Saturn Returns with Caggie - *The Courage To Create* Origins Story - Caggie's Journey with Music

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

In this episode, Caggie opens up about her deep and complex relationship with music, tracing it back to her early years and sharing the emotional journey she's experienced along the way. Key Themes: Caggie's Relationship with Music from a Young Age: From her earliest memories, music has played a pivotal role in Caggie’s life. However, as she grew older, her connection to music became both a source of joy and vulnerability. Vulnerability in Sharing Music: Caggie discusses how sharing her music has always made her feel exposed, as it’s a form of self-expression that brings up intense vulnerability. Fears Around Singing: Despite her love for music, Caggie reflects on the fears she’s carried around singing, particularly in front of others. These fears have often held her back from fully stepping into her creative potential. Love-Hate Relationship with Music: While music has been a lifelong passion, Caggie dives into the complexities of her love-hate relationship with it. There have been moments where the pressure to perform and succeed overshadowed her natural love for the art. Pressure, Fears, and Failures: The pressures that come with creativity often bring fears of failure. Caggie shares how these feelings have surfaced throughout her career, particularly during her time on Made in Chelsea (MIC). Creativity – Why All or Nothing? Caggie explores the idea of why creativity sometimes feels like an all-or-nothing pursuit. She questions when creativity shifted from being a joyful expression to something to be criticised or scrutinised. Creative Blockers: A significant part of Caggie’s journey has been dealing with creative blockers. She reflects on the fear of how her music will be received and the external judgment that has haunted her, especially the notion that she’ll never be taken seriously because of her background in reality TV. Where Does the Fear Come From? Caggie contemplates the root of her fear. Is it simply fear of the unknown? Is it tied to ego and self-belief? These are the big questions she grapples with as an artist. Ego and Self-Belief: How does ego get in the way of true creativity? Caggie shares her thoughts on how ego can sometimes overshadow creative expression and how developing a strong sense of self-belief is key to overcoming this. Creativity as an Offering: A powerful idea Caggie shares is that creativity is not something we control, but rather an offering. It chooses the artist to come through, and it’s up to us to honour that process. Discovering Herself in Her 20s: Throughout her 20s, Caggie navigated the journey of discovering who she is, both as a person and an artist. This period of her life was marked by experimentation with different styles of music and self-expression. — Stay tuned every Friday for new episodes of The Courage To Create. Follow or subscribe to Saturn Returns to get notified when each episode drops!  For those inspired to dive deeper, you can join Caggie’s Substack, You Are Not Alone—a creative hub and community where you can follow her reflections and be held accountable on your own creative path. Sign up for your free month here.  If you’d like to learn more about Chiron, the wounded healer, join Caggie for her online workshop with Madeline from Astrology for Artists. Limited spaces available— register your interest here.  At the end of this five-part series, Caggie will release her music project—sign up here to be the first to hear it. The Courage To Create was inspired by Caggie’s episode with Amy McNee (@inspiredtowrite). Listen here!

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I'm very glad that you are joining me again. And last week we talked about creativity through the ages and sort of interconnections between creativity and spirituality and I hope that you enjoyed that and that it inspired some of you. And today we are going to be going deep into my personal journey. I'm going to be sharing my relationship with creativity specifically around music because the goal of this show is by the end of it that I have garnered enough courage to release a music project, one that I have been sitting on for I don't like to say how long but quite a long time and it just brings up all of these thoughts and feelings and

emotions that I think are important to share with you because it's been my experience from doing this podcast now for almost five years that usually something that I'm struggling with someone else will be struggling with and when I can share that vulnerability even as I'm navigating it. It helps you guys and then you guys help me and it's this really sort of beautiful symbiotic relationship that we have with each other that's made this community so so special. So today the main themes are around facing our fears and doing something even though we don't feel ready. And I feel that it's quite a universal thing for everybody,

but I'm going to say quite gender specifically for women, that we hold ourselves back, that we don't think we're good enough to do something, that we need someone to come and tell us that we can, that we're capable. And in turn we end up holding a lot of stuff in our hearts that never sees the light of day and that might be a music project, that might be a piece of art, that might be a business. It can be so many different things and I hope that to all of you who are listening that this series really inspires you to take that first step and in this episode today I'm going to be taking you on the journey of my relationship with music because I know some of

you have followed me for a very long time back to Made in Chelsea days but I'm going to go even further back today because I think it's important for you guys to understand the journey that brings together this project. It's not just starting in this series, this goes way way way way way way back which means that it's not only extra important to me, but also very vulnerable. And we'll be talking a lot about where it all started in the resistance that we feel about the things that make us feel too vulnerable.

