126 - Joshua Roman talks about Long Covid, Music, Vulnerability & Connection

Episode 126 of the Long Covid Podcast is a chat with Joshua Roman - Cellist, Composer & Curator, as well as Longhauler. We chat through some of the things that he experienced, learned and some of the incredibly inspiring work he is now doing to help others with Long Covid as well as heal himself.

Links:
Joshua Roman Website
"Immunity" Project

Your Brain on Art by  Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross

NBS News Segment featuring Joshua - A blood test for long Covid is possible, a study suggests

TEDx - Immunity | Joshua Roman | TEDxProvidence

An intimate musical exploration of cellist Joshua Roman’s life-altering, inspiring experience of ongoing long COVID. Roman combines performance and storytelling into an emotional journey, as he confronts the impact of the illness and the limitations that nearly ended his career, before progressing through a period of doubt, struggle, refocus, and renewal, culminating in a profound acceptance of self and a deeper connection to what is most important in life.

Princeton University Concerts - Cellist Joshua Roman on Living with Long COVID as a Musician (Healing with Music Series)

An avid believer in the healing power of music, Roman came to Princeton University Concerts to explore the role that music has played throughout his continued recovery as part of our Healing with Music series.

For more information about Long Covid Breathing, their courses, workshops & other shorter sessions, please check out this link

(music - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Jackie Baxter  
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the long COVID Podcast. I am beyond excited this evening to be joined by Joshua Roman, who is a cellist, a curator, composer, I'm sure many other things. And you know this, this is super exciting for me as a musician myself. So we're gonna dive into all sorts of things. A very, very, very warm welcome to the podcast today.

Joshua Roman  
Thank you, Jackie, I'm very excited to be sharing this conversation with you.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I'm so excited to dive into all of this. To begin with, would you just say a little bit about yourself? Maybe what life was like, prior to COVID? Which feels like quite a long time ago, doesn't it? 

Joshua Roman  
Yes. So I play the cello. And it's been a part of my life for 37 years, I started when I was three. And I always wanted to be a soloist. And that's, that's my job. I play concertos with orchestras as a guest artist. I do solo projects, I do actually a lot of collaborating. And my career has allowed me to explore a lot of different kinds of music, a lot of different connections with people a lot of different places of playing venues. 

And I would say that the dominant themes of my career, or variants, like doing a bunch of different things, and constants that constantly go, go, go, always trying to challenge myself almost never focusing on one particular element to the exclusion of other things. I was more than do a little bit of everything right and sort of, you know, I guess, kind of competitive with myself in that way.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, absolutely. That sort of self competition, I can absolutely relate to that. 

So perhaps it would be useful just to dive a little bit into kind of where this all started. Because, you know, I mean, you mentioned connections with people. I think this is something that we miss out on a lot of the time, I mean, partly through lockdowns, partly through illness. And you know, when illness goes on for a long time, it is very isolating in itself. And I think that's, you know, something that is difficult, especially if you're a person for whom connecting is very important. 

So yeah, let's go back to the start. And maybe you just take us through a sort of brief outline of the sort of illness and how it mutated into what we now know as long COVID. 

Joshua Roman  
Yes, so I was actually living in Santa Barbara at the time. Santa Barbara, California, just north of Los Angeles, a beautiful, idyllic kind of place. I was doing a composition residency, and had packed up everything from New York into storage and was like trying out different places to see if I wanted to leave New York. 

And that's when the pandemic struck. So I'm kind of stranded in a way but also very, very lucky to have people helping me out at that time. And it was interesting. The reason I started there, even though that's pre my own illness; it was already starting to become apparent to me that I wasn't making the kinds of connections that I wanted to with people when I was always running around. 

And I wanted to find a place for community. And Santa Barbara was one of the first places that I tried doing that. And I have a dear dear friend, some of whom I saw last week, in fact, here in New York, that I grew close to in a way that I hadn't seen much of in my adult life, just because of being around them regularly and having something that resembled a routine, which is not usual for traveling, performing classical musicians like myself. 

