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 You just don't know what you're gonna find challenge you We truly have to act to ourself like why is it noteworthy? 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 Manush Zamorodi Were you one of those lucky people who knew exactly what you wanted to be when you grew up? cellist Joshua Roman was You know, I went through a phase when I was 10 or so a few of these kinds of things was like, oh, I could be a fighter pilot or a firefighter or was always something heroic the fastest man in the world but only if I break my arm and can never play the cello again Oh, wow Then I'll join ski patrol was that sort of thing? He has always spent most of his days practicing his cello 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 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 Was it love at first sight or was it more of a slow burn? 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 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 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 Eventually Joshua went on to study music he joined the Seattle Symphony Orchestra this is him on cello playing Shostakovich 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 Occasionally I get to meet an extraordinary young musician such as a case with Joshua Roman 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 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 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 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 it's been great but it's also been something my whole life has revolved around and my time has always been limited because of your commitment because of my commitment 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 to rethink his approach to life and music so he could love both But first let's go back to a typical day for Joshua in 2018 before all that happened A typical day pre-COVID was packed it was all super intense so I used to practice anywhere from 6 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 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 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 I needed to add an extra night or crash at my sisters 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 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 and I would record these multi-track cello things 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 looking back I think that I was really ignoring my personal relationship with the cello 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 and then we get to January 2021 that's right and like the vast majority of us you got COVID yeah yeah where were you I was in Jacksonville, Florida and 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 the Altoids and stuck my nose in the box and I couldn't smell a thing and I was like this is not good yeah 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 yeah cause like it's really hard to remember which is so weird cause 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 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 yeah it was weird because I didn't feel like I had such a bad COVID I mean it was strange I did 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 cause I had done something or being sleepy it's this feeling like I'm wearing weights inside of my body or something that I just 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 then it just didn't go away 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 when we come back Joshua puts away his cello unsure he'll ever return to it 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 more from my conversation with Joshua Roman I'm Anusha Zamorodi and you're listening to NPR's Ted Radio Hour we'll be right back 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 and your critical thinking to surpassing discoveries about the adolescent brain find Ted Talks Daily wherever you listen It's the Ted Radio Hour from NPR I'm Anusha Zamorodi 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 I was facing the possibility of never playing this beautiful music again Here he is on the Ted stage 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 So what happened next after that? Well eventually I made it home well home I made it to New York 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 and Oh wow 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 Sansons cello concerto it's a 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 learned so I'd learned it when I was 12 or 13 or something I don't know and if there was any piece I was going to be able to perform at the level that I expected myself even with long COVID it was going to be that piece so I got it ready it was nuts at first I could only play two to five minutes 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 but right after that I was working for the very first time with Edgar Meyer and Tessa Lark 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 and it wasn't until after I pushed through those two things that I truly truly just crashed that was probably the lowest point nothing on the calendar no confidence in my ability to recover crisis of faith about what music meant at that point and whether I wanted to continue it all is a really dark time I abandoned the daily practice routine that I've been cultivating for over 30 years I put my cello in its case and I left it there doubts that had been lurking for years came to the surface I've 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 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 with the difficulty I had even lifting the bow let alone putting in a decent practice session I lost hope that it mattered you say you put your cello in its case and you left it there yeah how long did that break last I don't know it was like two and a half months almost three months oh wow yeah that was probably the biggest break you'd taken by far ever in your life basically yeah because my rule was somebody told me when I was a kid that hyphets said I've never looked this up because I don't want to know 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 what do you think your cello thought of this I'm starting to think of them truly as your life partner yeah they're not happy about that I can tell you Midge is her name and she 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 it's you don't have a lot of sounds it's kind of crazy how much this would changes when it's played and when it's not played so she was very unhappy but also my fingers I didn't 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 when you were in the midst of that of not playing did you miss it? Did you miss Midge? Did you did you no start think no no I started thinking about other things I could do 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 going to 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 and it was the first time that I'd truly voice those things that had always kind of been there I want to try and understand that why you don't know if music is going to 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 going to sit in this not knowing like what exactly you know this is getting this is cutting to the quick of it when I was a kid I grew up in a church 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 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 but I hadn't yet figured out how music was going to save the world if it wasn't through God and Jesus the way that I had thought when I was a kid 