The Eyed Entity Podcast
Based on a one year long project called "The Eyed Entity Project", the experience of identity in the face of profound grief and loss brought forth questions: who am I when I am not who I was in relationship before? What is most important? How do we uncover our preferences? How do we follow them? How impactful are others in each chapter of our own individual identity? This process emerged in the face of grief and the role of identity in that experience, but evolved into what matters most in life.
Join your host, Kimberly, an LMFT and creative in the exploration of themes around mental health, grief, relationship, creativity and the arts, how we find community, self-empowerment, and related psychological and sociological topics in coming episodes.
The Eyed Entity Podcast
Exploring Creativity with Craig Klonowski: A Journey Through Music, Education, and Artistry
Celebrated musician and educator Craig Klonowski joins us to uncover the essence of creativity across multiple disciplines. With over two decades of experience, Craig shares his journey through a vibrant career that spans classical, folk, musical theater, and film scoring. Learn how he weaves resilience and renewal into his work, particularly in his debut album "Comeback Year," and discover his passion for nurturing young talent in New York City's public schools. His reflections on embracing vulnerability and imperfection in art provide a profound exploration of the artistic process and finding one's voice and identity through the arts.
Craig's personal anecdotes enrich our dialogue, from his love for bonsai trees to his adventures in acting. We tackle the struggle of inner criticism in performing arts, and the journey of evolving through artistic exploration. Discover how feedback, resilience, and the beauty of imperfection play crucial roles in personal and artistic growth. As we delve into Craig's musical journey and his students' achievements, this episode is a testament to the enduring allure and transformative power of the arts. Join us for an inspiring exploration of creativity that promises to touch the heart and ignite the imagination.
Craig can be found at www.craigklonowski.com or on social media as @craigklonowski
Hosted by Kimberly Koljat
@theeyedentityproject
theeyedentityproject@gmail.com
Hey everybody, thanks for being here. We made it to episode two Yahoo. Today we're talking to Craig Klonowski. He is an all-around great human being and he's a composer, a performing artist, an educator, and you're gonna hear all about him. Let's go, let's do it. So Thank you, hello everybody, and welcome to the Identity Podcast. Today I am sitting with Craig Klonowski. Hi, craig.
Speaker 2:Hi Cammie.
Speaker 1:So, before we started the podcast, I asked Craig to share with me in his own words I know people send their bios. I asked Craig to share in his own words, like how, how he would identify himself, how he would, uh, introduce himself. And so these are craig's words that I'm about to read. Something stirs in the darkest hours, when the world is silent and thoughts run deep. Craig klanowski's debut album, comeback, takes shape in these quiet moments. It's more than just music. It's a journey through the shadows, tracing the path from loss and heartbreak to hope and renewal. Acoustic folk melodies, piano and cello set the scene, guiding you through down-tempo ballads and more upbeat songs, capturing the full spectrum of life's experiences. Craig, you are your music.
Speaker 2:I am.
Speaker 1:Oh hi Hi. Of course I need to. Before we even dive in, I need to tell the folks some of the things that you have done in your life, because you've you've done a lot of things and because this is a podcast about identity, you know we are our experiences and we're going to talk about that, but I wanted to kind of give them a summary, a review, if that is that cool with you.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean my music is kind of a summary of all of that, all those crazy things and adventures I've been on.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Summary of all of that, all those crazy things and adventures, I've been on Absolutely Legit, okay. So Craig Klonowski is a multi-talented musician, composer, arranger, educator and recording artist with over 20 years of experience in the music industry. His career reflects a commitment to excellence, community engagement and the transformative power of music. His versatile artistry spans classical, folk, musical theater, film scoring and education. He's a seasoned double bassist and has performed with prestigious ensembles, including the principal double bass for the united nations symphony orchestra I might pronounce this wrong Camerata New York and the Galactica String Quintet, which he founded as a composer, arranger and performer. He's also collaborated in theatrical productions such as Still Within the Sound of my Voice, the songs of Linda Ronstadt earning a Bistro Award and Urinetown.
Speaker 1:He's a composer and arranger in town. He's a composer and arranger. He has scored award-winning films, including when the World Goes Dark, which received a College Emmy Humanitarian Award, and Choices, featured in numerous film festivals. His arranging work has been performed by ensembles like the United Nations Chamber Music Society and various New York orchestras. He's a tenured music teacher in New York City's public schools and he has built programs that integrate strings theory and composition, reaching students from underserved communities, and this past year, in 2024, craig released Come Back here, his debut single, followed by Milestones.
Speaker 1:Back Home One Last Night and Heard of it. His music blends folk influences with themes of resilience, renewal and connection. This release builds on his passion for storytelling, complementing his extensive background in live performance and composition. Look at what you do, dude. It's so weird to hear it all back Uh-huh. That's why I wanted to read it, because I was like we don't actually like take in, like all the things that we've done. You have done so much stuff, lots of stuff, yeah, stuff and things. I, when, I, when, when you sent me your list of all the things you had accomplished, I kind of categorized them into four separate clusters of you Composer, educator, performer and performing artist. Does that feel like it encompasses all? What am I missing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's pretty much the. Those are the four main elements Right by your power combined. Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Plus dog owner.
Speaker 2:Dog owner. I really love plants and trees I make. I play around with bonsai trees in my free time.
Speaker 1:I didn't know this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are other little tidbits, my little secrets. I love it, yeah, and I like I explored acting for a hot. I didn't know this. If you want to do well, that's one of the ways we reach people. So I've found that I can get that satisfaction through all my other elements still.
Speaker 1:I love it. Yes, it's accurate. Yes, or read whether it was your words that I asked you to share or, um, like your bio. What do you claim like today? This we're, we're taping this on a Sunday, this day, this Sunday. What are you claiming as like what's leading the way? What part of you is leading the way today?
Speaker 2:it's, it's oh god, that's so hard. Because it does. I mean, I'm glad you asked the question that way, because it does change from day to day. Yeah, and like I'm I'm right now, I'm like a performer educator I and I list them in that order.
Speaker 2:I'm really working on this, like seeing myself as different things right and um I don't know the educator of it. I've gotten so good at it and I know that I, like I, can reach people. It's, it's pretty cool. And and um, that's something that I feel like I, a skill that I have that I give to other people.
Speaker 2:Right, and performing and recording and creating music is something I I start by doing for myself, um, and so it's kind of a yin and a yang and you know, I try to balance out what I create, what do I learn from it and how do I give that to other people. And you know, you're talking about these four main roles and it kind of distills down to those two things I think we've talked in the past about being, you know, the line between being a consumer and being a creator, and each of those roles kind of does a little bit of both. But you know, right now I really I'm really proud of my education stuff that I'm doing. I'm doing really cool things with people of all different ages and I'm really proud of the stuff that I'm making.
Speaker 1:I love it. I feel like of the like, the four kind of like roles, categories that I kind of like pulled out. They all feel tied to your creative self, Absolutely. How do I put it? How do you fuse that with all the other parts of your life?
Speaker 2:How do you fuse it with all the other parts of your life?
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm even asking that.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure I understand the question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like do you bring that into other parts of your life too, Like when you're not a teacher, when you're not creating music?
Speaker 2:It's like impossible not to. It's sort of a thing about who I believe I am. I guess is like I'm like as much as you say, like I put on a hat right, I'm a teacher for the moment and I put on, but none of those other things goes away at any time during any of the other, any of the other situations. They're all bubbling and boiling on the back burner and every once in a while I need to grab something out of that tool bag. And so I'm like, oh wait, I need to grab something out of that tool bag, and so I'm like, oh wait, I, I need to be a teacher for a moment. And so, you know, they, they, they're each a pillar that holds up sort of the whole personality. Uh, you know, and when one is in the foreground, the other ones are all they're still making that able to, you know, to be delivered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like while I'm teaching, while I'm teaching, there are moments where I will just suddenly like make up a song for the kids and like it'll help them to learn, or I will do some silly little dance just to distract them and throw them off and bring them back in and get focus on me for a moment. You know you have to grab a like I know this works over there, let's see if it works here. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah, and you know it's a lot of trial and error. We've we've talked about a lot about how everything is an art. So if you can pull from more different kinds of art and and and think about how that, you know, relates to what you're doing, boy you've got. You've got the best toolkit in the world.
Speaker 1:Heck, yeah, yes, yes, I love it. Well, okay, I feel like in what you had said, you said like you have a passion for storytelling and that complements. So I feel like we're kind of like telling a story of Craig through all of these different roles that you play. So, like, if we're going to tell the story, what's our, our first chapter? Where do we go? Composer, educator, performer, performing artist. Do we start with where, where you're feeling you are today?
Speaker 2:um, I don't know. I mean, like I'm I'm sort of a literalist with these things, like I'm picturing myself at five years old swinging my feet on a piano bench you know the one who's dragging mom to get me to go to the, the piano lesson yeah, were you the kid that like was forced to go to piano lessons and hated it?
Speaker 2:no, I was asked that's what I'm saying. I mean, I was like, mom, it's time to go, come on, we're gonna be late, get in the car. And I and I just she didn't have to ask me to practice. I loved it up until there was one thing that happened. So I started when I was about five, around 12 or 13, um, I, I had been enrolled.
Speaker 2:I started taking bass at cleveland institute of music, like pre-college, and I loved it. My sister, my twin sister, was playing violin and she encouraged me to join the orchestra. Yeah, I was supposed to play the cello. They ran out of cellos and they said we'll give you a bass. And uh, I don't know, 30 some years later, I'm still playing the bass. I got my own cello, um, but the point is, uh, what happened is my parents said let's take, why don't you go to the next step and take piano at cleveland institute as well? And I got this uh, really intense guy I won't say his name, but like I'm like this isn't fun anymore and I lost, like I kind of fell out of love with the piano. I focused on the bass and I didn't come back to it until I was in college.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so valid when you have that teacher, that's so like disciplined and like authoritative in your lessons and suddenly it loses, like the buoyancy of the art.
Speaker 2:It's such an important thing for us, I think, is it not just experiencing like who you want to be as a teacher? For me, there's this component to it. It's a lot of who you don't want to be. We go through all these experiences I know you have. I've shared some of mine where, like you've had some traumatic arts experiences yes, I have. It's like I can even see them creeping out in my teaching sometime. I'm like I don't want to be that person. I'm not going to do that to these. My first teacher, miss haynes I think she's still around. She lives in brecksville. Ah, lovely, lovely lady. But we learned I had a book of tv themes, like I learned the oscar meyer hot dog song and like she asked what do you want to play? And so I brought in a whole book and I learned nothing but phantom of the opera.
Speaker 2:And I went to this new guy and we spent like two months doing like scales and I'm like, yeah, I get now as a teacher, like that's important, yes, but if you don't like it, like it's not kind of fun, especially for beginners and I find this true for adult beginners as much as a five-year-old or a 60-year-old if they're not having fun doing it, you are wasting your time 100%.
Speaker 1:I think that's what makes it hard for adults to start something new, especially if it's something like learning an instrument or learning like a new creative outlet, because we're adults, we've already mastered so many different things in our lives like good enough to like live right in our lives, like good enough to like live right. So if we're going to add something to our life, we think we're going to have that same level of mastery that we did, like that we have now with everything else. But we've had like decades worth of practice doing those things. So then we pick up something we're not good at, we don't have a sense of mastery over, and we think, like we generalize it, we go like, oh god, I suck, so it's gotta have that like some that little bit of play in it to be like I'm doing this for the sake of doing it and I think it also gives it a sense of ownership.
Speaker 2:When you're when you're making music or you're making art that's satisfying to you, you're not doing it for, like, doing scales, for example. You're doing that because that's a tool to get to an abstract. Other thing you're going to do in the future yep if you can play like the big note version of uh, you know again the oscar meyer wiener song. You have made something now that is recognizable and you think is fun or cute, right?
Speaker 2:yeah and and, and there's something really profound in the, the instant tangibility of the product that you're like. Okay, I'm making something, especially with young people. I think older people have. We've talked about frustration, tolerance, and that's a lot of what this is. You're frustrated, you haven't made the thing you want to make yet, and I think adults have a little bit further vision in how to get there. But equally, I mean, we all have that inner child that just says I can't do this. I'm not a musician, you know. I'm a tax lawyer. I can't play the piano.
Speaker 1:Why not think it's like for for adults, especially like we get so ingrained in a specific part of our identities. So, like, speaking from my own experience, right, so you, you knew me when I was in theater and then I walked away from theater to go to grad school to become a drama therapist and I had this fantasy like, oh, it's fine, I'll see like clients during the day and I'll do shows at night. Like that's, that's how it will work. I will have this whole life. That's like blossoming with creativity and and expression and and helping support people through whatever they're going through using theater arts. But it's therapeutic and yeah, but then like the, the, the pathway to become like an actual licensed therapist is so intense that like it was all consuming and suddenly everything is about the clinical work and like all these creative parts of me just fall away and it becomes so amplified. So then I'm like I'm a therapist.
Speaker 2:And then it's like, wait a minute, you know I mean you also I've watched you enough that, like, those things are all there, they've just evolved into something. I I mean because I went through the same process. I've talked about the, the idea you go to music school and they and and it's very definitive, from the moment you take the entrance exam, are you performance, are you education?