And vulnerability is a core value of this show and of myself. And so that's why I need to slay this dragon that's why I need to face the music no pun intended and I really really hope and pray that you guys will support me in that. My earliest memories of singing are very vivid. When I was a child, I would take the opportunity whenever my mum or dad would leave, either me in the car or at home. And when they left, I would seize the opportunity to go and sing. So when I was in the car, I would put on the tape player, which shows how old I am.

Sometimes I would sit at the top of the staircase and I would just sing. I would sing and it was like this exhilarating feeling that I had because it was mine, it was private, it was this experience that I had, it was this access to my inner world. But for whatever reason I always kept it very hidden and I remember sometimes if I was on the top of the staircase and I would hear the keys going into the door I would be so mortified with the possibility that they'd heard me that I would sort of run back into my room hoping that they hadn't heard anything. I often wonder where that sort of reasons that I kept it so hidden and it still sort

of perplexes me. Perhaps it was because I grew up in a very academic family that wasn't particularly creative I wouldn't say but it was something in me that felt very very vulnerable and I sort of loved it and dreaded it at the same time and this really set the tone for my relationship with music this sort of love and fear this this paradox of this experience that I had with something that I obviously desired on a very deep level, but felt almost ashamed in showing because it was just something that gave me a real sense of connection and fulfillment

and presence. It creates a sort of a duality in me because I know where the fear is we must lean into that more and that is why I'm speaking about this subject and that's why I'm putting this project together. I often like my relationship with music to sort of having like a cruel mistress and on those very rare occasions I felt like it loved me back and when it has it has been the most exhilarating beautiful feeling in the world and I'm going to talk about some of those moments a bit later on but for the most part it's definitely felt like something that is a deep longing and often felt quite unrequited like an unrequited love. And I remember after school sometimes I would walk back

through southwest London, we grew up in a place called Barnes, and on my way home I would take a little detour into where the pond is and there's sort of like trees and everything and there was this particular tree that I used to climb up and I used to perch myself there and I used to take my mum's tape recorder and I would record myself singing and then play it back to kind of hear whether there was anything there but I was also terrified of being outed so I would always hide any trace of the recordings, or delete them before returning them to my mum, who again was none the wiser, she had

no idea that I was doing this. But at school I didn't sing. I remember one of my best friends, Grace, when I grew up, her family was very musical, her mum was a singer and I would go to their home and always feel very inspired like oh this is this is kind of where I see myself but I wasn't able to really express it. And when I was 19 I went to Leeds University and I wasn't really I didn't really know what I was doing there I was studying philosophy and history of art and I decided to leave university and go to New York City and enroll in Lee Strasberg's method acting school. I remember one semester I did

singing but I couldn't get up, I couldn't sing in front of everyone and I remember every week I would just be so so nervous and of course I was at a school, I had every to kind of try there were some people that were really good there were some people that were not so great it didn't matter everyone was supportive and nobody judged and yet I still couldn't do it so my secret singing continued but we had a little bit of an upgrade from the tape recorder as I got an Apple Mac an Apple Mac for those that have one might know that they have I guess like an app in it called GarageBand and that's where you can record music, you can record your voice, you can play around with it, you can sort of give it all sorts

of effects and so I started recording myself in my little Avenue C apartment and I'd go into the bathroom because the acoustics were very good there and I would often sing one of my favorite songs to this day which is Etta James At Last and when I returned back to London for Christmas I was at my dad's house and we were all in the kitchen and my laptop was on the table and I'd gone upstairs for something and I came back down and me singing this song was playing. And my whole family sort of looked at me puzzled and they were like, is this you? And I was very embarrassed but I was also relieved because it was like the secret was out. I was no longer this closet singer. They were aware that this is something I was doing but I did feel incredibly embarrassed that they'd found

this sort of acapella recording of me. And then a few months later I was connected with a sort of loose family connection, it was my stepdad's brother-in-law and he was a musician he very kindly offered to bring me into the studio and we started playing around on with some chords on the piano and I started singing along and that's when I wrote my first song which it was called Ghost Woman. I honestly don't know where it came from but it was about someone who had died. It was a very very sad, very morbid song. Quite depressing song but it was also kind of beautiful and it was it was bizarre because I hadn't experienced grief like

that. It was just something that kind of came through me that day. But what I did know instantly was that I loved songwriting. I found a lot more safety in the studio and in songwriting than I perhaps thought I would in performing at this stage anyway. Around the same sort of time there were whispers in the corners of West London about a reality show being filmed. And having lived in London my whole life, I'd been going out from a very young age. I went to all the clubs. I knew a lot of the people in them, I really loved going out. I felt that going out allowed me to kind of become a version of myself that was sort of more extrovert

and it sort of allowed me to discard the more melancholic sort of nature of myself. And when I drank, I I partied I felt like I fitted in. There was a safety in that at that age and when the show approached my friend Millie and Millie was gonna get involved in this reality show she then said oh they want to speak to you so I went and met with them but it was not on my radar something I wanted to do at that point I really wanted to be an actress I was just sort of exploring music and I but I didn't really know I

