July 7, 2025 • 39 mins
Joshua Roman has been playing the cello everyday since he was three - but then on a concert tour he caught Covid. The illness wouldn't go away and sapped his ability to play the music he loves at the level he was used to.
How can things like music help us feel better during tough times? And what can tough times teach us about appreciating and reappraising the activities we sometimes take for granted?
Check out more of Joshua's music at https://www.joshuaroman.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This season of The Happiness Lab is all about
coping strategies, and one of my favorite go to coping
strategies is music. With just a few clicks on my phone,
I can pick a track that will help calm me
down in times of stress, or pump me up when
I'm facing a challenge, or transport me back to happier
(00:37):
times when I'm feeling blue. But as a professional composer
and celebrated cellist, my guest on today's episode has developed
a way more profound relationship with music. Joshua Roman began
playing a child sized cello at age three and gave
his first public recital at age ten. He's now played
with great orchestras and collaborated with some of the top
(00:59):
names in classical music. Joshua was a huge rising star
and driving himself to ever greater heights until he was
struck down by long COVID.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
And it took a debilitating condition to strip me of
all ability before I let myself just be and that
has changed everything about how I feel with music and
really with life and the people around me.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
So to continue our journey into the coping strategies that
real people use to tackle real problems. I've asked Joshua
to explain how music has not only helped him during
times of adversity, but also how those times of adversity
have helped him to regain something he'd lost in his
relationship with music. But before jumping into all that, let's
start at the beginning, the overture, as it were, Josh's childhood.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It's hard to know exactly the moment when the love
of cello took over, but I do remember the day
that cello arrived. I was three years old. I remember
the house I was in. We only lived in that
house for maybe half of a year. The ups two
livery lady with her brown shorts, and the box was
bigger than me. It was a small cello, but still,
(02:16):
and I don't remember ever not loving it. And I
know that by six I was telling people that this
is what I wanted to do with the rest of
my life. But there's not really a moment where there
was a transition. It just feels like it was always
going to happen.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And So tell me a little bit about your childhood
and how cello fit in. I'm kind of thinking about
the things that you went through and how cello was
helping you cope back then.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, I grew up in Oklahoma, and it's not the
place with the biggest infrastructure for classical musicians. My parents
were church musicians that were recently retired. Now, my dad
was the choir director at that point getting his degree
or whatever it is that makes him officially a reverend,
So he's officially a reverend, but he was always focused
(03:01):
on the community and engagement and especially music, so very
much a musical family. My mom would play the piano
companying the choir, and that's kind of what I fell into,
is just music being a part of our everyday lives
and a part of our experience with the people around us.
Music was something that happened at lessons on Thursdays or
(03:24):
Wednesdays or whenever that was, and you would practice and
prepare for that. But in between, music was all the time.
We were always singing, we were always playing whatever instruments
were lying around. From a very early age, I was
just taught to try it, like why not pick up
the trombone, play the guitar. And that's something that I
(03:45):
really cherish, is just music as a way of being
in community with other people, and that connection and shared experience,
I think is very powerful.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It also seems like music was a bit of a
constant for you when other things were changing around. I
understand you kind of moved a lot as a kid.
Kind of describe what that was like.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
We did. We were in a lot of different houses.
I think by the time I was thirty five, I'd
lived in more than thirty five places, and a lot
of that was when I was young. But when I
didn't know how else to connect with people, I could
at least join the band. For example, when we moved
to Mississippi from Oklahoma, I learned to play the bass guitar.
(04:27):
I would make the cello work. In certain bands, I
could find the pianists and play with them. Music was
always a way of connecting with people pretty quickly, and
you start to make sound together and you don't have
to talk. It's great.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
It also seems like you started noticing the benefits of
music really early on. Right. One of the ones that
we know from the science is that music is incredibly rewarding. Right,
Listening to music activates all the same reward areas as
things like food and money, And it seems like music
was sort of your go to reward for you know,
a lot of the time you were growing up.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, you know, looking back, a lot of that is reward,
and some of that might have also been the only
thing that felt good in that moment. There was lots
of stuff going on, Scouts orchestra later, that came later,
A soccer I was always in soccer. I loved studying too.