So I was already feeling some of that. And when the pandemic started, there was obviously a big sense of isolation with the lock downs, but I was able to connect at same time with these friends, and be close with them. 

However, I immediately realized Santa Barbara wasn't the right place for me, in general, so I began this long kind of trek across the country, trying to figure out where I was going. I was actually planning on moving to France and even got a visa, went through all these kind of depths to make change in my life without realizing that it was all external. Or maybe realizing that it was all external. But assuming that because of these grand external changes, my internal side would change as well. 

Then I was in New York, had driven across the country in a car, and had one more performance to do before I was going to move to France. So I went down to Florida, and did my performance. it was supposed to be two concerts. And the morning of the second concert, I woke up and I couldn't smell. And of course, it turned out that was COVID. So they canceled the concert. 

And luckily, no one else got it from me, the orchestra I was working with really had amazing protocols. And I think I probably picked it up a few days before getting there and just didn't know until then. So I was very grateful for that. 

But I was, I got pretty sick, not hospitalized. But one trip to the emergency room. Lots of the strange symptoms, not a whole lot of the like flu like stuff, but mostly the weird feelings and the brain irregularities and the crushing fatigue and sensation throughout my body of like, extra gravity or heaviness or something like that. 

So that lasted the full 10 days, and then I started being able to smell again. But I didn't really get energy back and ended up staying in Florida for a month before I felt well enough to travel on an airplane back to New York. And then that trip back to New York, like put me out for a few days. 

I was going upstairs, the home I was staying in, after taking the car from the airport, and I will never forget getting stuck in the middle of the staircase, there was little landing. And I couldn't stand up, I couldn't make it any further. And I was crying for I don't know, half an hour or something, just like completely stuck. And this is somebody who weeks before was running the mile in less than six minutes. So it was pretty devastating. 

And long story short, I didn't move to France, that was too complicated. I started experiencing a host of symptoms that evolved from my initial acute illness to be more recognizable as a certain types of brain fog, certain rhythms to the fatigue, the things that I call crashes that not everyone seems to have. But for me, they can be pretty drastic and include uncontrollable shaking and being like cold, really, really cold when it's not cold, being unable to speak, or open my eyes or listening. And that was January 2021. 

I've now had COVID Four times, I've been in the care of the Mount Sinai long COVID clinic and they've helped me a lot. But the long and short of it is I still have this chronic illness. And I'm just getting better at managing the symptoms, month by month, year by year. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah. And it's still tough, that sort of unpredictability. I mean, you know, I noticed this with work for me, for things that I was trying to do, or that maybe I shouldn't have been trying to do but you know, this kind of cycle of trying to work out what your limits are, and they change all the time. And this, you know, stuff that you didn't realize existed until suddenly it happened to you. 

And for someone like yourself, you know, that was performing at a high level that was literally onstage in front of like what 1000s of people, that must have had a pretty drastic effect on your work and your entire livelihood.

Joshua Roman  
Yes, it was. Well at the time, it was weird because most performances had been canceled because of COVID generally. So it was this weird moment where I didn't actually have to change that much because everything had already been changed. So it was a lot of like trying things and thinking about how things would be and wondering how long this illness would last. 

I remember the first time I was given a projection, not a diagnosis, but like a prognosis or like what I should expect, and it was something like six to eight months. And then after that I got towards the end of that. And they changed it to like, well, it'll take maybe like a year. And then some point towards the end of that year, they were like, This is chronic. So, you know, really being able to watch the doctors learn along with the patients was another one of those oddities that, I would say, affected all parts of how I was dealing with it, but for sure, the professional part. 

At first, I had just a few concerts. And the very first one, it was a piece that I've known, the Saint-Saens Cello Concerto. So I've known it for almost my whole life, it's not that long, it's not that hard, there are a couple of spots. It's like, okay, this is great. This is, I always need to get into the music of this anyway. 

And the story of learning to play that piece with long COVID, I think is actually for me, one of the real interesting moments of beginning to understand my own long COVID journey. It's a piece that I knew really well. So I felt comfortable, at least giving it a shot. And my manager talked with the presenters and said, This is the deal, we think it's gonna be fine, we'll talk you through what he's going to need to make this work and what you should expect. 

