Saturn Returns with Caggie - *The Courage to Create* The magic you’re seeking is in the work you’re avoiding

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Exciting news - you can now sign up to be the first to hear Caggie's new single "Breakfast" when it launches soon. Click here to sign up and you'll be sent it directly via SMS or email on release day! In this episode of The Courage to Create, Caggie reflects on the unexpected twists and turns that shaped her creative journey, reminding us that it's never too late to pursue our passions, no matter where life takes us. Caggie shares her time in LA, where she spent two years immersed in the music industry before the idea for Saturn Returns was even born. She opens up about the challenges she faced in discovering her voice as an artist and how the destabilizing years between 27 and 30 ultimately led her down a different path. This unanchored period became the foundation for Saturn Returns, inspiring her to explore deeper themes of spirituality, identity, and transformation. As she approached 30, Caggie experienced a personal crisis, feeling the pressure of time running out to “make it.” A failed relationship and the close of her Saturn Return prompted deeper introspection, leading her to a healer who shifted her perspective. This liberation sparked a new wave of creativity, allowing her to launch Saturn Returns and reignite her passion for music. During the pandemic, Caggie collaborated with producer Luca, who helped push her creative boundaries and refine her songwriting. Their time together in Mexico rekindled her connection to music and storytelling, setting her back on the path of releasing her own work. Join Caggie as she delves into the courage it takes to embrace your artistry, overcome self-doubt, and find your unique path—no matter how many detours life throws at you. This episode is an inspiring reminder for anyone who feels it's too late to put their work into the world or is scared to take that leap. — 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 series, Caggie will release her new single, "Breakfast" —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.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Courage to Create. And last week we kind of took a journey down memory lane and talked about my relationship with music from when I was little, my time in New York and of course my time in Maiden Chelsea. Today we're going to be talking about my chapter in LA. So I've shared with you guys most of the backstory but I feel like an important chapter in this whole narrative that I cannot overlook is my time in LA. I sort of skirt over that moment in time these days because I think when your career pivots in a different direction you tend to sort of, well I do anyway, kind of move away from

the other things I might have been pursuing because I guess in a sense I feel like I failed at them so it sort of is something that I sort of condense into one sentence but now that I'm reigniting this aspect of myself I felt like I should do it the service of sharing that experience. I talk about it in the Saturn Returns book, this chapter of my life where I left Maiden Chelsea really primarily because I wanted to pursue music. Acting kind of fell into that as well but I felt like I wanted to do music and yet at the same time felt like I was just beginning that journey and in many

ways I was doing it on a very heightened level. Nobody wants to be learning in front of the public eye especially a very sort of quite a critical one in the sense that the press would often cover things and the road from reality TV star to respected artist is not not one that many get through unscathed. So I decided to move to Los Angeles and I had spent a little bit of time there and fell in love with it as anyone that has been to LA it's quite an intoxicating place and so it was I think 2017 when I moved there and I was enchanted by the whole place initially I was you know had so many exciting meetings, things felt possible, things felt exciting. There's this aspect of the American dream, this can do, anything's possible, how can I help,

let's make it happen attitude that's very very enticing. It makes you feel like your dreams are going to come true but But there's a sort of shadow side to it there as well because they use the term you never have a bad lunch in LA and you quickly realise that everyone wants to be very positive but they don't necessarily follow up on the things that they say they're going to do and so I sort of learnt that as well. It's also a tricky place to navigate in terms of who you can trust. At the time I felt like I couldn't see through the BS, I hope a little bit older and wiser now that I would. But I started really getting into music there and it was so

beautiful because I had this kind of blank slate, I could be whoever I wanted to be there. There was no pre-judgment. In fact, the sort of Made in Chelsea stuff was a benefit because I had this audience and I felt a lot of people were kind of wanting to work with me and I loved it. I loved that period. It was a really interesting time in my own personal journey and sort of professional one because whilst I was spending all my spare moments in the studio this was often at night because it was a lot cheaper to have the studio at night than in the day. It wasn't particularly glamorous, sometimes I would get to work with quite exciting people but for the most part it was yeah the kind of after hours like working in the studio and I was working at the time a lot

with one particular person who really allowed me to cultivate discipline in myself he was the embodiment of that and I wasn't before I I think I'd grown up and had this idea that people have talent and they just launch something and it's a success. This very naive kind of oh everything's overnight and if you're if you're good at something it will be noticed immediately. I didn't have much awareness of the grit and hard work that goes into things and I think LA really opened my eyes to that, to the sort of hustle that people have to go through no matter how talented they are. grit and hard work that goes into things and I think LA really opened my eyes to that, to the sort of hustle that people have to go through no matter how talented they are. And this particular person called Alex, I work with him a lot and when I first started

