What this musician’s identity crisis teaches us about navigating change

Since childhood, Joshua Roman's life revolved around the cello. But when long COVID forced him to set his cello aside, he had to rethink his approach to life, faith and music. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted http://plus.npr.org/ted. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Manoush Zomorodi?

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• 0:37Speaker 01

  You just don't know what you're gonna find.

• 0:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  Challenge you.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?

• 0:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi.

• 1:04Manoush Zomorodi?

  Were you one of those lucky people who knew exactly what you wanted to be when you grew up? Cellist Joshua Roman was.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  You know, I went through a phase when I was 10 or so. A few of these kinds of things. It was like, oh, I could be a fighter pilot or a firefighter or it was always something heroic. Fastest man in the world. But only if I break my arm and can never play the cello again.

• 1:31Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Then I'll join ski patrol. It was that sort of thing.

• 1:37Manoush Zomorodi?

  He has always spent most of his days practicing his cello.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  It's pretty all-consuming. It's a practice, not just practicing the cello, but the practice of sitting with a friend and working on something together.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  All of the things that I think other people might explore and really get into, I would do that, but it was always kind of on the side. I never put more effort into anything than I did into the cello.

• 2:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  Was it love at first sight, or was it more of a slow burn?

• 2:20Speaker 02

  You know, I don't remember my first time playing the cello. I was three years old. But I do remember the UPS lady at the front door. And we had one of those glass doors and a wooden door. And the wooden door was open. And she was standing there in her brown shorts with this box that was bigger than me. And I was so excited. And yeah, I don't remember ever not loving the cello. So it's been inseparable since memory began.

• 3:00Manoush Zomorodi?

  Growing up in Oklahoma City, music and faith were two sides of the same coin, and what his family stood for. By the age of 13, Joshua practiced cello five hours a day, often at church alongside his father.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  When I was growing up, it was very religious. We went to church all the time. My dad was the music director. He's Reverend Paul David Roman. We were at church almost every day of the week, my whole life. And music was a service to God. That's how I saw it.

• 3:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  Eventually, Joshua went on to study music. He joined the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. This is him on cello playing Shostakovich.

• 3:53Manoush Zomorodi?

  At 22, he was their principal cellist, their youngest ever. At 24, he left to pursue a solo career, playing with orchestras around the world, live streaming on YouTube from Carnegie Hall in 2009, introduced by Yo-Yo Ma.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Occasionally, I get to meet an extraordinary young musician, such is the case with Joshua Roman.

• 4:17Manoush Zomorodi?

  Tens of thousands of fans online, traveling the globe, life with his cello was exactly what Joshua had hoped for ever since he was a little kid.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  By the time I was six or so, I was telling everyone, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. And I just knew it. It wasn't a question. It wasn't a consideration. It was just, that was what I was going to do. No question.

• 4:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  I think a lot of people, or I won't speak for a lot of people, I'll speak for myself, which is that I'm envious that you had that clarity at such a young age.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Hmm. You know, you can imagine, that's something that I, I get told a lot or asked about quite a bit. And I think it cuts both ways. For me, it's been great.

• 5:10Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Been great, but it's also been something my whole life has revolved around. And my time has always been limited.

• 5:20Manoush Zomorodi?

  Because of your commitment.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Because of my commitment.

• 5:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  That commitment to his craft gave Joshua Roman the focus to become a world famous classical musician. But like millions of other people, in 2020, his life shifted when the pandemic happened. Not only because he couldn't tour or play concerts, but because after Joshua got COVID, his body completely changed. His health, which he had always taken for granted, became fragile. And his old friend, the cello, it was like they hardly knew each other anymore. Today on the show, an hour with cellist and TED speaker Joshua Roman. An identity crisis that nearly ended his passion for his cello, and how he had

• 6:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  to rethink his approach to life and music so he could love both.

• 6:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  But first, let's go back to a typical day for Joshua.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 6:19Manoush Zomorodi?