Speaker 2:right those are two. They're like you. You have to choose a path and go down that one. Yes and uh. I chose education because I believe that I could still be a performer and, kind of like you, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go to new york city and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna teach by day and I'm gonna do auditions and play in pit orchestras by night, and like it doesn't work that way. So then you find ways of making it work together. I do shows at my school. I teach kids how to you know I, I had them sing like their own little cabaret songs or like you know you you find a way to fit it in. And then finally, when you get comfortable enough like you're making a podcast, you are making something, you are creating something new you finally get to a point where you're like, no, I can do this, uh and this and it does. All these elements start to come back together, things that, like you asked me that question how do I identify? I'm all of those things.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's not an, or it's an and.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's all. And.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they don't fall away. Like, of course, like the longer you're away from a particular part, the more like the skill sets fall away, but they don't fall away for good. Like I mean, my, my music training is as a vocalist. So, like all of my music skills, my music theory, my music training is like where, like placement, and like resonance, and like what is my range and like where is my break and like how do I use my mix, and all that kind of shit.
Speaker 1:But like I thought, like rewinding back a year when I was doing the identity project and I did that final thing and I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna sing that I'll do something that I have mastery over, but I hadn't actually practiced the thing I had mastered decades before. So I was like, oh my God, I suck at the thing I had mastered. Now I suck at oh no, I'm terrible, but it's really about like, oh, like, can you sit with where you are now and actually give yourself space to find those parts of yourself again, like finessing them and and and tending to them as if they're like a young part of you. Like it's okay, I got you it's totally that it's.
Speaker 2:It is what you just did. It is a little hug to the breast. Uh, draw it near to your heart, let it feel your breath and like it's hippy dippy. But it is totally that 100 it is. It is so difficult to find that kindness for yourself that I struggle with this, like I mean it's part of my upbringing and a bunch of other stuff. But like, just be like, hey, you made a thing. It doesn't matter what anyone else say, you did it. You made's there, yes, and it's not your choice whether they like it or not, that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter. It's literally that you made it. It's doing it for the sake of doing it, versus doing it for a product so that others will consume it Yep, and if others consume it, great, that's great. But if they don't, you made a thing consume it.
Speaker 2:Great, that's great. But if they don't, you made a thing absolutely and I think that I we've we've touched on this in the in our in our past conversations. But there's this idea of when you are creating. If you're creating specifically like I want people, you know this is going to get 400 000 streams in the first month, so I'm going to make money off of this.
Speaker 2:If you're creating with that intent, you're creating something totally different it's like a different type of art right yes, yes you're creating a consumable, you're creating a product, whereas if you're creating for yourself I think that's closer to the concept of fine art as we would define it in like a intellectual sense you're designing it, you're creating it simply for the purpose of making something right. Right, which is what this is art, because I said it's art yes, which is how we define play.
Speaker 1:Like play is doing something for the sake of doing it. So, like art, art is play, creativity is play. It's just how we choose to channel it.
Speaker 2:What medium, what, and I think, when art is is play it, it becomes something more. That's what, when you see something that like, moves you like? I saw sunset boulevard last night, the, the new production and I there's a when I was a flight attendant. I was a flight attendant for three years. Speaking of other identities and lives, yes, I remember that chapter well.
Speaker 2:And trainer and, yeah, I had a whole nother while I was doing my master's degree, but I had a Scion XB in this car the one that looked like a toaster and the CD player in this car would eat CDs and it first it ate a vita thank god it wasn't something I didn't like and then it ate sunset boulevard. So I literally listened to this on repeat for like months and I loved it and I'm so. I know every word of this show. And then I finally saw the. I saw the last production where glenn close uh, did a reprise of her first performance and it was unbelievable.
Speaker 2:And then I saw it again last night and I was just like blown away at the idea how this art can evolve. It was the same notes, it's the same words, but like when you go and you see and it's something totally new, the value was added. But that happens from somebody sitting with it and playing with it and taking chances and being adventurous and not just doing what. I know. This worked in the past, so we're going to do that one again, right? Somebody took a huge chance on this and it is like it's just the coolest thing I've seen in, maybe ever. It's just a really cool idea.
Speaker 1:I don't know well, I mean what that play? Absolutely. What that makes me think of is, like, what is the role of risk in art?
Speaker 2:Risk is quite possibly the most important part, and it's like taking risk. It's so funny because the risks are so imaginary most of them.
Speaker 1:Most of them yeah.
Speaker 2:Because we don't really know what's going to be and we see it even as a risk only because we are painting societal norms and expectations on what we're making. Yeah, the risk and the risk is not. The risk is usually purely emotional and social with most art is are they going to like it? Are they they gonna not like it? And when we use that as a measuring stick for art, it's very, very dangerous, because that wasn't what it. That. That's like. Yeah, how heavy am I? You're six inches heavy, like that doesn't make sense. It's the wrong unit of measurement, right right whether art is good or not right, right.
Speaker 2:Oh, I have so much to say on that and I'm blessed which goes back to your the whole discussion of social media and like how toxic that is to the idea of art okay, let's go there, because, because we're here and I don't- can I? Can I talk about another thing that came up? We were talking about the idea of long form versus short form. I don't know if you want to go there. We can, yes, you go your direction when we get there. Remind me to ask you on some of the things, Okay, so?
Speaker 1:so, if I were to, you said today, you were feeling your educator self and your performer self. Let's talk about educator self for a second, for a little bit, um like, because it's it's tied to what you're you're bringing into the conversation about social media, one of the things you've said to me in previous conversations that sticks in my head because, like we both work with kids in some capacity.
Speaker 2:I see the impact of social media on kids' mental health and well-being, and my own, yeah, I mean I think that's so important is, as we are talking about this, we are experiencing that in a in a completely different lens, because we grew up without it yes right. We know a world as a child that if you wanted to play you went outside and found friends. Like that was a whole nother world.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And you're watching kids who don't get, they're not going to get that experience, and so we're watching them through a very, very specific lens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is an interesting concept as an educator today, because you had the experience of being exposed as a younger child. I mean going out into the world and playing and creating in your own world, but also creating art as a child, going to lessons as a child, because social media wasn't a thing. So you just create, create, create, right.
Speaker 2:I'm in this like five-year window, I think. So I'm technically a millennial. I was born in 1982. And I think it's the first year they classify as millennials between Gen X. And there is this I've talked with so many people about. This idea is that, like when I was in middle school. It was kind of a new, but it was a mandatory first for the first time and within about two or three years we had to turn in our papers typed, right. But it was this weird time like we didn't have at-home computers. So I would go type my paper at the library on a typewriter, on like a word processing typewriter. But that was like in middle school and by the time I was in high school. Later in high school we had a home computer, right. So I'm on this weird plane where, like, the first half of my life was analog. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the second half of my life turned digital. Yeah, and it's such an odd thing, I have such a deep, deep respect for analog work, deep, deep respect for analog work. I think that I've been thinking so much about this. In what you're talking about in education is that I feel like there's this skip, that we skip the analog and go right to the digital and people don't understand what certain things even mean, like in a digital audio, audio workspace if you add um reverb, right yeah kids now know this word is reverb and it sounds like an echo, but they don't really understand what depth is or width, or what the wetter or the drier sounds of it.
Speaker 2:And those are real things that you would experience in, in in the analog process of experiencing different spaces or changing you know. And so there's this disconnect between what the digital words mean, what the software is telling you, and the understanding of what that means in function, if you were to try to create those sounds or those things in real life.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, oh my God.
Speaker 2:And so I'm and it's weird to be and I think you and our generation is in this space where we understand the analog side of how, because the digital is all a representation of the analog world, right, right, right, we understand that, but there is a dwindling capacity for teachers and professors and such to have experienced and grown up learning how to type on a typewriter before a computer, or play a violin before you could just do it on your phone, you know, or you know you wanted to create, uh, I don't know, some artwork. Now you can do it fairly easy, or edit video or make a podcast. I mean, these things are much more accessible now in a way that never used to be, but we have this advantage of having gotten to do those things by hand.
Speaker 1:Tangibly. Yeah, and there's something yeah, you know I didn't, oh man, yes, yes, yes, because, like I forget that, like the younger generations of folks won't understand the concept of the words behind the things that are on their like software programs, yeah, that they were representational of what was, which totally makes me think about like drama therapy and like the concepts within drama therapy, and I'm not going to go down that path but just to say like, oh, I'm so fascinated by like, like the interpersonal exchange in person encounter, and I've been trying to write about like online encounter and what's different about online encounter versus in-person encounter and where we kind of like miss or what gets like represented but is not like what you're saying with technology, and I'm like, oh my God, it's true there too.
Speaker 2:It's true everywhere, yeah, and I think there is some. There's some loss, right, and I we used to talk, I mean a literal sense. I mean like a great example is like if you listen to a vinyl album yeah and you listen to the same exact thing as an mp3.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whether you know it or not, you're actually hearing less of the original thing because, in order to convert it to digital, they have to drop certain information out, and even within that world like if you listen to mp3 versus a wave file a wave file has more information in it than an MP3. And so what we're getting are these sort of like distillations of whatever the original real world thing was and the new ones. If you don't understand what you're losing, or you don't understand that it's gone, you just think this new thing is how it always was.
Speaker 2:Yep understand that it's gone. You just think this new thing is how it always was. Yep, and, and there's a. There is a loss of the understanding, like you were saying, of where these concepts come from. Where do these sounds, these words? The? You know the, the meaning behind what you're making was all grounded in in very concrete, tangible reality before it was on your phone yep you need to know how to do those things.
Speaker 1:I think that there's just a need to understand where it comes from right, right, yes, so like you're in a classroom with a bunch of kids every day, so so something folks should know about, like who you are as an educator.
Speaker 2:Um, you work at the only school with a performing arts program in lower manhattan where I'm in, district geographic district two, which runs from like, chinatown all the way up to midtown. So not only do we have a wild, wild population, um, so we have kids like immigrants who don't speak English, from Chinatown all the way up to like, finance and diplomat children in the 50s and then within the last two years, I mean, we had an influx. Our school has about 1,200 kids and of those, about 200 in the last year are immigrants that just got thrown on a bus and sent here. Our population is about as broad as I've seen in a school district, one of the only schools in the district that has, and I'm speaking specifically of the fine arts. We have a drama program. We have I teach strings and there's a counterpart that teaches band and all the wind instruments Between us, we have about 500 in in instrumental, hands-on music. We have, um, a visual arts program and we also have a ceramics program. So we have like a kiln. There's one teacher that just teaches ceramics all day. It's, it's, it's like the unicorn of unicorns and on top of that we have an administration who respects the arts, which I think is the key. So our school is really unique.
Speaker 2:Most schools will schedule the kids English and math and science and social studies and then say where's the room in the schedule? Oh, the math teachers need a break at two o'clock, so let's send them to music, right? So we end up being the babysitters so that the and I'm using quotation marks real teachers can have their break and then we get the kids back right. That's how most schools in the city operate. At our school, they actually they let the kids choose. They actually are electives. The kids choose what they're going into and once they select their elective, they build the rest of the schedule around that and it works.
Speaker 2:I don't know why other schools haven't done this, because they're still in the schedule for everyone, and so, in that sense, our school, where I teach, we're really lucky to have administrators that listen to us and say, hey, this is the most effective way to do this and this is why it matters. We're the ones who are putting. You know, music is language, it's math's math, it's discipline, it's all of these things. So if you respect us and what we're doing, we can make the other subjects shine. Yeah, you have to, and it takes a lot of infrastructure. You got to have a building that's willing to do that. You got to invest in the instruments and the materials and the clay and the kiln and the time. Um, and then you have to say, yeah, go, do your thing. We're not going to tell you how to teach music right, right.
Speaker 1:So like, because of, like the, the program, like what we were just talking about, like the fact that you know the analog versus digital world and your, what you're teaching students is like the analog instruments.
Speaker 2:This is as like analog as it gets. I'm giving them a you know, original model violin based on the Stradivarius. You teach them how to take care of it. You teach them how to tune it. You teach them how to like all the physical, the physicality of you. Press harder, it's going to be louder. You move the bow, faster it's going to, you know, be louder. I keep going with louder, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Actually, this is a funny thing that just popped into my mind, saying that is the number one thing I struggle with is getting kids to play loudly. I'm sure you've done this with voice and stuff, but like, a kid will play something. Totally, I'm like now, can I hear it? Can you like? Yeah, there is this fear in them of like expression, even using an instrument. There's like the, even in a, in a group setting. Right, they're fearful of creating too much sound. It's, it's a. It might also be cultural and part of certain populations I have, but it's a fascinating element and I think I've talked to you a little about like, just with social media, we had a wonderful thing happen. You've been to a couple concerts in the last year, I think.
Speaker 1:I have maybe one or two.
Speaker 2:Maybe one or two, but last year or the year before our school adopted yonder pouches.
Speaker 1:Oh God.