(05:23):
I was a real math nerd. I loved all those
kinds of things. But with music, I could work on
it in the room alone. I could shut the door
and say my brothers and sister have to stay out
because I'm practicing, and I could make progress. I could
get better at something. I could go, oh, this is cool.
I really want to do that now, and then I
(05:44):
could go share it with people. Music let me have
what felt like, I guess, better interactions or more rewarding
or meaningful interactions with people because I brought something to
the table and that was maybe a version of what
you're talking about, for sure, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
It also seems like music is super good at helping
us regulate our emotions, whether we want to kind of
get pumped up and kind of hyped up, or whether
we want to wallow in our kind of sadness but
kind of have a beautiful thing to wallow in. Oh yeah,
Is this something that you found with music early on too?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yes? Absolutely, And I would do that with the cello,
of course, but I would also do that with the
radio and with tapes and CDs and sometimes records. And
there's a lot of stuff that I guess I didn't
understand or have the right context for how to process.
You know, teenagers have so much, so much going on,
(06:39):
and music was a place where even if I couldn't
work through the details, I could feel it, I could
express it and get some sort of sense that that
was okay.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
There's also lots of evidence that music can kind of
make us feel more present, it can make us mindful,
and I think especially when you're playing music, you can
get in this state of flow. Is this kind of wonderful,
happiness inducing state that the psychologist me Hi Cheek set
me High talked about a lot. While you're kind of
in the zone, time is past, you're kind of forgetting
your bodily needs, but you're just like feeling great and
(07:13):
kind of challenging and pushing yourself. And it seems like,
especially early on, this was something that you got out
of playing the cello a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I would obsess overflow, not just in the cello. I
think cello was where it was most successive, is most
accessible to me because you're doing so many of the
things that flow requires in terms of openness and focus
at the same time. And I mean, I would really
geek out about this. I pretty young read The Inner
Game of Tennis, which talks about flow. But I was
(07:43):
always really into that basic idea that you could find
a state of awareness or of being that allowed you
to have that feeling like time didn't exist.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And so you found a way to get these benefits
kind of permanently as your career. I love that you
announced at six years of age, like, oh, do playing
the cello forever? But yeah, you actually kind of went
good on that. I announced at six years old that
I was going to be a dolphin trainer, but I
did not make good on that. There's still time, still time, right,
but you jumped in early. So tell me about the
paths of becoming a professional cellist.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh my gosh. Well, I guess I'm glad that I
didn't know what I was doing when I said that,
and no one around me knew either. Again, no infrastructure
for classical music in Oklahoma. I was studying with a violinist.
I didn't even have a cello teacher. I was playing
the cello and he would be on the violin demonstrating,
(08:39):
and I would copy on the cello. But basically my parents'
thought was, we can't find the cello teacher that we
want that will agree to take a three year old,
so we'll do the next best thing. We'll just find
the best musician that will take a three year old,
and that happened to be a violinist. So from the
(08:59):
very beginning it was kind of a hodgepodge of things that,
on one hand had these very deep values, you know,
we're gonna do the best possible with what we have.
At the same time, it was a lot of different
things pieced together. It was a violin teacher I was
in Oklahoma. Most of my formative chamber music experiences were
(09:21):
with rock bands, essentially me and my friends. Often I
would be on the cello, sometimes I would grab a
different instrument or just seeing I think my first string
quartet experience wasn't until I was thirteen or something, and
I'd been playing for ten years at that point, which
is a long time to go thinking this is what
(09:43):
I want to do with the rest of my life
and not experiencing what the usual path would be.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
But you were able to kind of jump into this profession.
You were thriving in your career. You were killing it.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, you know, as a classical cellist. I don't know
what people think of that career or what it entails.
The particular thing that I do as a soloist is
I don't regularly play with any particular orchestra. I'm not
a member of an orchestra, a member of a group,
or anything like that. I don't teach at a university.
I travel around as the guest artist with an orchestra
(10:17):
when they played what we call the concerto, where there's
a spotlight on the guest artist who is the soloist.
The piece of music they're playing is often from centuries ago,
sometimes it's brand new, but it's always a big feature.
