inTUNE: Stories of Connection through Music
inTUNE explores how music connects, heals, and empowers — from private studios to correctional facilities.
inTUNE: Stories of Connection through Music
Shot Full of Holes: John Edward Keough on Poetry, Incarceration, and Patsy Cline
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of inTUNE: Stories of Connection Through Music, Dr. Melissa Martiros sits down with John Edward Keough — poet, essayist, and founder of Hollywoot Film Group — for an honest conversation about creativity, incarceration, and what it takes to build a life from scratch.
John's story begins at age six, when he was placed into DYS custody for truancy while homeless with his mother and siblings at South Station in Boston. Over the next three decades, he moved in and out of foster care, DYS, and DOC custody — including nearly ten months in solitary confinement. It was there, trading food for postage stamps, that he began submitting poetry to literary journals at a rate of 40 to 50 submissions a month. A letter from an Ohio poetry editor changed everything.
Six years out, John holds a degree from Clark University, runs a profitable independent film company in Worcester, and participates in restorative justice. Poetry and music — tools he carried through every cell he ever occupied — are still at the center of everything he does.
Episode Summary A portrait of creativity as survival, and what happens when the system fails a child but art does not.
Key Themes
- Poetry and music as lifelines inside correctional settings
- The long reach of early childhood trauma and systemic failure
- The role of one attentive adult in changing a trajectory
- Restorative justice as a choice, not a requirement
- Building a creative life and business with a record
- Partnership versus saviorhood in youth-facing work
The Pulse
Topic: What John's story offers educators working with system-involved youth
Dr. Martiros draws on John's experience to offer five grounding reminders for educators, teaching artists, and advocates:
- Meet the student before you meet their paperwork
- Access is an act of advocacy — you don't have to fix the system to change someone's experience of it
- Creativity is not a reward for good behavior — it is an essential, not an extra
- Understand what your student is walking back into — the sentence doesn't end at the gate
- Partner, don't save — young people know the difference
Music & Words Featured
"Shot Full of Holes" — written and performed by John Edward Keough
"Walking After Midnight" — written by Don Hecht and Alan Block, originally performed by Patsy Cline, sung by John Edward Keough
Intro and outro music written and produced by opporTUNEity students.
Find John Edward Keough
Substack (Writing Stuff Down): johnedwardkeough.substack.com
Hollywoot Film Group: hollywootfilmgroup.com
Get in Touch Submit questions or topics for future episodes at https://opporTUNEitymusic.org/intune
Episode produced and edited by Angela Senicz.
Learn more about our programs, stories, and community at https://opporTUNEitymusic.org
I went on a Massachusetts prison journey. So I started out at Walpole. I spent some time in the hole. There was a librarian, just like there is many, many times. And she was dedicated to making sure the men in solitary got access to books. And so she gave me this little guide from Pan America that showed you how to submit your poems. Every month I could send out three letters and I started to trade my food for more stamps. So I'd be like, hey, you know, who likes Jell-O? And you know, if someone liked Jell O, I'd be like, ah, you know, how many stamps do you want to give me for the Jell-O? Probably about four months in, I was sending out anywhere from 40 to 50 submissions a month.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Rintune, stories of connection through music. This is the podcast where we explore stories from educators, artists, and community leaders who are using music to break down barriers and build community. We'll look at how inclusion shows up in private studios, classrooms, in community programs, and even inside correctional facilities. And I'll share a few stories and strategies that might just shift the way you think about teaching and connection through music. Whether you're a teacher, a musician, a parent, or someone who simply believes in the power of music to bring people together, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Dr. Melissa Martiros, a music educator, consultant, and the founder of Opportunity, an organization that uses music to connect people across backgrounds, bridge divides, and open doors. For our first several episodes, Intune has been telling stories from the Opportunity Program at Worcester County Jail. Today's episode is the first time we're stepping outside opportunity to look at how personal connections to music and poetry can transform a life even without a formal program to support them. Our guest today is John Edward Keogh, a lyric writer, poet, and founder of Hollywood Studios. His relationship with the system began at age six, found homeless with his mother and siblings at a South Boston train station and placed into DYS custody for truancy. Over the next three decades, John moved in and out of foster care, DYS, and eventually DOC custody, including 10 months in solitary confinement. What happened inside those walls and why it didn't break him is the heart of this episode. Six years out, in his 40s, he's built a life around his creative work, and this is his story. I don't really know your background, John. I know that you did some time and I know that you're doing awesome stuff on the outside, but I really don't know too much about you. So I'm looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_01Sweet. Excited to talk about it.
SPEAKER_00Before we get into the questions, I'd like to just maybe have you talk about who you are and you know what your passions are.
SPEAKER_01My name is John Edward Keogh. Saying my name that way is probably the best way to indicate who I am and what my passions are. I'm a poet. Uh that's my number one focus. So if there's any one word, I guess that would encapsulate who I want to be, it would be John Edward Keogh, the poet. Most poets, especially the older, pretentious kind, would use three names instead of just the regular uh first and last name. And so to live in Rome, you want to be like the Romans.
SPEAKER_00What kind of poems do you like to write?
SPEAKER_01I like to say that I am a memory memorialist. I like to take memories of my life and the things that are happening around me and make memorials to them that would last. And so I like to do comparative things, taking events from my own life and then comparing them to things that are happening in real time. It doesn't necessarily always have to be serious, it can be fun and silly and light. And so the latest poem I wrote is called Shot Full of Holes, which is about an event that happened to me when I was 16. I got shot. So I use that particular event to create like a dynamic between what's going on in the real world today. The United States is at war right now. And also there's a lot of just political strife, I guess, in our country. And when all that stuff is going on, what happens when a kid gets shot? And so I use that memory to do that. So that's kind of where my focus is. I'm a long-term poet, so I've been I've been writing poems since I was a little kid. And so I've gone through different stages, I guess, of my poetic journey. Now I'm really comfortable with my voice. I know kind of what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. So I'm prolific, I guess. I I write a lot now and put out a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_00What were you doing before got shot?
SPEAKER_01Hour before we got shot, we were actually eating pizza. You know, long story short, it was a gang incident. So there was like a rivalry between a good friend of mine and then this group of people, and they really wanted him to join the gang, and he didn't want to. And it was uh one of those scenes where it was like, hey, we're gonna meet them in the parking lot behind this liquor store. And so uh me and a couple other buddies, we went with him.
SPEAKER_00What does happen when a kid gets shot?