  In 2018, before all that happened.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  A typical day pre-COVID was packed. It was all super intense. So I used to practice anywhere from six to 10 hours a day. I was always reaching, striving to make myself better, whether at the cello or some skill or more reflective learning meditation. But it was all 100 miles per hour. You know, my idea of relaxing was to sign up for a 10-day silent vipassana meditation course. And you're really grounded, but I wouldn't call it relaxing

• 7:05Speaker 02

  in the sense of not doing anything. And that's what I would do to take a break. And I would get up early, I would run. I got my mile under six minutes again the year before the pandemic. While I was bouncing around, I had been so busy, gone about 80% of the time playing concerts, that I decided I didn't want to bother living in New York anymore. And so in 2019, I left everything in storage. And I just, for the first six months, I just lived in hotels and host family homes while I played the concerts that I had. And occasionally

• 7:46Speaker 02

  I needed to add an extra night or crash at my sister's. So I'd spent a long time kind of just roaming, being a kind of nomad. And it had been, I think, eight or nine months of doing that when the pandemic hit.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone. What a day. What a time. All the concerts were canceled that March 12th, or whatever it was. Concerts that have been canceled between now and May. It's for the best. Got a phone call from my manager that wiped out the entire future income that I had, except for, I think, one concert. And I immediately went into a kind of musical response mode. Welcome to Cello Bello. And started doing daily live streams on Facebook. I was doing this project called The Musical Journal.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  And I would record these multi-track cello things.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  When I would get somewhere and unpack, the first thing I would do is set up my recording equipment, my little mobile studio, and record an entry into the musical journal. And that was, that was what music was doing for me at that point, was an outlet to serve.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Looking back, I think that I was really ignoring my personal relationship with the cello.

• 9:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  Huh.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  I think I was using the cello as a tool, trying to extract all the, the good that I could from it in a way that would make an impact for other people, but I wasn't really considering, what does this sound, what does this practice mean for me? I, I was on a mission and that was it.

• 9:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  And then we get to January 2021.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:49Manoush Zomorodi?

  And like, the vast majority of us, you got COVID.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 9:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  Where were you?

• 9:58Speaker 02

  I was in Jacksonville, Florida, the one concert that wasn't canceled. And I just, I will always say, for the record, the Jacksonville Symphony did a great job with their safety protocol and measures. No one else got COVID. They canceled the second concert. We played the first concert and I woke up the next morning and I had a, I couldn't smell, couldn't smell the Altoids.

• 10:24Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, man.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Stuck my nose in the box and I couldn't smell a thing. I was like, this is not good.

• 10:29Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  So I took the test and then, you know, in those days, you would cancel the whole concert and I was just kind of stuck and I had no idea what it was going to do to me. But from the very beginning, it was an ordeal.

• 10:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah, cuz like it's really hard to remember, which is so weird cuz it's not that long ago, but I think, you know, it's not fun to think about, but but let's just remind ourselves that for some people, it was no big deal to get COVID.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:55Manoush Zomorodi?

  And for others, it was an extremely big deal. How did your symptoms progress? And at what point did you realize like, oh, nuts, this is not good?

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was weird because I didn't feel like I had such a bad COVID. I mean, it was strange. I didn't, what I didn't have is the extreme, regular flu-like symptoms. I basically had the weird stuff that COVID brings and not a whole lot of traditional sick stuff. I wasn't, I had a lot of trouble breathing, that was a thing. And I had incredible fatigue, which was like nothing I'd ever experienced, where it wasn't being tired cuz I had done something or being sleepy. It's this feeling like I'm wearing weights inside of my body or something, but I just,

• 11:50Speaker 02

  lifting an arm can be so difficult. It just feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. And the brain would have similar things. I was really struggling with brain fog. It was very difficult to read. And it was very strange. I didn't feel sick. I felt like I was inhabited by something else, like I'd been possessed with some weird thing. And, and then it just didn't go away.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  And I'm very, very lucky that my primary care doctor knew about and understood enough about long COVID, both to suggest that that might be what I had and also to say, you need to get extra help because I'm not an expert in this.