And I began practicing, after not having played the cello for over a month because of getting COVID. And at first, I could only play for a few minutes. And then I would feel just too exhausted to lift my arms. And I would have to stop. And I gradually worked my way up to about 20 minutes, the length of this piece. And then I started playing through the piece every day. 

So I played through the Saint-Saens concerto. And still like to the point of exhaustion at the end of it each time. Sometimes needing help unscrewing the bow and putting the cello away. It's like really taking everything out of me in an unbelievable way. 

Then I decided I have to practice. And for those who aren't musicians, I mean that when I was playing through the music, I was just playing it as if I were performing it, just going through from start to finish without stopping. But what I mean by practicing is to stop and say, Okay, this phrase or that note, I didn't love how I played it. Or maybe I could do it in a way that's more interesting. Or maybe I played a note slightly off tune. So I can like practice that shift or those few notes, that little passage. 

And what was wild is I learned that very first day, when I started to do that. And rather than 20 minutes, I only had 30 seconds to a minute before I had the same collapse. And that taught me how much cognitive impairment there was and how much cognitive energy was being used in that. 

So I managed to make it through that. And through a couple of the other performances that I had after that, by really paying attention to the use of energy and finding ways to practice without touching the cello, by just listening or just looking at the music. And I will say I'm super grateful for my memory, I have some recall issues, but not that sort of long term thing that would affect music. So that's just a very lucky side note. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and again, I think, you know, for people who aren't cellists, which is probably most people listening to this 

Joshua Roman  
probably most people *laughs*

Jackie Baxter  
I think we've got a niche here. You know, it's a physical thing, you know, the cello is a big instrument, it requires, you know, sitting up, which is like, a whole thing. But you know, just the movement of it, you know, there's a lot of energy required there physically. 

And then you absolutely hit the nail on the head with the cognitive stuff. We don't think about that, until suddenly something like long COVID comes along, and you realize that like reading an email is tiring, or, you know, trying to remember a phrase or actually remember which way up to hold your instrument, like all of these things are cognitively exhausting. 

And you know, I guess you know, being on a stage as well, you know, that's a different kind of, like, sort of emotional energy as well on top of everything else. So it kind of stacks up and up and up and up. And you just mentioned kind of like, paying attention to your energy usage. Like that's kind of like you know, putting the microwave on off like a little teeny tiny battery, isn't it?

Joshua Roman  
Yeah *laughs* It's interesting. I had never paid attention, as you're saying, to not only the cognitive even really but the physical as well before of playing the cello. And especially during a concert, playing a concerto. It's one cello and an orchestra of, for this piece, I think it's like 60-65 players. And I have to be louder. And we're not amplified. This is all acoustic. 

So a room that, I think that hall, that first of all that I played in  again, seats like 2800 people, it's a lot of people. And it's a big space. And it's really fun, but it is a lot of energy that I had taken for granted before. So I learned how to do things like rest on the day of a concert, to like save something in the dress rehearsal, to not on the day of a concert, go for a run and meditate for two hours and read a book and see if I can catch up on emails and practice scales for two hours as a warm up. 

But instead just to trust that I'm ready, and figure out how much warming up I need to do to be at my best and to be present, and be able to do deliver that high level of energy for 20 minutes on stage, before walking onstage and needing someone to hold the cello while I immediately fall into a chair. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, that's a lot. You know, different people have things that are important to them. And you know, as a musician, I can sort of understand that it is your identity, you know, it is so much a part of you that, you know, the sort of not being able to do that, or not being able to do it in the way that you feel you need to or the way that you want to, it's like losing a part of yourself, I think, you know, not being able to do something that is so integral to who you are and what you love doing. 

Because it's such a personal thing as well, isn't it you know, it is literally something that you are, you know, you said you'd been playing since the age of three, like, you know, it being cut off, or potentially being cut off from something like that is, I suppose, like, I was gonna say utterly terrifying. But it's like more than that. I guess.