Speaker 2:It was transformational. I didn't know schools did that. It is, oh my God, the kids already know how to open them and get there. But like it almost eliminated the problem of the phone and the social media during school time. It doesn't eliminate it everywhere else, but at least there's some moment. So now I have kids in my room who are there and the most interesting they can thing they can do with their time is pick up an instrument, not the phone right, yeah.
Speaker 1:so for for those of the folks who don't know what yonder is, yonder is, um, this uh company, essentially that. Uh, they're these little pouches, and I've gone to concerts not recently and likely will go to some in the future that use them, but Madonna used them before the pandemic. So like there's folks that have these pouches and you put your phone in them and then they give you a little like valet check. That valet check, yeah, like a valet ticket.
Speaker 2:They close, close with a magnet and you can't open it, so you get permission and somebody does it for you exactly.
Speaker 1:And so then you know, for concerts, at the end of the concert you go up to one of the representatives. They're able to like unmagnetize it, you can get your phone out, um, and then you get your phone back. So for the fact that schools are using these, because you have, you've said to me in the past like you feel, like I've written it down you feel like at times being an educator is fighting technology. It's a fight between you and technology to get the attention of the student.
Speaker 2:It's such a funny fight too because, like I mean, like the perfect example is like chat GPT fight too.
Speaker 2:because, like I mean, like the perfect example is like chat gpt and there are these, it's like the jets and the sharks where somebody's over here, no, you can't use it and I'm over here going yeah, you can, but only if you do this with it, right, right, and because to me I view it as like almost like a calculator for words, right, ah, yeah, you can get if you know how to use it. If you just put it in and say, hey, give me my homework back, that's one thing. But if you use it to generate ideas and try to find the right words and then use them in your own voice, that's a different way of using it, and we've talked about this a lot and that's the battle I feel there is with technology.
Speaker 1:It's not just like here's technology, go use it.
Speaker 2:It's, what are we doing with it? Are we? Yeah, it doesn't have real purpose, or is it just a toy? Right? This is something we're using to literally cheat and not and we're cheating ourselves out of the experience of struggling with it. There it comes again, right, struggling with how to make this thing. Yeah, um, I appreciate chat gpt because I have written a lot. I've written and written, I have written tens of thousands of pages of words, right, and so again, it kind of goes back to I understand the analog side and I appreciate how this is a tool, not a solution, but a tool to help writers, right, right, or to help an artist, I don don't. You know, ai-generated things are not human-generated, so it changes what the artwork is in the end.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But there's this constant battle with technology in that sense of how it's being used, yeah. But then there's also the battle of like put your phone away. We're trying to have class. This is an orchestra. You can't be texting right now like right, that luckily is gone, but we still get like. There's certain days, if they, the day after the concert, all the kids in my room get to have a laptop, we watch the video and they get some chill time. And I've talked to you about this concept too. Which is fascinating is how it's sort of you watch the kids get sorted very quickly. The sorting hat comes out into creators and consumers. This I like.
Speaker 2:You see certain kids sit down and they want to like oh, can I open GarageBand? Is it okay if I make like I record myself? Everyone be quiet, I'm recording something. And you know, like the other half of the class is they're just watching TikTok with oatmeal coming out of their ears. So it's just a fat meal. Yeah, out of their ears. So it's just a fat meal, yeah, no, you're right, oatmeal. It'd probably be like pockies.
Speaker 1:That would be what it is absolutely pockies and a and a coke but yeah, the, the, oh god, so that there's so many layers to this, because like, okay, so yeah, the, the division between creator and consumer, my mental health part of me wants to say, like, what does it do to the mental? Like, what is the mental health experience of the consumer versus the creator? Right, that's one piece of it. The other piece of it makes me go like, oh gosh, okay. So we're also talking about, like, how you are, like the analog versus digital experience and like what you're teaching is the most analog of analog, right, because it's strings, it's creation of music, learning new things and all of this. It keeps coming back to frustration, tolerance, right. So if we use AI, how are we using it as a tool versus a crutch? Yes, absolutely. And if, like, ai is the creation, it is the source of the creation, then where's the humanity go? And then, also, like, the analog experience of humanity, where does it go?
Speaker 1:um but that also makes me think about god, this, I'm firing so many the synapses, they be a fire and um, but like it makes me think about, like the analog experience of taking in art and we've talked about, like the long form, art versus social media.
Speaker 2:Tell the, tell the folks about your thoughts, because I, when you talk about this stuff, I'm like, oh my god so again, I mean, it kind of comes back to what we were talking about just a few minutes ago, this idea of of you and I were brought up in a in you know, if you, if you wanted to listen to a song, you bought the album, you bought the cd, you bought the cassette tape, right, and you didn't just get that song, but you would end up experiencing it as a part of a larger piece which was designed by an artist or a studio or whatever. But it was part of a bigger thing. Yeah, um, pretty much everything we consumed artistically was like that, even a comic strip. I was obsessed with calvin and hobbes, but you could go to the library and check out. You know there was a whole shelf of these books and it was part of a bigger scale of things.
Speaker 2:And I've I've had, I've had an interesting conversation with my husband about this, but what I've noticed is that the consumption in large part has been shrinking into like smaller and smaller tidbits, and I was expressing that.
Speaker 2:One of my concerns is that the smaller bits aren't necessarily a distillation of the quality of a larger work, but that they're just these snippets, and kids are gaining a very different concept of what dancing, or you know what is a dance, what is a work of art? And I'm not saying that these things are not, they're just a very limited view of what they are. And then this was really fascinating to me, though, which was the flip side of the coin. I was talking to my husband, and he was talking about binge watching things, which is something that we can do now because of the same technology, and this is what I was going to bring up like. I can't tell you how many kids have come to me in the last couple years and have suddenly watched 10 seasons of friends, right and they did it in a week over break what took us 10 years to consume.
Speaker 2:A kid can sit down now and do in a weekend yeah and it like that idea kind of also blew my mind, but only if they have to be, like led to it. Right, they have to be. There has to be some incentive to go consume that much. And on the same side, there's other. There are, I think they're more limited.
Speaker 2:We talked about, like wagnerian scale, like art creation, art for art's sake, the artist that creates the theater and the costumes and the, the entire production. They are the mastermind of the whole thing. And while that doesn't necessarily exist in as great frequency as it might have in the past, there are these things like the hair, like Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings or the Marvel Universe, where there are these huge scale, you know, concepts with, or even like that's, multiverses that kids can somehow wrap their minds around. Yeah, um, but again, I'm I'm gonna like really press, as a asterisk on that is we're talking about consumption, yes, consumption of those things. The creation of those things is is now like if you think of the marvel universe, I mean, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people that go into creating this product.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Even like the Harry Potter, world was mostly created by one person at first.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But within two or three books, I mean, it was an entire again capitalist industry right Creating this, and it changed what the art was. It changed it into something sellable.
Speaker 1:Right. So then, where does the role of risk?
Speaker 2:Well, the risk to me in those franchises and things, the risk becomes making art. That is art, not something that's going to please the masses. You're making it because I think this is good. The character is supposed to die here. Right, that we don't kill off characters in most of our stories. You know, oh, I know that's going to be the main character because somehow he survived that situation. But you know, like there's, there's been some, I think. Uh, a great example was game of thrones. Part of what made it magical is like in the first episode they spent all this exposition introducing you to this character. In the end of the episode the character gets killed. You're like wait, you're not allowed to do that, wait that's not how we write things.
Speaker 1:What are you doing? But that's the risk it's saying like, this trope of how we tell stories doesn't have to be the only way to tell them right yes and and so like I think there is this sort of I would call it almost a counterculture towards the analog.
Speaker 2:Again, like I have kids who are excited because they got a new album. There's kids who are buying vinyl they're 10 and they're like I got a new album this weekend. Or, like you know, a kid came in the other day. He's like I got a new ocarina and I'm like what? And he was like, oh, I learned about it because in Zelda you have to get a, an ocarina, as a. And I'm like, okay, well, play me a song. And the kid, like, played a song on it. I'm like, okay, what a twisted way. Now you got a video game taught you about a old, ancient, southwest, southwestern instrument that you now brought to school to show me again the. There's so many ways this, this goes right, oh, dude, that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1:um, okay, let's talk a little bit about you as performer. Okay, I mean like, and I think honestly, composer, arranger, is a separate identity than performer.
Speaker 2:But sometimes do they combine? They do. Well, that's a whole nother can of worms, weasels, can of weasels. I'm going to clean that up. I'm stealing it. Go for it. Worms, weasels, kind of weasels, I'm gonna call that stealing it. Uh, no, like there's one place that I think of those two things intersecting, and that is improvisation where you are.
Speaker 2:You are a composer and a performer in the same moment, and I bring this up because it is the it is about. The scariest thing to me as an artist is when someone's like oh, just make something up for me. I was not really taught how to do this, not in public school, not in my bachelor's program and not in my master's program. It's technically a part of something they're supposed to teach us, but it's something that I've had to teach myself and in that sense, I do feel that composer, composer, arranger and performer do come together. If you've watched any of my like Instagram reels where I like do covers of songs, that's a spot I've been and it's kind of a place where teaching even comes in, because I never learned how to read chord symbols. I only learned how to read individual written notation. Right, I understood what chords were, I understood how they worked. I took theory. I even taught theory for a while, but I never sat down and just played chords, and so a lot of that project for me I didn't give it a title or anything, but it was my little experiment with myself was to how do I learn to play chords and sing along with it. So I was doing three things. I was teaching myself how to do that to how do I learn to play chords and sing along with it?
Speaker 2:And when you're doing so, I was doing three things. I was teaching myself how to do that. What's the difference between a major and a minor? Do I wanna play it inverted? Do I wanna play it in this register down here? Is it one voice, Is it two voice? What rhythm am I using? And in that sense, I'm improvising in the moment, but then I'm also performing this for other people and actually I want to throw one other element in there, the reason I started doing this. I was watching, um, we were watching a series, uh, the last of us oh yeah and we got to the third episode and I don't know.
Speaker 2:So this is a weird place and where binge watching led to me doing all this. And in the third episode we never watched past it because I thought it was one of the most perfect episodes of television. There's this whole side story they take where Nick Offerman has this romantic relationship with another man and they live in this abandoned town together, like in the. In the. In the episode they go through their entire life and at the end of it he sings a long, long time by linda ronstadt at a piano and it and it's beautifully, beautifully imperfect, it's just you can tell they just recorded him sitting at a piano singing this and it's like almost unedited and there was something in that moment. Watching I was like I think I can do that and it's if you go back and look, it's actually the first one that I posted.
Speaker 2:I did my interpretation, I imitated Nick Offerman doing this thing and it I was like I want to try another and another, but what it did is that you know, this consumption of all this media yep, kind of said to me, I can do that, I want to try that again. And so it led to me kind of combining these things education and improvisation and performing which led to me posting all this stuff online, which led to our conversation about. It was weird. What I was doing is I was sitting in my, I had my piano and I put my phone there and I would play it and then I would do it again and I would do it again and I could go through it. I would have 50 takes, right? Oh, yeah, for sure. And so it became what we talked about, this thing like who am I performing for? And I was just performing this, literally this black box, right? Not?
Speaker 2:any performing for an imaginary audience that hadn't even seen it yet yep and that was really dangerous for me actually at first, because I really got in my head and I was really, I mean, you know these toxic cycles of thinking you're like bad, and it's combined with that conservatory experience where nothing you do is ever good enough. Right, it doesn't matter how good you play For anyone that doesn't know. If you go to music school, just be ready. I think I compare it to the movie Whiplash, like that's just one professor and the rest of them are doing the same thing to you.
Speaker 1:It's a very difficult and it leads you to be incredibly self-critical oh for sure, like I just remember, like I, a few weeks ago I was talking to my dad about this, about how he would come see me in shows, and he would be like but he and my mom would be like, oh my god, like what? Wow. Every show we see it gets better and better and better. And my first response to him was always oh god, like I did this wrong. This was the worst it ever sounded. I couldn't have, I couldn't have fucked up that scene more. And it was so hard to talk to you after your shows because you couldn't sit in. Someone saying what you did up there moved me.
Speaker 2:I still struggle with this. Like it's, I would say. One of my more toxic personality traits is I. Someone says oh, that was fantastic. And my like. The first thing is like no, it wasn't. Like you don't know anything. Then it's a cruel, cruel thing that we do to artists when we make them.
Speaker 1:Right. So I mean there's a whole topic of the systemic stuff that I'm going to just kind of acknowledge and know there's these big systemic things that we could talk about, but I want to stay true to Craig as a human in the world. But specifically about Craig as the performer, what is the role of your inner critic in creation and performance? How loud does it get, and is it motivational or is it a? Is it wwe smackdown?
Speaker 2:it's. It's so funny because it it really depends on what it is okay. When I play with the un symphony I don't like. It's almost like I feel like I'm there as a gift to me. I just absorbing, I know how to do it well enough right, I have enough confidence. Even when I make a mistake, I'm like I know that wasn't that bad, it's fine. Nobody noticed or I that was a wrong bow direction or wrong note or whatever, and I am able to just be present and enjoy the like. If you see me perform with that, I'm like I enjoy every minute of it and I'm there, like in myself in the moment yeah uh, you mentioned that linda ronstadt show.