Didn't really have many connections in that world in London, even though I knew a lot of people and so I was like Oh, well, I'll have a meeting with them And when I did they asked me asked me what I liked to do. And I told them that I had just started singing and that I really loved it, but I was very shy about it. And anyway, the next day, they called me and they said that they would love me to do the show and that they had written into the first episode

that I would do my first performance and that I would be singing at the iconic troubadour in Earls Court. Now there would be a camera crew filming the whole thing, it was going to air on E4 and go out to hundreds and thousands of people and to everyone's surprise, including my own, for whatever reason I said yes. Which looking back is like the matchest thing. I had never sat apart from in the studio with this I had not sung in front of anyone. I'd never done a performance. I was scared to do it at school for goodness sake and I was agreeing to sing on TV. And anyway, I performed an acoustic cover of the Goo Goo Dolls' Iris and also Rihanna's What's My Name which at the time was the song. It was a very

different version to the sort of radio version that she does and it was in front of an audience of friends, some family, all the extras for the TV show. There was about six cameras and it was the most terrifying and exhilarating experiences of my life. I was petrified before but I did want to do it. I felt like I was given this opportunity and I wanted to sort of slay that dragon, to slay that fear and it felt like doing it in such an extreme way is quite in my nature. I'm kind of a bit of an all or nothing sort of person. I'm still perplexed by how I managed to do that but I think that I didn't really didn't really fathom what reality TV was. I did retrospectively they

probably thought it might be a disaster and that would be great TV but I just thought oh they're really supporting me here and anyway it put me on the most bizarre path because it suddenly went out and it was presented as if I was a singer and at this point I wasn't. I wasn't a singer at all. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no performance experience at all. And I was suddenly propelled into the public domain in a reality show, but also depicted as a singer. And so that is the sort of origin story of my relationship to music. It's not the standard one! And actually it's quite cathartic sort of sharing it but it's important for you

guys to understand like where this project has come from, what it's been born from and it has been born from all of these experiences. Music is something that's very deeply rooted in my essence. It's not that I'm putting this out because I need to become anything or I need it to do anything. I just truly believe that the thing we love the most is often wrapped up in the most amount of fear and that's part of the journey. It's that we have to go through that barrier, we have to go through that pain point because the magic is on the other side. The magic is in the work you are avoiding. And whenever I sit down and actually record this series, which

there's been a lot of resistance about and also the whole project has taken me years to put together because there's so much resistance but I notice whenever I do it how lit up I feel, how aligned I feel, how guided I feel to put it out into the world. And I'm really, really trying to tune into that and tune into that trust and know that I'm supported in it. So thank you so much for joining me in another episode of Courage to Create and I want to leave you with this thought that there is something inside of you that you have been avoiding. For me it's music but perhaps for you it might be writing, art, it might be starting a business, it might be telling someone how you feel.

Essentially this is about having the courage to create the life that you desire and working through the things that stop you from doing so. It's not about perfection but it's about perseverance and it's about trusting that the world needs your voice, it needs your art, it needs your courage. I hope that by sharing more about my personal journey it inspires you on your own because often people only show the highlight reels of a finished project and it makes it feel inaccessible and it makes us feel like we can never begin like we're not going to be good enough. So I hope that by sharing the more rough

elements of the whole process that music was never something that was perfectly handed to me and like I said it wasn't something that I've ever felt particularly loved me back. But there's still something in me that wishes to sing, that wishes to share that part of myself. And I still battle with the feelings of wanting to keep it hidden. Even sitting down to do this series, I have to deal with so many voices in my head that's like people aren't going to care this is not what they want from you this isn't going to help anyone and one of the people that I find really really

amazing on this particular subject is Steven Pressfield who wrote The War on Art and he talks a lot about resistance, procrastination which we're going to get into in the next episode and how procrastination is the most common manifestation of resistance because it's the easiest to rationalize and this is the thing we have to recognize sometimes that we can be our own worst enemies and we'll tell ourselves all these stories why something can't be done, why we're not ready, why we need more time, more experience, but the truth is the only way to be

ready is just to start and then to release things into the world and they can be messy and uncertain and it will be scary but this is where we find our own magic. So thank you very much for listening. As always remember, you are not alone. Goodbye.