working with him I remember I bought a song to him, it was called Ignite and to this day it's a very very special song for me but I remember when I first recorded it with him and somewhere and I will bring it out but not for this episode I have the recording of it and it is awful my voice is awful it does not sound nice at all but rather than just him sort of going oh this is terrible he heard something in it and he wanted to pursue it, he wanted to kind of uncover what he heard the potential of in that song and we worked on that song amongst many others for the duration of my time in LA and what was really interesting is seeing the kind of where it got to eventually through singing one line again and again and again and again and again

and pushing me in the studio and not just resorting to auto-tune or like tweaking things which is so easy to do. He actually made me push myself and at times that was really hard but within that it gave me a teacher, it gave me someone who saw potential in me, which is so, so important at that stage of life. You know, I was 27 and so I was always really needing guidance. And not only that, but someone that was guiding me through something that's a very challenging industry and didn't just see me as like a reality star I guess and

that meant a lot to me at the time. And whilst I can look back and see that that was you know a great person in my life I think I was so confused by all the different people I was working with, all the different directions I was being pulled in, all the guidance that I was being given, people saying work with that person, work with this person, you should sound like this, you should change this. And I ended up with a collection of songs that will probably never see the light of day or perhaps after this series, who knows, some might. But they all sounded like a different artist, they all sounded like a different person. My voice, I would sort of manipulate it according to whatever

producer I was working with, I would sing in the style of the producer that was directing me in that way. I had little idea who I was as an artist and that was because I had little idea who I was as an artist and that was because I had little idea who I was as a person. And that was really simultaneously the inception of Saturn Returns because it was when I was going through this sort of identity crisis, both personally and professionally, and that came out in my musical identity of, you know, why do I feel this way and why do I feel so unanchored? And so I started sort of writing down these concepts for this thing, Saturn Returns, like what could I make it into?

Anyway, but back to the music. So I then had a bit of a breakdown towards the end of my time in LA. I felt that intense pressure of time even though looking back I feel like I had so much time. When you're kind of about to go through your Saturn return you often have this feeling of oh my goodness I need to figure everything out in this very short window or I'm just gonna be sort of exiled from society because I felt like everyone back home is kind of you know they might have been getting married they had their careers they were getting a house they were

getting a mortgage it all felt quite safe and sensible whereas I was like floating around LA with very little idea what was gonna happen with my life and it was quite terrifying because music is so feast or famine like you really there's no guarantees at all with most things in the creative industry to be honest and so I felt very anxious very very anxious and I was seeking authority outside of myself so much to try and make things happen but try and get someone to give me a guarantee a certainty that things were gonna work out and they were gonna be okay and what we all eventually realize is no one can do that for us and if anyone is gonna come and save us it's

gonna be ourselves. Anyway, after having a moment when I was driving to the studio in Burbank, I called my mum and I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't breathe because I was crying so much and I had to pull over. I remember that moment very clearly. I felt so panicked, I felt so lost, I felt so unsure about myself and the direction I was going in. I had pursued something in quite a public way and whilst retrospectively probably no one cared I felt like they did and I felt humiliated if I

didn't succeed and I felt like everybody else was succeeding everybody else had figured out what they were supposed to be doing with their life and who they were and I was just lost at sea that's how I felt at the time I know that's not true now and by doing the Satamatrans podcast I know how many people feel that way and that's why I did it but at the time it felt very isolating and so I came home to London slightly with my tail between my legs and a little unsure of what was next and I had this body of work that I'd created in LA and so eventually I kind of got myself to the point where I was like you need to just

put something out there. It doesn't have to be this perfect release. It doesn't have to do anything. People aren't going to judge you or if they do so be it but you can't sit on this anymore. And so on July the 4th, 2018, I released my first single. Which was a song called Here We Are Again. I recorded the song in LA with a band called We Are Exes and they lived in Venice Beach and I remember very clearly it was one of those great studio

days where everything just flowed very organically and they had a really nice sound that complemented my voice and my way of singing and this felt like the right record to put out first but I was absolutely terrified of doing so. I remember I went away with my brother at the time probably to try and escape the potential embarrassment that I thought was lurking around the corner and I had put it out and I'd contacted... I had some loose connection with someone at Spotify. honestly it was like my mum's best friend's daughter's boyfriend's friend it was so it was such a tenuous link and I remember my

