Most of us know the feeling: everyone else seems to be moving faster, releasing more, filling their calendars while we drift behind.
But what if we've confused pace with progress?
This week's episode examines where that persistent hum of falling behind actually comes from—social comparison, manufactured urgency, and the pressure to perform productivity.
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Most of us treat peace as a distant reward—something that arrives only after the album is released, the rent is paid, the right person finally calls back, or we've finally achieved enough to justify the rest we deserve.
But what if peace wasn't a destination waiting at the end of your plan, but rather a practice embedded within it?
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The culture around creativity increasingly trains everyone on everyone else's output, compressing references and narrowing the ground from which genuine distinction can emerge. The question, then, is not how to sound different for its own sake, but whether we're willing to let the contradictions and cross-pollinations of our actual lives shape what we create.
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Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
There's a gap between what we can feel and what we can name; between sensing something and being able to articulate it to the world or even to ourselves.
Seen Heard Held releases 16th Oct 2026 on Warner Chappel Music.
Pre-save the album
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Official announcement of my upcoming 8th album 'Seen Heard Held' with thoughts on the why, how and what of it all.
Seen Heard Held releases 16th Oct 2026 on Warner Chappel Music.
Pre-save the album
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Sheila Chandra returns to Tapasya Loading for her third appearance to discuss Echo, a collection of live recordings she describes as possibly her final album.
Her first album as producer reunites her with Stuart Bruce, a collaboration dating back to Sheila’s Monsoon sessions in 1982 and continued through her Real World trilogy. For Echo, they worked as a team of two, communicating entirely via email.
In this episode:
Producing Echo and the dynamics of a two-person collaboration.
Production techniques and the often overlooked art of vocal production.
Revisiting past performances and choosing feeling over technical perfection.
Accessibility for artists, being mentored and becoming a mentor.
Sheila’s artistic journey and her perspective on what may be her last release.
Echo is released on 25 September 2026 through Real World Records on LP and digital, with six additional tracks on the digital edition.
Explore Echo and find listening and purchase options.
Previous conversations with Sheila:
Voices Lost and Found
Revisiting the Birth of ‘World Music’ and Unpacking its Relevance in 2023
Listen to the second half of the episode.
Free Artist Training
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Connect with Sheila:
Website: https://www.sheilachandra.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sheila_chandra
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesheilachandra
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sheila.chandra.1
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sheilachandra0000
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilachandraartistcoach/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sheila-Chandra/e/B0034Q533Q
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Chandra
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1291550/bio/
Connect with T.L.
www.tlmazumdar.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everynowheremusic/
With roughly a month to go before my eighth album comes out, I’m revisiting the work I’ve dedicated the past decade to, and what I was searching for through it.
This is a look back at that search, and how my upcoming album, Seen Heard Held, aims to be the counterbalance to what Re_movement was.
The IG Carousel with photos.
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Three weeks after a racial attack in Berlin, I move from shock and helplessness into anger, and sit with the discomfort of agreeing with what someone is fighting for without knowing if I could fight the same way.
A solocast about racism, belonging, contradictory truths and what humanity means when even that word can be hijacked.
--
More Relevant Links:
My talks with Equity Coach Tayo Rockson
My Talks with Sheila Chandra
My article on Racism in Germany
---
Free Artist Training
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
The coaching industry has fractured into two distinct worlds: one grounded in genuine education and responsibility, another built on engineered dissatisfaction and circular profit models. Between them lies a dangerous gap where the language of transformation masks the machinery of extraction, and where the promise of accessibility obscures deliberately incomplete offerings.
Read the article.
Free Artist Training
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Five years after her first appearance on Tapasya Loading, New York-based Dutch vocalist, composer, producer, educator and psychologist Vivienne Aerts returns as our first-ever guest to make a second reappearance.
Her new album, Current, was created aboard a tiny wooden sailboat that Vivienne and her husband, Ted Steinebach, first bought during the pandemic. What began with a fascination for the acoustics of open water eventually became a floating studio, travelling from Leiden towards Amsterdam and back through the Dutch waterways.
Vivienne chose not to release the album on mainstream platforms, refusing to place a project built around attention, connection and care inside a system she feels is increasingly removed from those values.
Listen to the second half of the episode.