Joshua Roman  
It's interesting. So I think I really had to face that pretty quickly. I had that first concert back, which went well. And it was really tough, but I managed to pull those off. And then I had a project, which was a week of recording with my favorite bass player in the world, and someone that I was meeting for the first time and wonderful, wonderful violin player that I love working with now. 

So we managed to do that work in a way that I like, barely held on through the week, and didn't ever crash so much that I couldn't continue. But at the end of that I was exhausted. And I didn't have any concerts, because of COVID in general, I didn't have any concerts coming up. 

So I put the cello in the case and left it there for almost three months, which was the longest that I've ever done that and I started to face a lot of those kinds of questions. Like who am I without the cello? Do I need the cello? I mean, I was afraid to face the question of whether I could play again. And so I kind of jumped past it to the question of whether I should play again. 

And these things that have been eating at me for my whole life about wanting to be of service to people and make an impact and make the world a better place in the best way that I can. And I think part of me has always believed that music is relevant in that way. And there are also parts of me that have thought you know, it's easier if you just become a doctor, or, you know, I really like physics, so like become a theoretical physicist and learn something about the world that changes how we relate to it. 

And music can seem a times a selfish pursuit. I'm always trying to think about how it can be good for other people. But there was this moment after going through all of that, and really seriously considering not playing the cello again, that I had promised to play for a friend's summer solstice party. And I didn't want to say at the last minute that I wouldn't do it, and I kind of like missed my window of opportunity to back out of it before it would have left her in a lurch. 

So I went through with it. And the day before, I pulled out the cello, literally dusted off the case, which was like I had me feeling so guilty that this case had not been touched, sat in the same spot for so long. So I dusted it off and I pulled the cello out and I started playing. And I started crying. 

I've mentioned crying now twice in this conversation but I don't cry very much so Oh, those two times were a big deal. And this one, especially, because I was realizing that I needed the cello, that I needed the feeling of playing, I needed the sound, I needed the vibration to hold the cello, the cello is as big as a person. 

And, you know, people talk about, I think Yo-Yo Ma has talked about, or maybe Pablo Casals before him, how you have to hug almost, you have to holdhug the cello to play it. And I love that. And feeling that, just this rush of things, of affirming things came at me. And I didn't realize it maybe at the time. But I think that only happened because I was vulnerable. 

And that moment has become something that I go back to again and again, and find a new ways as a source of strength, actually, that letting myself be vulnerable was something that I had not done before, not in a real true deep way. And because of that, a lot of what I had been doing was trying to like cut myself out of things, to be such a pure vessel that you wouldn't even notice me on stage. Or you wouldn't even notice me in a conversation. But I would just facilitate the great ideas of the world or other people or elevate what you're saying. 

And, and really, that doesn't work. It's still about each of us. But also it's like it kind of defeats the purpose of playing the cello in the first place. So that moment was really, really truly important to me, and understanding now how I relate to music and what a personal thing it is. And what a gift it is to be able to share it with other people. And yeah, one of the few profoundly good things that has come out of this experience. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, totally. And I think something that we touched on just before we hit record, was this idea of kind of perfectionism. And you know, anyone who is - I'm gonna say a musician, but you know, I think all of the arts and I'm sure across all sorts of other things that I don't personally have experience of, as well. 

You know, perfectionism is what makes you good at what you do, you know, like, you are an incredible performer because you're a perfectionist. But at the same time, when we bring that into something like trying to recover from long COVID, that kind of idea of perfectionism is kind of the opposite to what we want. 

And certainly, I have an ongoing battle with perfectionism. I'm a recovering perfectionist. And you know, what you just said about, you know, playing for your friend's party, and, you know, like taking your Cello out the box like the day before, like, as a musician, you don't do that. You're practicing for weeks. Like, nobody pulls their instrument out the box the day before. 

And yet, that was such a profound experience for you, I guess, because you'd kind of let go, maybe, of some of that sort of drive and perfectionism before. And you were maybe just playing because you wanted to, and because you were so grateful to be able to actually do it, maybe. And it's a totally different way of looking at it, isn't it, as a musician?

