The Art of Making Do and the Audacity to Begin

May has been a learning experience for me in Santa Fe. In California, I’m used to peppers blooming by now. But on May 19, it snowed. Then it rained. Then it hailed. (P.S. Have you ever heard of graupel? It’s a thing here.) Santa Fe weather is a party! We can get all four seasons in a day. It almost always ends with sunshine, but our planting season doesn’t start until Memorial Day. I over-prepared, of course, and have been chomping at the bit to get my hands in the dirt. I had to learn how to pre-grow indoors, something I’ve never done. And next thing you know, I’m researching greenhouses, because if you’re going to do something indoors—do it right, right?

Life finding its way in our pool turned pond.

I’m also converting our pool into a pond, which is a move everyone has an opinion about. Some are enchanted, others confused. That tracks. My ideas often emerge like I’m a woman of means. But the truth is, I’m still the consummate artist. I make art, and it eats up most of my spare funds. Welcome to real life. Financing your creativity isn’t cheap. And I’m still trying to work out how billionaires live with themselves. I get an extra hundred dollars and I instantly start buying homeless people lunches and lending friends 50 dollars.

So, my pond has cinder block fountains. It works. Minimalism, when done with a good eye, is cheap. And instead of crown molding on my walls or fancy marble, I’m painting murals with my artist friends and tiling the formica—brushes in hand, house in process. Everything in my life is art. Not just the intentional, finished kind, but the make-do, on-the-fly, figure-it-out-as-I-go kind.

We all dream of big dollars for our art, but the lack of them often forces something better: ingenuity, authenticity, originality. I bought cheap koi, goldfish, and minnows for a few bucks and tossed them into the pool, hoping for the best. A few didn’t make it. But almost 200 have! My numbers are better than the pet stores. And in 15 years I’m gonna have koi the size of puppies. I have a utility pump with a garden hose and a cinder block fountain with a statue of a happy Buddha. It’s simple but quite lovely. I’m figuring it out. That’s the trick to creating music, too—by starting. Starting without knowing everything, but with enough curiosity and courage to keep going. That’s what most people are missing: the audacity to begin.

There’s a study I read once that said the most accomplished musicians often had some lessons but tended to quit early, then figured things out on their own. That hybrid model—gentle guidance plus self-direction—is magic. If you’re curious and accountable, you don’t need a shadow. You need time, space, and a willingness to trust the process. A little wind. A little chaos. The study may have been fake. Who knows these days? 90% of all statistics are made up on the fly. #AlternativeFacts. Wait a minute… don’t go there, Frannie. But… #$^&*%$%$

Community mural in process.

…And back to the loving place. The pond has pulled me back into practicing classical guitar. I always do better when I can hear the wind and water. My whole being thrives. Maybe that’s why I’m always drawn to practicing in gardens and at poolside. Anyway, I’ve been drawn to my classical guitar all week. But because I’ve neglected it this year, I had to change the strings and stretch them. It took days for the tuning to settle. The guitar has a way of teaching patience. I keep tuning… and retuning. Reminding myself not to allow myself to dismiss out-of-tuneness for too long. It’s like practicing without practicing—showing up for the ritual of it, even if the melody isn’t ready yet. Getting my ears locked into six notes and not letting them drift off. There’s a meditation to tuning like that.

I keep pencils in every room, like breadcrumbs to my future self. I sketch ideas the way I plan gardens—loose shapes and structures, built to be revised. My grandmother used to say, “Draw what you see.” Like Jiminy Cricket, my mind whispers, “Bring a pencil,” constantly. Those voices live in my head, keeping me anchored when perfectionism starts to creep in. A pencil, after all, can be erased. I really only believe in two writing utensils. Pencils and classic Sharpies. When I’m ready, I go bold.

My home is art. Guitars hang on the walls. Photos of beloveds, past and present. I collect the paintings, photos, and sculptures of my favorite artists turned friends—friends who stay for dinner and leave brushstrokes behind. I think some folks would find it chaotic, to live in rooms that are always changing (my poor blind cat). But to me, stillness is death. Spaces should evolve, and so should we.

Santa Fe clouds displaying chaos to come.

Even my songs grow in shifting gardens. I track them in a spreadsheet—moving titles on and off albums and EPs in progress as parts are written, recorded, rearranged. I used to think I’d know when something was done. Now I know better: it’s done when I say it is. When it feels ready to share. And if I change my mind later, I can repaint. Rewrite. Re-record. Artists do it all the time. Bowie did. Joni did. Taylor’s doing it now. Nothing’s too sacred to revisit. And no version cancels the others out. They’re all true. Just… different seasons of the same root.

