Lesson 3: Effective Creativity Workshop
Stop Hiding From Your Listeners
Welcome to Lesson 3.
All the work we’ve done focusing on our creativity have all been building up to this moment. It’s time to get into the good stuff.
Strap in, because we’re about to find the aspects of yourself you’re keeping hidden away from your listeners.
When it comes to making music that connects deeply with listeners, the parts of you that you’re keeping hidden away hold the keys to the kingdom.
Without them, your marketing efforts will continue to fall flat. Without them, your music won’t connect fully. Without them, you’ll always fall short of your potential as an artist.
What You’re Hiding
The question of what truths we fail to express or afford even to ourselves in private is a rough one.
Typically, the parts of us that are unexpressed, hidden, unintegrated, etc. originated early in life when we experienced some form of shame or rejection.
Likely, this pain and confusion is what brought you to music in the first place.
You probably found artists early on who were able to express the things you felt the need to augment or hide. These artists immediately drew you in and changed your life.
You felt safe in the medium of music, and innately started making your own.
We use the cover of music to express more of ourselves than is allowed in real life.
That’s why it feels so good.
And that’s a step in the right direction, but if you stop there, you’re going to hit a wall.
Let me explain.
Remember before? How you found artists who expressed things you felt you needed to hide? Those artists clearly and unequivocally reflected those hidden truths back to you and making you feel seen. You probably recognized sounds and words that reflected your felt experience immediately. You didn’t have to go digging for it.
This is to say, those artists were doing their jobs.
And if you’re here reading this newsletter, my guess would be that you have a ways to go toward doing your job as well as those artists you love. But don’t worry, that’s what we’re here to help you do today.
Almost every artist I’ve ever spoken to is hiding in plain sight. Their lyrics are too complicated and vague or otherwise shrouded. They do not tell us or show us who they truly are. They do not allow us to know them. They’re too afraid to have a real conversation.
What About Maintaining Some Mystery?
I love a good mystery as much as anyone and I don’t believe you need to drag every logistical detail of your life out into the light.
To illustrate how you can communicate truth boldly and clearly and maintain a sense of mystery, I’m going to talk about the queen of mystery and lore, the goddess of story, and queer icon, your friend and mine, Taylor Alison Swift.
For over a decade, she’s kept us guessing on the who, where, what, when, and why.
What’s autobiographical, what’s just a story? We will never know the mundane details, and ultimately they don’t matter.
What Taylor does in her masterful storytelling, throughout every thread of her magnificent, multifaceted career, from her lyrics to her visuals, interviews, the colors she wears, her lore-rich videos etc, is deliver crystal clear specificity of her own lived emotional experience.
Sure, we don’t know who a specific song was written about.
But what we know is so much more important than that:
She feels like an outsider.
She tries to hold her head high despite enduring disrespect.
She is self-aware, and hardcore anxiously-attached.
She has endured loss upon loss.
She is powered 100% by her reserves of internal strength.
We know her ugly inner thoughts.
In this way, we know her, we live through her, and she is part of us.
She’s so brave. And you can be too.
What Are You Hiding?
Every great artist you can think of embodies something terrifying. The more off-limits, the more powerful.
Taylor is high-cringe earnest. She said I refuse to be a chill girl—this is what it’s like!
And she’s a billionaire.
Prince’s life’s work is about transcendent sex and poetry. Which is wild because, while he’s a beautiful person, Prince was a 5’2, 112 lb man in mostly women’s blouses. Not exactly the image of traditional black male sexuality.
He stepped boldly and bravely out of his assigned lane and became larger than life.
Lana Del Ray tells an ugly story about a deeply bruised internal feminine landscape.
Sade embodies tenderness. Maybe that doesn’t seem scary and off-limits to you, but how comfortable are you at actually expressing tenderness? That’s what I thought.
We hold back expressing our desire and sexuality for fear of being judged, cut down, rejected, or maybe even sent to hell.
We hold back expressing our power because we are afraid of having it taken away.
The more precious and important, the higher the risk we face in sharing our truth.
And indeed, the higher social risk we face in expressing the art, the more valuable it will be to others who are hiding from similar limiting forces.
We hide our big feelings because we’re afraid they’re too big to love.
Yes, it’s scary.
And also, if we want our music to be useful to others, we need to be sharing what is most important and precious and true for us.
Who Are You Hiding From?
Is it the cool kids? Bullies? Your parents? Your spouse? Yourself?