SPEAKER_01I was shot in my leg, and I didn't realize I was shot until I felt like the blood kind of going down my leg. My reaction, which was complete and utter shock, I was shocked. But the younger people around me thought I was like a stone cold person because my face froze because I'd just been shot. So then it led to this kind of like legend of John being this really tough guy, which is not true at all. There was a sort of a Chevy suburban, an old suburban. I got into it and laid it in the back uh and I put my finger in the hole where the bullet had gone in that to like stop the bleeding. So we drove around for a couple hours and I was not stopping the bleeding. So they they basically dropped me off at the hospital, and I walked in on my own uh accord, bleeding, and then got it uh taken into the hospital. This is in the 90s. The police you know came to talk to me and I didn't tell them anything, and so that also added to the legend of me as a badass, I guess. But mostly because I didn't really know what to answer, because I was kind of delusional and delirious in that moment because I had lost a ton of blood. So it would be fun to you know have a Hollywood kind of ending to it, like I was being this tough guy, but it had nothing to do with that. I was just a 16-year-old kid who had lost a ton of blood. Shot Full of Holes by John Edward Keogh. Just a different kind of thing, an attempt to capture a feeling in a string of words, in an order that has happened yet. Some time ago I thought all the songs you had ever sang to me had been sung, and all the ways that you could sing them, but as it often is, I was wrong. Standing in the parking lot, loud noises, hot metal brushed by on its way, to wherever it was going without me, and left me there, alone. Later on, others asked me why I shake my leg. The people who make decisions in the middle of the night when no one is looking made up a disorder for it. But then and there the blood was pouring, and all I could think about was that the genes were new, and you had just bought them for me, and it was the first week of school. There was a young man there who looked at me and said I was too cold for his blood. He gave up that life, moved to Buffalo, he runs a laundry service, has six kids, still married to the same girl. And I wish I could tell him that I wasn't being cold. I just didn't want to face you about the genes. Those were Levi's with the carpenter panels. I used to put a hammer in there, and it fit perfect, like I was a real man, and everyone around me was scared. To this day I remain annoyed. Why were they scared? When I was the one, shot full of holes, and bleeding where I stood. In my defense, I put my pointer finger in the biggest hole, and we got in the car. His old suburban. I laid in the flat staring at the ceiling and imagined how to say what it is I had gotten myself into. The blood stopped a bit, but I was dizzy and dizzy, and I lost my words a bit, and they dropped me at the hospital. There was a grizzled old cop who knew me by sight, said it was only a matter of time. Wouldn't it be funny if he read this? I was a bad man, and now I am a poet, of the coolest kind, the memorialist. I make monuments of moments. Moments that a child should never see, but I saw them. I thought they were normal, but now I know that was silly. One time, twenty-five years later, I stood on Main Street and looked at the gutter, as if there would be a chance the slug would still be waiting for me to find it and bring it home. But that old slug had a place to go, and boy did he go through me to get there. And fast. Do you think that maybe the adults that have hung around for a while wonder how much of these are word for word true? Or if I am exaggerating, as is a poet's want, or that I am expertly weaving the verse to get to the perfectly timed ending, and that I am not as broken as I seem.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you got shot at 16, hanging out with your friends, being loyal to your friend, and then it contributed to some kind of a narrative that you were a stoic tough guy. Did that kind of set you on a on a path?
SPEAKER_01I was already on the path. I had been in DYS several times at that point already. I had been in trouble for various different things. Also, I was a foster kid, so in and out of different places. Back then, the system in Massachusetts, and I and it hasn't really completely fixed now. But when it came to foster kids who are older, you basically get shipped around to whichever family will like take you for a little while. So like I moved from school to school to school and town to town to town. I was generally angry and pissed off at the world. We were very poor, and my parents were abusive in various ways. And so I was already pissed off and angry. That event was a symptom of being an angry kid who was basically willing to go and fight and steal and do whatever because I just didn't care. There was no real interested adult to stop me from going on the path. And then it got worse from there.
SPEAKER_00So what happened? What point were you incarcerated as an adult?
SPEAKER_01My first time as an adult, I was 20 years old. So I had robbed a bank. This is in 2003 with my sister. My sister was my co-defendant. That was fun.
SPEAKER_00Are you still close with her?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, our family is not close. I went to jail for like 15 days, bailed out, and then I was on bail for like two and a half years awaiting trial. And then I went to state prison for the first time in like 2004.
SPEAKER_00For how many years?
SPEAKER_01Uh three and a half years. And then was that the end of it, or did you end up back in no so I I was out for about 11 months, and then I went back to jail for the big run. I went on a big, I guess you could call it a crime spree over the course of about five weeks in 2008, and then I ended up in prison for a decade after that.
SPEAKER_00Can you talk about what that looked like? What does a five-week crime spree look like?
SPEAKER_01I had started a business. The business had had like an event that did not do well, and my business partner at the time kind of left me with the bill, and I didn't know what to do. And so a person I had met in prison the first time gave me some work. So we went and we started robbing places. So restaurants and fast food franchises, liquor stores.
SPEAKER_00Like at gunpoint or like when they were closed?
SPEAKER_01At gunpoint, yeah. We probably did maybe 25 or 30 over that period, and then we planned and executed a large-scale robbery of a citizen's bank in East Providence, Rhode Island, which eventually led to a high-speed chase that led me to prison. And in that particular case, we had robbed a bank earlier in the day, and then we needed to get another car. So we ditched a car. My partner, he had cased some houses in the city of Verhoboth, Massachusetts. So we went to steal a car from a house, and the woman was home. So when we went into the house, we tied her up, and then my partner and I got into an argument. He wanted to kill her, and that was probably the first time in my life that I thought about stuff. And I thought, well, I don't know if that'd want to do that. And that it's important because she overheard that argument. And so then we left, we stole the car, and we went to rob a bank. And in the process of that, he got out of the car and I was in the car by myself. And an off-duty police officer heard the call for the car, which was actually a Toyota Prius. And that was in 2008, so they weren't like a common car. And then I took off in a high-speed chase up uh Route 1 in East Providence. And then I ended up in the river, uh, the Taunton River, which I crashed into a tree, jumped out of the car, got hit by the police car who was who had followed me, and I kind of jumped forward and I ended up in the river. And then I had a um a standoff of the police for about three and a half hours.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that's quite a story, John. And then you did 10 years, so you were out when you were in your late 30s?
SPEAKER_01In my late 30s, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And how old are you now?
SPEAKER_01I am 43.
SPEAKER_00We are gonna spend a lot of time talking about how you're doing now because I feel like it is quite a turnaround. But no, you mentioned that you were in DYS a bunch when you were a kid. Your start wasn't really great. I think I mean I think when you're in your 20s, you're still a kid, right?
SPEAKER_01I'm still a kid now.