Speaker 2:I did this was for someone who was had already written the show and they had already produced it somewhere else. Uh, there was a guy who was producing it, who was a producer from sesame street, like, and I get in my head like, oh, these people are watching. I gotta get this right, because if I get this right, then maybe I'll get another opportunity and and you remove yourself from the actual making of the of the thing. So for me it depends on like who's there, who's seeing it and it, and it has gotten better over time. But like those again, those little weasels, all like, they all come in and they're like hey, what about that one?
Speaker 1:They're walking through, well, and I think too, like, yeah, like coming up in the universities, the conservatories and all those places, it's like they might be those people's voices, like the teacher, that's like the authoritative teacher, that piano teacher that you had, that was like no, we're going to do scales for like a year, like and and it's so interesting because it's all about balance. Right, it's like you must have the technical skills in order to be able to complete the task, but you also have to be able to find the emotionality, you have to be able to connect with it, not just emotionally, but spiritually, internally. But then also, like all of those voices, all of those experiences, become internal messages that you carry about who you are as a performer, as what you're capable of. Like they become the like self-limiting beliefs. I mean, like I don't and we've talked a little bit about like, like I don't, I say I don't perform. And yet, you know, yesterday I was sitting there telling somebody else like, well, you know, if you directed this show, I would audition.
Speaker 2:Yep, you can't. I think once you, once you get a taste of it, it's with you forever.
Speaker 1:Forever. Like it's just that I haven't done a thing, but it doesn't mean I'm not Like. We talked about that at the beginning of the podcast.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of in Evita. There's that line where she goes they called me a whore. Can you believe that? And the guy responds he's like they still called me Admiral, even though I gave up the sea years ago.
Speaker 1:Yes, it role, even though I gave up the c years ago yes, it's kind of a great line in the whole show.
Speaker 1:It's so snarky and it's so true. But it's like, yeah, you still carry like when, whenever I'm sitting with clients and we're talking about trauma, like we talk about, like you know, you know the developmental age and the chronological age which they were when the trauma happened. But they are not only themselves today, as them at, let's say, like 35. They are that. They are them as 35. They are them as a 25 year old who was just just coming out of the trauma and realizing, like, what am I going to do with this? They are them as a 35 year old and a 15 year old who was navigating the world in a confused way and didn't have any guidance or leadership. They're the five-year-old who wanted to play and was told to you know, don't cry, or I'll give you something to cry about. Like all of those things. They are all of those experiences. And then there are 35-year-old performer being told like well, well, express your inner world through the piece. And it's like well, do you know what my inner world?
Speaker 2:yeah, are you? Sure it's like there's some stuff but it's a little heavier than you think and I'm like give me the dark, give me the juicy what's there brahms lullaby, the emo punk version, oh I would eat that shit up, yeah right oh, it's so true.
Speaker 2:I kind of think of it as I always. I'm like this is the, the conductor in me. It's just nothing but analogies. But I think of the uh. Like, if you're a mac user and you go to the uh, when you have to go to the um, what do they call that? The time machine to find your old because you messed up some file, and you this like there's like you can go all the way back in time, but it's all still there and it until I like click on that button, I'm like, oh my god, it is all still there. And I always remind, like I always kind of feel that way about it's all still here, you just tucked it away somewhere exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:And you know, the body keeps score, the body remembers. I don't know why I said it like it was sultry. I'm talking about trauma, I'm all like trauma.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you went on the npr on me there welcome to npr.
Speaker 1:I am your host. Um, okay, so, like, okay. So, as a performing artist, like, so you're a performer, you're stepping into these parts of yourself, that it's a gift to you to be a part of the symphony. But then you started saying what else? And what else that's my favorite question and what else? And you decided to impersonate this performance from the show and put a video online. And and then that grew to what if I? How did it get from there to saying how do I keep expanding this and stepping outside my comfort zone? Oh, I think I'm gonna record a song.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a long, long road. Um, I've mentioned before like I had a favorite book when I was a kid. I actually actually should get the book out. I have it in the closet, but I still have the original. It's falling apart and held together with a binder clip at this point, but around 2014,. It was kind of a what else and I tried my hand at composing music. I composed a bunch of stuff for these short films. You know rick hamilton, right?
Speaker 1:yes, I do choices.
Speaker 2:The movie you mentioned early was by him that's rick's movie a bunch of those film scores I did were for him.
Speaker 2:He's. It was only this. See, people don't understand. Kim and I met doing the show cabaret and during the show I met one of my best friends, brad, and his husband, who became his husband. They met at the show and then I met this woman who was playing a Nazi piano player. She offered me my assistantship at Cleveland State, which got me my bachelor's degree. I'm now having this conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Rick Hamilton contacted me a few weeks later and asked if I would score some films for him. Like it is astonishing what this doing, saying yes to this show, which I wasn't going to do. I was living in columbus and my dad sent me a clipping in the mail from like, snipped out of the classifieds from the plane dealer, and it was like, and I was driving back and forth from I should not have done this show, but I said yes and I did it and it was like the transformative moment that led to me being because I went and worked at cleveland state, I met a pilot that got me a flight attendant job and if I didn't have that job I wouldn't have been able to come to new york and have the interview and you know it's just insanity, right yeah, it's the.
Speaker 1:It's the door that opened the doors there's.
Speaker 2:There's so many other layers to that story, but that's. That's a whole nother, a whole nother series.
Speaker 1:Uh, I forgot the question that we were going for um I I was talking about the journey um from performer to performing. Artist writing your own.
Speaker 2:What what ended up happening is. I started, I tried my hand. I had done these short films. I had a friend that asked me to do the one that won the emmy. That was the college emmy we were friends from. We played football together in high school and he went into animation at the cleveland institute of art. I think he's the head of animation there now. Um, yeah, uh.
Speaker 2:And then I was kind of like well, let me try to make something of my own. And for a lot I'm talking decades I had had this idea of turning this book into a musical. I just think it's the most perfect story that anyone can relate to. It's a hero's journey. And I started writing and the music was just garbage. I go back, I saved it and I go back and listen and it's bad. And so I did it again and it was a little better. And then I did it again and it was a little better. And then I showed it to someone and let them listen to it. And then they took the feedback and I got a little bit and it just it was, I mean, at least a decade, a decade and a half, of late nights and just playing around with sounds and and kind of having fun with it. And then it slowly grew.
Speaker 2:The pandemic came and I had a lot of free time, uh, and I ended up writing a full-length musical of it. I adapted the entire book into a musical. I soon found out that you can't just do that and give it to. You can do it for yourself, but you can't just do it and give it to people. So I have this musical, you know, just sitting in a sitting in a hard drive somewhere waiting, waiting for the moment, and I got really depressed when all that happened at the end. I'd put, you know, a decade of work into making this happen. I learned how. I taught myself again that intersection between composer and performer. I taught myself how to how to use the audio workspace and make midi sounds and record myself and get a microphone and use auto-tune and like. So I was performing all the voices, I was writing all the music.
Speaker 1:I it like it's one of the again, wagner jason siegel is jason siegel, and forgetting sarah marshall with his like um. Are you familiar with that movie? I'm not no oh, I love it. I love jason siegel. I think he's brilliant, but like um he he writes a musical about um dracula and like he's going through this like huge heartbreak and he sits in his house and writes. He's a, he's a composer and he writes like jingles and background music for shows and stuff.
Speaker 1:I've never seen this and yeah, so he writes a musical and then he finally gets to perform the musical and it's like Dracula and it's all him going through a breakup and using the art as coping. Yeah, that's, I mean Everybody knows the season, the scene of him showing full frontal, and that's why everybody talks about that I will have to go watch this now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so when I got to the end of that, I it was really, I was really sad that like nobody was going to get to see it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Especially, I think, writing in that like nobody was going to get to see it. Yeah, especially, I think, writing in that genre and art form. I had written it with the idea of like, like I know what musicals mean to me, I know what, how you can use it as a a metaphor for your own life and you, you find ways of connecting and understanding yourself by consuming art like this and, of course, I want that and I want to share it with people. Um, and my husband's like, just okay, set it on the side and go make something. Make something for yourself. If you can prove that you can make music, maybe someone will be more inclined to come listen to the other stuff that you've made. It took me a few months and I was like, yeah, yeah, I can do that. And then I had this hard time because I was going to take all the music from the musical and, like repurpose it and I haven't quite, uh, gotten to the point where I'm okay to rip that one apart yet. Yeah, that's all sitting there and I started making new stuff. I went through my old journals, I found lyrics and I just sat at the piano and like my creative style was just mess around and if I like it, maybe someone else will like it, and so I would come up with a melody or some chords and I would build off of that. And then, uh, I went to therapy. I had, uh, you know, I got to this point where I was really struggling mentally and as a part of my therapy, in one of the early sessions I got this piece of homework it was about expectations, what you expect is going to happen a certain situation or other. I had to, I of homework. It was about expectations, what do you expect is going to happen in a certain situation or another. And I had to. I, of course, waited till the night before and I didn't do my homework. At the last minute I was thinking I had started this string quintet, which is another just throwing spaghetti at the wall thing I wanted to try. I love the vitamin string quartet who does arrangements of pop songs and stuff.
Speaker 2:Because of Brad and Chris's wedding I don't know if you know that I they bought me finale so I could start writing music and I wrote all the music for their wedding. I wrote all the arrangements I put the group did. That was my first movement into and they were like it was golden girls, it was, it was, I mean, it was just the most fun thing. And I was like god, I love this. And so I tried my hand at doing that here and I hired people. I wrote I don't know, maybe 30 or 40 arrangements. I had these menus. We're going to sell it for weddings. This is the gay wedding list. This is the anyway, and it just didn't. It was too much and I couldn't. I couldn't keep it going and I got recordings. I've got you know, samples and everything, and I felt so embarrassed that I failed at this thing that I couldn't make it happen. It's still again. It's another one, that's just it's sitting.
Speaker 2:The cellist went on to play on tour for Waitress and on Broadway he was self-taught. Anyway, his name's Nick and I was like there's no way this guy is going to like want to talk to me because, like, I wasted all of his time doing this thing. Anyway, I used that as my example for this therapy homework and I said there's a in my head. It was like there's a 60 to 90 chance. He's just not going to respond and he's not going to want to talk to me and all this others. And I sent him a message and his first thing was like, oh my god, this is awesome. I had such a great time when we were in that ensemble together and I think you're such a great musician. And like all those doubts, just like they were all made up. And he's my producer, we I thought it was going to be a four or five tracks he was going to help me make and I've got a 12 track album.
Speaker 2:I just finished the last one couple weeks ago, holy crap, and so it. It was this. It's like these teeny baby steps. I mean, it's from me living in misery in Columbus Ohio. My dad sent me a newspaper clipping right.
Speaker 2:You got to meet people. It's improv in the sense that you have to say yes.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, and like you said, and what else? Okay, work, let's try something else. That didn't quite work, yet let's try something else. And not being scared to go back and say, okay, that didn't quite work, yet let's try something else. And not being scared to go back and say, okay, that didn't work. But maybe there's something else there that I haven't explored yet and I don't know.
Speaker 1:There's like all kinds of hidden, hidden treasures in these things I mean, yeah, and it's like when you said like I'm not ready to like take apart my my musical yet and I'm just like, well, maybe you don't even have to frankenstein it.
Speaker 2:It evolves like it exists and some theme from that appears in something else later, or it influences you and gives you different skill sets or confidence enough to try the next thing that you did there's also this very real thing for artists which is, like I was saying, like the first couple drafts were awful, and it's like I've heard other artists say this, like if you're going back and listening to your earlier stuff and it doesn't embarrass you or you're not like boy, I could have done that, then you're not growing. So a lot of this stuff I use. Also, I go back and listen to my stuff all the time. I have to do it for myself, to remind me that that I am moving forward, that it is getting better and that, and so sometimes, like I think in a way like what we were talking about earlier is you do create these things for yourself.
Speaker 2:You're creating your, your own history of yourself as an artist. Maybe nobody will ever see some of it, but you have to do these things you have we've talked a lot about you have to get it wrong. A whole lot of times art is failure. I mean it's like if it was on a scale of one to a hundred, it's the first 99 and a half times you're not going to get it right, and then there's going to be one that like nope, that's it.
Speaker 2:It was that and then the next time around you might get 95 of them wrong and it's a little less. And the goal, like we've talked about, is always towards, uh, progress. We, I think and I kind of bring it back to that conservatory thing is this idea. They, they instill this idea of you need to be perfect. Right, perfection is the only thing that is accepted. You will not get work if you are not perfect. And if you think you're perfect, you need to take a closer look and it's like so kind of retraining your brain to listen to the work you've done and notice that you're making progress.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not perfect, and then also being okay, it's never going to be, it's always going to be growing. I've talked to you about that moment. You get the master back and you still hear things in it like oh man, I wish that word was on a different beat and it's like nope, it's done, it is done it lives there now.