Connect with Vivienne
Vivienne’s website
Explore the world of Current
Listen to and support Current on Bandcamp
Why Current Will Not Be on Spotify
ViviTalks on Substack
Instagram
Vivienne at Berklee College of Music
Vivienne’s previous appearances
Well-being for Artists and Making Music with Chocolate
Making an Album with 100 Plus Female Collaborators, Chocolate that Empowers Local Congo Businesses and Effortless Mastery in Juggling Multiple Hats
Connect with T.L.
Tapasya Loading
Holistic Musician Academy
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Produced by T.L. Mazumdar.
What happens when you stop trying to force incompatible parts of yourself into a single coherent identity, and recognize that the relationship between those parts is the identity itself instead?
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In an era when machines generate the appearance of creativity, understanding the difference is not sentimental.
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The boundary between coaching and therapy has become impossibly blurred, particularly for independent artists navigating both creative ambition and psychological weight. Most distinctions you've heard collapse under scrutiny, revealing instead that what actually matters is scope, competence, purpose, and the specific geography in which support is being offered.
Here's my revised take in 2026
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Why a Growth Mindset less about trying harder and more about loosening your grip on who you think you are.
Read the article.
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Self-loathing is a harsh word to acknowledge, but what it points to is real.
And what it shows up as in our daily decisions are the buildings blocks of the pattern that threatens to pull us away from our own creative centre.
Brought to you by:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/
https://safeandsound.studio/
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I was a toddler when two women at a doorstep decided what I was worth.
It took me decades to hear the lesson inside that deal.
This one is about value decided, not discovered.
About us waiting for circumstances to hand down a verdict that was never theirs to give.
And about the harder half: receiving.
Who taught you what you were worth? And have you been living by their estimate ever since?
Brought to you by:
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https://safeandsound.studio/
Read the article.
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Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Why a manager, team, assistant, audience or patron might be useless to us until we understand this first.
Brought to you by:
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https://safeandsound.studio/
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Uday Benegal is the founding vocalist of Indus Creed (formerly Rock Machine), the Bombay band that that arguably forced the rest of the world to acknowledge the existence of a culture that had always existed inside post-colonial India amidst the crossfire of an East and West not always as hypothetical as portrayed.
Rock Music.
Indus Creed navigated a global music industry with no label, no budget, and no precedent, and still managed to land an MTV Video Music Award at a time when public internet did not exist in India, and its passport offered access to a fraction of the countries whose culture flowed freely the other way; a one-way traffic that remains a controversial dynamic in the history of the world's largest democracy.
This conversation traces the journey from Bombay bus rides hoping to catch unannounced matinee shows of ‘Woodstock’, to the New York club scene eventually leading to a long creative silence, and Uday’s much awaited solo EP that finally broke it, in his Goa home this May.
Listen to the second half of the episode.
Resource Links:
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Brought to you by the Holistic Musician Academy.
Connect with Uday:
https://www.instagram.com/udaybenegal/
https://www.facebook.com/udaybenegal/
Connect with T.L.
www.findTL.com
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Most creatives know that beliefs are holding them back.
Some can articulate them, analyse them, even replace them with supposedly empowering alternatives.
Yet the behaviour often remains unchanged, and the resistance stubbornly intact.
What comes up:
Why "limiting belief" might be the inaccurate terminology
What self-sabotage is actually trying to do
The question I used to ask, and the one I ask now
Why knowing the pattern doesn't always break it
The beliefs you never chose
Read the article.
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The brain mistakes repetition for safety, comfort for understanding, and endurance for choice.
This confusion runs deeper than personal relationships; it shapes entire careers, industries, and the inherited scripts we mistake for our own lives.
What comes up:
Why the decisions that change your life rarely feel safe at the time
Why the brain is a prediction machine, not a happiness machine
Liking things simply because we've seen them before
The known wound vs. the unknown opening
The music industry as an amplified version of everyone's life
The starving artist: when suffering becomes a costume, then an identity
Is this safe, or just recognised?
Read the article.
Free Artist Training
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Saying no sounds simple. It isn't, and not for the reasons most people think.
In this episode I unpack why the word itself was never really the problem, what's actually happening when we can't hold a line, and why the emotional aftermath of a boundary is harder than the boundary itself.