SPEAKER_00Because you spent a lot of your life incarcerated, right? So you're still kind of growing on the outside. Uh, not that doing that kind of time doesn't grow you up, but it's a little different, right?
SPEAKER_01It is.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you're clearly a creative person and you clearly need that outlet. Can we go back? Can we just talk about when you were a kid growing up? Did you have an inclination for creativity? I mean, I know you wrote poems.
SPEAKER_01I was a prolific writer. My mom taught me to read and write very early before school. And so I was an advanced reader, read a lot of stuff. My mom was an aspiring writer. You know, she had a novel that she worked on almost her whole life. She never finished it, but it was called Apple Blossom Time. She inspired me, you know, to chase that. And so I wrote poems and songs and stories, you know, from a very young age. There's a picture of me when I was like four or five years old, and I have like a book and I'm writing.
SPEAKER_00When you were a kid and you were going through all the shit that you were going through, did you write poems during that time? Was it like a lifeline for you?
SPEAKER_01Whenever the stuff was not great, I was writing or reading. And all the reading usually inspires the writing. So the more I read or the more I listen to music, I'll get some kind of thought. And it's hard to explain to people because every writer has a different process, but mostly things come to me fully formed, whether it's a song, whether it's an idea or a concept, and then there's a push from me inside to finish it or not. The difference between me, I guess, as a child versus now is that now when I get an idea, I finish it. Whereas a kid, you just kind of do scraps and a lot of different things. So there's piles and piles and piles. I have something like 30 or 40,000 handwritten pages from when I was a young kid into my late teens on yellow, like legal pads. A lot of people don't realize that a big part of being able to express yourself, whether it's creatively or just in any kind of conversation, is having people to talk to. And my mom talked to me like an adult when I was a little kid. And so that allowed me to develop conversational ability, which helped both in my creative expression. It also helped a little bit in my criminal life because I was able to convince people to do things because I could speak at a more adult level than that is normal for a uh, you know, for a teenager.
SPEAKER_00In the last 10 minutes of talking to you, you're obviously extremely bright, and my guess is probably pretty gifted when you were younger.
SPEAKER_01Because remember, I went to a lot of different schools. So I would go there and they would do like whatever intake exams. Those were easy for me. So I would get A's and stuff. And then of course I would immediately get in trouble. I I used to make fun of it, but my life as the subject of the interested teacher in the movies. Growing up, there was like the principal, there was Lean on Me, there was Michelle Pfeiffer, you know, like they would be like this person that would go to an inner city school and like help the troubled kid. And so that was me. I was the troubled kid, and uh I was also the reluctant, gifted person. So it was always like, we can get this out of you. And uh, and they couldn't because I was just so angry. I mean, the anger But it was justified.
SPEAKER_00I mean, your anger was justified.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it was justified. I also think that there was at some point a transition between when it became justified and I became vindictive and started hurting people that didn't deserve it, right? And you could say that there was adults that definitely didn't get the same level of punishment that I did as a child, and they they should probably answer for it. At least they should have to admit things, you know. So there's definitely relatives of mine that got away with a lot of stuff. But at some point I knew what I was doing was wrong, and I started to use my physicality. I was a big guy, so I've been the same size pretty much since I was 11 years old. So I'm I'm just about six feet and about 230 pounds, and I've been that size since then. So I started to use that in conjunction with my anger, and that kind of that caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00You're owning it now.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. And so I've been through the transition, you know, of uh the way they've approached psychology for for kids uh and youth who have um been troubled. So there was like a period in time where it's like at some point you gotta deal with it, you know, and then there was like this time where it's like, oh, it's not his fault because you know he was troubled, and then it's kind of started to swing back, I guess, a little bit. I think that there needs to be a happy medium between the two. Obviously, the environment that I grew up in was not conducive to a healthy childhood, no doubt about it. But there are other people who have had it way worse than me, who have been very healthy, successful adults. And so there's always someone out there that could tell you that their childhood was worse than yours, right? There's always that. So, what's the difference between me and them? Why were they able to go on to become something that I couldn't think? So that's related to my own personal psychology. And I get it, there's genetics involved, there's a lot of different aspects, environmental concerns, and sometimes things are just related to timing. But there was definitely a point when I knew I was not doing good and I did bad anyways.
SPEAKER_00What point would you say that was?
SPEAKER_01I would say probably when I was like 14 or 15 years old, I was in a DYS like lockup. We had an argument over like where we were sitting or something like that. And you know, so we got in a fist fight, and I was much bigger than him. And you know, after hitting him once, you know, he was well on the ground. And then I I kept hit, I kicked and kicked and kicked and punched and kicked and punched and kicked and punched, and I knew I was doing wrong. That that uh moment I knew that I was bigger and stronger than him, and I was punching down. You know, that definitely started to change kind of the way I viewed myself for a long period of time.
SPEAKER_00But you didn't have the wherewithal to stop at that point.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's a really interesting question. I think that I think that I I could have, because there were other chances that I did. There was a point where I wanted to express my overall anger towards somebody. And in that particular case, argument over a hot dog, I did. And I think that part of it is because what I went through as a child and into my you know late teens from other adults was so abusive that I was scared of them. And I think in this case, I wasn't scared of him, and so I wanted him to feel what I felt. I definitely had the ability to stop. I think there was a cruelty in me at that point, and I think that's part of because there was no interested adult. I think that a kid who expresses that kind of anger or violence or like attributes that you wouldn't normally associate with a teenager. There's training, there's education, and there's parenting and love that could be expressed to that child that could probably get them out of it. But we have to also acknowledge that there's definitely within the human race the capacity for cruelty even at a young age. And so what it's true that people were cruel to me and it was learned behavior, but I was still cruel to that young man and then other people after that. So I I don't want to blame young John for everything, but I do need to acknowledge that young John was not a good boy.
SPEAKER_00You had just mentioned that there were certain ways of being that adults could have been to sort of help you learn or heal or move you through that period of your life. It doesn't sound like you got those. So if you were speaking to people who are working with kids like you now, right at that age, what kinds of supports do you think would have changed your direction at that time?
