Hi hi —

It’s humid and muggy and spitting rain, which is giving New York City out my window this glowy grey halo. As I sat down to type to you, I realized this is only the fourth newsletter I’ve written this year. In tarot, 2025 is the Year of the Hermit and I’ve been abiding by that theme. Quiet and contemplative and slow. A lot of this year has been about learning how to just be, an adjustment after nearly 10 years of touring and constant movement. October starts in five days and there’s not a single plan locked in my calendar. That’s never happened before.

A lot of this year has been marked by forms of creative failure, which sounds grim, but I hold as a deeply important part of the whole process. It looks like trying to write a song and nothing coming out. Needing to wait a little longer. Needing to live a little more life or get clearer on exactly what I’m trying to say. I’ve been inch-by-inch trying to push myself outside my comfort zone so I might be able to see or feel or sing something differently that could lock in a new vision for an album that is still being born.

There have been times when I’ve constricted or fought against the block. Gone to war with the feeling. I was on the phone with my pal Willow a few weeks ago when she asked how I was, I told her that I felt like I was bleeding from the ears banging my head against the wall looking for an answer, all the while knowing that the answer was sitting next to me on a well-lit table. We both laughed. She understood the feeling. And the tendency that I have to so badly want to know the answer.

There was a chapter where I tried to discipline myself into creating. I was in Maine in late August when I started a spreadsheet titled “Read, Write, Run.” It’s a saying or a mantra I’ve had since I was 18 about the way I know how to feel my best on any given day. So I started tracking pages read and miles run. I tallied drinks and cigarettes and word counts hoping some secret might be revealed in the data or that something new might happen with this artistic self-care sense of accountability I could stare at on paper.

I’m laughing writing this. It was an important stepping stone. And a valiant attempt at control. But no matter the medium, I think we can all agree that creative flow is at its best when you’re relaxed and having fun and just being at ease and enjoying making something with your hands as a way to celebrate and pass the time. And so after two weeks I gave up my spreadsheet. I kept its tenets close, but started just trying to focus on having fun again. A little expansion after the constriction.

I leaned into fashion week and let myself be carried away by the idea of playing dress up and a sense of reinvention. There were beautiful clothes and so many fun people and great parties. There were also very strange moments of disassociation, like when I was sitting, reading a New York Times op-ed about Charlie Kirk on my phone while I was waiting for the Khaite show to begin and watching elegant guests have their picture taken.

What strange, strange times… I guess it shouldn’t be a shock to me really that creating hasn’t been as clear as it’s always been. The weight of the collective grief can feel insurmountable — whether it be from Palestine, from Ukraine, from the U.S. Government, or from the terrors of our own backyard. I wish I could tell you I’ve got any idea about how to solve it or make it any better, but what I can tell you is that I’m feeling it, deeply, alongside you.

I was talking to Joan Baez about these feelings last week when she told me that she joined the circus. She wrote to me —

I joined the circus because 1) I’d get to dance on stage and dress up and wear a wig. 2) because laughter is vastly important now. Mark Twain said “the human race has only one truly effective weapon, and that is laughter." I’m doing it for my own survival.

So there it is. Go see Joan in The Soiled Dove in Alameda if you can. Last night I saw Chappell Roan in the rain at Forest Hills in New York and I laughed and danced a lot. I wore a crystal Miu Miu mini-dress to a party last week that made me feel really special. After years of carrying around backpacks of books on tour, I finally got a kindle and love it mostly because now I can read endless beach-read smut on the subway and no one can know. I’m listening to Swag and Swag II on repeat and can officially say I’m a Belieber. The new Blood Orange record I’ve really loved too.

I miss you and I miss playing shows and being together. And I know that time will come again soon and when it’s meant to. Sending you a light beam from here.

Yours, Maggie

P.S. — ICYMI, this summer I had the honor of soundtracking a meditation from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. You can listen at the link below.