And this was my dream. It's incredible to be able
to do this at all, let alone nike a living
(10:39):
doing it. It's very difficult. There are only a handful
of cellists in the country who are able to do
that and not also do other things. So I felt like,
despite all of my insecurities, I was really I was
really on the right path.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
But what happened in March twenty twenty when COVID hit.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, I think it was March twelfth. My manager calls
and an entire year of work was just wiped off
the calendar. At the time, I was also doing a
residency for composing, so I was living in Santa Barbara,
and so all of my belongings were in storage in
New York City. I had no fixed address. I was
(11:24):
not in any of the systems that you needed to
be in to get unemployment. So that phone call where
everything was wiped off the map was like pretty devastating.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Was that a time that you turned back to music
to kind of cope?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Laurie. I'm curious about this.
I don't think I did it in the most healthy way,
you know, Like I don't actually have any home at
that point, and I'm very lonely because I went out
there for solitude, for beauty of nature, to have inspiration
to write music, and I don't feel like I had
(11:59):
much of a choice but to double down on that,
So I did. I doubled down on that. I was
trying to compose. I started doing a live stream every
day day for a while.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, just trying to feel connected to people. But I
was actually just alone. So music was kind of that
desperate lifeline. And it's hard to say that it made
me happy, but I guess it kept me going.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
But a lot of things changed back in early twenty
twenty one. And so tell me what happened that fateful
day in Florida.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
All Right, So twenty twenty one, COVID had been going on.
This was January, So for a good nine ten months,
almost all of my concerts were canceled. One of the
only ones that wasn't was this performance in Florida. And
you know, I didn't have as many restrictions, and the
orchestra was extremely careful and great, so I felt comfortable
(13:01):
going despite everything else, and there was no way that
I was going to cancel one of the only opportunities
that I had in a whole year to perform and also, frankly,
to work and get paid. Not only was this an
important concert because it was one of the only concerts,
it's also this incredible piece. It's the Sinfonia Concertante the
(13:24):
Symphony Concretto by Sergei Prokofiev, which is a mammoth work.
The cello is just crazy. It goes all the way
up to the heights, serene, it plummets down to the depths.
It's wild and frenetic and chaotic. It's so difficult technically.
And this was my first performance of this piece ever
(13:45):
with an orchestra. And I got to Florida and played
the first concert. We're so excited. The next morning I
woke up and I couldn't really taste the toothpaste very well.
The thing that I remember as thinking, uh oh, and
grabbing a box of altoids and stuffing my nose in
(14:06):
it and nothing, And I was, no, this is not good.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It wasn't good. In fact, it was about to get
far worse than Joshua ever expected. But more on that.
After the break we left Cellis Joshua Roman on a
concert tour, frantically sniffing toothpaste and altoids, checking to see
(14:33):
if a sense of smell really had disappeared, a sure
sign that he'd caught COVID.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I panicked a bit, got a test, and of course
it came back positive. The orchestra canceled that concert. I
found a place to hole up for a while. My
infection was not that bad, it was kind of weird.
I mostly had the unrecognizable symptoms. I wasn't coughing, but
(15:01):
I was short of breath. I wasn't sneezing, but I
couldn't smell or taste. There were weird things going on
with fatigue that didn't just feel like being tired, and
then I just never got better.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So awful, and so describe what that fatigue was like.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It was really strange. It's like I'm wearing a coat
of heavy metal or armor underneath my skin, embedded in
the muscles, like everything is just so difficult to move.
Or if you've ever woken up at the wrong time
with jet lag and not been able to sort out
(15:42):
how to lift your arm, that's a similar feeling.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Okay, I've had bad jet lag, but my arms have
always worked. Like when you traveling to like Europe for Asia.
This is a new one for me.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Well, I the only times that's happened to me are yes,
traveling to Asia or something and then waking up totally
at the wrong time and your body's so confused. If
anyone listening has felt that. Drop it in the comments.
I love the ways that we describe sensations because it's
really difficult to pin down whether we're talking about the
(16:16):
same thing. Yeah, so much of the time. But the
quality of this fatigue is not sleepiness. It has nothing
to do with I need to go to bed. It
has everything to do with I don't know how to
get the energy to move something, or to lift my arm,
or when it comes to thinking. Last night, I was
(16:38):
laying on the ground and I realized in conversation with
my fiance that I couldn't think. I could only speak
like I couldn't conjure up words unless I was saying them.