Yesterday, I was shoulder-deep in pond water, rearranging plants and stirring up muck. The work was sticky, and the smell of damp earth was… ripe. As I wrestled one of the planters into place, I noticed a tiny goldfish hovering right next to my hand, utterly unbothered. Just keeping me company. I stopped what I was doing, said hello, and thanked him for the trust. I was churning his whole world and he was still calm beside me. There was a lesson in that—about stillness, about letting the hands do their work, about faith in something larger than the moment’s mess and the reward of calm even when you are muscling things into place.

The album I’ve been working on for years is suddenly done—at least the A-side is. And the rest is super close. I didn’t even realize it until I looked at my spreadsheet and saw that every box was checked. It’s a good thing I’ve learned the discipline of writing things down because when I get knocked off track, I totally lose things. I wandered back into my “song progress” spreadsheet at the beginning of the month and read “mastered” with bemusement. OMG! I had a single floating in there, totally complete, that I hadn’t scheduled for release. Free song! #MusicianMath

That’s how creation works sometimes. You just keep showing up, reshaping what’s there, and one day the shape takes hold. It’s finished not because it’s perfect, but because it’s ready. Just get it across the finish line and call it. Completion is power.

I cut songs I loved to get this record done and maintain focus. Just like I’m dismantling the solar heating system on the pool. I don’t need a heated pond. You have to make space. Destruction and repurposing are part of the creative cycle. I keep every discarded lyric and broken line on scraps of paper—like carpenters keep wood scraps just in case they need them. It’s all part of the same gesture: nothing is wasted when you’re paying attention.

And I don’t do it alone. I surround myself with creatives—singers, builders. Folks with productively busy brains and hands. The kind of people who see unfinished walls and want to add color. You don’t have to ask them twice to scar up a fresh white wall. When I host gatherings, I lay out brushes, instruments, snacks. I set the stage for people to create, and they do. My mural grows in layers from the hands of friends. My kitchen becomes a symphony of shared dishes. The pond gets redesigned by committee. Creativity, like water, finds its way, and once the flow starts, it keeps going.

Tending to our creations is a kind of devotion. An important discipline.

So as spring settles in, here’s a quiet blessing for those of us out here making things—muddy, messy, unfinished things:

May all of our gardens flourish, even when planted too early.
May we trust the process. When we find balance, everything becomes clear.
May we never fear editing. Repaint, rewrite, rebuild—without shame.
May our friendships stir up creativity and water our roots.
May we show up and tend to our creations every day.
And may we always, always have the audacity to begin again.

🎧 Homework: Applied Listening. Musical Do-Overs.

Even the greats revisit their work. The Beatles famously re-released Let It Be… Naked, stripping away Phil Spector’s production to let the raw songs shine. Read that again. They edited out Phil Spector!

Check out: The Beatles’ Let It Be (1970) vs. Let It Be… Naked (2003)
Focus: Stripped-back production, rawness, removal of Phil Spector’s orchestral additions.

Joni Mitchell reimagined her classics with lush orchestral arrangements in Both Sides Now and Travelogue, her aged voice offering sagacity and a new emotional palette.

Check out: Joni Mitchell’s selected songs. Compare originals with versions on:

• Both Sides Now (2000)
• Travelogue (2002)
  Focus: Orchestras + matured vocal tone.

David Bowie took it even further; he hated his 1987 album Never Let Me Down so much that one of his final wishes was to have it remade. In 2018, after his death, it was completely re-recorded, the synthetic ’80s gloss stripped away, the songs rebuilt with live musicians and intimate new arrangements. A posthumous do-over.
It’s wild that we get second chances even in death.

            Check out: David Bowie’s Never Let Me Down (1987) vs. Never Let Me Down 2018
            Focus: Replacing ’80s gloss with organic, emotional arrangements.

Taylor Swift is methodically re-recording six of her early albums—Taylor’s Version—to reclaim both ownership and expression.

Check out: Taylor’s Version Albums

• Fearless
• Red
• Speak Now
• 1989
• (Reputation and Taylor Swift still unreleased, mid-2025)
  Focus: Changes in tone, delivery, and production choices—how has her perspective evolved?