SPEAKER_01This is gonna be hard because I know a lot of people don't understand this. I needed a man to challenge me because in my experience at that point, every man I had met had been either extremely violent or extremely passive, and I didn't know anybody who was balanced. And it's not to say that a woman couldn't do that, but my mom did try. I want to give her credit. I don't want to have anybody listen to this and go, oh, well, his mother should have done better. My mother was raising three children on her own, and she left an abusive relationship to raise us. So she did what she needed to do to get us free from that you know negative environment that you know her her marriage with my father had led to, right? So then when we left, she did everything she could to put us first. And I and I have to give her credit for that. So it wasn't from her not being able to try to be the best mom that she could be, but then that's when you get into the environmental conditions. You know, a single mom in the late 80s and the 90s, it was difficult for her to get a job, to keep a job. It was hard to access resources that they have now. They have much more resources now than they than they did then, as far as you know, women's shelters or programming for uh women with children. The other thing that I think it still doesn't happen to this day is that adults talk down to people that have just been through something. So, for example, when someone just gets out of jail, right? Most adults in the United States treat that person like they just committed the crime the day they got out of jail. And they expect them to go through another series of prove-it moments to exist within the framework of society, not acknowledging how difficult it is and how society has made this ridiculous structure behind the walls, behind the prison bars for people to overcome. Prison society, in and of itself, is a million times more violent and a million times more abusive. There's a ton of guards that are really vindictive and evil people. And maybe I would have ended up like that if I hadn't gone to jail, would have ended up a guard, just abuses and punches down on people all the time. The society is intentionally structured to do that way. So, you know, there's a ranking system within the prison for what kind of crime you committed. And then they get out, they do all the programming, and they get out, and then society expects them to then do it again. I think that's the worst possible thing you can do to a kid. And that happened to me repeatedly. So I Go into DYS, not necessarily for committing a crime now, because remember, once you go into the system, you're kind of in the system, depending on the whims of the adults that are around you. So then I would go from foster home to facility, foster home to facility. And every time I got out of the facility into a foster home, I had another set of adults who now wanted me to prove myself. And so it was like I was being blamed for what I did. And I did do things. I'm not taking away the responsibility. But how many times do I have to prove it over and over and over again? And I think that's how our society is, even to this day. Our society is really very much fake pious, even in 2026, where we all act like we're better than the people that get caught doing things. And that really does kind of bleed into providers, especially with teenagers who act as if they're saints. Like you by being a provider, you're not a hero. I appreciate that you chose that role, and I'm grateful for someone who's willing to do it. But don't act as if you're a savior. Act as if you're a partner with this person in a role to get them to be able to be stable. So don't come in saying, I'm gonna save your life. Come in from a partnership perspective.
SPEAKER_00I'm looking at my notes and I'm saying, okay, so how many times would you say you were in a DYS facility when you were growing up? How old were you when you entered the first time?
SPEAKER_01I was like six or seven. It was not necessarily for something I did wrong. It was a truancy situation. Truancy took place because we were homeless. You know, long story short, I I couldn't get to school.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's infuriating.
SPEAKER_01I have a clear memory of a police officer who was berating my mother. We were living in the train station, in South Station in Boston, behind the old post office. And it was an area where people who are unhoused would go sleep in there. It's my mom and three kids.
SPEAKER_00And because she escaped an abusive marriage.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but not just that though. She was in between uh all the resources. Again, people think like today, like if a woman who's been abused shows up with kids that she just automatically gets like an apartment. That's not how it works. It doesn't work like that today. And in this case, she didn't have family, right? Because the family wanted the marriage to continue. They were both Irish immigrants, and so it was not an easy path for her to just go and find a place to live. So she did the best she could. Some people will be like, oh, she took kids to a train station. Yeah, you want to know why? Because it was warm there. It was warm there, and there was people that would give you food and it was safe. You know, that's the other thing, too, is that uh the unhoused community, a lot of times, homeless folks in general, are like accused of just being like crazy, unsafe people. No, no, as a society, they're usually very loyal and protective of the people within them, but especially families. Does abuse happen there? Of course, because it happens in every area of human society. And it's always people with things, with privilege, with money, with opportunity that love to look down on people without it and be like, oh, they're they're like, they're criminal and they're scum and they're bad. But in this case, we were safer with homeless folks in the train station than we were in some of these facilities. Again, you know, my single mom raised me, so I got to experience what many abused women uh experience, which is the kind of underground battered women's shelter system. The battered women's shelter system is a great thing, but it also attracts really terrible people. There are men who go to those shelters to work who are abusers, and they take advantage of those situations. And I know I'm not going to rehash all the hundreds of thousands of stories that are like that, but that's very much true. And so at this point, my dad and mother were like fist fighting and weapons in the street level violence in that marriage, right? And the court would tell him where we were. I mean, that's just stupid. Now, it's not to say that he hasn't grown. He he's uh he has at this point, but he's in his 70s. You gotta get older kind of to reach the capacity to calm down. So that definitely happened for him. But at the time he was a maniac, you know. I was a little boy, you know, I was the uh my mother's oldest of the three of us. And what was I gonna do to help her? I was seven. You know what I mean? Like, you know, what does a seven-year-old do? Kudos to my mom who passed away last year. To me, she's a hero. The fact that she even got us out of there, these are things that I've thought about for decades at this point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So much. Just to kind of pull us back a little bit, age six and seven, you were put in a DYS for truancy that was not at all your fault. And then you kind of were in and out pretty consistently until you ended up in like a state prison when you were 20, 22 to 26. Did you remain true to your poetic expression from six till 26?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say that the reason that I'm alive is because I never was completely cut off from poetry and music. I was able to get to a place where I could stabilize through song. One of the things that I used to do, and I still do this sometimes if I get highly stressed, is that I sing the Patsy Klein song, Walking After Midnight, because it was one of my mom's favorite songs. She loved Patsy Klein and Loretta Lynn and used to sing all those songs to me all the time. But in particular, that song Walking After Midnight used to make me calm. So I would get into a cell because generally speaking, whenever you go into one of these facilities, you you start off in some kind of holding area, right? That song Walking After Midnight, it used to allow me to calm down, and so I would sing it in the cell out loud to everybody and anybody, and it would make me feel good. And I go on walking after midnight out in the moonlight, just like we used to do. I'm always walking after midnight, searching for you. Then it would make me start thinking about poems and thinking about stories, and then eventually when I got to a cell where I had writing utensils, because eventually you get to a place where they give you something to write, I would start writing again. Poetry, song, short stories, long stories, essays, everything you can imagine I write.
SPEAKER_00So you and you you were never really cut off from it, but because you pursued it. Were there opportunities for you inside any of the DYS facilities, or when you were incarcerated in your early 20s to pursue anything formally? Like were there music classes or poetry classes, or was it just kind of on you to hold that lifeline for yourself?
SPEAKER_01I I I think that in every place, there was usually at least one person. There's usually some staff member that's interested in that and in and like kind of guards the library and guards the music. And and I've I got opportunities to do a lot of things. And so then once I got into places, you know, uh, if you if you wanted to um have access, you had to like behave for usually like some period of time. And so um, because I wanted to play the guitar and play the piano and play the drums, and um I would uh I would calm down and I would quiet down and then I would get myself access and then I would go do that, and that would usually help me pass the time.