Speaker 1:That's how it exists and it's not perfect, and that's what makes it art, and that's what makes it beautiful well, going back to what you were saying about that show, where you said it was like the end, and he's singing a song and it's imperfect. I mean that's where the, that's where the humanity is. Like there was a certain time in broadway, I want to say like the 70s and into the, into the 80s, where, like, they weren't hiring, like all the, the, the singers who were like the, the clearest, cleanest voices, and that was what the leading, uh, the leading decision maker was to cast that person, they, they were hiring the people that were like I energetically or like um, energetically, and however they wanted that character to be and how they expressed it. So, like nowadays you go, and it's just like I met with somebody this week, who's who directs a lot, and they said, um, you know, like, like, I want a lot of, like, I want a lot of good singers, like in what I'm doing. It's like, yeah, you can have great singers, but if it's perfect all the time, like you were so moved by that show and the music at the end of the show because it was imperfect, because that's where the humanity lives, it's like there's that.
Speaker 1:What is that? The Japanese practice of? Like the broken cups?
Speaker 2:The broken bowls with the gold. Yeah, I don't know what it's called, but I know what you mean. It is that.
Speaker 1:It's that it creates the beauty in it, and it is that it's that it creates the beauty in it, and that's what makes us feel connected to one another is through broken parts.
Speaker 2:I love Tom Waits. A lot of people can't stand his voice, but there's something and he plays out of tune instruments. And another example is why is it Hallelujah?
Speaker 1:Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 2:Leonard Cohen. He actually even has a line in one of his songs. It's something about uh uh, the cracks are there because that's where the light comes in yeah, it's that quote, that quote yeah and and that, but that's what it is and I love the imperfections of these.
Speaker 2:I know I was just talking about sunset, kind of. Why I pull it out? Because, um, uh, nicole's, what is it? Scherzinger is playing the lead, she is, she is. She's playing Norma Desmond, and what was interesting is we. This is her week off, so we saw the understudy.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love those days and people were saying, well, aren't you mad you're not going to see it? I'm like, no, I want to see the underdog, I want to see the one. She's still a celebrity and, like, has done a bunch other stuff. But it's like there's something about going to say this person only has a week to be the star right of the show and she knows, on monday the actual star is coming back and but I don't know, there's something. You get an extra little, a little, I don't know what there's something of is specifically with theater.
Speaker 1:When you know you're getting an understudy, I don't know I, I, I mean, I remember being an understudy like the day of my senior recital. So I was an understudy for a great lakes theater festival my senior year in college and you know you didn't really like everybody's, like, you won't really go on. The show only runs a month. It's regional theater. Whatever you get your equity points, that's what it's all about. But then, like the day of my senior recital, like I had worked all year on like creating this show, my mom had made like 30 different kinds of like pastries and cookies for people for the reception to enjoy after my performance and I was going to stand there and like peep, my, my, my elementary my first grade teacher was there, my uh, like my voice teacher, my choir director from elementary school was there. Like everybody was there from my life.
Speaker 1:And I got a call an hour before my senior recital that I had to go on for the show that I was understudying and I was like this is the biggest day of my entire like collegiate career. I put my blood, sweat and tears into this and I don't get to relish in it because I have to be like peace out bitches. I'm going to Great Lakes and I literally had to be like, bye, I have to go. I'm understudying and I ran and there was this like receiving at the theater, of just like it wasn't like the lead in the show, but there's this energy of like well, I mean, I was anxious af. I was like, oh my god did, did I learn it? Because I was so focused on my recital that day. I was like, will I be able to shoot?
Speaker 1:in there, yeah I was like what if I forgot everything?
Speaker 2:I think there's something about it too, especially in that, like this was a planned, obviously this person was supposed to go in, but I think, like that, like there's so much more pressure and you, but at the same time, you have this opportunity to be like a superhero, like you stepped in and did what yeah yes, and it's like, wait me singing and dancing, is that important to all of you?
Speaker 2:wow, right, I mean, there's been times I've been asked at the last minute like, hey, we don't have a bass player, can you just show up to the concert? Yeah, I'm like sure, okay, such a cool experience because you don't know the group, you don't necessarily know the dynamic from that perspective, and there you are, making art.
Speaker 1:Yep. So coming back to your performing self, because we got a little sidetracked, because I wanted to tell you the silly story of my senior recital.
Speaker 2:That's a great one, and also, we've shared so many in our time, but like so. We've shared so many in our time, but like those only come from this. Yes, this is one of. To me, this like theater, in particular, is still just dirty green rooms and grease paint, and like smelly costumes and shoes and socks and like it's still rough. What you see is not what it is back there, right? No?
Speaker 1:no, I will never forget. I was still in high school and I went. I had, I was the last seat in the first row for kiss of the spider woman and for the tour and I could see the.
Speaker 1:This was like the, the clinching moment for me I could see in the wings and I could see the other actors messing with the actors on stage. So they had like a skeleton head. That it was like, and they were just like taunting the actors on stage and I was like I want to do this for the rest of my life you're in cabaret, we okay.
Speaker 2:So for the, when we did cabaret it wasn't in a real theater.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was, but it was real theater, it was a professional theater it was, but it was a storefront that had been converted into a theater, so there was no real backstage. You had a very, but the band had to be on stage the whole time and there was a curtain that would open and close. And that was like my favorite part is brad and chris would come up and just mess with me, but you couldn't make a sound and I was like I love this. You get to play practical jokes and make art. Oh, this is fun it's my favorite.
Speaker 1:It's my favorite thing about performing. I mean, I love when there's a scene that I can pour myself into, like I love that. But it's also my favorite thing as an audience member to look for those moments, the cracks in the foundation of like I know you're a professional, I know you're working your ass off, but there is your humanity and I love it. I do it at show, I do it at concerts. Yeah, I mean, that was part of the reason why I went to so many concerts last year, because I or two years ago now oh god, oh god, two years ago now because I was like look at them doing the thing that I used to do, but they're in a different media. Like if you're in like a musician, a popular musician, but they're in a different media. Like if you're in like a musician, a popular musician, but they're like mixing performance art with being a popular musician, now that's interesting. And then also watching them mess with each other, like okay, yeah, crack, crack, the character, crack, crack, like it's my favorite.
Speaker 2:I was recently and maybe we were even talking about this idea of like what happens when you join a show and how you like, instantly are a family yes right, there's that, there's a there's always a creepy uncle.
Speaker 2:There's like the aunt who, like, gets you drunk. There's like, there's like all the characters are instantly there, yeah, and you like and you bond. It's such a like this, uh, and you have whatever. It might be a week, it might be a couple months and there's an end date and you know, like I have this long to be your family member and then we'll see what happens after that I don't know if we'll have any family reunions.
Speaker 2:We'll, we'll find out, yeah but, like you know, there are certain shows like cabaret and I, every single person that I have talked to that, was part of that one in particular yeah it was a it was a transformational moment it was.
Speaker 1:I mean that there was something very. I mean, we're all wax and poetic, poetic everybody about this show, because so this was many years ago. It was 20 years ago now yeah, 2005-7, somewhere in there. Yeah, 2005, because 2006 is the year I moved to. Uh, yeah, um, yeah, so 20 years ago, oh my god, um, we, we were in the show, but it and it was. I know a lot of theaters do cabaret, but that specific production I mean you think about this like in the like.
Speaker 2:If you're making a recipe and you put in certain it every once in a while, it's just the right ingredients of personality and people and you get everyone everyone like suspends their disbelief in the right way and everyone's invested in the illusion and you get this like magical little gem that you all get to carry with you on your next adventure yes yes, and nobody else gets to know that, nobody, not the audience, no, unless you're in it.
Speaker 1:It's such a a unique experience you get from creating things as a team so that brings me to the concept of community, like art, art forms and identity and community and the blending of those things, because I think, like with theater, it doesn't exist without community of some kind, collaboration with the other in some way shape or form. But then in your music making that you've made like I know it doesn't because you got done saying earlier like, well, nick is your producer's name yeah, nick Anton so like you wouldn't be a recording artist if you and Nick weren't working together.
Speaker 1:But like the creation of the music, you can sit in your apartment and create your music and then bring it to Nick and say, like, how do we evolve this? Whereas theater is an art form where it's just like okay, we are creating this together, I feed off of your energy and that will inform how I am. Like, how does this, like all of these different things that you've done? Like where does your creative self feel most alive? Like in different scenarios, I guess I don't know if it's the same or different.
Speaker 2:It's funny because I think you're touching on two separate categories of the same thing, like when, like I was talking about my comfort in performing when I'm with the un symphony right, there was a moment in this last concert and we were doing some of swan lake, and there's just a moment I get to play the open e string on my bass. It's the lowest like and it's just like, and what you're doing in that moment is, and which I find this, if I get yeah, if I've had a little too much and I'm I'm thinking too deep on this is like Tchaikovsky wrote this right in the mid-1800s, like the civil war was going on in America, which also is like just crazy. So, and here I am with this group of basically strangers and we are recreating this idea that was in his head 150, 170 years ago, right, yeah so there is something in in like recreating what something wrote.
Speaker 2:When you're performing a play like cabaret, it was written, there are instructions given to you and you get to do what you want with those instructions and there is a sense of satisfaction in creating something that moves an audience and you get to put your own little spin on it and that is its own, like I have. That's very comfortable to me. I love doing that, but that is most of what we're trained to do from an early age. You start with a method book and you are reading notes off a page and that's right and that's wrong, right. And so there's that's this like one path of creation and consumption? And like, how close is that to the original? And if it's, that's this like one path of creation and consumption? And it's like, how close is that to the original? And if it's different, is it great? Like I was saying about sunset boulevard, I have this love for what it is, and this one that we saw was something totally different and I loved it. It was a whole new idea of something that was very specific set of instructions, yeah. And then there's the other side, which is sort of improvisation, right, where you're creating your own thing, or I guess there's kind of a middle of the road, like writing an album.
Speaker 2:I'm making this out of my history, my story, what I know about music, what I know about instrumentation, what do I like putting my tastes on it, and there is a satisfaction that comes from that. That is just otherworldly. It is not the same thing as going on stage and performing a written work, so and but then there's like a weird, there's a real weird side effect to that. One is like, once you make it, like at school, kids ask me to play the song right. So now I am performing for my students a version of a song that I wrote down right, so there's a whole nother level, and that is this like I think it starts to get into this realm of what you're talking about is like I'm getting feedback from these people that I really care about and I really care about their opinion, and it's strange because they don't have the same understanding of music and performance and composition that I do.
Speaker 2:So they're having this innocent sort of listen to it and I get to perform my piece for them and hear what they think about it, and that is its own separate world of satisfaction, right, right, even when they hate it and sometimes they do, and it is hilarious and I love it. Um, we've talked about like I love when they hit it. So there's like there's creating something for some that someone else made, there's this creation, and then we have these creations that we make just for ourselves. They're super private, they're they're all our own and you don't give it to anyone else and that like has.
Speaker 2:So, and I think that's an important aspect, we've talked a lot about what is an artist, what is a musician? Any one of those, all three of those? There's other versions of it. Yep, you, you have to. If you want to do that, then you find the corner of it that makes you really happy yeah, yeah, I think, and it changes right.
Speaker 1:So, like, because I think I thought I knew what my little corner was until I was like, what else is out there? Oh, there's other things. Oh, I could do this too. Oh, oh, I'm not good at this but I'm. But what if I get better at it? What if I just kept doing it and found out what happens? Because I don't, I don't know what this pathway is. Oh, but there's something about, like, what you're saying, like the kids who don't have. Like earlier or before, when we talked, you've said, like how our generation experienced art. That way of taking in art is disappearing, it's gone because of the analog way of living is disappearing. It's gone because of the analog way of living is disappearing. And so, like, you're creating this like analog piece of art and sharing it with a digital age, human, digital age, humans, and they're like here's my assessment. So it's like building a bridge to.
Speaker 2:But I also think there's like something about the like, the importance of modeling and what you're doing yeah, I think there's like you're kind of touching on an important aspect of this, which is that, like I am a teacher, but I happen to be a teacher who does the thing that I teach- yeah and it's something to be able to go to school.
Speaker 2:And a kid asks a question is like, how do you, um, you know, how does an album get made? And like 10 years ago I couldn't have really and I could look it up and I could answer that question. But you know, I've managed to get to a place where I've gone and explored so many. I've been a composer, I've been a performer, I've been, you know, I've done film, I've done commercial, I've done pit orchestras, I've done, you know, like every different thing. So and I, and I feel like I get to bring all that back and tell kids like, hey, you could try this, you could try this, it's not that scary, I did it once like it wasn't for me. And even that, the modeling of like yeah, I've tried these and they're not all for me, right, it's an interesting thing to get to do that to two or four children, right?
Speaker 1:right. I mean it's it's it's for you and it's also for others, because you have to be able to go through it first. So there's discernment, but you can't get to the discernment phase without actually sitting with the discomfort of unknown and the instability of it not being meeting your expectation. And you have to be able to sit in that discomfort long enough for it to either evolve or for you to say it's evolved and I like it, or it's evolved and I actually still don't prefer it and therefore I'm not interested anymore.
Speaker 2:And the modeling of that for kids having kids watch an adult like fail.
Speaker 1:Yes, so important.
Speaker 2:I don't think adults let themselves do this in front of children nearly enough.