Welcome to the club, my sweet darlings.
As we dive into the exercises of Lesson 3, this is where we’ll begin—with the people who we most feel the need to hide from.
Get a pen and some paper and let’s dig in! There’s a lot here, by the way, feel free to break these exercises up into multiple days.
Exercise 1
Journal: List everyone whose judgement feels uncomfortable to you. Take as long as you need. Make the list as long as you can and feel free to keep adding to it.
Think of ways you can insulate yourself from their judgement so that you have some space to develop a truer voice. This will be harder or easier depending on how close you are to the people on this list.
Do you feel weird or crappy every time you see that this person has watched your story? Block them! I swear you can, it’s easy.
Are there people close in your life who really don’t support what you’re doing? Are there ways you can create distance between yourself and these people and call in more support from friends and loved ones who believe in you?
Journal: List people in your life who support your artistic vision and believe in you fully. It’s okay if this list is a lot shorter.
Are there conversations you need to have with friends of family members asking for their explicit support as you roll out a bigger, bolder, riskier version of your music?
You may think this all sounds a little dramatic, but you need good input if you expect yourself to produce good output. Finding people who can help feed and nurture and validate you as a growing artist is critical. You need people in your life who can help you hold the vision of the great artist you’re becoming.
Inversely, people who make you feel like shit or like you need to hide the full magic of the art inside of you have the ability to completely debilitate you, especially if you’re in a sensitive creative space.
Journal: Make a plan to give yourself more of what lets you shine and less of what makes you shrink. List at least three ways you can insulate yourself from stuff that makes you feel small and three ways you can ask for/receive more support.
Exercise 2 (Here’s where it gets gnarly)
For each person you list whose judgement you fear, write what you imagine their perception of you is.
Example: Here’s mine, woof!
Dad - That I am foolish, irresponsible, frivolous, attention-seeking, hysterical
Mom - That I am uptight, a buzzkill, too sensitive, not spiritually evolved, fat and ugly
For each person you listed, write corresponding beliefs about what you must hide/how you must behave in order to avoid judgement.
Example:
Dad
It is unsafe to make decisions that others don’t understand
It is unsafe to shine or receive attention
It is unsafe to express intense pain. Always be measured and make sure everything I express is carefully curated and justifiable. Always show my work.
Mom
My feelings are over dramatic, not even genuine, I need to chill out.
I need to relax and be more positive.
I shouldn’t even try to be attractive because I’m not.
Exercise 3
This isn’t fun, isn’t it?
The things we believe we must hide hold the clues to how we can express fully and make something truly bold, dangerous, transcendent, beautiful, sublime.
Journal: For each belief, journal ways that you might be able to begin to do the opposite of what the fearful belief wants you to do. Write them as “I could learn to….” sentences.
Example (my answers)
I could learn to focus less on being perceived as valid. I could Stop Making Sense.
I could learn to be gracious and let people enjoy me.
I could learn to let myself be seen in my mess when I’m hurt.
I could learn to accept and appreciate that I take things seriously.
I could learn to see the ways I am special instead of focusing on how I’m boring.
I could learn to show the ways I enjoy my own beauty, even though it’s scary.
You may begin to see overarching or repeated themes. Group these together and try to boil them down to a couple of important new ideas for how you could learn how to feel into and express, both through your art and as a person the world. Upon review, mine boiled down to two main categories, but you can have as many as you need.
They should feel scary and exciting and you may have no idea how to begin.
Boiled down:
I could stop making sense, reveal my messiness.
I could risk sharing more of my gifts even though I’ve been told getting praise isn’t safe.
I could risk owning my beauty and let go of trying to seem fun.
Exercise 4
Write down your boiled down new ideas. Write them down and put them up somewhere you can see them, like the fridge. Check in with them every couple of days.
For each boiled down idea, list 2-3 ways that you can begin to live into this in your daily life this week.
For each boiled down idea, list 2-3 ways you can make space for these ideas in your music in the coming month.
Take these boiled down ideas and take them back to the work you did in Lessons 1 and 2. How can you find space for these in your creative pillars to incorporate elements of your new ideas?
Go back to your list of your own favorite songs from earlier lessons and take inventory, how much of what you’re hiding is trying to come through in these songs. How can you make more space for it?
Friends, I truly cannot wait to read all your responses. Paid Members: Don’t forget to drop them in our Discord under Coursework > #creativity
Thank you all in advance for diving in deep with me on this one!
Cassidy