Drawn from real situations — a collaboration that needed a hard conversation, a coaching relationship that got uncomfortably accurate, and years of running a business through someone else's framework, this one gets personal.
What comes up:
Why setting boundaries is easy and living with them isn't
The two identities in conflict every time you want to say no
How chronic yes becomes a survival strategy — and then a prison
Why managing other people's emotions is costing you more than you think
What congruence actually feels like when you finally get there
Read the article.
Free Artist Training
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
There is an entire chapter of Indian music history that has shaped global music in unknown ways remains preserved only in the human memory of a select few.
Sandhya Sanjana is one of those humans.
Long before "world music" became a marketing category, she was part of a generation of home-grown South-Asian artists blurring the edges of jazz, global and Indian classical music by a trial and error met with genuine curiosity, rather than novelty.
Co-founder one of India's earliest internationally touring world-fusion ensembles, Sanjana has been more than thirty albums, and spent decades moving between radically different musical worlds without reducing either of them into aesthetic decoration.
In this conversation, we try to trace that arc.
From an upbringing between Bombay and Delhi, to the nightclub circuits of Calcutta, with first-generation Indian Jazz musicians.
From backstage blessings from Alice Coltrane after the exchange of a cassette tape, to the origins of India’s first international festival ‘Jazz Yatra’ where the appearances from the likes of icons such Art Blakey, Max Roach, Stan Getz, Freddie Hubbard and John Handy and their days in India in open exchange with local musicians threaten to fade away amidst undocumented history.
What emerges is not nostalgia, but a portrait of a generation of artists that worked without the visibility, institutional support, or mythology later scenes would inherit.
Artists building language in real time. Documenting culture through performance while remaining largely undocumented themselves.
In the words of Sandhya herself, much of that era was "not presented to the world."
This conversation tries to remember.
Listen to the second half of the episode.
Connect with Sandhya:
https://instagram.com/achhamusica
https://facebook.com/sandhyasanjana
https://youtube.com/@achha_musica
Connect with T.L. Mazumdar:
https://findtl.com/
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In this episode, I unpack two economic philosophies that sound academic but are anything but. The gift economy and the transactional economy. What they actually mean, where they came from, why the gift economy keeps surfacing as an alternative to the chaos of how power and wealth get distributed and why, in the creative industries specifically, the romance of giving freely has been one of the most expensive ideas we never agreed to.
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The fear of invisibility haunts nearly every one of us, especially creatives. We're quick to blame the algorithm, the platform, the saturated market, and AI.
But what if the real source of that pain runs much deeper?
Rooted not in metrics, but in older wounds we're carrying? This piece traces the invisible thread between childhood experiences of being unseen and the desperate urgency many of us bring to our art, asking whether the visibility we're chasing is really about being heard, or whether it's about finally healing something that was broken long before the internet existed.
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
In an era obsessed with relentless output, we often make the subtle but dangerous mistake of confusing our outward capabilities with our internal space. While modern hustle culture demands flashy performances, new skills, and louder opinions, the profound art of truly "holding space" is quietly slipping away from our daily lives.
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What does “accessibility” really mean when the door looks open, but power still decides who gets in? Using the music world as a revealing lens, this episode discusses how current culture turns openness, authenticity, and even vulnerability into branding tools that can mask exclusion, exploitation, and control.
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
What if creativity is not just an abstract concept, but a vital physiological necessity rooted deeply within the human brain?
What if creative freedom isn’t a luxury at all, but a biological requirement for humanity?
The striking connection between stress, brain function, and creativity reveals how judgment, control, and poorly-curated environments can push the mind into survival mode and shut down the very capacity art depends on.
And the implications of flipping that dynamic are fascinating in ways that stare us in the face, waiting for us to see.
Read the article.
Free Artist Training
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Pop psychology can often flatten complex neurological phenomena into simplistic manifestation slogans. But the actual mechanics behind how our brains organize reality is far more fascinating.
Read the article.
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When a serendipitous turn of events resulted in Mahidhara's international debut being on one of the most visible stages of the world, the cascade of events that followed leading to an illustrious career that breaks multiple stereotypes in the arts industry by default, was not on a premeditated agenda, but a natural bi-product of a passionate and tenacious work ethic amply apparent even in her earlier formative years.
