This roundtable discusses the podcast Music, Creativity & Mental Health with Emily James. Terry McBride, Chairman & CEO of Nettwerk, Coleen Novak, Artist Manager, Chris Norwood, Chief Strategy Officer and Caren Mix, Director People & Operations reflect on the podcast just as the dust was just settling on the United States election, so you’ll see some pretty interesting ways this discussion integrated the two! We discussed many things: tolerance of ambiguity and Emily’s metaphor of ‘things that fall between the cracks’; the Buddhist parable of the 2 arrows and how we can influence our reaction to the inevitable difficulties in life; how there is always hidden opportunity in adversity; how focusing on what we can do (rather than what we cannot) leads to enhanced wellbeing by building a more internal locus of control; using music as a therapeutic outlet that creates a shared emotional understanding with the audience; the centrality of prosociality as a strategy to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity; and the way that the creative arts can unite people across polarised politics by highlighting what we all have in common.

This Q & A explored the podcast entitled: 'Is Our Time Running Out?' We begin with a summary of that podcast and then the main themes touched upon in our discussions were: the wisdom for us all of an eledely father who says: 'I don't look to the future. I'm not wishing my life away. I want to live for the day'; how to live more of the 'holiday paradox' (that it passes quickly in the experiencing, but is spacious in recollection) in everyday life; whether it is optimal to experience spaciousness in both the present moment and in recollection; how the ageing brain has a much larger library of experiences and may be slower, but it is deeper; and how the old-fashioned dinner-time habit of the family members discussing that they did that day serves to add both spaciousness and significance to the day.

As we get older time appears to go by faster. This may be because we experience less novelty each day and therefore record fewer new frames of memory to 'replay' in recollection. It may also be because our brain processing is slower because it is far more complex than for younger people, and because our neural architecture degrades over time. Also it makes a big difference if we are paying attention to time duration in-the-moment or retrospectively. If the present is interesting, novel or significant, time tends to fly by in the moment, but retrospectively we experience it as being of longer duration.

In this podcast I talk with Emily James, an indie singer, songwriter and producer about music, creativity and mental health. We discuss the unfortunately high prevalence of mental illness in the music industry and the factors that underlie this, including the constant comparisons among artists and levels of success, the financial burdens and insecurities, the impact of social media, and so on. We also discuss the ways that music can be therapeutic and can enhance wellbeing, both for the musician and for the listener. And we explore the psychology of creativity itself. In particular, Emily describes how creating music is allows her to process experiences and discover meaning and purpose in them. She also describes how, when it resonates with listeners, it makes her feel very connected and very fulfilled. This prosocial joy is central to her motivation to keep going and keep creating. Emily describes the very practical ways in which she keeps balanced, staying intentional, prioritising what’s good for her, and how being a middle-class musician, one who makes a living doing what she loves, is so good for her emotionally and creatively. It was a delightful conversation full of practical insights.

We begin with a summary of the podcast 'Time Series Part 3: Hypnosis, Meditation and Awe', and then our discussion included the following topics: finding awe internally, not just externally; experiencing awe in the mundane; the ever-available awe of others; depression as the opposite of awe; the relationship between staying in the moment and experiencing awe; recognizing negative emotions as resisting reality and thereby blocking awe; the usefulness of 'aha moments' and ticking off our to-do lists as aiding time expansion retrospectively; stage of life effects on awe and cultivating a potential 'awe u-curve' as we age to rediscover our child-like appreciation of reality.

Part 3 in this Time Series explores altered states of consciousness and their effects on time perception. We see that in everyday trance we can lose all track of time, such as when you are lost in thought or daydreaming. Hypnotic states alter time perception in various ways, especially where we think an experience was very short, when in fact it was quite long. In meditation time often sems to expand, probably because we are paying very close attention to the details and the complexity of moment-to-moment experience and because we are more relaxed. In states of awe, time also slows down, again as the perceptual experience is so rich and complex. A key takeaway is to enagage in novel experiences and in day-to-day life turn our attention to the details of things and to the awe-inspiring.

Our roundtable discussion of the William Fitzsimmons podcast explored a range of fascinating ideas including: that music, as an aesthetic form of creativity, is about expressing and communicating feelings, and is in fact a force for therapeutic healing; that creative process is about suspending judgment and making music for the sake of making it, rather than being focused on whether it is good enough; the important role of intuition, born of experience and expertise, in recognising the 'gems' in one's output; suffering as a negative factor for creativity itself, but as a stimulus for a later reflection; the power of our reflexive consciousness in connecting to the creator through similar experience and feeling; the challenge for artists who are more senstiive in navigating an industry so focussed on algorithms, on metrics, especially when the artist is a young person who is navigating all the normal developmental challenges.

This Roundtable begins with a summary of the podcast focusssd on the notion of 'Time Affluence'. In particular, the benefits of this sense of having enough time are identiifed. Both objective and subjective to straegies to increase time affluence are explored. Topics discussed in the Roundtable include: how we can grow the subjective capacity to enjoy our leisure; how we can navigate others' negative judgments of us for being 'lazy; how high intellignce is not the same as being emotionally intelligent and how that may play into enjoying leisure; how being benevolent to others can give us a more spacious experience of time; the 1:3:5 rule for productivity and how it is imprtantot to do the one big thing each day, and probaly do it first!