And I don't know exactly what's going on with that,
but physically, cognitively, this fatigue is debilitating, and sleep doesn't
(16:59):
fix it.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
You also had this condition that I've heard of with
long COVID called dysautonomia. Yes, what's that? And what did
that feel like?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Well? I still have that one, though it's a lot
less inhibiting than it used to be. It's a nervous
system condition. And this is my bastardization of something that
I heard from a doctor somewhere so please forgive me.
But the nervous system generally takes an input like a
temperature change, and then the output would be what the
(17:29):
body does in response, so sweating to cool you off,
for example, or in the other direction, shivering to warm
you up. And similarly, when you're running a marathon in
mile twenty one or whatever it is, when your body
is really trying to slow you down, that feeling is
(17:51):
the nervous system giving you signals because of the information
it's receiving from the body. Otherwise you wouldn't have that feeling.
You would just keep going in damage, tissues and all
that sort of thing. So dysautonomia is when those signals
are mixed up, when those wires get crossed. Yesterday I
(18:13):
was walking up to subway stairs. I had to stop
three times for one flight of stairs. And I know
that my muscles can do this, but my nervous system,
using the sensation of fatigue and heaviness, is screaming You've
done way too much. It's a mix up. It's a
(18:33):
mix up of signals. In the same way that sometimes
I will start shivering uncontrollably, feel incredibly cold, and everyone
else is in shorts and a T shirt.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Fine, So give me a sense of how these changes
affected your life, Like, what was your kind of morning
routine like before long COVID kicked in versus now?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Well, let's start with the sleeping Four hours was kind
of what I considered the necessary six was great and
anything past that was a waste of time. So if
I went to bed at four, I'd be up by ten.
If I went to bed at midnight, which was very rare,
then I'd be up by six. And the passa meditation
(19:18):
an hour in the morning and an hour in the
evening and charge it the day. Let's go run six miles.
How close to one hundred pushups in a row can
we do? Can we clap in between? What if we
do a workout class where we lift weights and then
a yoga class so that the brain will be really clear,
(19:39):
and then I can jump into composing or practicing.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And so what's it like now? I get the sense
that it's very different.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, it's funny. You ask me again. My fiance Ana Luisa,
it'd be funny to get her perspective because we met.
Since I've gotten a long COVID, it's been over four
years now, so I've had to adjust to this to
a certain degree. She doesn't know the difference. She hasn't
seen me wake up and run out the door. I
(20:09):
mean now, I wake up and meditate as close to
twenty minutes as I can get, and sometimes it's not
a full twenty minutes, and I take about an hour
and a half or so to wake up. My body
just feels weird. It has these extra sensations all over
that are not really comfortable, and they stop me from
(20:33):
being able to move with ease. My brain, similarly have
to be really careful because if I do too much,
Let's say, if I do this Saturday morning New York
Times crossword puzzle, then I'm gonna need a break. So
I really have to think about what's coming in the day,
(20:55):
spend a lot more time planning. I go to bed
at ten thirty and I get up at seven fifteen
every night. It's a different world.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And how has that changed your cello practice?
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Well, when I first was trying to play the cello again,
I would play for two or three minutes and that's it.
That's all I could do in a whole day. Just
moving the bow was so exhausting. And I had one
other concert, and I had two months, a little over
(21:26):
two months, I think, so I was trying to practice
every day. Eventually I got up to twenty minutes, which
was the length of the piece that I was playing,
and that was huge. So for a few days that's
all I would do is once a day I would
play that piece. And then I decided to try to
practice it. And practicing is different than playing. When you're
(21:48):
just playing through something, you know, you're just having fun
or you're just going through it. But what I was
doing was I was thinking, Okay, is this in tune?