Joshua Roman  
It is. It's interesting. I've been diving into this notion of perfectionism getting in the way of human connection. And I've done some work recently with Juilliard, and students across all three of their disciplines, so actors, dancers and musicians. I've also engaged in some work with some business leaders, and just seeking out these places and people who have this kind of drive and ambition that, I think can.... 

It's almost like the story of the master and his emissary, where, you know, you have this tool perfectionism, which you can use it's really, you know, it's not even perfectionism, but the desire to get better, this desire to do things better. But that's not really the thing that's supposed to be in control. So you're the master and your Emissary, Perfectionism or ambition, is doing some work, but you'd like delegate more and more. And all of a sudden, without realizing it, the emissary has taken over the power and the master is no longer the master. 

And I think that's one of the things that happens with perfectionism to the detriment of the original goals. And it's become my strong belief that no matter what you're doing, the only way that you really have a strong connection with another human being in any interaction is through vulnerability. That all of the skill, all of the perfection, all of the bravado, cool stuff that you can put out there, those are like, those are points through which you can connect, but you're not actually going to have the depth of that connection unless you let yourself risk something. 

And that's mutual. So it's really important for us, I think, to embrace that, to understand it, both in our interactions with others, but also in how we interact with ourselves. And to save room for that and to shift our mindsets away from the sort of machine-like perfectionism ideal, and towards something that is more reflective of the actual human experience. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I think you're right. And you know, we are fundamentally imperfect. And I think, you know, going back to, quote, unquote, perfect life that I was living before I got sick. It wasn't perfect. I wasn't healthy, I wasn't even happy, actually looking back on it, although at the time I thought I was. So that kind of whole idea of what was again, quote unquote, perfect, has completely kind of fundamentally changed. And it's changed me a huge amount. 

And, as you say, realizing that actually sometimes opening yourself up and admitting that you were wrong about things. Like I would never have admitted I was wrong. Or, you know, leaving in imperfections on a podcast, for example, you know, leaving in the word "umm" - how many times do I say that in an episode, like?!

Joshua Roman  
*laughs* tracking my own in my head!

Jackie Baxter  
I think it can be rewarding, I think it can be a really beautiful thing to kind of open yourself up to that. But certainly, you know, going back years and years, even to sort of childhood, it's not the sort of thing that you're sort of encouraged, certainly, I wasn't encouraged, to do as a child. It was the kind of keep calm, carry on kind of British way of doing things. But also, you know, needing to achieve, needing to be good at things, you know, not showing weakness. 

So yeah, it's interesting to have kind of gone on the journey, and to have kind of come to this realization, where actually, it's okay, it's even quite liberating to do that, to be wrong, to be imperfect to be, you know, screwing things up, and admitting that. So there we go, I've said it. *laughs*

Joshua Roman  
*laughs* Yeah, it's great. I couldn't agree more. I've always loved the feeling of being in control. But being on the edge of that, there's this like balance, right, where you're almost discovering the flow state, where you're discovering the next thing as it's happening. But the way that I generally would try to get to it was through control, so that you start with control, and then you relax it a little bit. 

And I think that's how, at least a lot of the things that I learned as a kid, that's kind of how they were taught. It was first you learn how to control it, and then you relaxed. 

And I don't know, I like this idea, instead of approaching things with playfulness from the beginning, that you can increase the amount of times that you play a note in tune, while still focusing on the character of the music that you're playing first, rather than fixing the intonation, and then later worrying about the character, which is the whole point of the music anyway. 

So basically, it's a prioritization, like whatever is the most important should always be at the center, no matter what else you're working on, that your focus is inherently set on that which is most important. And that's something that I think carries over, not just in business, and music and the arts, but like in everything. And that's shaping all of my decisions now, is what's really the most important thing. And if it's not that, then don't bother doing it. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, Joy, I guess, you know, joy from life and joy from what you're doing. And, and sort of the, the idea of play and creativity through play and all of this. You know, I mean, there's, there's so many people that have actually started doing things like creative hobbies, who maybe weren't very creative beforehand and said, Oh, well, you know, I can't do this. I can't do that. But actually, what I can do is like, I can draw something or I can start Painting little things. 