• 12:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  When we come back, Joshua puts away his cello, unsure he'll ever return to it.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  That was probably the lowest point. Nothing on the calendar, no confidence in my ability to recover. A crisis of faith about what music meant at that point. It was a really dark time.

• 13:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  More from my conversation with Joshua Roman. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to NPR's TED Radio Hour. We'll be right back.

• 13:29Manoush Zomorodi?

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 13:33Speaker 03

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• 14:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. We are spending the hour with cellist Joshua Roman. By age 26, he had a flourishing and frenetic career. By 30, he was traveling the globe, playing the world's biggest venues. But when the pandemic hit and Joshua developed long COVID, everything ground to a halt for him, including the pleasure he'd always gotten from playing his beloved cello.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  I was facing the possibility of never playing this beautiful music again.

• 15:18Manoush Zomorodi?

  Here he is on the TED stage.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  In January of 21, I caught COVID, and unfortunately, I never fully recovered. I could tell something was wrong when I continued struggling to read, even after my initial infection. Sometimes even basic sentences wouldn't make sense. A few weeks later, I was returning from the trip I'd been on when I got sick. And when I arrived home, the simple act of walking up the stairs to my bedroom completely laid me out. I only made it halfway before falling to the floor on the landing, unable to continue or even to lift myself to a sitting position. I was there for half an hour, frustrated and crying.

• 16:09Manoush Zomorodi?

  So what happened next after that?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Well, eventually, I made it home. Well, home, I made it to New York,

• 16:19Speaker 02

  to the last place that I had been staying. And I only had two concerts, but they felt so important, so I kept those concert dates.

• 16:29Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, wow.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  That was wild. You know, of course, my manager and I had a big, several conversations about it. Am I going to be able to do this? I worked my way up to playing the Saint-San's Cello Concerto.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  It's a solo cello with orchestra piece, and it's only about 20 minutes long, which is unusual. The big cello concertos, the famous ones are 30 or even 40 minutes long. But this one was only 20 minutes long, and it's one that a lot of kids learn. So I had learned it when I was 12 or 13 or something. I don't know.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And if there was any piece I was gonna be able to perform at the level that I expect of myself, even with long COVID, it was gonna be that piece.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  So I got it ready. It was nuts. At first, I could only play two to five minutes.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  And eventually, I got up to 20 minutes. And I could do that, but I would have to rest so much to be able to just play the cello for 20 minutes. So when I did that performance, I definitely had to recover.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  But right after that, I was working for the very first time with Edgar Meyer and Tessa Lark.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  The only way some concerts went on was that they were videotaped. And so that's what we did at Edgar's house. And we were able to spread out our work over the course of a week so that I could manage it.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  And it wasn't until after I pushed through those two things that I truly, truly just crashed.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  That was probably the lowest point. Nothing on the calendar, no confidence in my ability to recover.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Crisis of faith about what music meant at that point and whether I wanted to continue at all. It was a really dark time.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I abandoned the daily practice routine that I'd been cultivating for over 30 years. I put my cello in its case and I left it there.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Doubts that had been lurking for years came to the surface. I'd been stuck in a gig mentality for much of my career, waiting for the phone to ring, afraid to say no to any opportunity, and completely unaware of the exhaustion that ran through my body and spirit.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  I've always wanted to feel like what I do matters. But after decades of ambitious effort to play every note in tune, make every phrase clear and powerful, I was having trouble seeing that possibility through my fatigue.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  With the difficulty I had even lifting the bow, let alone putting in a decent practice session, I lost hope that it mattered.

• 19:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  You say you put your cello in its case and you left it there.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  How long did that break last?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  It was like two and a half months, almost three months.

• 19:56Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, wow.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was probably the biggest break you'd taken

• 20:01Speaker 02

  By far.