Speaker 2:No, they don't there's this one orchestra I have at school and this girl plays violin. She's played for like eight years. She's so good. I have kids that have played a carnegie hall multiple times in my class and I will demonstrate something on the violin and she just gives me a look, right, and I'm like, and we make a joke out of it and it disarms it for the whole room. I'm like I don't know how to. I'm like will you demonstrate it then, please? But watching an adult who's supposed to the children you're their expert, right? And to say I'm not. I'm an expert on a lot of things, but it doesn't mean that I know everything. And making that available to any learner, kids in particular, is absolutely essential, particularly in the arts.
Speaker 1:Yes. Because so much of it is about failure you have to be able to sit with it and be comfortable enough with it to come to a place of peace within yourself with it. Because when you are faced with that authoritative teacher or the one who dismisses your, your worthiness of the art or the performance, you have to be able to withstand your. You've weathered your own internal thunderstorm, so now you can weather the external thunderstorm of somebody else's opinion.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that is just that. Just that one thing. There's the key, just that one thing.
Speaker 1:It's so easy. I said it like a little boozy bitch. It's so easy darling, you just say oh, you're a thunderstorm. No, no, no, darling, it's sunny over here. Go fuck yourself. And that's no, no, darling, it's sunny over here, go fuck yourself.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing about that too. It's like it gets easier, the rejection and the failure and everything, but it never, ever goes away. Oh yeah, definitely, and I think that's one of the golden things we get as artists and performers is we get a life of rejection. I mean you get a life of rejection. I mean you get a life of learning. And the people who stop doing it and they leave a lot of times it's because it just became something that was hard to deal with and it is. There are times when it is overwhelming and seemingly insurmountable. How many times, kim, how many times have you said I'm done, I'm never doing this again, I'm going to go sell shoes.
Speaker 1:Like it's.
Speaker 2:There have been periods where it's every day I, you and me both, I I mean this week alone. I mean I will release a song and then I will go into a tailspin of panic of what people are going to think about it and like, or you know, I we talked about expectations. You know, I expect this song is gonna. Everybody's gonna love this song and nobody likes it. And then this one that I thought was just going to be some trash I just put out because I'm like that's the hit.
Speaker 2:They like this and that, like. It trains you to lower expectations. My older sister gives me all these little nuggets of wisdom, but one of them that she gave me recently is uh, what is it? Uh, expectations are just future resentments yes, they are yes.
Speaker 2:If that doesn't apply to what we do, I don't, because when you put out in the world you have even sometimes, as you're making it, when you know that it's going to go out into the world, you immediately start thinking about what people are going to think of it oh, of course which I is the most dangerous aspect of being an artist yes because it doesn't matter well, well, I mean it does I mean it?
Speaker 1:does it does because you do want somebody to hear it and go, hey, yeah, I get it. Because I think, at the end of the day, no matter what it is, art or just living, we want others to say I see you.
Speaker 1:I see myself in you and your experiences and I see you, I hear you and I look all over the world. I hear it in therapy sessions with clients. I see it in art that I consume. I see it in conflict between people that you know it's. Do you hear me? Do you see me? And art is the way we navigate that when we want to know, like, just how others experience it, like, do you get me, do you get it?
Speaker 2:It's like an emotional translator. Yes, it like allows us to be like. This is how I experience this emotion. Maybe you do too. Yes, and it might be song, it be dance, it might be both, it might be a doodle, it could be anything right. It could be fashion, it could be your hairstyle, all of these things.
Speaker 1:And I think the wider you open your mind to what art is and what expression is, it allows you to let more in yes, so we're talking about like what you model for the kids and modeling failure and modeling like risk, because, again, I'm just so these big like choice points keep popping up. I'm hearing risk, I'm hearing frustration, tolerance, I'm hearing like connectivity and community, but connectivity with the other right. We're talking about you modeling for others who were your models for these things oh, my god.
Speaker 2:Well, my dad, who showed me every style of music I'm going to talk about. And there was another thing. So my dad, my dad went to a school at cleveland state as well. He got a degree in art and he ended up working in a screen printing company. And then, at some point I was probably around the age of four or five he got fired, and my mom at the time was an aerobics instructor. She quit her job and helped him and they started their own business. Um, about four years late, they started from nothing. Uh, someone set arson to the building, to the ground. Parents had to take a second mortgage. We lived off food and clothes from the city, like it was. I mean, we were in extreme poverty. And, uh, they managed to rebuild the business and they went into a new place and the guy skipped out on their lease. So they moved into a new place. They did really well and they built their own building. They were like, okay, we're going to like really own this. They built the building and there was a sinkhole under it.
Speaker 1:No, this can't be what.
Speaker 2:The building is across from LTV Steel on Pershing Avenue and 77. It's pink. Go see it, be careful in the parking lot and so so, like through my parents, I just want I mean resilience was the theme right. They were not going to give up. But the other people like um, if I were to talk about like sort of media consumption as a child, mr rogers was like my god. Even to this day he's like I, like I. I find him like just an absolute inspiration.
Speaker 2:But I had a first grade teacher named miss pillish. Miss pillish used to walk about a mile to school every day. She always walked. She lived a few blocks from us and she was so kind. I don't know if this was around the same time that my parents building burned down. I don't know. Now, as a teacher, I try to imagine what she was thinking about me as a teacher, but I remember there were a couple things like, as an example, she, uh, um, we were growing plants and she gave me and I'm in quotations cactus seeds, right, and the next day, all that, we all come in. We're about whatever five or six years old and I, I still I don't have a lot of memories from that time in my life that I can visualize. We came in and everybody's bowl was empty and mine had a whole field of cactus. She had gone out and bought a like, a whole little like prepackaged cactus oh my god. But it's like as an adult, looking back on these things, I'm like, oh my god, these people just wanted.
Speaker 2:So it's like one me we want to cry like I'm it's like one example of how fantastic this teacher was and the other teachers I had that would like. I never. I had like severe social anxiety. I was closeted in high. I didn't know it, I mean until much later, but I never went to lunch. I would always go to the music room and I would go practice and just hang out there and to this day I don't take lunch. It's actually kind of miserable sometimes, but I always make sure, if I'm able, that I have my classroom open for kids. A lot of them don't even come play, they just need somewhere to go. That's not the bully, noisy lunchroom, you know.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep.
Speaker 2:So all of these music teachers in particular, and then my grandma, my dad's, my dad's uh, mom, grandma helen, uh, she grew up during the depression and, again, just a person who was resilience and love and kindness. She was a little off the beaten path but like I liked that. You know it was. She wasn't traditional. She taught me how to do snot rockets, like you know she was, that. She was a little rougher, but we loved her. She also taught me how to bake and, like I don't know.
Speaker 1:Hopefully those two things that she taught you were not in the same.
Speaker 2:You haven't tried my snot rocket pie. Snot rocket Alfredo.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, that's's gonna make me throw up in my mouth.
Speaker 2:No, but it is, it is. It is fascinating how formative these things are. And then, as I got older, learning about artists like um, my parents were obsessed with janice ian and I my older sister's name is janice she's's actually named after Janice Ian. But then, like it's not only like I fell in love with her music, but then I started like learning who she was and she was closeted and she had a manager who stole all her money and like. And then like you see them still making great music and overcoming that. So I guess that's kind of another big theme for me.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Is this therapy or a podcast. You're welcome.
Speaker 2:You've been therapized I guess, like perseverance, like that is a really important uh and it really shows up in a lot of the music that I write is this concept of overcoming challenge and and particularly around relationships the challenges and struggles that come from interpersonal relationships, whether with family, with friends or particularly with lovers. Yep, yep and because those things all go wrong for everyone.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And generally in only a handful of ways they go wrong right, yep, the, the. The source, reason for that going wrong is different for everyone, but there's certain number of things that happen and I feel like if you listen to enough music, you get there actually, which brings me back to another important point, which is sad music yes, I've talked to you about this idea that kids don't really?
Speaker 2:there's always that subset of really sad kids, but like they don't like sad music, they only want to listen to the new banger and your students don't listen to sad music don't like sad music and teaching them how to listen again.
Speaker 2:This is a frustration thing, because sad songs in general take a lot more effort to listen to. You have to think this. This is so funny because I've had to teach english so many times and teaching to the test not to bring it full back to where we were before. Yeah, the question that kids struggle with. There's categories of questions on standardized tests, particularly English tests, and they have to read a passage and answer questions and the multiple choice questions they get fall into. Certain there's ones that are about like what was it about what? And then like, as you get into these tougher, what was the moral of the story? They struggle with this.
Speaker 2:The concept of finding what's not explicitly written in the text right and the one that throws it is the number one thing across millions of students in new york city. It is the category of author's intent. What did the author intend for the reader to take from this? It's such a deep and difficult question that I think we innately get through. Being in the arts, that is what you are, especially that category I talked about earlier of recreating another person's work. That's what you're doing. What did they want me to do and how can I deliver that to the audience? Right, but I think, particularly with sad music, kids are told so often like, oh, just smile, it's okay, everything's going to be all right. Well, you know what? No, it's not. Sometimes it's really fucking awful. I mean die. You know there are wars, there is famine, there are horrible things, and this is a way that you can soften that and understand it.
Speaker 1:Normalize it yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, if you normalize it, yeah, yes, there's this whole wedge of emotions that like don't get addressed in pop culture enough, I think um well, I think it's part of culture's huge like push to like fix, like, oh, oh, you feel sad, don't worry, we'll fix it.
Speaker 1:Let's distract you, let's numb you yeah, you're not really allowed to be sad right, and I, I mean you know I focus a lot of my work on grief. So, like a lot of it, of the grief, the grieving process is unlearning because, like, none of that script works with grief and if anybody tries to meet you in your grief and that well then you know that's not a person you can like, authentically be, and who you are as a human in that moment in time, instead of you just say, oh, I just can't be myself around you. That's all I've learned from that exchange.
Speaker 2:Like I, oh, oh well, it puts me into this, because I was thinking about this while I was watching sunset boulevard last night. I was thinking I have this thing with dissociation right when I get into, uh, conflict and it's and it's linked for me to abandonment. I've learned this through therapy, that you know conflict, whether it's in conversation or otherwise, um, often leads to the other person in that conflict leaving me whether it's family or friends or co whatever, right, right.
Speaker 2:And so I struggle with conflict and I was really like deep watching the show last night and I was thinking about people who are in that Dissociation is just a teeny, tiny tiptoe away from suspension of disbelief. Right, I think that people who are drawn particularly to theater, that we have this ability that, like I, can't process the real world yet and but I understand what they're doing on stage and it gives us I was talking about this being like a trans, an emotional translator, where you can watch them going through it and then be like, oh, that reminds me of this thing that I'm going through. So we, as people who struggle with these emotions, are able to access them because we see someone else doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think that's like. Whether it's like taking in a piece of art or going to what, witnessing a piece of theater or listening to a piece of music, it gives us permission to feel the feelings that maybe we feel shame about feeling. We see someone like express it, and we say, oh, that, like whenever shame pops up, we're going to shut down. So, like witnessing someone else express it says, wait, it might be okay for me to express it, and for some people, it's only through the arts that they can express it, and for others, it's like that was the instigator that gave me permission to finally release what I am carrying, whether it's like I think like journaling is a form of creativity, and and because it's like express, like, yeah, like express, express, express and and.
Speaker 1:But we have to be able to sit with that feeling enough, and what often happens is people notice what, what has brought that feeling up for them and they feel it and they get stuck there because they're like, oh, I'm not supposed to. So, instead of expressing it, rather than express, my choice is to withhold that expression and shut down and carry it, and that's where the dissociation pops in. Yep, shove it down and suppress yeah I'm allowed to have those feelings yeah you are.
Speaker 1:I mean like I feel like when we're talking about technology and all the things, I often feel like my job as a therapist, specifically as a drama therapist, because when I've got people up on their feet and in an imaginal realm saying I want you to find a way to express what your experience is as not you, then they feel like it's safe enough to express it. But then like express what your experience is as not you, then they feel like it's safe enough to express it. But then like, if we actually express it, what happens?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're kind of touching on the same. I ask my kids all the time like what if? Well, what if we try it this way, or what? Okay, I mean, that might not be the best one, but like what if?
Speaker 1:What if it is?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so to kind of bring us towards the end, since you know we've been chatting for a minute, what have you had to unlearn, to expand what you do and to grow and challenge yourself?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Oh wait, do you have that question written down? I? Do I want to throw one other thing at you that popped up while you were talking earlier. Yes, you were talking about watching stuff online and like I think we are, so one of my oh, the little buttons that are underneath posts right, you have like. For a long time, the only choice you had was to like something.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But, like it was funny, you were talking now and you were saying something. I was like why is that not a? I see you. Why is that not a button? Like I hear you, that's enough. Like, okay, you don't have to like it, or or anyway, I'm sorry, I just had this moment that's so, that's so fucking real.
Speaker 1:It's like I. I don't like this, but I see what you're experiencing. I feel you, I hear you.