SPEAKER_00And it kind of kept you on a path inside 100%.
SPEAKER_01A lot of times in the prison system, particularly the state prison system, access to the places where there's a band is restricted to two things, right? There's usually church bands, right? So those are opportunities where you can get involved in some kind of religious programming, and you just go every week, and there's usually at least one or two sessions a week, and that gets you out of your cell and it gets you into the program. That's usually pretty basic music instruction. It's you they don't necessarily teach music, but if you already have it, you know, you'll quickly become the leader of the band, or you'll become one of the leaders of the band if you have any ability to you know to carry a tune. If you can sight read, you're often in charge right away. So that happened a bunch of times. You know, I would join bands, the church bands often, because they were the ones where you could play the most. That first adult scent, it's Shirley Medium is a medium prison uh that's next to the maximum prison in Shirley, Massachusetts. So I ended up there and there was a music program, and you could go there for like two or three hours, and the first hour was some kind of formal instruction, and they would like to teach a song that they wanted us to learn. And then the other the last two hours was usually like some kind of jam session. And so then there were more than one band because prison is hyper-racially segregated, which is not fair, but it's just the way it is. It's definitely bad that it's like that. To reform that, you have to have total and complete prison reform. And so it's not something I can achieve in this conversation, it's just the way it is. So the white guys would play with the white guys and the black guys with the black guys, but in that usually jam session that was after the instruction, you sometimes would have the groups mix because that was the only time where all the guitars were out and all the pianos were out, and all the, you know what I mean? And so then people were very nice in those hours that people who wanted to play music would just go and play music. You didn't want to lose your opportunity because usually, at least in the medium prisons, you could get into some kind of trouble in the music program and like get back, but it was usually maybe you you got two chances, right? So, but if you did anything that was like led to the destruction of an instrument, you're done forever. Done not just there, but you're done in every prison in the state. And so people were most of the time, I would say 99% of the time, people on the bed. There's always something prison is a place of precipitous violence, which means that once the trigger happens, the violence comes immediately. So it definitely happened, but for the most part, I would say almost everybody that I ever was in the band with was generally intending to do the right thing and to use that as an opportunity to not be in the prison. Because when you're singing and playing music, you're not in jail. And so, and I I know a lot of folks out there are like critical because most of it's like kind of religious programming, and that's true. It's it's not easy to like learn Metallica songs when you're in jail. But the fact is that it's available and you can find things that maybe inspired a genre that you're attracted to. So, like if you're a heavy metal guy or if you're a rap guy, there are a lot of you know musical DNA that has been passed down over the years that started in churches. And so you can at least have access to the beats and to the melodies and to the rhythms and to the choruses, and then you can find a thing that you like. You know, there's this one song called Count Your Blessings, which is like a very famous hymnal, you know, and there was several versions of that song that I heard in the prison, which I find funny, right? I would hear like a do-wop version, and then I would hear like a hardcore rock version of that, because it depended on which musician you were playing with, right? So if you if you if you get a guitarist who's a drop D shred guy, and Count Your Blessings sounds very different than it does when you have a guy who's like a keyboardist, who's like just a middle C kind of keyboard guy, right? You get to find your genre, even if you are kind of stuck with the Baptist hymnal, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00It does. I guess my question for you is what is your genre? What was your genre then?
SPEAKER_01There's another credit to the great and powerful Frances Marie Maloney, my mom. She made me a kind of non-genre music guy because she listened to everything. And so there was a period of time when she was heavy into like local, like Boston hip-hop in the late 80s, and then early 90s, like Tribe Call Quest, so kind of musical hip-hop. And then, you know, she listened to top 40 radio and she she had DJs that she loved the named David Alan Boucher with the nighttime magic guy, the guy who used to give away the bathrobes. He was famous, late-night DJ, like soft rock on this station called Magic 106.7, which I don't even know if it exists anymore. I I guess maybe the only thing I haven't done, I guess, is maybe polka and like really hard death metal. But other than that, I would say that I've had a period of time where I've done every kind of music. Uh recently I've been exploring singer-songwriters again, and I find them to be intriguing as they make that transition from kind of the softer stuff to the harder stuff. And of course, maybe the most famous is Alanis Morissette. So she got the unique kind of opportunity to really have that heavy thing that was only kind of allowed to men in the 70s and 80s, right? So good for her, by the way, because more women should uh be able to express that particular side of them, that kind of visceral, emotional, memory side. She was standing up for herself and was badass. By the way, for the men, if you know, guys out there, like let a woman scream at you for a little bit, especially if you've been a dick. Listen to her and then get it, get what she's saying. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. So when you were at Shirley, you could write your poetry kind of whenever you wanted. You had access to a pen and paper, and it sounds like your mother was your greatest influence. But so Tuesday nights were your access to music. You would go to the church band, you would do worship stuff, and then the last two hours, the guys from any walk of life turning hymns into whatever you could, just to have some moment of music expression, and it it kind of took you out of the jail.
SPEAKER_01It was in the same building as the library. So the librarian at the time, he loved music, so he had a ton of sheet music books in there. So prison is a weird land of rules that are made just so they can have you break them and punish you. So one of the rules was like you couldn't take the library book, bring it into the other building. But as prisoners often do, we would make things like that happen. So, you know, if you had a folder with sheet music from church, you know, sometimes that sheet music would have, you know, other songs in there. So we would we would get in that time opportunities to play a lot of stuff. I would say the vast majority of that was top 40 stuff, popular music. It was really hard to do anything different or unique. Another uh person that I love is Frank Zappa. Uh Frank Zappa is a great, great musician. As he got older, he started playing around with orchestral stuff that's unique and kind of chamber music, but with heavy metal influences in it. So that's you know, like a cello next to a, you know, a guitar. In my second adult sentence, I got to access more of that stuff, but definitely not early on time. It was harder to get things that weren't like heavy popular music.
SPEAKER_00For people to kind of access, like you really would have had to have some experience with music to have any of that kind of make sense. Like I assume there was rarely somebody who would just come and pick up an instrument for the very first time on Tuesday nights.
SPEAKER_01It was harder to get in there if you were new. You had to have some experience. And there's the other aspect of prison where like once you have a spot, even if maybe it would be conducive for the environment to like give it up, it's hard to get guys to give up a spot.
SPEAKER_00Yep, I get it. So it's limited. Where did you end up when you did your 10-year sentence after your crime spree?