• 20:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  ever in your life, basically.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because my rule was, somebody told me when I was a kid that Hyffetz said, and I've never looked this up because I don't want to know.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  If I miss a day of practice, I know. If I miss two days, the critics know. If I miss three days of practice, the whole world knows. And even as like a six-year-old, that was the mentality that was drilled into me. So almost three months was inconceivable.

• 20:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  What do you think your cello thought of this? I'm starting to think of them truly as your life partner.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're not happy about, I can tell you, Midge is her name and she,

• 20:46Speaker 02

  she had been put in the closet a few times, I'm sorry to say, but always because I had another cello that I would be playing. It was never me not playing the cello. But there's something about cellos when they don't get played for a while, they get stiff. It's hard to get a sound, you don't have a lot of sound. It's kind of crazy how much this wood changes when it's played and when it's not played. So she was very unhappy, but also my fingers, I did, I had pretty much lost my calluses, which is something I think any string player will understand what I'm saying with that. I had pretty much lost my calluses.

• 21:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  When you were in the midst of that, of not playing, did you miss it? Did you miss Midge? Did you, did you?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:37Manoush Zomorodi?

  Start think, no?

• 21:39Speaker 02

  No, I started thinking about other things I could do. I, I mean, it was not, I don't think I was very in touch with myself. And, you know, we talked about earlier, I knew from such an early age and people, a lot of people look at that and think that's awesome, but that flip side is real, that there are all of these other things that just got pushed to the side because I knew what I was supposed to do. And so I wasn't gonna let anything that would, that would counter that narrative become real. So when I did put the cello away, I was flooded with those doubts that had been shoved down.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  And it was the first time that I'd truly voiced those things that had always kind of been there.

• 22:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  I want to try and understand that why you don't know if music is gonna do it? Because physically I don't feel able, because wow, I haven't given the rest of the world a chance in my life. Was it that you still had long COVID and you were just like, I'm just so damn tired. I'm just gonna sit in this not knowing, like what exactly?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  You know, this is getting, this is cutting to the quick of it. When I was a kid, I grew up in a church.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Music was a service to God. I was able to have incredible ambition to serve in this place where there's meaning attributed to those things which can't be articulated sometimes by science so well, so spirituality, really. And I, I left the church when I was 16 or 17. And at the point that we're talking about, it had been, gosh, 20 years of not being a Christian,

• 23:42Speaker 02

  but I hadn't yet figured out how music was gonna save the world if it wasn't through God and Jesus, the way that I had thought when I was a kid.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  And so a lot of what I had done for service was kind of like automatic. And in this moment, all of that that had been building up just came down on me. And I didn't know if I could believe anymore that music would save people because I didn't believe in the construct that had given me that in the first place, and I hadn't yet found a new one.

• 24:23Manoush Zomorodi?

  Hmm. So COVID almost forced you into confronting this confusion in that you just stopped playing.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. It totally forced me into facing something that I could have faced a long time ago.

• 24:40Manoush Zomorodi?

  In those very dark days, you got a call from a friend.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  That ended up changing things for you. What did they say? Like, I know you're struggling right now, but would you consider playing just for us friends?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  It's so, it's so funny to me because I had this friend who asked me to play for her summer solstice party. And, you know, I said, yes. I, at that point, I wasn't really sure if I was even gonna continue a career as a cellist. And I think I had in the back of my mind, you know, I can just cancel. It's fine. She'll understand. But then I procrastinated actually thinking about it. And so I couldn't say no anymore. And that is actually when I picked up the cello was the day before this