Speaker 2:Or when someone posts something that's tragically funny, you can't click like, because that's not right. You can't click dislike, you can't click. Ha ha ha.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's so funny how and I think again talking about kids there is a reductive language in how we talk about emotions. That is just really hardcore, reinforced by social media. You have, I mean, on Facebook now, I think you maybe have five options. On Instagram, you have one. You can either like it or not. It's just fascinating to me that these things that are out there that way that those are the only options left for you to express how, anyway, that was all.
Speaker 1:Yes. Options left for you to express how. Anyway, that was a yes, and the meaning making behind all of the choices to, to react with any of those reacts is specific to that individual. There's no set of rules that universally says this is what this means and this is what that means. So, like in the whole social media world, that's where like and there's there's also like these other layers to it.
Speaker 2:It's like other people are gonna see how you reacted and it's documented, or like we've had that moment like somebody's I don't know if this has happened to you someone's like I posted something, you didn't like it, like like no, I don't, maybe I didn't see it yet, and like I don't know. It just gets weird well, yeah, we could.
Speaker 1:We could do a whole different that's a whole other thing.
Speaker 2:What would you ask me?
Speaker 1:one more question there, but the other there's. There's two other questions that I had, and one is um, what have you had to unlearn to expand? What you do to grow and challenge yourself as an artist or like in all of the roles that you have because, like, you've evolved so much I.
Speaker 2:You know what it's. It's such an interesting thing about being an artist because we talked a little bit about the conservatory side so you have to learn a certain set of technical skills in order to execute the art form that you choose, right, right, so you spend, I don't know. For me, I started, like I said, at five. It kind of began and then I got a little more serious at it around 13. And you've talked about these things happening, not just that when they happened in time, but also your developmental state while they were happening. And so I think that there's this you spend all this time learning this technical skill that's right, that's not. That's in tune. That's too loud. That's an up bow, not a down. Like you spend all this time skill, that's right. That's not. That's in tune. That's too loud. That's an up bow, not a down. Like you spend all this time doing that in order to get to the end and then, like, unlearn it. It's like right, right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like you memorize all your lines in the show so that you don't have to think about the lines anymore. You can actually be present with your scene partner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's like you spend all this time learning so that you can spend the rest of your time unlearning. You learn all of the rules so you know which ones you can bend and break and when.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So it's such an interesting question to me because I feel like I'm constantly learning and unlearning things. It's not like you don't just do one for a while and then the other. I will have classes at school where I will like like the kids will say something and I'm like I've never thought about it. They'll ask me a question. I'm like I never thought about quarter notes that way, like some simple, basic, fundamental thing, and I'll like, and then there'll be a time in class and I'll like yell at the class and I have to unlearn that Like I can't keep. You know that's not effective, I know it's not, so stop doing that thing. You know my first school I worked at it was very authoritarian and they were very hardcore, and so I have some of these bad habits that I have to unlearn.
Speaker 2:The number one thing that I feel like I am constantly unlearning, though, is caring so much about what people think about the art I make. Yeah, it is just the most toxic little weasel Brain, weasels, oh God.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the internalization of all those messages you got coming up in the world, and then you don't even need them anymore. You carry them yourself. It's your own voice doing it.
Speaker 2:There's this weird moment. I'm sure it's happened to you. It happens, I mean, if you stay in an industry or do a thing long enough. I know, sometime around the time I was about, I mean in the last, like seven or eight years, 35 to 40 it's like all of a sudden you're the older person in the room and everybody's like what do you think? And I'm like, oh, there's no one behind me.
Speaker 2:You were talking to me and it's like you, you, you suddenly get passed into this role of being the elder or the, you know the, the keeper of the secrets, like even this podcast, you asking me these questions. I'm like I don't, I'm still figuring this all out. This is just my experience, you know, um, but like, especially like in when you're teaching and in the classroom, is like people will turn to you and it's like, okay, I know I got a big forehead and a lot of gray hair, but that doesn't mean I know what's going on around here, uh, but and then all of a sudden you realize, wait, I do yeah, I am the most knowledgeable person in there.
Speaker 1:I am the one who knows what's going on yeah, you get to tell yourself oh, that narrative doesn't serve me anymore. Actually, I do know things and so you have like.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of unlearning is again we've talked a little about like this creation of consumers and creators is there's this point where if you want to keep doing the thing you, you get stuck as a consumer. There is a certain level like, and you can get stuck as a creator. There are people who do this and they make a certain type of art and people like it and they keep buying the same one and that consumer and the creator are on the same level and they just keep making the same old beat with a slightly different melody and different words, but the same theme and you know they have their relationship. But if you, as an artist, want to keep going, you have to like, unlearn that and, like you were talking again, brings back all these things. It is risk. You have to try something. You might lose half of that audience because they don't like this new thing you make. But if you like it, you need to unlearn that. That's the value of it.
Speaker 1:That isn't right. So like where does the value fall? Is it in like how they receive it, or is it in the creation of it, especially when it's like something that's being produced for capitalism or consumption?
Speaker 2:like for consumption. Yeah, if the end goal is that people you are making this to get people to consume it yeah, and I've found in my whatever 42 years I've got all the stuff that I enjoy the most, the stuff that is the most unique. The stuff that everyone else is imitating is stuff that people made for themselves oh, 100 yes and it, and you know that that's saying that imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
Speaker 2:I mean, like if you make something and other people are like, wow, I want to do that thing, you've gotten through the risk, you've gotten through the frustration and you just made something that's going to last, you know, and that's I mean that, I think is the highest evolution of an artist. Not that it's famous or everyone knows it, but if you've made a thing and other people want to be part of it or experience it, there's your arrival point, that's your waypoint onto the next one.
Speaker 1:Well, I think when fame becomes part of the formula too, I mean that's a whole different ball of wax and I could definitely talk about it because that's like all I've been reading about over the last year and like, like. But, like you know, historically, like celebrity and fame, like fame has existed throughout the the centuries, first through through the church. It was like the priests and all the back to the pharaohs.
Speaker 2:I mean egypt.
Speaker 1:I mean right, not something new, that's right but then when, like, we get to like the 20th century and the movie studios were like oh, we can sell products if we market like a star who's in all of our movies, and that star says you know what's really great, marlboro Reds. And then they're like oh, oh, yes, I trust them because I know them, I've seen all their movies, and so therefore, they become famous no longer for the art that they make but for existing as this idea of a concept of a human, of who they are supposed to be perceived as. Yeah, which then turns into fame for the sake of being fame.
Speaker 2:I think we've hit on this before. If you're going to make the best T-shirts, you're going to source really great cotton, right?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And what you're talking, what the studios did and eventually, I think, in the 50s, through the're talking what the studios did and eventually, I think, in the fifties, through the eighties, what record labels did, is they basically treated these artists as the natural resource.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And they, they would just sort. It's like going to. We've talked about auditions and you're like they would. It's one of the industries where you can still show up and be like you're too fat, get off the stage.
Speaker 1:I don't like your face and like and we all are like yeah, okay, yeah, you're right, yeah, that's how it works, it's just really that, yeah, I mean even and it doesn't even have to be professional level, like I think about community theater, where they're like oh well, we're casting so-and-so and it's just like. You do know, you could literally cast anyone in that role as long as they energetically fit that and like what. You do know that right. But no, we've got to stick to like Because you're selling it and what happens is the.
Speaker 2:I feel like it just uses up people. The artist becomes consumable, right, and what you're talking about is that thing. The artist isn't necessarily the product. They are like they're juicing the product out of the artist like you're the Marlboro Reds, right, they are. It's that I'm reminded and you're saying that I'm. One of my favorite artists of all time is Johnny Cash. He's just again. He's like he's perfectly imperfect. There is this, just there, and there's something truly deeply american about him. Right and right after he died, they were in a contract and it got I, I. This was on npr somewhere and, uh, preparation h was trying to get the rights to burning ring of Fire.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:And he died and so they ended up not allowing this to go through and I just it was always one of the to this day is one of these really profound. What that song meant when he wrote it and like what it would have turned his legacy into simply by selling it to make more money off of it is like profound and also in my head I'm like what a perfect song like, but also it would have ruined it all. It's like, yeah, it's. It's so funny when the commercial comes in to to snack on the arts, right yeah we just come in and like, oh, we want all the taste.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's nice, everyone likes that. Can I have it? It's like sometimes the answer needs to be no, that one's ours, I don't know. It's just like yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, so, oh, I had a really good question for you in the middle of that, because it blew my mind. Give me a second. Okay, what is the role of legacy in your identity as an artist?
Speaker 2:I can speak to myself. This is not something I've talked with other people about, but I'm trying to kind of amalgamate an answer because it's more than just as an artist, because I get to experience, because people talk about being a, I get asked at least a few times a week why I don't have kids and if I want kids okay, and I and I I'm only.
Speaker 2:This is a a circuitous route to the answer to your question, but I think legacy is really important for artists. It's like we work our whole lives and we come to some sort of realization that we want to share with the world, and we come with this creative way that we can share it. That could last, right, you can write a play, you can create a work of art, a song. You can carry a song in your head and take it wherever you want, right, um? And so I think the idea of legacy, of of continuing like, I got this idea, I got to this arrival on this emotion and this, this struggle, this strife, this conflict, and this is how I deal with it, and I want to pass that on to someone else and maybe you can do more with it, maybe you can keep that.
Speaker 2:And one of the magical things in my life that I get to do is I actually get to teach kids how to do that right. I teach them how to use an instrument. I teach them while they're watching me write music and fail and do all these things. That's part of my legacy is me handing that. I've literally taught tens of thousands of kids if out of that. I made five or six that go on to make things that last. I mean, that's I. Do you know, jackson Brown? Yeah, no, jackson Brown, what a dumb question. Uh I, when? Um, do you remember the Pulse nightclub shooting?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In Florida. So the moment that, like the day that that happened, I had never heard of Jackson Brown, I didn't know his music and I heard the song For a Dancer and there's this line in it do the things that you've been shown and the and and dance until the dance becomes your very own and I can't remember the lyrics exactly. But scatter your seeds and you'll never know the idea. I'm sorry, I'm really massacring it, but the whole idea of the song is that, whatever seeds you cast, you don't know what you're going to, what it's going to happen to them and to me. That's the same thing that happens when you create art. You don't know what you're gonna, what it's gonna happen to them. 100. That's the same thing that happens when you create art. You don't know what it will lead to. You don't know what friendships, you don't know whose life you're saving. You don't know like.
Speaker 2:I mean to bring it back to the show we were in together. I would have never guessed in a million years that responding to that classified ad would lead to me. I'm writing an album. I'm teaching in new york city. I'm on a podcast right now. I mean, like it's, you don't know what the legacy is going to be. You just hope that there's going to be something, and then it's going to be better than where we are right now evolution you don't there's.
Speaker 2:There's another great lyric. You don't have to fix the whole damn thing, you just got to leave it a little bit better and like, if you can do that, to me that is the measure of success yep 100. Beautifully said my friend I'm just repeating other people's stuff that I love well, again like speaking of legacy, right?
Speaker 1:So it's like these internalized messages, like you had teachers that instilled these messages in you for better or worse, and now you're looking to leave things better than you received by giving other messages to others as well, whether it's through your art or whether it's through your education, whether it's through, like your performance, like through your words, like and everything. Yeah, yeah you too.
Speaker 2:I mean I. I can't say how inspired I am by you. You have been through grief that some people don't. I don't even know that.
Speaker 1:I understand it, and you don't know it till you know it you don't, and you can't ever know someone else's grief.
Speaker 2:You can only get a glimpse at it, what they share with you, and even then you're lucky to scratch the surface and I think what you have done is incredible.
Speaker 2:You humanize grief in this way that it's accessible, it's not scary, it's something that we all have.
Speaker 2:It's it's that sad song, it's the thing that connects you and lets you say it's okay and and then to watch you go through that and create such beautiful things and you, like I'll watch your instagram feed and like you'll, you'll be really sad and you'll have this thing and it's so poignant. And then, like a couple, a couple stories later, I'm like you'll be really sad and you'll have this thing and it's so poignant. And then, like a couple stories later, I'm like you'll make me laugh out loud and it's like you're telling me I have permission to be sad and laugh in the same few sentences that's okay and it's so beautiful to watch someone do that and explore it and share it with people. And to me, that is what art is. We are so lucky to get to do that and explore it and share it with people. And to me, that is what art is. We are so lucky to get to do that, and I find you to be an absolute inspiration you are very, you're very kind.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna do what my, what I used to do to my parents after shows oh, but you know, like there's so many, no, instead I'll say thank you I it and I'll be a very therapist kind of person and say thank you I. I will have my cats like whacking me in the face with her tail, but um, but thank you I.
Speaker 2:I feel seen I say'm going to click the seen button. Right, I say it in a very performative voice, because it's still a very difficult thing for me to take in. You're doing amazing things and I cannot wait to see where this goes and what you do next.
Speaker 1:You amaze me. Tap dance glasses. Oh great, it says my internet connection is unstable. Great, lovely. Well, we're just about two of us, not the internet connection Me me too. I wanted to wrap up with discussing the final topic is we're talking about you as an artist and your identity, but also like the messaging that you're sending out into the world and one of the things that I think about a lot since we've talked about it the first time to now. This is a nice topic to kind of transition out of this podcast your thesis. Tell people about what your thesis was when you were in school.