SPEAKER_01I went on a Massachusetts prison journey. So I started out at Walpole. I was in a I was in some you know pretty rough fights because I was again, I was really angry and I was super disappointed at going back to prison. And then I kind of calmed down. Um, I spent some time in the hole, and this is pr probably the time when everything changed for me. Uh, as far as I decided to focus on my creative expression. I ended up in the hole in Walpole, and Walpole has a solitary confinement that is literally designed to torture you. Um, it has giant submarine doors, so they lock you in and you're like locked in. You know, it's like soundproof. And the only thing you could do in there is you get a small radio, like a little tiny plastic radio that had little earbuds. Maybe we could pick up two or three stations. But there was a librarian, just like there is many, many times, and she was dedicated to making sure the men in the in solitary got access to books. And so she would come by and ask you what you wanted to read.
SPEAKER_00So she just was like a bright little light in a really dark, dark place.
SPEAKER_01And she was a tough lady too. So she didn't put up with people's bull crap, you know, people who would yell at her, or people that, you know, she didn't. But if you if you took a minute, she would talk to you. And so she asked me what I liked. And so I told her, you know, what I was doing, because I, again, I had the legal pads and I was writing. And she was like, Well, what are you doing? I said, I'm writing poems. And so she gave me this little guide from Pan America that showed you how to submit your poems. And in the back of that, there was a bunch of addresses to magazines and to uh like poetry journals that you could submit to. So then she taught me how to do it. So, like, you know, you had to type it up and put it in an envelope and you had to send a stamped envelope out, and it was a lot of money for a prisoner because I'm in the hole, so I wasn't earning any money. What you got was you got stamps every two weeks, you got three stamps because they had to give you a minimum amount, and so I had three stamps, and so I could every month I could send out three letters to three publishers.
SPEAKER_00How long were you in the hole for?
SPEAKER_01Uh almost 10 months, which by the way, not good because you start to go crazy. But this thing let me start to change in the hole, and it was important, it was a very important time. She started bringing me poets. I'd read one and then I and then I'd say, Oh, I like this poem, and she's like, All right, I'll find you another one. So she started to bring me poems and poets that like connected their different things. So I got to read poets that otherwise I never would have heard of, like Nikki Giovanni, who's an African-American poet who is very famous uh in the 70s and 80s, but as a young Irish kid, I never would have heard of her, right? And so I got to read almost her entire body of work. She's this incredible, very musical, very lyrical poet. And then I started to read others and different people. I got into novelist called Zora Neil Hurston. Yeah, things I just never had experienced before. And I mean, she was obviously trying to influence me, right? So she's bringing things that she thought were important, but then she also brought me things like, you know, William Butler Yeats, who I had only ever read like the bet, you know, like one poem. But she brought me his corpus, Dylan Thomas, John Keats, just a tremendous amount of things. And then she introduced me to maybe my the single greatest poetic influence I've ever had, and that's Charles Bukowski.
SPEAKER_00So this librarian, this woman for 10 months brought you poetry and literature and helped you figure out how you could submit your poems to awards or publications. What came of that?
SPEAKER_01The first few, like I didn't hear anything back, but I started to do it every, like I said, every month. And so I could send out three submissions a month. The second month, I got responses to all three submissions. They were like these little uh form of responses, but I was so excited to get mail. They were these little cards that would say, Hey, thank you for submitting your poem to like X Journal. Like, we don't have a spot for your poem now, but please continue to consider us in the future. And I now know that that's like a standard thing in submitting poems. And what happened was I got excited and I started to trade my food for more stamps. And it was funny how we traded. We had like little strings, and we like throw it down this down the tier because you could fit your hand kind of under the door. So we would like to slide stuff up and down the tier. I figured out the food I didn't like, and I would find people that liked that food. So I'd be like, Hey, you know, who likes Jell-O? And you know, if someone liked Jell O, I'd be like, ah, you know, how many stamps do you want to give me for the Jell-O? Because most of the people in the hole don't use those legal things. So I would usually get that whole little legal kit. And the legal kit was like three stamps, three envelopes, some sheets of paper, and like a little blue pen. So I would get all those and I would accumulate them in my cell. And so probably about four months in, I was sending out anywhere from 40 to 50 submissions a month.
SPEAKER_00And then what happened?
SPEAKER_01So I got out of the hole and I ended up in Bridgewater Prison. It was just an easier place to be, I guess, is the best way to look at it. And so I got there and I got access to the library there. And within two months of arriving there, I got a very important letter as far as my poetic journey. So I had submitted to this poetry review called the Hiram Poetry Review in Ohio, which is published by Hiram College. And the editor there was named was Willard Greenwood. He's still the editor to this day. And he wrote me a letter about a poem that I had submitted. And the letter was the first uh detailed feedback I had ever gotten from an editor.
SPEAKER_00Did he know you were incarcerated when you sent it?
SPEAKER_01He knew I was incarcerated. He gave me great encouragement and he challenged me. I will be forever grateful for Mr. Greenwood. But basically, the letter he wrote me was hey, John, this poem that you sent me is good, but it could be great. You should rewrite it. And I'm telling you right now, you need to kill your babies. That's what he wrote. Now I didn't know what that meant, but it was super encouraging. And so I reread the poem. And in the poem, there were three lines that I loved. I just loved them. And I realized those were my babies. And so I took those lines out of the poem, I rewrote it, and I resubmitted it like within 24 hours. And I got a letter back three days later, and he bought my poem. I think I got seven dollars, and I got copies of the magazine that it was in. So my very first published poem, it's called So Rude The Flowers That Grow and Do Not Grow Beautiful. That's the title. It's a line in a poem from Charles Bukowski. And it was my first ever acceptance in my life at that level, you know, and it was a revolutionary moment.
SPEAKER_00Wow. I can't even imagine what that did for you in terms of motivating you. Does he know that? Have you talked to him since then?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I have. And so I don't know that he knows how much of a big deal it is. Because for him, it was just him being himself. I think he probably did that for a lot of poets. But he inspired me, and so that that really helped. And then from there I started getting published all over the place, dozens of magazines, and it made me confident because I thought, oh wow, I'm in jail doing this, and I'm good enough to get published. And so the point I eventually got published in a national magazine called America Magazine, which is published by the Jesuit order of Catholic Church. But at the time it had like a million subscribers. And so, you know, I got a poem published there. I made like 60 bucks. I got free subscription to the writer's market. The writer's market is a book that's like put out every year that like has access to all the publishers kind of in the United States. And in it has a ton of training materials. And in that, I found out that if you get paid for poetry ever, that you're in like the top 1% of poets ever who have lived. Because most of the poets. Poets never get paid. It's just rare to earn money for your poetry. And so that got me really excited. Like, oh man, maybe I can do this. I also started getting published as an essayist. So I wrote essays about a lot of different things. So this is about five years into my sentence. I made the determination that I was going to get out early with good time. And I was going to go back to college to Clark University in Worcester, where I had started when I was a teenager. And I was going to get into Clark and I was going to get my degree and become a working writer and a working artist. I got out of prison in 2019. I went to Clark like within two weeks of that release. And I found out that I was actually still a student. So I had never withdrawn from Clark when I had gone on my uh early life prison journey. And so I was still a student. I was actually on probation, which is great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's stunning. I mean it's remarkable. I mean, and it really makes me want to find that librarian.