• 25:36Speaker 02

  party. And that's why I took midge out again and started playing.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  And that's the moment where I, everything changed for me.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  There's, there's a place on probably most if not every cellist's chest that has marks on the skin from where the cello touches it. And for me, it's right on the breastbone, slightly to the left, close to the heart, which is kinda crazy.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  And when I started playing the Bach prelude, after not having touched the cello for so long, I think I was extra sensitive to the vibrations. You can feel the whole cello vibrating, you're holding it with your knees, it's against your chest. Sometimes your head is touching the scroll a little bit, you feel it in your hands. I know that that vibration wakes the cello up. This is something that we, we know. It's studied, the effect that vibrations have on the instruments.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  And I think that was one of the only moments in a long time, maybe the only moment in many, many years, that I let myself feel the vibrations from my hands touching the cello and the cello leaning against my chest and against my knees, just waking me up.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  I started crying because it was something that I really needed.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Pretty immediately, I felt that here is the thing that I've been missing. It's my own personal connection to the music and to the cello. That all of the other stuff has to come from that. That I'd been so singularly focused on putting music out there for other people. Then I wasn't, you know, and some was ironic. I wasn't even really doing that as well as I could because I wasn't letting myself be a part of the equation. And I was trying to disappear. I was trying to make myself a perfect, empty vessel for music. And that's just not how it works.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  And being moved, literally feeling the vibrations and emotionally feeling the the vulnerability that I had in that moment be touched in a way that I hadn't experienced before. That showed me that music is on its own powerful and necessary. And all of the layers that I've been peeling back since that moment come from that basic element of I had to be, I had to be taken down to my knees before I let go of pride

• 29:16Speaker 02

  and let myself be vulnerable and experience the beauty of, of music.

• 29:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  With that veil pulled away, what did you see in front of you then? Cause it looked different, it sounded like than where you'd just been. Very different.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Very different. I wasn't immediately sure what to do with it, except that I knew that I wasn't going to quit the cello. That in fact, the cello is my partner and my life. And that I just needed to have a healthier relationship with it. And I think setting out to explore that, what is my relationship with music, with the cello? What is the power of music? Those have become my structure in a way, those questions. And it's led me to do very specific things. Like there was a point that I realized, and I think it was many months after that. But there was a point that I realized.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  I needed to stop practicing when I didn't want to practice. And that's just so weird for me to, even now, for me to hear myself saying. But whenever I would feel the urge, I started asking myself, is this because I really want to practice? Or is this because I feel like I should practice? And I discovered that when I started that, I actually started being able to keep my mind on the cello more when I was playing, like my mind wasn't wandering off like it used to sometimes. I wasn't just playing by rote. I was there. It took a little while, but now that's, that's very true. And also, I found that I really love playing the cello and that

• 30:58Speaker 02

  I really love practicing. And it's not just, this is the difference. It's not just about getting better at something. It's about just enjoying doing it. And another paradox, or irony, or whatever you want to call it, is that I think I'm playing better than ever.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  And, and I don't, I don't show up unprepared and stuff like you'd, you'd think that's what would happen if you said, I'm not going to practice unless I want to. But, but no, it's actually, it's not really that. At my core, I trust, I'm working on trusting myself.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Practicing is about trusting. And just like in any other relationship, trust is a matter of building the trust part, not the verify part. And I had been so focused on all of the little checkboxes. Have I done my skills? Have I done this? Then maybe I can relax and trust myself. But I hadn't ever actually practiced trusting myself.

• 32:03Manoush Zomorodi?

  Cause that's scary to do. What if you fail?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  It's really scary. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing. I realized, I'm gonna fail. That's okay. That's gonna be part of it. And I'm gonna somehow find a way to let people experience this thing that I feel right now, and that's gonna make me fail in other ways, ways that I would have considered failure before. But maybe now, that's actually the point.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  That truly, I can put my, I can put my bow where my mouth was and really do this thing of truly giving something.

• 32:48Manoush Zomorodi?

  In a minute, what Joshua Roman went on to produce, his debut solo album, and a piece improvised just for you, dear listener. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Stay with us.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from TED Talks Daily, the podcast that brings you a new idea every day. Learn what's transforming humanity, from balancing AI in your critical thinking to surpassing discoveries about the adolescent brain. Find TED Talks Daily wherever you listen. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  Try Google Workspace with Gemini at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini.