We dig deeper to trace the trajectory of the same and unpack the surrounding themes that have made themselves pertinent along the journey.
Connect with Pallavi Mahidhara:
https://www.pallavimahidhara.com/
Connect with T.L. Mazumdar:
https://findtl.com/
Watch the extended, unedited replay.
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Ever wondered why those heartfelt conversations with friends leave us drained, even when no one's keeping score?
Emotional labour is one of those terms that's either completely unknown or been flattened by overuse.
It shows up insidiously in wellness content, relationship advice, and workplace conversations, usually in the form of a complaint.
That's a shame, because the original concept is genuinely rich. And understanding it properly changes how we move through professional and personal life in ways that can be underestimated.
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Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
A single offhand line in a hotel café, (“Get someone else to sing it”) can crack open a much bigger question: who gets to decide whether our voice belongs?
This personal anecdote dives into my experience of being pushed into a category, and the deeper truth that creativity isn’t just craft or market fit. It’s intimacy, consent, and identity.
Read the blog post
Download the album I'm talking about.
Explore coaching + courses for independent creatives:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
What if the biggest challenge for us isn’t learning how to perform well, but discerning true expression from a hunger for approval?
Read the full blog post:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/performing-versus-being-performative
Explore coaching + courses for independent creatives:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
This episode is a live Q&A session from my Workshop 'Identity: First Step Last', delivered at the Pianist Academy, founded by award-winning pianist Charles Szczepanek.
Although the workshop was conducted for pianists, the conversation quickly moves beyond music into larger questions of authorship, vocation, and identity: who we believe ourselves to be, how that belief shapes our lives, and what shifts when we begin to treat life itself as a work of art rather than a moving part within an industrial machine.
Waiting list for the next workshop.
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/identity-workshop
Explore coaching + courses for independent creatives:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Is Your Tiredness Actually Burnout? The Distinction That Could Change Everything
Feeling exhausted while simultaneously experiencing some of your most creative and meaningful work might seem like a paradox—but it's far more common (and far less alarming) than you think. While exhaustion and burnout are often collapsed into the same conclusion, they are fundamentally different states that demand entirely different responses.
Read the full blog post (with academic references):
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/burnout-vs-exhaustion
Explore coaching + courses for independent creatives:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
For over twenty years, Peter Crone (‘’The Mind Architect’’, ‘’Human Ayahuasca’’), has worked with some of the world’s most elite athletes, CEOs, artists, and Hollywood icons, helping them dissolve the mental constructs that create limitation and suffering.
His approach doesn't attempt to offer behavioural fixes or quick-fix strategies, but goes where generic self-help tends to tiptoe around: dismantling the core beliefs underneath accepted constraints in the first place.
Recorded with a live online audience, we talk about the three topics Peter’s work touches upon with a clarity and perspective that continues to win hearts all around the planet: freedom, love, and identity.
Connect with Peter Crone: https://www.petercrone.com/
Connect with T.L. Mazumdar: https://findtl.com/
Watch the extended, unedited replay.
Brought to you by the Holistic Musician Academy.
T.L.'s Free Training.
When medium gets confused with memory, and quality gets buried under endless content, it’s easy to blame the screen instead of the real culprits: unprocessed pandemic associations, collapsed discernment, and marketing masquerading as teaching.
Read the full blog post (with academic references):
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/online-education-is-dead
Explore coaching + courses for independent creatives:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
Join the newsletter:
→ holisticmusicianacademy.com/newsletter
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Podcast archive: https://www.tapasyaloading.com/
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RSVP here
Read the full blog post (with academic references):
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/intentionality-vs-awareness
Explore coaching + courses for independent artists:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
Join the newsletter:
→ holisticmusicianacademy.com/newsletter
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Podcast archive: https://www.tapasyaloading.com/
The idea of taking a step back might seem counterproductive. But embracing a period of rest and reflection in January could be the strategic move needed to fuel your creativity, prevent burnout, and enhance overall productivity. By allowing your nervous system the time and care to regulate, you can set the stage for a more focused and successful year, grow new ideas, and maintain mental health.
In a world that often equates perfect with excellence, it's easy to overlook how such mindsets can obscure the true essence of creativity: sincerity.
This episode delves into the emotional complexity behind how many of us inadvertently sacrifice the genuine sincerity that breathes life into our life in an attempt to abandon perfectionist habits.
Read the full blog post (with academic references):
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/why-you-should-take-it-easy-in-january
Explore coaching + courses for independent artists:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
Join the newsletter:
→ holisticmusicianacademy.com/newsletter
Connect:
IG: @everynowheremusic
YT: Tapasya Loading
Podcast archive: https://www.tapasyaloading.com/
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
In a world that often equates perfect with excellence, it's easy to overlook how such mindsets can obscure the true essence of creativity: sincerity.
This episode delves into the emotional complexity behind how many of us inadvertently sacrifice the genuine sincerity that breathes life into our life in an attempt to abandon perfectionist habits.
Read the full blog post (with academic references):
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/sincerity-vs-perfectionism
Explore coaching + courses for independent artists:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
Join the newsletter:
→ holisticmusicianacademy.com/newsletter
Connect:
IG: @everynowheremusic
YT: Tapasya Loading
Podcast archive: https://www.tapasyaloading.com/
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
In the whirlwind of year-end sales and irresistible deals, many artists find themselves caught in a familiar cycle of seeking external fixes for deeper creative uncertainties, often without realizing the true cost. This pattern, fueled by emotional urges rather than genuine progress, can leave musicians chasing fleeting highs that never quite resolve the underlying doubts.
Read the full blog post (with academic references):
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/stop-buying-gear
Explore coaching + courses for independent artists:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
Join the newsletter:
→ holisticmusicianacademy.com/newsletter
Connect:
IG: @everynowheremusic
YT: Tapasya Loading
Podcast archive: https://www.tapasyaloading.com/
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Sæunn happens to be one of the most respected cellists in the world, performing with orchestras like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and Iceland Symphony, and in venues like Carnegie Hall, Barbican, and Suntory Hall, to name just a few accolades. She’s basically one of the best out there, for those who find language like that easier to understand.
But what makes Sæunn stand out beyond her accolades are the challenges she throws at accepted narratives both in the classical music world and beyond.
Sæunn is the kind of kindred spirit I don’t have to circle around or soften edges for. There’s an immediate intellectual and emotional honesty and shared language that allows us to get straight to the heart of the matter without performance.
This was her first reappearance on Tapasya Loading since lockdown.
The last time we spoke, the world was paused. And both of us have stepped away from academia as full-time identities since, and re-examined calendars from a different lens as performing artists as well.
A central thread in this chat is our shared fascination, and frustration, with how many co-artists remain passively locked into inherited industry narratives.
So we talk candidly about how many of these myths get internalized, shape behaviour, and how difficult it can be to step outside them without feeling like we’re risking our worth.
We reflect on the assumption of being ‘busy’ being the same as being ‘good’, and the fear and freedom that comes when we’re no longer chasing multiple forms of what are essentially external sources of validation.
Complete Episode
https://www.saeunn.com/
www.findTL.com
Explore coaching + courses for independent artists:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
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In a world overwhelmed by information, the concept of "signal-to-noise ratio" as used in music production can be a powerful life philosophy in our everyday lives. Clarifying what truly matters amidst the distractions can steer us from reactive chaos to intentional harmony.
Read the full blog post (with academic references):
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/signal-to-noise
Explore coaching + courses for independent artists:
holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
Join the newsletter:
→ holisticmusicianacademy.com/newsletter
Connect:
IG: @everynowheremusic
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Podcast archive: https://www.tapasyaloading.com/
Seeking help can feel like a luxury or something that qualifies us as 'weak' by default.
By the time we finally are ready to reach out, we've experienced what I refer to as one of the Five D's—Death, Disease, Divorce, Discernment, and Disillusionment.
Today's episode explores how these critical junctures often arise when we ignore the subtle signals that nudge us towards change. I go on to try to offer an alternate take: the benefits of a proactive approach that challenges the cultural narratives of self-sufficiency that often hinder our growth.
📖 Read the full blog post (with academic references):
👉 https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/death-disease-divorce-discernment-disillusionment
🎓 Explore coaching + courses for independent artists:
👉 holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
🧭 Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
📝 Join the newsletter:
→ holisticmusicianacademy.com/newsletter
📲 Connect:
IG: @everynowheremusic
YT: Tapasya Loading
Podcast archive: https://www.tapasyaloading.com/
Professor Miles Miniaci returns to the podcast, with another exchange filled with effortless resonance and curiousity.
A mentor writing instructor, we crossed paths serendipitously at the Tate Modern in London right after my master’s graduation ceremony, to launch immediately into the beginning of this sober and astutely honest, ongoing conversation that is made so striking by his wise lens.
We begin with zero-sum thinking, the insiduous presumption of someone else gaining something results in the loss of another. We explore mindsets that run the risk of shaping everything from politics to personal worldview, and how easily it can seep into the arts. Territorial behaviour, the subtle panic around “running out of space,” and the pressure to compete instead of expand.
We talk about the shifts that open up when we stop operating from there and move on to modern obsessions with 'solving' things as the poor man's version of creativity.
Fix the draft. Streamline the process. Optimise the workflow. The fast track to flattening the very beauty art tries to build, how it shows up in our inner world, and why some of the most meaningful work comes from staying with a question rather than rushing to answers.
We eventually return to the topic that brought Miles to the podcast the first time: AI and creativity. Back in the day when we first talked, AI was still speculative.
Now, as it's embedded so many corners of the creative world, the conversation an honest check-in about what has actually changed as opposed to the poles of 'warning' or 'celebration'
Authorship, agency, and voice, and how the temptation to hand over too much to a tool can quietly disconnect the creator from the work, while acknowledging ways in which AI can genuinely support the process when present, awake, and responsible for the final expression.
Complete Episode
https://www.milesminiaci.com/
https://findtl.com
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In this episode, I reconnect with guitarist, educator, and fellow Effortless Mastery retreat graduate Corey Congilio—a musician whose presence in the Nashville scene is more than skill; it’s a standard.
Corey’s work as a pioneering educator has shaped players across generations, with a roster of students that include the likes of artists like Seal and countless guitarists who’ve come to rely on his clarity, precision, and grounded musical wisdom.
But beneath the technique and the résumé lies the real connective tissue of our friendship: a shared devotion to the inner world of the artist.
Our common love and passion beyond the obvious is a vision of a music industry where musicians are more conscious of one of the most underaddresed skillsets of a professional aritist in the current era: personal development.
Corey is a self-proclaimed 'therapy junkie', while I took things to a whole different level by getting certified as a therapist myself and eventually making coaching an integral extension of my artistic practice.
A significant part of this conversation dives into the soul-level decisions behind where we choose to live and create. Corey breaks down why Nashville became his creative ecosystem—not for the clichés, but because the city demanded, shaped, and refined him. I share my own unconventional pull toward Berlin: both choices rooted less in career strategy and more in inner alignment, curiosity, and the need for a different kind of creative oxygen.
From there, we shift into the heart of Corey’s newest chapter: the release of his debut solo EP—a reclamation of artistic identity after years of amplifying other people’s visions in one of the world’s most competitive music environments.
We explore:
the psychological shift from sideman to solo artist.
the intricacies of collaboration and the invisible emotional contracts musicians enter.
why hiring the right bandmates is an energetic choice as much as a musical/logistical one.
the...
Ryan Hurst returns to Tapasya Loading on the launch of his much-awaited book On The Mat Forever (OTMF), with a conversation that leaves as powerful and deep an imprint as our first 3 years ago.
Ryan holds four black belts, and spent twenty-eight years in Japan immersed deep in the study of martial arts and its philosophy.
(He is also a pretty serious guitar player, even if mostly a quiet one.)
The fact that most people have no idea about any of this is a clue towards the brand of humility and restraint that mark real mastery like his.
‘’Posture, breath, mindset’’.
These were the three words that kept me steady when everything else felt like it was falling apart during one of the hardest chapters of my life, hours after I’d just learned of a health scare my mum was going through when OTMF reached me..
We talk about that and how the book has been a companion through personal storms, and why it feels so needed right now.
We explore the tension between the two dominant archetypes of martial artists today, and differences he notices in how masculinity expresses itself across cultures as he moves into a new chapter with core philosophies of ‘mutual benefit and welfare’ taking the forefront in a world where kindness, generosity, and calm are often misread for weakness in times of confrontation. And we unpack the dissonance of reverse culture shock. How it can be a reminder that it is not our environment that defines us-but how we respond to it.
