Pod Insights TED Radio Hour What this musician’s identity crisis teaches us about navigating change About this episode 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.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Manoush Zomorodi? This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message: What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current so you can win more deals. Learn more at hubspot.com. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.
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1:04 Manoush Zomorodi? Were you one of those lucky people who knew exactly what you wanted to be when you grew up? Cellist Joshua Roman was.
1:15 Speaker 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.
1:31 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, wow.
1:32 Speaker 02 Then I'll join ski patrol. It was that sort of thing.
1:37 Manoush Zomorodi? He has always spent most of his days practicing his cello.
1:42 Speaker 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.
1:59 Speaker 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.
2:15 Manoush Zomorodi? Was it love at first sight, or was it more of a slow burn?
2:20 Speaker 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.
3:00 Manoush 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.
3:19 Speaker 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.
3:43 Manoush Zomorodi? Eventually, Joshua went on to study music. He joined the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. This is him on cello playing Shostakovich.
3:53 Manoush 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.
4:10 Speaker 02 Occasionally, I get to meet an extraordinary young musician, such is the case with Joshua Roman.
4:17 Manoush 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.
4:29 Speaker 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.
4:46 Manoush 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.
4:57 Speaker 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.
5:10 Manoush Zomorodi? Yeah.
5:10 Speaker 02 Been great, but it's also been something my whole life has revolved around. And my time has always been limited.
5:20 Manoush Zomorodi? Because of your commitment.
5:22 Speaker 02 Because of my commitment.
5:25 Manoush 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
6:07 Manoush Zomorodi? to rethink his approach to life and music so he could love both.
6:15 Manoush Zomorodi? But first, let's go back to a typical day for Joshua.
6:18 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
6:19 Manoush Zomorodi? In 2018, before all that happened.
6:22 Speaker 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
7:05 Speaker 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
7:46 Speaker 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.
8:04 Speaker 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.
8:42 Speaker 02 And I would record these multi-track cello things.
8:48 Speaker 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.
9:10 Speaker 02 Looking back, I think that I was really ignoring my personal relationship with the cello.
9:16 Manoush Zomorodi? Huh.
9:17 Speaker 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.
9:45 Manoush Zomorodi? And then we get to January 2021.
9:48 Speaker 02 That's right.
9:49 Manoush Zomorodi? And like, the vast majority of us, you got COVID.
9:54 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah.
9:57 Manoush Zomorodi? Where were you?
9:58 Speaker 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.
10:24 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, man.
10:25 Speaker 02 Stuck my nose in the box and I couldn't smell a thing. I was like, this is not good.
10:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Yeah.
10:30 Speaker 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.
10:42 Manoush 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.
10:55 Speaker 02 Right.
10:55 Manoush 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?
11:06 Speaker 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,
11:50 Speaker 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.
12:24 Speaker 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.
12:47 Manoush Zomorodi? When we come back, Joshua puts away his cello, unsure he'll ever return to it.
12:53 Speaker 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.
13:12 Manoush 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.
13:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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14:43 Manoush 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.
15:14 Speaker 02 I was facing the possibility of never playing this beautiful music again.
15:18 Manoush Zomorodi? Here he is on the TED stage.
15:21 Speaker 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.
16:09 Manoush Zomorodi? So what happened next after that?
16:12 Speaker 02 Well, eventually, I made it home. Well, home, I made it to New York,
16:19 Speaker 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.
16:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, wow.
16:31 Speaker 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.
16:44 Speaker 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.
17:06 Speaker 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.
17:18 Speaker 02 So I got it ready. It was nuts. At first, I could only play two to five minutes.
17:29 Speaker 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.
17:48 Speaker 02 But right after that, I was working for the very first time with Edgar Meyer and Tessa Lark.
17:55 Speaker 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.
18:09 Speaker 02 And it wasn't until after I pushed through those two things that I truly, truly just crashed.
18:18 Speaker 02 That was probably the lowest point. Nothing on the calendar, no confidence in my ability to recover.
18:30 Speaker 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.
18:43 Speaker 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.
18:53 Speaker 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.
19:13 Speaker 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.
19:31 Speaker 02 With the difficulty I had even lifting the bow, let alone putting in a decent practice session, I lost hope that it mattered.
19:43 Manoush Zomorodi? You say you put your cello in its case and you left it there.
19:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:47 Manoush Zomorodi? How long did that break last?
19:53 Speaker 02 It was like two and a half months, almost three months.
19:56 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, wow.
19:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:58 Manoush Zomorodi? That was probably the biggest break you'd taken
20:01 Speaker 02 By far.
20:01 Manoush Zomorodi? ever in your life, basically.
20:03 Speaker 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.
20:14 Speaker 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.
20:32 Manoush Zomorodi? What do you think your cello thought of this? I'm starting to think of them truly as your life partner.
20:39 Speaker 02 Yeah. They're not happy about, I can tell you, Midge is her name and she,
20:46 Speaker 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.
21:27 Manoush Zomorodi? When you were in the midst of that, of not playing, did you miss it? Did you miss Midge? Did you, did you?
21:37 Speaker 02 No.
21:37 Manoush Zomorodi? Start think, no?
21:39 Speaker 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.
22:23 Speaker 02 And it was the first time that I'd truly voiced those things that had always kind of been there.