• 34:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  This message comes from Middlesex County, New Jersey. Here's why companies are actually making the move to Middlesex County, New Jersey. It's ranked in the top 2% of US counties for talent and knowledge creation and is more innovative than 98% of the nation. The opportunity's real, and it's right here. Visit biz dot discovermiddlesex dot com to set up a meeting with a business advisor today. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, cellist Joshua Roman and how long COVID changed his life and his approach to music.

• 34:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  So you went through a lot, but it has brought you to sort of this unexpected and kind of wonderful place, your debut solo album.

• 35:06Manoush Zomorodi?

  It includes classical pieces, original compositions. You also do covers of more contemporary music.

• 35:18Manoush Zomorodi?

  And features you on guitar as well as cello, and you sing.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 35:23Manoush Zomorodi?

  Tell us about the album and the process of putting it together.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it all started with that moment and trying to figure it out. But there was a catalyst, which was a friend of mine who ran, still runs, a series at the Princeton University Concert Series. And it was new at the time called Healing with Music.

• 35:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, yeah, I'm familiar.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Okay, awesome. Right, so the basic idea, you know, you hear artists playing music that has helped them through their health journeys. And it was very scary to think about that, to be up on stage saying, I'm not okay. You know, I'd played a couple of concerts at that point. And of course, we told everyone, the presenters, to make sure that everyone backstage knew. But I wasn't going out on stage and being like, I've got long COVID.

• 36:17Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, you weren't.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be tired after this, until this moment.

• 36:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  I see.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  This proposal from my friend, Dasha, was come do a concert where the whole point is something's wrong and here's how music helps.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  One of the challenges I face is that especially classical music is is hard for me now because cognitively it's not it's not that simple. It's it's actually pretty taxing and can take a lot out of me, but it has been the center of me understanding my relationship with myself and being kinder to myself. So I started thinking about the pieces that had meant something to me on this journey. And all of the pieces that were on that concert ended up being a part of the project.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  And this idea that I would be on stage and I would tell my story in words and music came from that experience. There was another layer being peeled back of sure, I'm performing, but I'm not I'm not performing to hide in a way. I'm not trying to be bulletproof up here. I'm showing people something that really matters personally to me, not just something I've picked because it seems important, but because like it truly affects me. And that that was different.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  It's it's so interesting to me because it's not what I ever would have said I I should have done as a debut album. And yet, I think 12 year old me would not have been surprised at all. It would have made so much sense to tell like, of course, that's the music that you had put on an album.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  And I, like, 12-year-old me didn't know what musical genres and boundaries were supposed to be. It was just

• 38:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Things that fit together, fit together.

• 39:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  I mean, what you're talking about is, is vulnerability.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 39:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  And, and, and one might think, oh, that means he's going to sound wistful or sad. But no, that is not the case. This is joyous.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I, I mean, there's, there's, there's sadness, but what's interesting actually is when you put it all together, it's just life.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  There's a moment, you know, I did write a piece specifically for the project much later when it came time to record it. And the idea was, this is going to be the piece that's about my experience. And I, I really desperately wanted it to have this up and down, feel the journey, kind of Lord of the Rings

• 40:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  landscape. At the same time, it's supposed to be a five-minute piece for solo cello.

• 40:18Manoush Zomorodi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  And I'm such a doofus, but I, I couldn't get that piece out. And I kept trying and failing. And, and so I started improvising every day to see what would happen and how I would get there. And it was really fun, but I wasn't making this epic that I had in, in mind. And it was the weekend before I was walking into the studio, I still didn't have that thing done.

• 40:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  Huh.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Or even really know what it was going to be. And so I finally just totally gave up. And I said, all right, whatever's coming out is the piece. And like, it just kind of, it just kind of showed itself

• 40:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  Huh.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  immediately. And very quickly, those fun improv sessions evolved into one of the most unabashedly joyful compositions I've ever written.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  I couldn't force myself to write the piece that I wanted. But when I let go and just played, I came away with the piece that I needed.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  I gave it the same name I've given my project: Immunity.

