Always Choose Orange

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She often works in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Shaw is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, an honorary doctorate from Yale, five Grammys, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has written and produced for iconic artists and ensembles across the musical spectrum, including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Tiler Peck, Kanye West, Nas, the LA Phil, the NY Phil, and others. Her recent TV/film/stage scoring projects include “Leonardo Da Vinci” (Ken Burns/PBS), “Fleishman is in Trouble” (FX/Hulu), and “The Sky Is Everywhere” (Josephine Decker/A24). Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.In this week’s episode, Caroline shares the background behind her Ringdown project (a collaboration with her partner Danni Lee) and talks about what it’s like for her to make music with someone she loves. Ringdown’s debut album Lady on the Bike comes out on May 9, 2025 and we talk about the heartwarming story that inspired the album name. From there, we dive into Caroline’s creative process and she outlines a fun exercise called “voice memo roulette”, describes how she builds her songs starting with the harmony first, and the two of us wax poetic on the benefits of Rhymezone.com for lyrical inspiration. To top it all off, we discuss the relationship between environment and creativity, the magic of old, janky instruments, and what Caroline listens for when she’s revising one of her works-in-progress.Website: https://carolineshaw.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolineadelaideshaw/ FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

In the conclusion to our five-episode series on enjoyment, we examine the relationship between understanding and sharing. Using the coffee taster's flavor wheel, the Studio Binder YouTube channel, and Scott McCloud's books on comic-making, we look at the way developing a vocabulary helps us process and understand a sensory experience. And to wrap things up, we'll use a probably-apocryphal Albert Einstein quote to reiterate the importance of teaching others what we've learned. FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

Getting lost is often thought of as a bad thing. However, when it comes to art, it can be a major contributor to our sense of enjoyment. This week's episode hones in on six access points to getting lost in something you love. From allowing your mind to freely associate to memorizing pieces of a poem, we'll examine some practical ways to look at art from a new angle. FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

Resistance is futile! At least, it will be after this episode. In part three of our series on enjoyment, we look at four common ways we resist pieces of art and explore some tools we can use to invert that resistance. From identifying the different types of screaming in metal music to intentionally finding flaws in pieces of art, we explore curiosity and the power it has to help us enjoy things more. FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

In part two of our series on enjoyment, we're looking at a quick and easy way to deepen your appreciation of a piece of art — moving your attention beyond the part you immediately focus on. From following along with the chord changes in "Penny Lane” to identifying the 23 flavors in Dr. Pepper, we'll examine some quick and easy ways you can hone this skill. FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

Enjoyment is not only a creative superpower; it's also a valuable life skill. And thankfully, it's one that any of us can learn. Using this brilliant essay by Sasha Chapin as a jumping off point, we're going to explore the micro skills that make up the larger skill of enjoyment. The hope is that each and every one of us can interact with our own creative process in a way that brings us deep joy, even when it gets hard. FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

Dr. Peter Adamson is a philosopher and intellectual historian. He holds two academic positions: professor of philosophy in late antiquity and in the Islamic world at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; and professor of ancient and medieval philosophy at King's College London.Adamson hosts the weekly podcast History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps which surpassed 25 million downloads in 2019. The podcast has covered Greek philosophy, Islamic philosophy, and European philosophy up to the early modern era, and also launched series on Indian philosophy (with co-author Jonardon Ganeri), Africana philosophy (with co-author Chike Jeffers), and Chinese philosophy (with co-author Karyn Lai). Next to his other academic publications, Adamson has turned the podcast into an eponymous book series.Website: https://historyofphilosophy.net FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

Matt Bucher is the author of The Belan Deck and co-host, with Dave Laird, of The Concavity Show podcast. He is one of the founders of the International David Foster Wallace Society and administers the wallace-l listserv. His writing has been published in Electric Literature, The Dublin Review of Books, Puerto del Sol, Publishers Weekly, and other places. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.Website: https://www.mattbucher.comPurchase The Belan Deck here: https://www.amazon.com/Belan-Deck-Matt-Bucher/dp/B0BZWKP2WN FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

David Benjamin Blower is a prolific musician, a writer of theological books, a podcaster, and an activist from Birmingham, UK. His writing, like his music, is characterized by its political and religious vision and by its apocalyptic imagination. His new book, The Messianic Commons: Images of the Messiah After Modernity, is out now through SCM Press and his most recent album, Kindness is Solid Stone Violence is a Heavy Loan to Pay is available on all platforms. Website: https://davidbenjaminblower.comSubstack: https://davidbenjaminblower.substack.com/Bandcamp: https://benjaminblower.bandcamp.com/music FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com

Putting your art out for the world to see is a vulnerable thing. It often means leaving yourself open to criticism, and in some cases, outright hate. How can you sift through the deluge of comments, feedback, and judgment and use it to make yourself a better artist? How do you stop obsessing over a negative evaluation of your work? And do you look at "the haters" from a different angle?In this episode, we'll talk about all those things and more. AND, we'll talk about a few composers who had their music critically eviscerated, including the one whose music was described as "the most dreadful deluges of piffle, bombast, and nonsense ever perpetrated on an audience in these environs." Surprisingly enough, it wasn't Richard Wagner… Material Mentioned in This Episode:Tim Ferriss' 8 Rules for Dealing with HatersLexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time by Nicholas Slonimsky FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIVITY TIPS, MUSINGS, AND EXERCISES, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALWAYS CHOOSE ORANGE NEWSLETTER: https://www.alwayschooseorange.com