And, and I think people are often very apologetic because they're like, Oh, it's just my little thing, you know, I can't draw, I can't paint, I can't do this. But actually, by doing that, kind of allowing that creative self to kind of have an outlet, I think that is incredibly helpful in healing as well, you know, to have that, you know, whether it's music, or drawing, or painting or poetry or whatever it is for people. 

And you don't have to be good at it, you know, what even is good at it? You know, it's, it's so personal, I think that I guess, you know, doing it for you rather than doing it for somebody else. But then I suppose when your creativity is for you, you know, literally what you do. Where is the line between doing it for yourself, but also doing it for others? That must be quite a tricky one.

Joshua Roman  
I love that question. And I love thinking along these lines of creativity. There's a lot of research and there's a growing amount of interest in creativity's effect on the brain, and so on the individual, and then on society after that. And there's a book, a recent book, your brain on art, by Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen, that, to me, it's an amazing collection of studies, that points to this movement of interest in reinvigorated interest in the arts, as a necessity for humanity. 

That our brains are actually wired for creativity, they are wired for self expression. And if we're not doing that, we're actually cutting out an essential part of how we operate as humans. And it doesn't matter, as you're saying, it doesn't matter how good you are. It's not about monetizing your creativity. 

And it is weird for me to be learning all of this and at the same time, yes to be - that's my, that's what I do. And there are lots of things that I can try to do to think about it in different ways. But I ended up almost always coming back to this one thing, which is, I hope that I'm true to myself with my creativity. 

And I also hope that I'm lucky enough that whatever that ends up being, that it resonates with enough other people that I have an audience. But even if it doesn't, I still hope that I'm true to that personal creative sense. And that's where I think, each of us, regardless of what we do, and how creative we feel, can find that thing that helps us explore our self expression in a very personal way. That comfort. 

And it doesn't have to mean anything to anybody else. You can share it with people, if you want, you can share it with a few people, or many, many people, but mostly it's about the act of doing it. And that is something, and sharing on a small scale too, that I find so valuable. And so under appreciated in our consumer driven society, where anything that you make is supposed to be as big as possible and reach as many people as possible. 

And I'm victim to thinking that way too. I think that way. And it is tricky. It's a constant thing. But I just keep coming back to - do my best to figure out what my voice actually is, to understand that. And to hope that it is relevant to others and not try to force anything. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, it's being true to yourself, but I suppose knowing that you're not going to please everybody and being okay with that, which is I guess hard as a performer.

Joshua Roman  
Very hard. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Jackie Baxter  
So, Immunity. This is a project that you are in charge of, I think this is your project. 

Joshua Roman  
My project. 

Jackie Baxter  
I'm just gonna throw the question out there. Just tell us about it. 

Joshua Roman  
Yes. Well, immunity is at its core, the music that's been important to me on my journey with long COVID. And the story of how it's affected me. And what I hope is useful to other people is the connection of that sense of vulnerability from a perfectionist, a recovering perfectionist like yourself, and powerful music that really covers a range of expression and emotions and even styles. Kind of incidentally, it covers an incredible range of styles. 

It started as a project that I did with Princeton University in, I guess, a year and a half ago 2022. And they asked me to put together the music that's been important to me, to talk about it for their series "healing with music." And they created a seven minute documentary film about my experience with long COVID. That played, and I walked out and performed this music introducing each piece. 

And then we had discussion, a panel discussion with Clemency burton-Hill, and someone else whose name escapes me at the moment, and myself. And it was so impactful in a way that I was not anticipating. It was scary for me to get up on stage and talk about long COVID. It's not like people didn't know, I had put at least one social media post about it, maybe two. And we were telling presenters so that they would know what to expect. 

But I had not really gone on stage to talk about having long COVID. Definitely not in that sort of long COVID centered experience. And after that, the presenters kept reaching out to me and saying, you have to do more with this, the response from the audience has been tremendous. And also, they know me really well. 