SPEAKER_01She's not the only one. There's several other people that helped me on that journey. The Department of Corrections is retaliatory against staff members who help prisoners. It's just a fact.
SPEAKER_00This is so much information, and I'm I'm loving this. So you got out, you did your degree, you had these concentrations, you kind of turned your life around. I wonder if there was a moment of redemption, you know, if you've ever had contact with the woman that you guys tied up, what that looked like for you. And then also I really want to talk about the stuff that you're doing now with Hollywood and Worcester.
SPEAKER_01So I'm still involved in what's called restorative justice. Restorative justice is a program that connects offenders with people that they've uh victimized. And I would say that because of that program, I can't discuss the interactions that I've had with the family. But I would say that I've done what they've asked me to do. They've definitely supported my journey, if that makes sense. It's the best way to put it.
SPEAKER_00The important thing there is I assume the restorative justice program is voluntary. It is. So that's a choice that you made to try to make things right as best as you can.
SPEAKER_01There's a confrontation aspect of that program where the person would get an opportunity. And so I would say that at this point, I've I've done what they what they've asked me to do. And I also respect their wishes that they want. Because, you know, again, my I've become a public person with my journey, and I still did commit those crimes. And so it's not easy for a person who's been a victim of a crime, even if they've had reconciliation with somebody, to also see that person on the news or in the media. You know what I mean? That's that's a tough thing. And so I follow the rules that they've asked me to follow. And I look forward to if they ever choose there to be kind of a fuller restoration, if they want that. But I also respect that it's their choice. Uh, as far as redemption goes, I would say that I think that that's a part that's coming. And what I mean by that is that this year is probably gonna be the biggest year of my career. There's there's two movies that I'm a major part of that are gonna come out this year. One we just finished in the last couple days, actually, and then another one that'll be finished probably in June. Those are gonna come out in Hollywood film group. It was a dream that was born while I was working at a warehouse. And so basically I got out of jail. I got three jobs. I got a job um with People Ready, which is the division of labor ready. And that job was like demo work, like I did demolition. I got a second job working at the DCU center cleaning up after the hockey team and the football team, the arena football team at the time. So I would like to clean the seats for people's nachos. Uh so I did that. And then I joined a church and I became part of the church media team and the music ministry in that church, and that led to a job with Westerman restaurant and store and restaurant equipment, which also owns Westerman's props, which is the largest prop house in New England that rents out to movie houses. And so I ended up working there and I ended up working in the warehouse. And so I got to interact with hundreds and hundreds of movies. And so a second part of my mom's encouragement of me is that she used to, when I was when I was in in school and I was getting in trouble, she used to dismiss me and bring me to movies with just trying to get me back on track. And so I also developed a love for movies and uh love, you know, watching movies, you know, as I was working at the warehouse and getting to experience kind of the art department side, which is that's the side of the people who dress the sets and put on the makeup and the costumes and all that stuff. I found myself intrigued with how writing and movies and music all kind of interact. And so, you know, I eventually believed in myself enough to start my own company. And so I started Hollywood Film Group as a corporation a few years ago. The first year of small business owners out there will know it was not easy. But now we're profitable and we are able to at least uh pay me a salary, which is great. And then we're moving into the direction of being able to create a sustainable film economy, an art kind of based economy here in Worcester, and to give guys like me a chance, because I know how it is, and I recognize that there are people who struggled through things and have gone through things that haven't done it. I actually have an intern uh now, which is unbelievable. Uh, and you know, I have great partners. Tommy J. Dwyer is a local director, Leanne Sylvia. She's actually the CEO of the company and she's an artist in her own right. She does a lot of creative stuff there. Manny Alvarado is a local media guy who's partnered with me on a bunch of different projects. And there's there's a bunch more. Those are the three main ones, so I should mention them. It's a full service production company. We film movies, we write movies, and we edit them, and then we help get them into distribution. And I think that the stories that I'm trying to tell, which are stories about redemption, this is why I answered it this way, is the goal, is to show you that you can do it. There has been, as far as like agency support, zero outside, right? My first probation officer told me that it hit it was his job to get me locked back up, but I had learned enough to know that I needed to ask for a different probation officer. I got a different probation officer. I've had a great relationship with him since, but everything's driven by me. Everything's driven by me behaving, me doing the right thing, me focused on everything. And the criticism that comes my way is instantaneous and swift whenever my record comes up. So you have to do 10 times the work that you were doing that anybody else would have to do. But Melissa, let me tell you, when I say that it is the best time of my life, it is the best time of my life. I am everyday inspired, engaged, invigorated, even when it's hard. And it's hard. It's hard to get money, it's hard to get investors, it's hard. But you know what? I've never been able to build something, and I am building. Now it could fail. And that's the thing I think that's different about John in the past. John in the past, if he wrote a poem that didn't get accepted, would have been upset, right? But John now is a man that has failed at every level in life and recognizes that the failure is what built me into the man that could do what I can do now. And I the right the way I write and sing the way I sing and play the guitar the way I do, or all the different things I do in that part of my life, I am a product of all this work, all this life work, all this dedication, all this inspiration, all the investment from my mom and from adults like the librarians of the world. And if I just stay on this path, I'm gonna affect the world in a positive way. And although when I die, it's gonna say on my obituary that I did bad things, they'll be able to say that it ended well.
SPEAKER_00I'm sitting here listening to you. I'm just overcome with emotion. My dog is, he just came over and put his head on my lap because he can feel all the emotion coming out of me while you speak, which is a testament, I think, to what you're saying. You know, you finished that 10-year stint and you didn't come out and say, okay, well, I'm healed now and I'm gonna just leave all of that behind me and move forward. You volunteered for a program where you gave the victim an opportunity to really just confront you and call the shots in terms of how she wanted to move forward. You didn't turn your back on it. You you took ownership and you you are remorseful and and you are doing what you can to make the best of your life from this point forward. It's a really powerful story, and it's it's a real strong testament to art and poetry and music and also just the incredible influence your mother had when you were so young and she had very little in her control to be able to influence your life. But man, what did she she did for you was just unbelievable. And I do feel very strongly that Hollywood is going to be successful. I'm excited for you, and I'm excited for for these movies that are coming out for you. We will link in the show notes your Substack and your socials.
