard challenge follows the diet of my choice, paleo, with the inclusion of two cheat meals & the occasional bottle of wine or cocktail.

The next aspect of the challenge is the physical side of it. 45 minutes, twice a day. An hour & a half total. Every. Single. Day. Y’all that’s just downright unhealthy. Your body needs rest, it needs time to heal. I know training hard leads to amazing results but there has to be a conscious effort into maintaining the body involved as well. My modification; seven & a half to eight hours of exercise per week. It allows you to workout hard for longer amounts of time while still allowing yourself & your body to rest periodically, to take a day off. The 75 hard challenge would tell us that resting would require us to restart the challenge, I would rather you come out the other side a healthy, happy human.

I’m just going to outright tell you I don’t do the progress pics. I think looking for progress day to day to day minimizes the growth you’re actually achieving. It’s also an easy way to get discouraged. Not looking different enough from the day before or the week before is what leads so many into self deprecating habits or toxic mindsets. Your body fluctuates 5-10 pounds a week anyway in addition to the fact that working out is literally tearing down muscle to rebuild it. You’re going to look “more cut” & less so from day to day, documenting such doesn’t feel like a healthy way of viewing that.

I started this challenge with the thought of making the reading 10 pages of anything. I think I’m sticking to that. We as humans don’t read enough. I would say out of the people I know only about 5-10% of them actively read books. That’s sad. I think if a challenge incorporates reading in any form & gets people to actually read then it’s a win in my book (see what I did there?) Read what you’re passionate about, it doesn’t have to be the book that makes you realize you have too many attachments or that you have the ability to be superhuman or manifest money. Read what you love, it’ll improve your brain & open up your mind, screw the requirements.

Honestly, I didn’t know that the shower was part of the challenge. I may have to throw that in haha. I mean at the end of the day cold showers have a lot of very great health benefits! It raises your metabolism, it increases your circulations, it boosts immune function, it reduces muscle soreness, & the list goes on & on. I know it may not be for everyone but I think I’ll actually incorporate it slowly, dropping the temperature over the duration of the shower instead of taking the polar plunge every single day.

A daily gallon of water is a great goal to strive for! Sometimes though a gallon of water can be too much or even too little depending on how much you weigh. I think the typical rule of thumb is that you’re supposed to drink half your body weigh in ounces but you also have to be careful not to dilute yourself. Adding a little sodium to your first glass can help to prevent that or even drinking something else with a little bit of electrolytes will do the trick!

In addition to these changes I’ve taken it upon myself to add in two more daily challenges.

• Something Creative/Journeling

• Meditation

Your something creative can be anything. It can be painting, writing, designing, playing an instrument, creating a floral arrangement, trying/coming up with a new recipe, just something that engages that left hemisphere of your brain. I often find myself getting frustrated as a songwriter because I can’t tap into my creativity when I want to. This is a good way to flex that mental muscle & establish the neuroplasticity to make your creativity an easy asset to call upon. I also count journaling under this daily task. I think journaling can take a few very helpful forms & often helps clear away the fog hiding all of your great ideas from you. Just journaling about your day, about what’s weighing on your mind or heart, about emotional baggage you’re still holding onto can make all the difference. Likewise writing poetry or a short story helps to get the juices flowing & stretch your creative neural pathways.

The last addition is meditation. Much like reading I think too few people actively practice meditation. Meditation is not just some mystic Buddhist art it is a way of centering yourself. Of coming back to the now & helping to experience your life as it happens. Too often we’re anxious about the unknown future or depressed about the past that way or the way things have change, meditation’s goal is to recenter you in time & in yourself. It is the inner work that we all should be doing. It is the quieting of the mind that allows our problems & areas of weakness to rise up so that we may look at them in a new light, dissect & transform them so that we can let the past, the future, the whatever go & simply be. I have found in the last two weeks of daily meditation that my joy & energy are elevated, my anxiety & depression have almost faded completely, & I am an all around more fun person to be around. If meditation is a new experience to you I highly recommend Headspace on Netflix, they also have an app!

The final step of my “…whatever” hard challenge is forgiveness. This is the key. Forgiveness. There are going to be days where accomplishing all of these things is impossible. There are going to be weeks you don’t meet you exercise goal or don’t read enough & y’all, that’s okay. Really. The difference is that you forgive, let it go, & try to do better the next day or the next week because that’s how we grow. That’s how we become better, not by hard restriction & rule, but by freedom & grace. I don’t want this life style change to be something I do for a month & a half then abandon, I want lasting change. I know, much like the 75 hard challenge isn’t for me, that this might not be for you & you may need to make your own modifications to it, but if you want to change your life for the better there are healthy ways to do it. Do what works for you, what makes you feel fulfilled, what makes you happy, healthy & expands your brain. Hold yourself accountable; set reminders on your phone, set a calendar on your fridge, try it with a friend or loved one. Do something that keeps you on track & keeps you motivated. I can honestly say in the week or two I’ve been doing this my life is improved; I’m sleeping better, I have so much more energy, so much clearer skin, my chronic allergies are hardly noticeable to me. I feel great & I want you to as well. So take the challenge! Make up your own, make it practical, & make your life as you want it to be because you deserve it!

Much Love,

C

Blog: Reclaiming My Creativity & Reclaiming My Voice

I know, I know. I’m a day late on this one.

Apologies.