• 44:02Speaker 04

  The

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Here was this joyful celebration that was just dying to burst out of me. And I'd been trying to restrain it and turn it into this serious thing. It was so, I still don't quite understand, except that a lot of, actually, a lot of religions and spiritualities and philosophies have this idea of the paradox. And it's, I think it's, it's really real, you know? We don't have to be all one or the other.

• 45:29Manoush Zomorodi?

  I guess I'm also thinking that maybe Freud might say, "You lost the ego." Or, or that you-

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Well, that sounds nice.

• 45:37Manoush Zomorodi?

  It does, right? Well, but it just reminds me of being, having, honestly, postpartum depression. And, and the one thing that came out of that was that I lost my filter and just kind of said what I thought. And-

• 45:49Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 45:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  That's when my career took off.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, what was that like?

• 45:53Manoush Zomorodi?

  You know, having to go to the darkness.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  And then doing things because you want to. And it's incredibly freeing and- Life is more pleasurable and oddly easier.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Yes, I think that's something that I don't feel like I can articulate it very well. It's it's another, for me, it's another one of those paradoxes where in music and in life, understanding enough to be able to let go is like, even just that sentence is a weird thing to chew on, but they they go together, understanding and letting go.

• 46:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  Did, do you think you essentially came back to being the same sort of musician or are you very different?

• 46:41Speaker 02

  No. Oh, my gosh. I mean, there's, you know, the roots are there. I would say that something has been unlocked. Something, you know, it's like I was circling something for so many years, trying through skill, through dedication, through commitment, through brute force, trying to get at something and all of those skills, they're not useless skills. They're they're good. They help. They help do the thing. They just weren't the thing. They were just tools that help when you have the thing. So I'm the same person with less and less fear of being who I am.

• 47:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  So I would love to use the time that we have left together to ask you, would you play some music for us?

• 47:30Speaker 02

  I'd be happy to. Yeah.

• 47:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  Who is this with you? Because I know you were

• 47:38Speaker 02

  This is Cindy.

• 47:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, Cindy.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Cindy, yeah, that was that was the response Cindy likes. One Piece Back.

• 47:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, she's got curves, Cindy.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  What, how long have Cindy, you and Cindy been together?

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Two and a half years. Actually, we were a little bit on and off at first, so it's hard to remember.

• 48:02Manoush Zomorodi?

  Well, you were with Midge before, right?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  I was with Midge, yeah.

• 48:06Manoush Zomorodi?

  All right. So so talk to me about what you and Cindy are gonna do for us right now.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Well, I think there are a lot of things that I could do, but probably the most appropriate thing, given our conversation is just to play a short little what's happening right now. And I have no idea what that's gonna be. So, this is... This is today.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  ...

• 50:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was amazing.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. That was very gentle.

• 50:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  That just came out of you?

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah. It was a gentle something.

• 50:38Manoush Zomorodi?

  I loved it. It was what I needed to bring me down a little bit today. Like, and I don't mean like sad. I mean, like, just like, take a deep breath.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think probably me too, you know, sharing, sharing this story, what we have been speaking about, it's always hard. I still feel anxious sharing these things and having something that was just so simple and grounding. So, there we are.

• 51:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Joshua Roman. His album is called Immunity. The selections you heard come courtesy of his record label, Bright Shiny Things. You can see his talk and all of his TED performances at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show today. If you enjoyed it, got something out of it, please leave us a comment or a rating on Spotify or email us at [email protected]. We read every comment and we love hearing from you. This episode was produced by Matthew Cloutier and edited by Sana Zmashkinpour and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes James Elahoussi, Rachel Faulkner White, Katie Monteleone, Fiona Guerin, and Harsha Nahada.

• 52:00Manoush Zomorodi?

  Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Simon Jensen. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxane Hylash, and Daniela Bellarezzo. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.