SPEAKER_01It's johnedwardkeo.substack.com. It's also known as writing stuff down.
SPEAKER_00I'm really grateful that you were so honest and gave me this time. And I is there anything else you want to say before we wrap up, John?
SPEAKER_01I would just say that um whatever circumstances you're in, even if you've done something bad, that doesn't mean that you need to stop contributing or or become you know quiet or whatever. You can still do it, and you can still do it while honoring whatever obligations you feel in your own heart that you've that you have to pay back. Most people feel some kind of debt when they have committed crimes and they started to realize, hey, oh, I did something really bad. So if you feel that way, the better and more constructive way to do that is to pour into that your passion and do that as best you can. It doesn't matter who's involved, as long as you just give it your all.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, John. There's a Patsy Klein song that John's mother used to play for him when he was young. She was a writer herself, someone who made sure her son had paper and pen even when they had very little else. And somewhere between those early days in South Boston and the holding cells he'd find himself in years later, that song became something he carried inside him. He'd sing it quietly while waiting to be sentenced, not just to steady himself, but to calm the people and cells around him. Even in his most desperate moments, John was using music to take care of others. And there's something worth sitting with about why that song, of all songs, became his anchor. It's a song about longing, about moving through darkness, searching for something just out of reach, hoping that somewhere out there what you're looking for is searching for you too. For a six-year-old boy who grew into a man who spent decades inside institutions, that image of walking through the dark towards something better. That's not a love song, that's a survival song. And every time he sang it in a holding cell, quietly, for himself and the people around him, he was saying, I am still moving, I am still searching, I am not done yet. What this conversation made clear is that John's story isn't in a simple redemption arc. It's more honest than that. He doesn't frame his childhood as an excuse, and he had every right to. He was six years old when the system first got a hold of him. Six. Found in a train station, homeless with his mother and siblings, and processed as a truant. The deck was stacked against him in ways that most of us will never fully reckon with. And yet, when John talks about the people he harmed, he doesn't look away. He owns it completely. When he was released, one of the first things he did was partner with a restorative justice organization to give voice to the people that most affected by his actions. To sit across from the harm he caused and not flinch. That takes a different kind of courage than surviving the whole. And then there's what he built. Hollywood Studios isn't just a production company. It's a long game. John is using film and storytelling to create space for his own redemption, told on his own terms through his own lens. He has perfect pitch, he plays guitar, he used music inside as a lifeline, not casually but strategically, knowing that access to it was a privilege he had to protect to staying in the course. He traded food for stamps so he could submit poetry from solitary confinement. He exchanged one hunger for another, and that hunger turned into a published poem, then a college degree, then a studio, and then this conversation. His mother gave him the first key, a librarian slid that second one under a cell door, and John Keogh did the rest. That is exactly why Intune exists, because these stories don't get told enough. And the people living them deserve more than a footnote in someone else's narrative about crime and consequence. John is the author now, and we are grateful he shared a chapter with us today. Each episode of Intune will include a segment called The Pulse, where I respond to real questions from teachers, parents, educational leaders, or community partners about inclusion and music. In the pulse, we step back from the conversation and offer something practical for the educators, teaching artists, and advocates listening. Today's Pulse is inspired directly by John's story. John Edward Keogh was six years old when the system first decided what kind of kid he was. And for the next thirty years, that label followed him, shaping how institutions saw him, how they responded to him, and what they believed he was capable of. But here's what the record never captured: a boy whose mother read him poetry, a teenager who carried a song inside of him wherever he went, a man with perfect pitch and a mind built for language, whose passion for the written word was so consuming, so relentless that it pulled him out of his circumstances and carried him all the way through. For educators working with youth who have been labeled, removed, or pushed out of traditional learning spaces, here are things to hold on to. One, the record is a snapshot, not a story. Every file, every IEP notation, every disciplinary history tells you what happened. It doesn't tell you who is sitting in front of you today. Make it a practice to meet the student before you meet their paperwork. Ask them what they're good at. Ask them what they love. You may be the first adult in a long time who has. Two, access is an act of advocacy. The librarian who slid books under John's cell door didn't overhaul the system. She just made sure he had what he needed to survive it. You don't have to fix everything to change everything. Putting the right book, the right instrument, the right song, in the right hands at the right moment, that is intervention. Don't underestimate it. Three, creativity is not a reward for good behavior. For youth who have been pushed to the margins, music, poetry, and art are often the only spaces where they experience competence, identity, and belonging. These are not extras to be earned, they are essentials. If you are working with a young person who has been removed from the traditional classroom, ask yourself, what creative outlet do they have access to? And if the answer is none, that is your entry point. Four, understand what your student is walking back into. John made a point in our conversation that I don't want us to move past too quickly. When someone is released from custody, whether that's a young person leaving DYS placement or an adult walking out of DOC, society rarely greets them as someone who has served their time and followed every step required of them to be released. Instead, they are treated as if they just committed their crime. The sentence doesn't end at the gate. It follows them into every job application, every housing form, every classroom, every relationship. For educators, this means the young person sitting in front of you may be carrying not just what they did, but the weight of how the world has decided to keep defining them by it. Your classroom may be one of the only spaces where they are treated as someone with a future rather than somebody defined by a past. That is not a small responsibility and is not a small opportunity. Five, partner, don't save. John said something in our conversation that stopped me cold. When I asked him what he could have used from the adults who tried to help him as a kid, the ones who showed up but couldn't reach him, he didn't hesitate. Don't act as a savior, but act as if you're a partner with the person. Most of us came to this work because we wanted to help. And wanting to help is not the problem. The problem is what happens when helping quietly becomes rescuing, when our need to fix becomes the loudest thing in the room. Young people know the difference. John knew it as a kid. But before you intervene, ask yourself Am I doing this for them? Or am I doing this for my idea of who they should become? Partnership means following their lead, staying when it's uncomfortable, and trusting that your role is to hand them the tools, not read the ending for them. John's story is proof that transformation doesn't require perfect conditions. It requires one person who refuses to see a record when a human being is sitting right there. And who shows up as a partner, not a savior. That person could be you. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If this conversation resonated, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. It really helps others find the show. You can also send me your questions or coaching topics at opportunity music.org slash in tune, and I might feature them in a future episode. That's O P P O R T-U-N-E-I-T-Y-Music.org slash in tune. Until next time, stay inspired, stay connected, and keep making music that brings people together.
SPEAKER_01I stop to see a weeping willow crying on his pillow. Maybe he's crying for me. And as the skies turn gloomy, night winds whisper to me, I'm lonesome as I can be. I go on walking after midnight out in the starlight, just hoping you may be somewhere walking. After midnight, searching for me.