I, of late, have found myself bumping into limitation. Whether it’s limitation around the current state of the industry/the world, limitation around the things I think I are feasible, or limitation around when I feel talented or have a free flow of creativity; I keep finding myself hitting walls.

Now I’m quite certain a lot of these are limitations self imposed by my own mind, by my own subconscious because I had the man in the mirror telling me I wasn't enough. He would say that I wasn't rich enough, wasn’t connected enough, wasn’t related to the right people or that I couldn’t write good enough songs, couldn’t sing well enough, didn’t have the right charisma to find success in the music industry. And quite frankly that’s all a load of horse shit.

I began going into writes & going into studio sessions putting immense pressure on myself to “perform.” I thought I had to come up with the most cleaver lyrics, the greatest hooks, but every time I went to write I felt like the song I wanted to write was locked away from me on the other side of an invisible barrier. I felt I couldn’t access the parts of my brain I wanted & it became so insanely frustrating.

I will admit that part of my issue, specifically when it came to the pressure I was putting on myself around vocal performance came from being on the flip side of several months therapy for vocal cord dysfunction. I felt like I’d lost my voice, like every noise that came out of my throat was pure, stinking garbage because once again, comparison was the thief of my joy…a common theme in my life. So, much like Irma S. Rombauer had to do for cooking, I had to rediscover the joy of singing.

What had once been a liberating platform for which I could openly express emotion & passion had become the thing I dreaded most. I hated the sound of my voice on recording, I hate the way I thought I sounded in a mic, so I barely sang for about a year because doing so filled me with nothing but shame, defeat, & terror.

I honestly have two things to thank for my vocal recovery, outside of therapy. Greg Breal, a dear friend of mine who became my vocal coach & musical theater. It’s odd, rediscovering something, especially when that something has been such a pivotal point in your life but it’s really a lot like having coffee with an old friend; the foundation, love, & admiration are there but you’re seeing it all in a new light, through a different lens, & with new, completely separate life experiences under your belt.

I started singing because of music theater. I started my music career on a stage telling stories through music. That’s what led me to country music, a genre that, used to at least, be about telling stories through music. The reason music theater became my beacon once again was due to COVID. I found myself, as many of us did, trying to fill the time we had while trapped inside, so I began rewatching musicals. (You can probably thank Hamilton for that desire.) Rewatching naturally shifted to going back to soundtracks which led me naturally to Wicked.

…I actually think it was Tik Tok that led me back to Wicked thanks to illegal recordings of Jessica Vosk belting her face off during her tenure as Elphaba on Broadway. At any rate Defying Gravity, as it always does, got stuck in my head. The line I found myself repeating over & over & over was:

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap!

It's time to try defying gravity
I think I'll try defying gravity
And you can't pull me down!

I couldn’t escape it. I couldn’t get it out of my head for the life of me, I think there was a reason behind that. I took the song to Greg in the summer, where I’d been singing pop, country, & originals with him, I decided to try music theater one week. I decided to sing Defying Gravity. Greg loved it. He told me it was the freest, most passionate he’d heard me sing in a long time so I ran with it. I began playing piano singing it, singing it in the shower, while washing my hands, in the car, but I strangely never listened to it, I let it become my own living with the lyrics & feeling its energy.

From there it went from “On My Own” & “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Mis (a show I actually loathe) to “Go The Distance” from Hercules to “Out There” from Hunchback of Notre Dame (a seriously underrated Disney movie.) Then Folklore came out.

I am unabashedly a Swiftie, I think Taylor is one of the greatest songwriters out there & I think she has navigated the music industry magnificently. Folklore was an album that at its core was minimalist. It was often piano, vocal, guitar, & drums with a tiny bit of production & that made it extremely accessibly to me, the quarantined singer-songwriter. I could probably sit at my piano & play you the entirety of Folklore in my own keys.

I was sitting there plunking on the keys one day when I realized something. I was humming. I was audibly making music with my voice subconsciously, something I hadn’t done in months. I had done it. I had reclaimed my voice, I had grown accustomed to its new way of opportunity, to its new life. I began recording again, I began releasing music again, I began posting videos again. The progress was slow & I am still learning & adapting but I’m finally back to loving my gifts & the music I can make with them.

I want to backtrack a wee bit to talk about writing. Yes, I am still writing & yes, a lot of the songs I’ve written recently are songs I’m very proud of because I’ve realized the only thing limiting me was myself. The only thing restricting the ideas I had & the words I wrote was myself. Much like my journey with my voice, I am reclaiming my creativity, becoming more comfortable in the unknown, & becoming reinvigorated knowing I can write kickass songs. I started journaling daily, creative writing, free writing, whatever. Just getting ideas out. I started to write out the restrictions in my life; what I was afraid of, who I was angry at, what I was holding onto that it was okay to acknowledge & let go of. I found peace & granted myself forgiveness & grace & almost immediately the ideas started pouring back into my brain.

I’m still grappling with my fears especially when it comes to solo writing but I’ve decided it’s time to move on. It’s time to be a confident human who deserves success, who deserves a flourishing career in this industry. I’ve decided I am an amazing vocalist, an incredible songwriter, & a worthy artist. I am worthy of my dreams, of my talents, now I just have to get out of my own way & let them shine. I am limitless, & strong, & more than capable. Yes, something has changed within me & something is truly not the same. I’m so over playing by the rules of what someone else or what I say should limit me.

It’s time I try defying gravity.