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 so covid almost forced you into confronting this confusion and that you just stopped playing a hundred percent it totally forced me into facing something that I could have faced a long time ago in in those very dark days you got a call from a friend yeah 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 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 I at that point I wasn't really sure if I was even going to 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 party and that's why I took midget out again and started playing and that's the moment where I everything changed for me there's there's a place on probably most of 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 kind of crazy 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 holding it with your knees 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 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 I started crying because it was something that I really needed 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 that I wasn't you know and someone's 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 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 and let myself be vulnerable and experience the beauty of of music with that veil pulled away what did you see in front of you then because it looked different it sounded like than where you just been very different 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 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 it now that's that's very true and also I found that I really love playing the cello and that 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 and and I don't I don't show up unprepared and stuff like 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 bad at my core I trust I'm working on trusting myself 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 check boxes 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 because that's scary to do what if you fail it's really scary yeah well that's the other thing I realized I'm going to fail that's okay that's going to be part of it and I'm going to somehow find a way to let people experience this thing that I feel right now and that's going to make me fail and other ways ways that I would have considered failure before but maybe now that's actually the point that truly I can put my I can put my bow where my mouth was and really do this thing of truly giving something 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 Manush Zamarodi stay with us on the show today cellist Joshua Roman and how long COVID changed his life and his approach to music 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 it includes classical pieces original compositions you also do covers of more contemporary music and features you on guitar as well as cello and you sing that's right tell us about the album and the process of putting it together 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 oh yeah I'm familiar 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 I 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 oh you weren't I'm gonna be tired after this until this moment I see 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 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 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 and this idea that I would be on stage and I would tell my story in words and music came from that experience that 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 well it goes like this the fourth the fifth the minor fall and the major lift the baffled king composing hallelujah it's it's so interesting to me because it's not what I ever would have said 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 12 like of course that's the music that you had put on an album hmm and I like 12 year old me didn't know what musical genres and boundaries were supposed to be it was just things that fit together fit together I mean what you're talking about is is vulnerability exactly 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 yeah 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 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 really desperately wanted it to have this up and down feel the journey kind of Lord of the Rings landscape same time it's supposed to be a five minute piece for cello and I'm such a doofus but 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 mind and it was the weekend before I was walking into the studio I still didn't have that thing done 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 it like it just kind of it just kind of showed itself immediately and very quickly those fun improv sessions evolved into one of the most unabashedly joyful compositions I've ever written 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 I gave it the same name I've given my project immunity and and and and and and and and and and and 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 really real, you know? We don't have to be all one or the other. I guess I'm also thinking that maybe Freud might say you lost the ego or that you... Well, that sounds nice. It does, right? Well, but it just reminds me of being, having honestly postpartum depression and the one thing that came out of that was that I lost my filter and just kind of said what I thought and that's when my career took off. Yeah, what was that like? You know, having to go to the darkness and then doing things because you want to and it's incredibly freeing and life is more pleasurable and oddly easier. Yes, I think that's something that I don't feel like I can articulate it very well. 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 go together, understanding and letting go. Do you think you essentially came back to being the same sort of musician or are you very different? 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 was 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 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. So I would love to use the time that we have left together to ask you, would you play some music for us? I'd be happy to. Yeah. Who is this with you? Because I know you were talking. This is Cindy. Oh, Cindy. Woo. Cindy. Yeah. I think Cindy likes one piece back. She's got curves, Cindy. Yeah. Yeah. How long have you and Cindy been together? Oh, wow. Two and a half years. Actually we were a little bit on and off at first. So it's hard to remember. Well, you were with Midge before, right? I was with Midge. Yeah. All right. So talk to me about what you and Cindy are going to do for us right now. 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 going to be. So this is today. Oh, that was amazing. Oh, thank you. That just came out of you? Yes. Yeah. This is a gentle something. I loved it. It was what I needed to bring me down a little bit today. And I don't mean like, sad. I mean, just like, take a deep breath. Yeah. I think probably me too. 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. 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 tedradiohour at npr.org. We read every comment and we love hearing from you. This episode was produced by Matthew Cloutier and edited by Sanaz Mashkinfor and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes James Elhousie, Rachel Faulkner-White, Katie Montalione, Fiona Gehran and Harshana Hada. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Simon Jensen. Our partners at Ted are Chris Anderson, Roxanne Hylash and Daniela Valorazzo. I'm Manusha Zamarotti and you've been listening to the Ted Radio Hour from NPR.