Speaker 2:So the title, which basically tells it all, is Factors Affecting Student Motivation and Retention in Performing Ensembles Outside of School, and I know that's a mouthful, but it was very specific. I wanted to know what is it that gets kids to join community orchestras, join youth orchestras and then to stay in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the thing that's that was fascinating to me is how much of it came down to feedback. There was this thing about the feedback loop and how and it ties into all the other things that we've talked about about frustration, tolerance and failure and mastery and how kids think about themselves and it turned out it was really really simple. Feedback needs to be precise, it needs to be really soon after the thing happens and it needs to be kind. It was pretty much those three things. If someone does something and you don't say good job, right, that doesn't do anything for someone. It's like wow, you really got that f sharp. That was. Yeah, that was tough. I see your fingers in the right place.
Speaker 2:It's very specific and they but we do this all the time with everything. We give feedback. We are constant feedback creators and consumers. We're doing it to people and consumers. We're doing it to people on the street. We're doing it to the person in the car next to us on the highway. You know you're like you're constantly doing this and I think that there is something there about how we communicate with each other that the arts lets us do right. It teaches us. I think we have been through the very traumatic version of feedback. What we were talking about in conservatory and what I was saying about, like learning about who we don't want to be, and that there are other ways of doing this. There are other ways of creating musicians and artists, and it doesn't have to be through authoritarian. You know means and you know creating an environment for for for kids to struggle for, and not just kids for learners to struggle, for learners to fail and feel safe. I mean, if you can do that, you can. You can kind of do anything.
Speaker 1:Well, I would even expand that, then, and say not just learners, like if, in relationships, we give each other permission to fail, to make mistakes, to struggle and say, hey, I really don't know what to do, or I don't know how to communicate this to you. Like, that's what makes it's everything, it's like it's relational, it's everything it's like it's relational, it's emotional, it's relational. It's not just in the arts, it's not just in learning.
Speaker 2:Being in therapy I was talking about this in my last couple sessions Like I'm trying so hard to be a better self right. One of the things I'm working on that's difficult for me is boundaries and just saying no when I need to, and you know that whole category of things. And what you just said really kind of tripped the switch for me, which is that like the world doesn't give you time to get that right. You like I want to be better at this and like it takes a little trial and error, but the moment you tell excuse me, you're telling people I'm trying to fix this thing about my personality or about my you know I want to do this thing better.
Speaker 2:Is we, as certain people do, and I think artists do in particular but to give the space to fail it at being a better person? Like the moment you get it wrong people, they just want you to be better. Yeah, like it's a process. All of it is, you know, communication and and and and compassion and understanding. All of these things take time and they take practice and practice. Like we said, practice is not about being perfect from the beginning. It's about progress and I don't think we make enough room for people to struggle and make that progress as a society.
Speaker 1:We don't. We don't give permission for frustration. Tolerance, I mean. We live in social media worlds now that act as echo chambers of validation and so like there's no space for difference. So if there's no difference, we don't learn to sit with discomfort. If we don't sit with discomfort, we can't sit with ourselves when we're trying new things. We can't try new things if we don't feel confident enough to be able to do it. But we have to be able to sit with discomfort to do that yep, I mean on the, on the head.
Speaker 2:that is exactly, and it's the same thing. You know someone dislikes your song or someone doesn't. People just unfriend them, them. Okay, then you're gone. I don't want to hear that voice anymore. Okay, it's gone. Okay, but that's how the world works. They're not. They're still there, Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I guess my question is like you said, in your thesis, you talked about the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and because I'm a therapist, I'm like, hey, those are some nice words you got there. Where does that fit?
Speaker 2:into this puzzle. So there's two things. Like I didn't know who he was I probably should have paid more attention in one of my undergrad classes, but like I it was there. I think I had a good time the night before that class or something, I don't know. Anyway, I basically discovered, I felt like I discovered maslow and his thinkings while I was doing my research old school analog at the library, where, um, but there were a couple things that just like struck me. The the hierarchy is one and I'll get to that in a second. The other was about the idea he actually spent a whole bunch of time thinking and writing about the arts and how everything is an art.
Speaker 2:These things that we're talking about is not limited to musicians, and the idea was that we as a society have created this elitist idea of what a musician or an artist or an actor or a dancer is. And I do it myself. I say I'm not a dancer. I mean I can move my legs, I have muscles, muscles and feet, but like I'm not great at it. But that doesn't mean I'm not a dancer. And I think a lot of our society just discredits themselves and says I'm not that thing, cause I can't do it the way all these other people have done it in the past. And this is what? Again, to bring up the commercial of it, this is the commercial idea of what a musician is. I'm not that, so I'm not a musician.
Speaker 2:Um, and he goes into this concept of like, and my favorite one is a taxi driver. You know, I gotta get from harlem to to to battery park. Lane. Switch for you there. If you gotta get downtown, it depends what time of day and what month is the un in session? Is there a show? Is a like a street shutdown? Was there an accident? And that there's an artistry to doing anything. Whether there's an artistry, as we have learned, to doing your taxes, there's an artistry to, you know, finding an outfit. There is a. Everything has things that you would not imagine are artistic, because art is about finding alternate ways to get to the end point that you want to. That is what art is. We have been talking for the last hour or so about how we use art to communicate emotions and communicate interpersonal relationships, but that same artistry is there for a stockbroker, or it's there.
Speaker 1:It's there for what your morning routine is it absolutely is.
Speaker 2:Yep, and and I think that that when you go to his other stuff, which is like the hierarchy, right? So he spent a lot of time talking about the hierarchy of needs of, like, a human being, like the first one being food and shelter, and above that is like interpersonal relationships, and then, like it gets more specific and for us as a society, we see the arts as this top of the top of the pyramid. If you're lucky to get there, you can enjoy this thing, but not, not, you can't have any pudding if you didn't eat your meat. Right, so you don't get to the top and so does it have?
Speaker 1:does the pudding have hot raisins in it?
Speaker 2:oh, I know what that is, and no, it does not. Are you against hot raisins?
Speaker 2:no, no, I'm, but I, I, I, I kind of like ended up in this concept of does that same hierarchy exist inside of the other things, and specifically I was thinking of inside of learning the arts, like what does it mean to, for example, learn the violin or learn the piano? In order to do that one thing? There is its own pyramid, the bottom. You got to have a piano, right, maybe you have to have a method of learning it. You have to learn how to read notation, you have to understand what these symbols mean and then, like we've done this, you learn rhythm and you learn pitch. Great, that's a start. Now you want to learn dynamics and articulation, and then you learn phrasing.
Speaker 2:And there is this hierarchy of needs within learning an art form of how you get to being the fine artist. But it doesn't happen without this foundational base and it is things like having just the materials to do it. But it's also emotional pyramid, right, you have to have the safety. You have to have that safety to explore the struggles of creating that art. You have to have a teacher, you have to have an environment that allows you to screw up and learn from those mistakes.
Speaker 2:You can't move sort of to the next level of the pyramid if you keep getting beaten down and you're wrong. That's not right, and that I mean there's some crazy people like me who survive that and you go to the next level right. And that's why I feel in my teaching it's so important to create access, to create these relationships, because if you create a good relationship with the learner, you can help them find all these different layers and move and like the cycles of grief you know it's not linear Sometimes you need more of this or you need to go, and so within that concept, I mean my whole project was to figure out why kids join and stay in orchestras and not. But what I ended up learning was this sort of more metacognitive idea of like how we do anything, it's all based on this idea of of safety.
Speaker 1:If you don't have the safety in that area, you're not going to move to the next level of understanding no, well, I mean because all of your energy is like your, your energy is being spent on survival, so like whether you're in a trauma response and then trying to literally survive. So you're in fight, flight, freeze or fawn, and so that is what's taking all of your energy, or your, your creative outlet is actually figuring out how to survive. So all your creative juices are going to like how am I going to get from school to home when I know I'm going to? Let's take it out of like reality.
Speaker 1:Let's say Christmas story, when Ralphie's like oh no, the bully's coming. Like he's using all of his creative energy to figure out how do I get around the bully so that I survive, not getting a black eye, and get home so that my mom can tell me like you know, no, you, you'll shoot your eye out if you get a red rider bb gun for Christmas. But like if all your energy is being expended to that survival, there's nothing left to create, art or to create. But it's still. It's still the same functionality within the self.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think about like I do material checks in my classroom and the kids get like all bent out of shape and like they I give all my assignments are worth five points, whether it's the final test or they're. So there's not. No one thing has some exponential weight and will change your life in my class. Yeah, but like I create these things with this, like this, in mind, right, so like it doesn't have their instrument, they lose only one point. You still have an 80 percent for the day. Right, you forgot your music. You lose one more point. You're still passing and I have a whole library of books and you're not gonna get yourself out of participating in class.
Speaker 2:There is a real consequence, but it's not the end of the world, right, and you have to show them that like, it's okay to make that mistake. Just don't keep doing it. The only way you can fail my class. Don't bring your instrument every single time. Then you're gonna have a so like creating these opportunities to fail. But it's not like and I watch them like if they lose a couple points, they will panic because that's how they're treated in their other classrooms, right, the shame spiral takes over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If you get stuck in the shame spiral, well then you're gone.
Speaker 2:You might as well have just left the room but you know this accountability measure what is accountability in education and what is accountability in education in the arts? Yeah, and and for me it does go back to that Maslow thing you got to show up with your materials and you got to show up with an open mind. If you can do those two things, then we have space to play with all the rest of this right so like that's like goes back to funding.
Speaker 2:If the school could buy me, you know, 500 instruments and I had them we could take that, that foundational level off the table right. We know the kids are going to show up, they're all going to have an instrument, they're all going to have a book. But the state of arts education in america is like the kids also have to bring the foundation with them, you know.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, so then it's. Then it becomes like a, a, a, a place of privilege.
Speaker 2:then it's like well, that as a society as a whole. That's why the arts is all the way up here is because we don't fund it. We don't give it the, the, the means that it needs to just exist. Right it's. You know you, you've been in enough arts organizations. You can't run an arts organization now. You're not going to get hired if you don't also know how to write grants like it's not. Like people are giving us money to make this stuff, even though the entire, I think, culture loves and appreciates what the arts gives them. We're just not necessarily ready to say, yeah, I'm going to fund that. Even though I'm not entirely sure what we're making, I know that it's worthwhile. It's the abstractness of it that a lot of people just aren't prepared to support.
Speaker 1:The ambiguity of risk. Yep, there she is again. She is again rearing her beautiful, beautiful head. Because, like again, like it's about, like, risk is ambiguity, it's uncertainty, it's instability, and because we cannot tolerate instability, we will choose these rigid, stable oh, you are all these little quotes up around my classroom and there's one in it and it's about navigating uncertainty.
Speaker 2:I think it's dr seuss or something it's like, for I'm not afraid because I'm still learning how to sail my ship, something along these lines, like I'm not scared of the waves because I'm still learning. And if you can say I don't learning how to sail my ship, something along these lines, like I'm not scared of the waves because I'm still learning, and if you can say I don't know how to do this yet, that's okay. And and knowing like I have a community that'll back me up and help me figure it out, instead of laughing at me or saying you got it wrong or I told you so right. It's like building that community, building that kindness and people. I think it's why I loved Mr Rogers.
Speaker 1:It's like oh my gosh, yeah you're not gonna get it right, but you know what be kind to yourself be kind to each other and, if you can start there, there's a lot of stuff you're going to be able to do. Yes, well, that's feels like a really great place for us to end our conversation today. Craig, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 2:The pleasure is absolutely mine. I love what you're doing. I love talking about this stuff with someone else who loves talking about it. Love it Go on for days.
Speaker 1:I seriously I'm like, oh my God, we can talk about this, this, this, this, this, this. So where can people find where? Where can people find your music? How do they find out about performances of yours or your students' performances? We didn't even mention the fact that your students performed at the Apollo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they performed twice at the Apollo. This year we might get to perform at the Shed. They've moved the event. My kids were one of the first. I had the very first group perform about 15 years ago at roundabout theater company. We were the very first middle school to perform live in a in a broadway theater.
Speaker 2:Um amazing, I had my my kids performed for the manhattan borough arts festival. We were selected and my middle school kids performed alongside um high school, the performing arts and laguardia. I mean, we were one of the only middle schools chosen to do this. Um, yeah, I, I theyaze me. Oh, my god, my kids are incredible. You can find me on all the socials. I'm Craig Klonowski, it's just my name. It's me and my new. I have an album, as I mentioned, coming out. I have five singles. I've been doing the drip release, trying to get people to figure out who I am. My last single Heard of it just came out on January 1st. The album right now the title is Come Back here. I've got 12 tracks. I released the first one the week of my birthday last year and my goal is to release the album a little bit later this year. It explores my journey through um struggle and strife and there's a little bit of silly funniness on there from from you know, it's all mixed in there together, uh and uh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if if you follow me on socials, you'll see everything that uh is going on in my life. Open book open book.
Speaker 1:Thank you, craig, you're the best. Thank you, thank you.