We were lucky to catch up with Edgar Everyone recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Edgar thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Recently I was invited to join a group of 15 people and travel deep in the Brazilian rainforest, to spend time with an indigenous tribe called the Yawanawás. The trip would include learning about their culture, and 3 ceremonies with ayahuasca (the plant medicine that has been revered by many for centuries). At first I was a bit scared to hop on that adventure, but there was a little voice inside of me that keep telling me to go, so I finally booked my tickets and embarked on the journey.

I have to admit this is one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life – not only it was mesmerizing to visit the Amazon jungle, to be completely off the grid, but the ayahuasca medicine has been invaluable for me to take a deep look inside of myself and heal whatever I needed to heal.

After I landed back in California, I keep feeling so lighthearted, and connected to the pure joy of making music once again. It’s like I jumped 10 years back in time, and now I feel like a teenager again being so ecstatic about my art!

Edgar, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi there! My name is Edgar Everyone – I am a musician, singer and multi-instrumentalist from France, now based in LA. Life took me to many places, (Paris, New York and even Hong Kong where I lived a couple years), but in 2016 I relocated in California and I’ve been loving the lifestyle here: its nature, its people, and the hyperactive music industry that I’m a part of.

All my life I’ve been surrounded by music instruments; my dad used to own a recording studio in Paris and when I was a child I would watch the adults run the recording sessions, and the engineers work with strange machines that I learned to use several years down the road.

Now I make my own music under the Edgar moniker, and I would describe it as a blend of high-energy beats, electronic sounds, indie rock and sometimes groovy funk. My focus is to always keep things moving, and danceable on stage. I love to sing pop-inspired vocals, and I’m always trying to blend different genres to create a unique sound signature. I hope my music can be uplifting, it’s dedicated to the things that sometimes feel bigger than us, like the Creator, or the sensation of Love that is so universal.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

As a musician, a big part of the journey is learning how to be okay with finishing a piece of work and releasing it into the world.

I used to be extremely self-critical, and throw away so many song ideas – on average I would only release 10% of what I had composed, and that love/hate relationship was a bit excruciating. Because you always evolve as a human being, the person you become every year sometimes looks back at the old work and doesn’t relate with it anymore.

So I had to learn to be more gentle with myself, and release music in a shorter time-frame. Initially it was frightening, because I thought I needed time to pull all the stops and keep tweaking things until it’s “perfect”. Realistically, there is no such thing as perfection! So I learned that it’s a fine line between “work” and “obsessiveness”.

That is what I love about the creative process now – to look back at the past and realize how much more loving and gentle I’ve become with my own creations… I try to treat them all like babies, or plants… One day they get birthed but still they will need a lot of watering until they are fully mature. But none of them should be abandoned because somehow they all matter, and they will have to get out into the wild to see how the world treats them :)

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

About 10 years ago I was really impacted by “A New Earth”, by Eckhart Tolle. It basically marked the start of my passion for mindfulness and meditation, and I cannot understate how good this book is. For whoever is curious, I think it’s like an essay on the whole functioning of the ego, and a deconstruction of its mechanisms.

As a young musician in France, I used to play in rock bands back in the day and my reasons for making music were a little “tainted” – I needed validation, I wanted to attract attention and be in the spotlight after growing up quite insecure as a kid. So music was my way out. But in that sense it was always dependent on the audience’s feedback, and I couldn’t find my own strength and self-confidence.

That book changed my life, because all of a sudden I began to understand the mechanisms of my ego – I was starting to recognize the wounded child in me, who was begging for attention. I started to heal and look inside myself. Since then my music life has been a constant path to connect with “better” reasons to create (IMHO). Nowadays I love to write about nature, about love, about the gratitude to be alive and these are all reasons that wouldn’t sway in the face of a reluctant crowd or a lukewarm venue.    

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edgareveryone/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edgareveryone
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@edgareveryone

Image Credits
Nikki Neumann, Maxine Bowen & Sika Senro