22:32 Manoush 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?
22:54 Speaker 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.
23:03 Speaker 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,
23:42 Speaker 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.
23:55 Speaker 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.
24:23 Manoush Zomorodi? Hmm. So COVID almost forced you into confronting this confusion in that you just stopped playing.
24:30 Speaker 02 A hundred percent. It totally forced me into facing something that I could have faced a long time ago.
24:40 Manoush Zomorodi? In those very dark days, you got a call from a friend.
24:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:45 Manoush 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?
24:54 Speaker 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
25:36 Speaker 02 party. And that's why I took midge out again and started playing.
25:49 Speaker 02 And that's the moment where I, everything changed for me.
26:01 Speaker 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.
26:28 Speaker 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.
27:11 Speaker 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.
27:37 Speaker 02 I started crying because it was something that I really needed.
27:50 Speaker 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.
28:34 Speaker 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
29:16 Speaker 02 and let myself be vulnerable and experience the beauty of, of music.
29:22 Manoush 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.
29:32 Speaker 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.
30:14 Speaker 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
30:58 Speaker 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.
31:20 Speaker 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.
31:38 Speaker 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.
32:03 Manoush Zomorodi? Cause that's scary to do. What if you fail?
32:06 Speaker 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.
32:32 Speaker 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.
32:48 Manoush 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.
33:16 Speaker 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.
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34:07 Manoush 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.
34:46 Manoush 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.
35:06 Manoush Zomorodi? It includes classical pieces, original compositions. You also do covers of more contemporary music.
35:18 Manoush Zomorodi? And features you on guitar as well as cello, and you sing.
35:21 Speaker 02 That's right.
35:23 Manoush Zomorodi? Tell us about the album and the process of putting it together.
35:27 Speaker 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.
35:46 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, yeah, I'm familiar.
35:48 Speaker 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.
36:17 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, you weren't.
36:18 Speaker 02 I'm gonna be tired after this, until this moment.
36:22 Manoush Zomorodi? I see.
36:23 Speaker 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.
36:39 Speaker 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.
37:20 Speaker 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.
38:21 Speaker 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.
38:48 Speaker 02 And I, like, 12-year-old me didn't know what musical genres and boundaries were supposed to be. It was just
38:57 Manoush Zomorodi? Mm-hmm.
38:58 Speaker 02 Things that fit together, fit together.
39:22 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, what you're talking about is, is vulnerability.
39:25 Speaker 02 Exactly.
39:26 Manoush 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.
39:37 Speaker 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.
39:53 Speaker 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
40:12 Manoush Zomorodi? Mm-hmm.
40:12 Speaker 02 landscape. At the same time, it's supposed to be a five-minute piece for solo cello.
40:18 Manoush Zomorodi? Mm-hmm.
40:19 Speaker 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.
40:42 Manoush Zomorodi? Huh.
40:43 Speaker 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
40:57 Manoush Zomorodi? Huh.
40:57 Speaker 02 immediately. And very quickly, those fun improv sessions evolved into one of the most unabashedly joyful compositions I've ever written.
41:12 Speaker 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.
41:22 Speaker 02 I gave it the same name I've given my project: Immunity.
44:02 Speaker 04 The
44:48 Speaker 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.
45:29 Manoush Zomorodi? I guess I'm also thinking that maybe Freud might say, "You lost the ego." Or, or that you-
45:36 Speaker 02 Well, that sounds nice.
45:37 Manoush 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-
45:49 Speaker 02 Wow.
45:50 Manoush Zomorodi? That's when my career took off.
45:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, what was that like?
45:53 Manoush Zomorodi? You know, having to go to the darkness.
45:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:58 Manoush Zomorodi? And then doing things because you want to. And it's incredibly freeing and- Life is more pleasurable and oddly easier.
46:08 Speaker 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.
46:33 Manoush Zomorodi? Did, do you think you essentially came back to being the same sort of musician or are you very different?
46:41 Speaker 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.
47:21 Manoush Zomorodi? So I would love to use the time that we have left together to ask you, would you play some music for us?
47:30 Speaker 02 I'd be happy to. Yeah.
47:35 Manoush Zomorodi? Who is this with you? Because I know you were
47:38 Speaker 02 This is Cindy.
47:39 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, Cindy.
47:41 Speaker 02 Cindy, yeah, that was that was the response Cindy likes. One Piece Back.
47:46 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, she's got curves, Cindy.
47:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
47:50 Manoush Zomorodi? What, how long have Cindy, you and Cindy been together?
47:54 Speaker 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.
48:02 Manoush Zomorodi? Well, you were with Midge before, right?
48:04 Speaker 02 I was with Midge, yeah.
48:06 Manoush Zomorodi? All right. So so talk to me about what you and Cindy are gonna do for us right now.
48:11 Speaker 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.
50:07 Speaker 04 ...
50:27 Manoush Zomorodi? That was amazing.
50:28 Speaker 02 Oh, thank you. That was very gentle.
50:32 Manoush Zomorodi? That just came out of you?
50:34 Speaker 02 Yes. Yeah. It was a gentle something.
50:38 Manoush 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.
50:48 Speaker 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.
51:16 Manoush 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.
52:00 Manoush 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.
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