And something was unlocked. And I kind of like, I didn't really find it that hard, because I knew what they were talking about, I felt something in myself unlock. I was a little hesitant, but my ultimate goal is to connect with people. And that felt honest and real in a way that I had never experienced to that level before. 

And so I created this project, as a way to focus all of my musical efforts on this new thing that I'm exploring, which is a deeper connection with an audience through the music that I love, and a story that I think is very human. 

So at this point, immunity is an album that I've recorded, and it'll be released. It's a talk with performance that I'm doing in various places that I don't think I can say right now. And I really wish I could, but some really cool places over the next few months that will be announced soon. 

It is a performance that I'm working with a long COVID collaborative in the United States to take to hopefully forty clinics across the country and present for patients, and private performances for other people, other people with long COVID. And it's an opportunity to collaborate and listen to any human being who is not in touch with their vulnerability. And I think that's pretty much all of us. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, this sounds amazing. I think you've mentioned the word connection and vulnerability, I think, possibly more than any other words, in the last 40 minutes or something. I think you're right, you know, connection is fundamental to humans, to mammals, I think, probably in some form to every living thing. 

And when we go through something like long COVID, where you sort of lose some of that connection, it's almost like you understand how important it is having lost it. And you know, you're talking about taking this to long COVID clinics, to people who literally are going through a similar experience to you, and you get how important that is to connect with those people. And to I guess, sharing that vulnerability, you know, to kind of bring the two together maybe? 

Joshua Roman  
Yeah, it's interesting. It's one of those things where I, like, I know that it's important, and it feels important, and there's nothing that I can do to capture the feeling of it, nothing that I can say. And there's one moment that I'll tell you about that I think of when I say that. 

I actually did this for the long COVID clinic in Portland, Oregon, when I was performing with the orchestra out there. And it was the first time that I did this for long COVID patients and they had, I forget, like 60-80 patients that were able to come in person and then they live streamed it to their other patients. 

And I've never given a performance in my entire life, where I felt so understood by the audience. It goes both ways. It was so profound. The connection looking at the people that I was playing for and having this bond, without even having to do anything, and then being able to open up and share from that place of willingness, and to see what that unlocked in them. 

And some of the things that people were saying, because at the end, we took time to just talk. And some of the things people were saying were heartbreaking. And so moving. 

But there is this one man that I'll never forget. And he came up to me, and he had driven, which is amazing, I can't drive anymore because of one of the effects of my long COVID. But I was, he managed to drive from Eastern Oregon, which is across the state from Portland, it's maybe three and a half hours away. So he drove for about three and a half hours, from a very rural part of the northwest of America, to this city. And he came to this. 

And he's this burly guy, a firefighter, actually. And he was so moved. To hear him come up with such tenderness and emotion, telling me what it meant to him. And how he didn't have that. And when he told me that he was a firefighter, and from Eastern Oregon, I could immediately picture the toughness of the people around him and of him and his job. And how he didn't, I couldn't imagine that he would have the kind of support to open up and be vulnerable about something like long COVID, that stigmatizes, that is not yet understood. And that can make you feel very weak. 

To reach him in that moment. And to have his connection and response just made me realize that I need to do this as much as possible. Because there are so many people who don't have that connection. Even if people around them are supportive. There's something about going through something like this. And then being able to relate to everyone else from that position. Again, where vulnerability turns into a strength. 

I think we have something to learn and something to help each other with and something to share with the world that's already out there. But I don't see any other way forward for someone like me. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think if there was ever any doubt in your mind that what you are doing is important. I think that is your evidence there, isn't it? You know, it is important. It's just wonderful. 

And I guess for anyone listening to this, they won't have been able to see but I've literally been like nodding my head for like, I'm gonna say the last 40 minutes, but particularly the last five. *laughs* 

Well, good luck with the project. Good luck with everything. Thank you so much for taking out your precious time and energy to come and talk to me. It's been an absolute pleasure. So thank you so much.

Joshua Roman  
Thank you, Jackie. I really appreciate it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai