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Look around the room you’re sitting in right now. Choose something at random. Now, write a song about it.

Things you can expound on:

1. Describe the thing. Use all 5 senses.

2. Write about your relationship to the thing. How do you use it? Do you care about it? Is it special? Mundane? How does it make you feel?

3. Write the story of the thing. Where is it from? How did it make its way to you? Where will it go after you?

This prompt might seem to you so simple that it might feel a bit amateur, but I’ll tell you something I know for a fact after working with 400+ people on writing original songs.

One of the most common things that blocks us creatively is feeling like we need to say something profound.

Something deep, fancy, or that godforsaken cursed adjective: original.

FUCK that, I will tell you. The profound might find you at some point. It may stumble upon you one day, at random (and it will be random) and surprise you in its choice of moments it chooses to grace you with its presence. But you will never be profound while you’re trying to be it. So stop trying.

Work with what you have right in front of you. Keep it simple, and see if your ego explodes when I say this:

In lyric writing/story telling, the simpler, the better.

The above is the very prompt we start with on Day 1 of Uke Camp each round, because it is so fantastically affective. Right away, we take the pressure off of you of needing to say something extravagant and put your attention into the present moment.

At once, you realize how easy it actually is to write a song with this prompt. And, most importantly, how you do have things to say. How you have a perspective on something (right now, a random object in your home), that is uniquely yours, even if it’s “simple”.

With this prompt, Uke Campers have written songs about everything from their coffee mug, to a sock in a hallway, to trash bags, to their beloved one-eyed cat, to pink sparkly heels lying on the floor that have a story to tell.

So, take a look around the room… what are you going to write about?

Check out badass Uke Camp alum Arissa’s Day 1 song she wrote about the best trash bag brand. Shit slaps.🤘🏽 Check out Arissa’s work here!

Next Uke Camp is August 20-22.

✨ Find details and register here ✨

Listen to Glass House!

Snapshot 1: New Orleans to Williamsburg, VA 2021

It was my biggest creative funk to date. I wasn’t just creatively blocked, I was like, creatively constipated in 2021. It was lodged in my mind that I needed to write HIT SONGS in order to be taken seriously by any kind of producer worth their salt and, of course, in order for Labels to “Want Me” (oh poor, sweet Caroline in her twenties— so much suffering due to people-pleasing-itis). And, of course, that kind of pressure and self deprecation I slathered on myself, particularly on a month long stint in New Orleans, as I tried to drill-sergeant out some songs reminiscent of the popular sad girl songwriters at the time all felt like absolute shit work (well, it was, because it was inauthentic). I can say it was a chapter that was utterly excruciating day to day.

Back in my hometown after feeling totally defeated, like an absolute songwriting failure, I visited my musical mentor and, as we now joke, my Other Dad Bruce at his home studio. This was was a period of frustration and tearful embarrassment that 1. I couldn’t seem to find my own voice in writing, but more 2. I was afraid that I had found it and that no one would like it. As Bruce so patiently listened, as he always does, he offered me something so very kind— a track of some cool, vibey, faster instrumentals that he had laid down of a celeste and tambourine— in the hopes that it might, he said, get me out of my head and my own comfort zone if I used it for a song.

He sent me the tracks to do with what I wished, and what did I do? My frozen, self-doubting ass sat on them for 4 years, just another thing added to my un-finished and someday lists. But that’s the magic thing… sometimes those little pieces come up for air when you least expect it.

Snapshot 2: Beaumont-de-Pertuis, France 2025

A last minute application to an artist residency in the south of France led me to one of my most fruitful creative ventures yet. I think I had around 9 days at La Maison, and I came intending to try and finish 4 songs (including Bruce’s tracks) that I had actually all began back in 2021, none of which had lyrics yet. This was the first time I would write since recording my album Space in 2023-2024.

Beaumont-de-Pertuis is a minuscule medieval village in south France and the place I didn’t realize I needed to truly focus on my work.

1. Most of the residents are old, therefore there is no nightlife or distraction, and hardly anyone speaks English

2. The only thing to do besides write is to go on walks up the mountain or through the cobblestone streets, or drink wine at the one cafe down on the main cobblestone road. Perfection.

3. There were little fountains and small squares in the village perfect for pondering lyrics and melody, especially with help from all the village cats that roamed and ruled the streets.

This place, completely devoid of distraction but so inspiring sensually (lilacs in bloom on every corner, rain showers then spring sun, the water sprinkling down ancient fountains), was the key for me to finish exactly 3.5 songs in my week at the residency.

I set up my theremin, looper and recording gear in the old cellar of the building where we lived. When I got tired and restless after a few hours of morning work, it was time to meander through the streets with a notebook, searching every corner of the winding stone paths for the write words to say.

I realized so many things, too, writing for the first time in so many years.

1. My writer’s voice had changed. Everything coming out was quite somatic imagery, more visceral, even. I had this idea of if an alien was born into an adult human body and just woke up one day… how would they see the world? How would they feel the human experience? That’s where all these songs came together.

2. My singing voice had changed. I wasn’t a nervous, self conscious, 20-something year old anymore. I had completed my album, I had experiences under my belt. That began to come out through my voice. All of a sudden I was accessing parts of my voice I’d never tapped into. It was more guttural, more visceral, coming from a place of power much deeper, much wilder, one that felt totally unfuckable-with. I felt like a sheep herder singing into the mountains, or a Balkan maiden, harsh siren cries into the wind, as I sang these new lyrics in that old cellar.

Glass House: exploring the concept of “the end of the world”

I had had enough experiences by this point in my life that had felt like the end of the world as I know it to become intimate with the idea. Besides those big terrifying moments that explode one’s life, Life as we know it, after all, is destroyed all the time, making way for the new present. The end of someone’s world happens every day, every second — whether it’s the ant in the grass outside who literally just breathed his last tiny breath, or it’s the end of YOU before this new insane thing has happened, insisting you become something different than you were.

“You were sure it was the end of the world, and you were right, you were right.”

The me in my 20s would never have been able to write that line. She was so terrified of endings, of the pain that comes with them. 33-year-old Caroline who wrote these words would be forced through some pretty significant world-ending personal events by the time she wrote this, and even creepier, I think — her life would completely explode a month after she wrote these words when her husband would have a drug induced psychosis lasting for an entire season.

Only now I know that from the ashes comes rebirth. Only from destruction can creation begin. The two are infinitely hand in hand, yin and yang. It is the end of the world, but a new one always begins from it. The end of the song begins back at the beginning, as the cycle continues forever and ever, amen.

Snapshot 3: New Orleans January 2026

It was a dream of mine to work with Teddy Lamson since I met her back at Welbourne Jazz Camp pre-pandemic and was in awe of this creative-lightning-storm-of-a-lady who I simultaneously looked up to in wonder and wanted to be best friends with. (She taught a Let’s Get Weird music class at camp, and I was head over heels).

I didn’t know if producing was in Teddy’s bag of tricks, but my motto is ** always always ask, just in case**. Not only does she produce, she told me once I reached out, but she really liked this song Glass House and was actually excited to work on it!!

In January I flew in for 2 days in her home studio with our Sound Engineer Extraordinaire, Adam Kiel, joining us to record my first song of this new project.

Hours flew by as I sang vocal track after track, stacking on harmonies that Teddy and I picked out. She brought in a marimba to play (she’s an insane percussionist and Shania Twain’s drummer!!?) and began to incorporate all these interesting shakers and other things that made fun noises, that were all around her cozy little house. Sage and palo Santo smoking in the corners, Adam laid down atmospheric guitar to whoosh color-sound into the background. Sunset dinners in the back yard, breaks for hot tea, bottles of wine emptied for me as I cling to the fact my vocal cords always relax when I’m slightly buzzed.

They continued to work their booties off for and with me as in the weeks after, when I was back home, they continued the mixing and editing process.

It still feels a bit unbelievable to me to have someone I look up to so much, like Teddy, be actually, authentically stoked about my music that I wrote. I guess I’m still a bit jacked up by earlier tries at getting my foot into the industry door and getting burned.

But this song, from resurrecting the tracks and composing a melody with my newly-found voice, to writing the lyrics, to making it exist as a listenable piece in the world, has been a healing process.

Moral of the story? Keep going. Keep making the shit. Have faith in yourself. Have faith in the universe. Everything’s unfolding exactly as it’s meant to.

Below are the lyrics of Glass House. I hope you’ll give it a listen, let it move your body the way your body wants to move, and give a little reverence to endings, terrible and scary as they may seem, for they are such a part of every beginning here in this strange world called life.

Glass house in a garden

Spend a life filling it with pretty little things

While the sun was watching

Ideas and desires are spinning stones with wings

Sliver comes into vision

The glass is cracked a random act of particle fission

Then one day it all shatters

Dissipating every corner of the world and all that matters

You were sure it was the end of the world

And you were right, you were right

You were sure it was the end of the world

Hold on tight, hold on tight

Somehow the sun rose in the morning

The open air without the glass felt cool upon your cheek

It’s a new life in the after

Takes you by surprise its the arrival, the survival of the seed

You were sure it was the end of the world

And you were right, you were right

You were sure it was the end of the world

Hold on tight, hold on tight

Glass house in a garden

Spend a lifetime filling it with pretty little things

While the sun was watching

Ideas and desires are spinning stones with wings

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I had a vision in a yoga class a few weeks back.

I laid there in shavasana, in a dark room, having just stretched my body for an hour, all the while imagining a light shining into all the crevices and cracks of my innards and even my soul, imagining that clear light illuminating the dust particles of long forgotten corners and cobwebs poofing into the ether as they felt this powerful shine.

Now here I was, laying on the ground, still as death. Only, it didn’t feel that way. Suddenly I began to feel myself being carried down a running stream of water, feet first, water rushing all around me. Or wait… was I water too? I felt it, that feeling of body surfing in the ocean, of being picked up in the current of the waves so eagerly, so surely, heading to their destination of the shore. But it didn’t stop. I was caught up in a mighty river. I was the river itself.

Then, the vision zoomed out. I was at the top of the Grand Canyon, looking out into its great depths. A voice inside said, “Water did this”.

Water did this.

I carried that out into the bright day after that class, and water has been sticking with me ever since. As a theme? As an entity? Yes?

Sure, other elements helped carve away the canyon. You have your erosion, you have the shifting of plates, etc etc etc.

But that damn Colorado River… she was always going to find a way through, come hell or high water. Heh, heh.

It is her nature… to find the way.

Ferociously powerful, water.

I’ve always been a bit afraid of water, and pissed that more people don’t acknowledge her power – the power to take whatever she wants, whenever she wants (I grew up on a river and every summer the drowning stories would come because of the under-currents and ignorant-overconfident beach-goers). I also happen to detest having pruny fingers, so anytime I’m in water, from the ocean to the tub, I keep my hands out of it, hovering them in the air above.

Now, suddenly, in this new and alien chapter of my life (my personal life currently feels like a ferocious forest fire of grief and chaos that I’m navigating barefoot), water has come to me like a salve. Like a lighthouse. Like something to look at when there are no maps of how to get through this disaster and I can say ah hah! SHE knows what’s going on. Let’s follow her nature for a bit. She is proof that this burning burning cannot be all there is and cannot last forever, because she is constantly in movement and so everything must be.

Even better, my friend reminded me as I shared this vision, WE ARE LITERALLY COMPRISED OF WATER! Huzzah to that!! We are made up of 60% of water on average (78% water at birth). So wait… the thing that I am finding such inspiration and comfort from is actually INSIDE ME already?! How fucking wondrous!

Here are my proposed

Principles of Water

Which i am emulating and inviting in to my life.

1. Water always finds a way. This way is hardly ever straight, but snake-like, with wild curves that come, no doubt, from dodging curveballs like hills and other pesky natural obstructions.

2. It can transform into entirely different states of being. Ice. Liquid. Vapor. Look at this like you’re an alien observing water for the first time. HOLY HELL, this is INCREDIBLY magical!

“So, you have this liquid that is clear like the air but distorts images when you look through it and feels and behaves differently than air, even though they’re both clear. Also you can move through it (we call it “swimming”) and it feels similar to flying”, says your human guide. You: No fucking way! What the heck??

“Now. See those big poofy clouds FLYING in the sky?” Your human guide points out to you. “ALSO WATER.” What a world!

3. The water’s always changing, always flowing. You can’t step in the same river twice, as our girl Pocahontas sings. Even a still pool of water will eventually evaporate and find somewhere else to be… and yet, all the water on earth is the same water it has been for billions of years. She is one source, but constantly moving, transforming, changing.

4. It nourishes. It provides. Just by being itself, it gives us life.

Each of these, I declare, are crucial and necessary characteristics for the creative human. Through act of making something, we must not remain rigid in our vision, but instead let the piece flow and morph naturally into what it will be (ice? water? song? fingerpaint?)

This includes veering in weird ways around road blocks, having faith that this is becoming the exact right shape after all. It includes understanding the difference between authenticity and originality — the former perhaps being a pure expression of self, the latter a more ego-centered outward goal. And finally, it includes trusting that the act of creating even the smallest things has the power to nourish in unexpected ways; though maybe most importantly, the life and soul of the creator herself.

Could incorporating some Water spirit into your life, and in particular, into your creative practice, shift/loosen/free things up for you? If yes, how so?

P.S. Go seek out some water to dip yourself into ASAP.

P.P.S. After this vision, I of course had to recreate it in real water and use it for cover art for an upcoming song… stay tuned.

You can catch my music on my debut album, Space, anywhere you listen.

As I reach into the depths of my bag that’s come with me to all the pubs, castles, and otherwise, holding my books and money and practical things, I can’t help but to be tickled by all the little doodads collected at the bottom.

I imagine those celebrity short clips where they show you the contents of their bags, pulling out incredibly posh skin care and sunglasses and whatnot. But mine is the exact opposite - as if you’re looking into the bag of a ten year old girl.

Et voila, the treasures in my bag that I’ve collected on the journey:

-2 sparkly rocks from a creek bed in the highlands

-1 witch’s stone (look it up) found on the beach in Whitby

-1 ammonite fossil also found on said beach

-a plaid wool blanket that doubled as a scarf (thanks dad)

-a small stick with the most beautiful lichen I’ve ever seen from a walk on the Moors

-a feather of an unknown bird

-a book on Qi Gong from Topping in York

-various teas from each place, to steep and lose myself in memories when I get home

Like a little crow, I will take these back home to my nest of odd collections. Each of these items has a bit of soul in them, and each carry a memory, a snapshot of this wild time, this fleeting chapter.

I smile as I look at these trinkets in the bottom of my bag and feel myself getting wilder and wilder — that is to say, I’m becoming more and more myself — and apparently, that looks a lot like a ten year old girl. Or a crow. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In my little life, the Big Pain has touched me recently in the form of mental illness and addiction in one of my most beloved… two human conditions that are absolutely mysterious and therefore not only painful, but terrifying in their mystery.

I have become more intimate with Big Pain in the past year than I would wish on anyone. I’ve joined the countless souls who walk around on this earth with a “before” and an “after” defining their lifelines, having had to question our core beliefs of how reality works and come to terms with the fact that we are not in control of anything.

Yet here I am, attempting to share a way to give these earth shattering moments purpose.

The way I’ve experienced it, it’s felt like there are 3 ways to react.

Door #1 You feel the darkness of senselessness, fear, and grief knock at the door to your heart and do everything you can to push it under and away from feeling it: booze, drugs, food, TV, sex, religion, etc etc etc. If you don’t know yet, these things do NOT get rid of the darkness… only delay it and morph it into another form of ugliness that will rear its ugly head in unthinkable ways down the road. This is the most popular and supported choice by our culture, as it fits very well into a consumer economy.

Door #2 You let it overtake you and you drown in it. I’m no stranger to depression, and this option really stinks because then we the world lose you and all your precious gifts when we desperately need them.

Door #3 You transmute the Big Pain into something, anything, different with your imagination and heart and newfound wisdom that comes from experiencing pain. Let’s peek inside.

Door 3 gives a purpose to the pain. Whether or not you believe in gods or magic or any old thing… pain is a part of this weird life experience whether it’s part of divine orchestration or totally random.

If you transmute it, YOU are actively giving the pain a purpose.

Pain leaves us frequently asking, “why me??!” This question, I’ve learned, is a terrible waste of precious and fleeting time.

To make something from/after/because of the Pain is to switch questions. “Well, what the fuck to do now?”, while laughing maniacally to yourself about the shit storm you’re weathering or have just survived, is a question that takes us from victim to creator mentality.

Though it fixes nothing that has happened, it feels a hell of a lot better than the alternate doors.

How to transmute the Big Pain & Darkness into something else in 3 easy steps!

Lolz, JK.

I can’t promise it will be easy or even feel good during. You still have to burn, your earth still must shatter, no matter what.

But I am pretty confident that you will look back after you’ve survived all of this and be glad that you took door number 3.

Here are a plethora of ways I am transmuting my own Big Pain of the last several years (I have a lot of pain, an overly-active imagination, and a freakish output tendency). Feel free to steal:

1. I held my virtual songwriting workshop for creatives for the first time in over a year. To be able to hold space for others in their own creative processes is the #1 fast track to purpose for me.

2. I started my substack and am planning on making a ritual of writing a weekly post like this about musings and tools on life and creativity that I find helpful (again, focusing on holding space for others and cultivating community)

3. I’m totally planning on writing a memoir someday about the Big Pain that happened in my life (you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll hopefully feel less crazy by me sharing my crazy stories). I have copious notes and am still writing down the painful memories as they come up.

4. I’m being impeccably intentional with what I choose to let into my life sphere, from what comes into my home , to people that come onto my calendar. My life is one of my greatest art projects and now my boundaries are more important than ever, after the Big Pain.

5. I’m building an entire live show of my original music, some of which I’m recording this year for my next album Songs for the End of the World, because it makes me happy and it’s a big dream I have.

Note: the product of transmutation could look like ANYTHING; it’s the process that matters most: which is, you taking this enormous Pain and deciding to do/make something, ANYthing, because of/in spite of/after it.

Here are some examples of what the transmuting process may look like for you:

1. Deciding to take a class in something you’ve always wanted to do but always had an excuse for not signing up. (Transmuting into more space for your Self)

2. Writing a poem, or a poem each day for 30 days

3. Doing a whole research project on a random ass topic and making a brochure about it for your friends

4. Have a themed dinner party for your loved ones

5. Take up painting, or pottery, sketching, or collaging (Dollar Tree has an EXCELLENT crafts section BTW)

6. When you’re awake in the middle of the night and your nervous system is on the fritz, try getting up and dancing and shaking your body (shaking is scientifically proven to help your nervous system release trauma). A literal evolutionary transmutation!

I’d love to hear how you’ve transmuted Big Pain before (maybe you didn’t even realize you DID it, you closet witch, you…) or if you’re in the fire currently (right here with you, sister), what’s one thing that sounds kind of interesting to try?

Wherever you are on your wild life road, you are a powerful bitch. I see you.

Now go make magic happen.

Get more from Caroline Scruggs in the Substack app

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Get more from Caroline Scruggs in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Read more

Read more

Read more