mum saying you should contact them and I was like mom they're not gonna be interested in my song but anyway I did and that was a few months before and I do think that played a bit of a part but also because I think my audience I underestimated that they would be interested in my music and so when I launched it I remember I think it was for the first 24 hours like people were listening I could see people were listening that made me feel kind of good, but I went for a run with my brother whilst we were away and I was feeling really nervous and I was trying, you know, I didn't really know what to do and he said well, what do you want to happen from this? I was like, well, it would be my dream to get on New Music Friday and he was like, well, what's that? I was like, it's basically the chart system on Spotify

and if it gets on that it means that people are gonna listen to it and it's a really good thing and he was like, it's basically the chart system on Spotify and if it gets on that, it means that people are gonna listen to it and it's a really good thing. And he was like, okay, well, how do you do that? I was like, I have no idea. And anyway, I came back from that run and I had a shower and I looked at my phone and someone from the music industry who I hadn't spoken to in years, he was someone that used to assist my manager at the time, messaged me saying congrats on New Music Friday with loads of exclamation marks and I was like what? Anyway

I went to my phone and Here We Are Again was on New Music Friday, not only in the UK but in the US and countries all around the world. It was the best feeling of my life. ["Sing Who You Are Again"] Like I feel like I could cry thinking about how excited I was at that moment. And I was getting messages from people and they were like, oh my God, I love this song so much. And I just, I burst into tears.

I was overcome with emotion, not only joy and happiness, and I guess to be honest, like a feeling of acceptance, but also sadness for how much I'd held myself back in doing this. And that makes me sad saying this again. Now, because I guess I've done it again and I don't know why I do that you know it but I guess this what that's why this project is called well I didn't think this would have called the courage to create because creating and putting your creativity out into the world

takes a huge amount of courage and it seems that I can lack in that sometimes even though people wouldn't think it but I'm trying and that's why I'm doing this show but anyway I didn't expect this to happen after that moment it kind of put me in an interesting position because I was then on this path as a musician. I was releasing songs, I started releasing more songs, but it always felt like, I think the anxiety that I had around performing and the lack of self-worth that I had as an artist or self-belief was really tough to continue with.

And I think that most artists that succeed they have this kind of stealiness about them you know this self-belief that no matter what comes their way what criticism they can pierce through it they have the courage and I was doing this at the time but obviously as anyone has ever touched the music industry in any capacity it's notoriously hard to kind of make a living out of and I sort of felt like as I was then got to 30 when I turned 30 I felt like if I hadn't made it properly then then kind of what was I doing rather than seeing the progress that I was making and having a bit more faith I think I just felt very panicked and I had a

relationship that I was in back in London with someone that I you know I was very in love with but we perhaps weren't right for each other. And that ended very dramatically, very unexpectedly in a, as I call a sort of guillotine style fashion where I just suddenly, the rug was pulled from underneath me and stuff was revealed that I couldn't, we couldn't go move forward with. And I was crushed by it and it brought to the surface all of my fears around my life, the lack of stability, the lack of professional stability or security and that actually happened to fall. So the relationship ended when my Saturn return ended. And as you guys may know you sort of have these shadow periods either side but it acted as this huge catalyst

for me and I remember going to see Valeska. Now for those of you that have read the Saturn Returns book I speak about this chapter, this experience in it, and Valeska lived in Henley. She's a healer and I had been recommended her from a friend and because I was going through a really hard time with this breakup I needed some guidance so I went to see her about that and I remember she had this little shed at the back of the garden, it was all very picturesque and quaint and I went in and she sort of just sat me on this bed and essentially read the bottom of my feet. She didn't touch them, maybe she did a little bit but and she asked me a couple of questions but not too much and she was sort of communicating with my body and she started asking me about what I did and I told her I was a singer and I remember so clearly she just said point

blank with no emotion no sort of thought she said it's not resonating in your body and my heart sank because I also knew that. She told me something that I knew but I was too afraid to act on or say out loud and I said to her I know but I'm 30 and I've been pursuing this and I've told people I'm gonna do it and I don't know what else I would do and she said well tell me the things you like to do, tell me the things that light you up and I said well I love astrology, I love spirituality, I love connecting with people, I love spirituality, I love connecting with people, holding space, poetry, writing. And I just started listing all of these things. And as I was listing them I could see she was nodding away and smiling and she said yes, yes, this is all true.