Timeless truths of the true warrior that risk being buried under noise, and why OTMF is an endeavour to bring them back to where they belong.
Connect with Ryan:
https://www.stayonthematforever.com/
https://gmb.io/
Instagram: @ryhurst
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GMBfitness/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GMBFitnessSkills
(This is the official edited release of our exchange. The uncut version lives inside the community.)
Complete Episode
https://www.reztone.com/
https://findtl.com
Join the f...
Guitarist, composer and educator Rez Abbasi joins T L Mazumdar for a conversation that begins with music but doesn’t end there.
Born in Karachi and raised in California, NYC-based guitarist Rez Abbasi has long been a bridge between worlds: jazz, South Asian and urban traditions, intellect and instinct, virtuosic precision and play.
A teacher at the New School in New York, apart from being a touring and recording artist, he is known for a sound that is as fearless as it is fluid, garnering him a brand of quiet, irrefutable respect amongst peers and audiences alike that is rare in the current music industry.
His latest album Sound Remains, dedicated to his late mother, becomes the quiet centrepiece of this exchange.
We talk about what happens when music begins to outgrow technique and extrinsic goals, when surrender starts to feel more powerful than control.
We touch on how ‘jazz’, in its modern form, has grown increasingly slick, and how that polish both reveals and conceals something about the times we live in.
Mentoring comes up as well. Not as a profession, but as a practice in awareness, a way of transmitting freedom rather than formulas.
As the dialogue deepens, it becomes less about the conventional mechanics of music and more about what keeps us playing at all.
Rez speaks of loss and of finding presence inside it. I share how the the loss of my father last year, and recent health-scare of my mother, peeled away my tolerance for pretense in an industry and lifestyle in a world where so many of us still feel pressured to play along with very questionable rules.
What emerges is not grief alone, but a quiet clarity about why we keep returning to sound after the noise fades.
(This is the official edited release of our exchange. The uncut version lives inside the community.)
Complete Episode
https://www.reztone.com/
https://findtl.com
Join the first cohort of my Artist Mastermind and get your first month free.
https://holisticmus...
You play the gig. You get the praise.
Then silence.
You send the pitch. No reply.
Then—out of nowhere—a playlist bite.
Enough to keep you hooked. Not enough to feel whole.
This episode is about a subtle but powerful loop most artists find themselves in without even realizing it:
**Intermittent reinforcement**—a reward system rooted in the nervous system, mirrored in the music industry, and normalized in relationships, rehearsal rooms, and even digital platforms.
In this solo episode, I explore:
– What intermittent reinforcement actually is (beyond pop psych)
– How it shows up in artist careers through gigs, praise, playlists, and power dynamics
– Why our nervous systems get addicted to “maybe”
– How scenes like *Whiplash* aren’t just cinema—they’re memory
– And what a healthier, rhythm-based alternative could look like
This one’s personal. For every artist who’s confused their grind for devotion.
For every creator who's stayed too long because something *almost* happened once.
📝 Join the Free Training:
→ https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/artist-mindmap
📖 Read the full blog post (with academic references):
👉 https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/blog/artists-and-intermittent-reinforcement
🎓 Explore coaching + courses for independent artists:
👉 holisticmusicianacademy.com
–––
🧭 Work with me:
→ C.I.A.R. self-paced course:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/ciar
→ HMA group coaching & 1:1 mentorships
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/coaching
📲 Connect:
IG: @everynowheremusic
YT: Tapasya Loading
Podcast archive: https://www.tapasyaloading.com/
Art often emerges as a vital sanctuary for those navigating life's deepest fractures, offering a sense of connection and safety.
Yet, this very refuge can unwittingly evolve into a subtle trap, where unprocessed wounds forge unbreakable ties that blur the line.
As artists chase authenticity and belonging, they may find themselves ensnared in cycles of pain and relief that hinder true growth and joy.
Unprocessed trauma can distort the mind into mistaking familiar feelings (even if painful) for safety, and survival for intimacy.
Free Training:
artistmindmap.com
Read the blog post.
Join the first cohort of my Artist Mastermind and get your first month free.
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/group-coaching
Courses:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/courses
1:1 Mentoring:
https://holisticmusicianacademy.com/page/1-on-1-mentorship