And these are all the things you should do. And I looked at her a bit perplexed and I said, but that's not a Korean. She said it will be, but you need to open up your language and stop being so tunnel vision on one thing. You aren't one thing. And I remember she said,

you have a likeness, but you need to let it shine. And at the moment you're being so focused, so tunnel vision on something that you're missing all of the opportunities. And I remember leaving that experience and as I said goodbye to her, I felt so much lighter, like I'd finally been given permission to sort of run downhill again after going up an uninviting drain for so long. And then I said my final thing was, well what about my ex-boyfriend? And she just kind of rolled her eyes and she said in three months you'll be over it. And she was like,

to be honest sometimes people are just assholes. I shouldn't say that but that's the truth. And I thought, really? I don't feel like I that's the truth. And I thought really I don't feel like I'll be over this in three months but lo and behold after three months I was and that experience set me on a different path. I had been brewing this concept of Saturn Materns. I had written down so many ideas around it. I knew I wanted to do something. I just didn't know what. And then suddenly something clicked because I'd had a lot of people talk to me about doing a podcast and it was never really resonating. I was like, no, that's not the right home for me. Some of it was to do with

like people that had done Maiden Chelsea and I was like no no I'm not going down that path again. And anyway I was working with people at the time in the music industry and they were on board with the podcast idea, they thought it was a really good idea. And I said well I've been thinking about this idea around Saturn Return and I'm really fascinated by it and I think people should know about it because I don't think people do and it's a really tough time but it's a really transformational time and now that I've gone through it, I want to share more about it. And I started putting together this project and then the pandemic happened. We launched it. The rest is history. I won't go into that too much. But I just, you know, wanted to fill you guys in because I host so many other stories on this show.

But really, this little mini-series is about bringing you on my journey, the sort of ups and downs and trials and tribulations of it all and the sort of winding, strange road that I've gone down that's led me here. And around that time, I, because I'd been pursuing music, the podcast then started happening, that started growing, that started doing its thing but I still wanted to do music it was still really important to me and so in the pandemic I actually went and did a project with one of the producers that I'd worked with when I was in LA LA. Now that is really what this show is bringing you guys towards. It's releasing that project. And this series is about holding me accountable to do that because I have a tendency to get things done to like 90% and then so much fear around releasing it that I will come up with every excuse under the sun and then bury it and then leave the moment and I

realized that that's causing me a lot of internal pain and what's really really crucial is that you guys understand the journey behind the music, behind the song writing, the person behind the artistry, because that's what's gonna make you guys connect with it more, I think, I hope, rather than me just putting out this record out of nowhere and you being like, where did this come from? So I'm to be releasing some songs that I wrote with Luca who is the producer from LA. Aloha! So I think I've pretty much gotten everything to a good place.

I'm just going to do a bit of refining today. I think you know what I've added will be fairly obvious to all the tunes. He was one of the people that when I came back and could look retrospectively at my time in LA, I thought that sound that he created with me. A joyful listening experience and the harmonies are sounding really good. It's really come together and it's a really cool,

it's a really cool bunch of songs. I think the lyrics and the stories you're telling are framed in very interesting musical settings. He calls himself the song doula, which I like. He sort of draws the artistry out of a person. And I felt like that sound, I was like, that, that was it. That was a vibe. That was kind of where I see myself as an artist

and working with someone like that as a collaborator because collaboration is everything, everything in life especially music and creativity because we need the song dealers to bring the song out into the world. Went through a lot of the vocal harmonies, I've added some electric guitars, some Prophet and Juno as well as the Melotron. I'll probably add some trumpets to it too, I think. And so we wrote this body of work together. We went to Mexico. It was a really special experience. I learnt and continue to learn so much from him as an artist, as a creative, as a sort of inspiration musically and also his approach to songwriting and the discipline that he has.

And he really encouraged me to draw outside the lines, to use a different palette, different colours from what I was used to, and pushed me in my songwriting and storytelling. And so I'm very excited that I'm going to be sharing with you the first song from the EP, which we actually wrote, it felt appropriate to bring it back to the very beginning. This was the first song we wrote together in LA and it's called Breakfast. Honestly, if I gonna leave it open to interpretation as to what it's about but if you guys want to hear Breakfast, I'll be the first to hear it. You can pre-save it in the link in the show notes and I hope you do that because that will allow me to

directly message you the song when it's out and any updates about the project. So please please please do that. I'm very excited to continue telling you this story, bringing you on this journey and sharing with you my music in the hope that obviously you like it but also that it ignites or reignites your own desire and passion for your creativity to pursue the things that you hold in your heart and to be vulnerable. So that is all for today but I'm sending lots of love and you'll hear from me very soon. Goodbye.