Could this sound different? Would this be better if I
used different fingers to give it a different feel, you know,
those sorts of analytical decisions. And instead of twenty minutes,
(22:11):
it was about a minute or so, and I was shaking,
had to have help putting the cello away. I couldn't
open my eyes. I had a complete crash. And it
was a real lesson in the different ways of engaging
with music that I was going to have to start
paying really close attention to how I was treating the
(22:33):
cello and then later realizing how I was treating myself
as I practiced.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
And this led you at the time to make a
really tough decision. What was that?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Well, after that concert, I put the cello away. I
just gave up. I thought this is too hard, and
I put it in the case. There was nothing on
the calendar, so I wasn't really in danger of letting
anyone else down. Basically, it was a choice do I
wash the dishes today or do I try to practice
(23:04):
for a few minutes. I was pushing myself so hard
and getting humble by my body for pushing it. I
was just dragged down so far that I didn't think
that there was anything on the other side of all
of this work that was going to make it worth it.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
And what was that like? I mean, my sense is
like a lot of people, you know put their instruments away,
But this seems like it was the first time your
cello was away for more than like a few hours
in your life.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yes, I don't actually remember what the longest amount of
time I had ever gone without practicing was before that,
but suffice it to say, in the past, if I had,
let's say, a flight, I would practice in the airport,
or I would sit with the cello in a hotel
(23:48):
room after it's too late to practice and I would
move my left hand to practice, and I would kind
of fake the right hand so that I could still
be practicing. I was obsessed, and for me to intentionally
say I'm not going to practice even for one day
(24:10):
was such a wild radical concept. But to put the
cello in its case and say, I don't know when
I'm gonna pick this back up again, I didn't think
that would ever happen to me.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I mean, it strikes me that this wasn't even just
like an instrument. It was almost like your friend.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, I mean I played since I was three. It's
human size. It's the little things like the cello has
to fly in a seat on the airplane, so Cello
Roman has been traveling next to me taking the window
seat because you know, you can't climb over in an emergency,
so I for years. You can make all the jokes
(24:46):
and everything, but it's also real, like that's a real relationship.
The vibrations coming from the cello moving through my body
is something that is second nature. My body has grown
around the cello. My right shoulder is shorter than my
left shoulder. My left fingers are substantially longer than my
(25:07):
right fingers because from the age of three, they were
stretching and moving in ways that my right hand was not.
There's all of this stuff that we grew up together.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And now it was in a box, and now I
was in a box. I find it so heartbreaking that Joshua,
who was once described as the Jimi Hendrix of the cello,
was so sick that he could no longer even hold
his instrument. But of course the story doesn't end there.
We'll hear more After this quick break. Long COVID was
(25:45):
wrecking havoc on the career of concert cellis Joshua Roman.
Since the age of three, the instrument he loved so
much had been a constant presence in his life. But
months of overwhelming fatigue forced Joshua to put his cello down,
unsure if he would ever play it again.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
The cello was in its case for almost three months.
This was early April twenty twenty one, and I didn't
I should again until right before Summer Solstice in June.
And I remember that because the reason I did was
that someone had asked me to play for their summer
Solstice party, and I said yes, kind of like sure,
(26:23):
I'll probably cancel later, but I'll say yes. Because I
feel guilty, and then I just forgot to cancel, and
a couple of days before the party there I was like, uh, oh,
this is happening, so I should probably get the cello
out and let's figure out if I still know how
to do this. And you know, this is probably something
(26:44):
I should work with my therapist about not holding on too.
But this image that sticks with me of wiping the
dust off the cello case is just wild to me
that it sat. I didn't even move it. It just
collected dust for almost three months. And then I started
to play, and I started with the famous prelude by
(27:08):
Bach Do.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Doooty doo Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do
do you do?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
You know, the one from the car commercials. But it's
the best, It's really the best. And you know, of
course I was feeling for my fingers, like this kind
of rusted over feel that you get when they're used
to doing something and then they don't for a long time.
But what immediately took over was the vibrations against my
(27:35):
chest moving through my body. And it was the most
moving moment that I'd had with the cello in so long.
This rush of emotions and realizations and energy. I was overwhelmed,
(27:55):
but also so suddenly motivated and inspired and like things
just clicked into place, and.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Kind of getting back to music has allowed you to
do lots of things that we talk about on this podcast.
It seems to have involved a lot of self compassion
and a lot of what we call radical acceptance. What
is that radical acceptance meant to you?
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So? I think one of the biggest things is that
I don't play the cello unless I want to. So
there are days when I don't practice, and the me
of six years ago is like, what the heck are
you doing? I don't know if I can swear, so
I'm not going to.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
You can swear, It's fine, what the hell are you doing, Joshua.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
You're supposed to practice every day. But more than anything now,
I treasure the trust in the relationship. You know, the
cello is a proxy for a part of myself. I
know it's just an inanimate object. But there's something about
am I practicing because I feel like I'm supposed to,
(28:55):
or do I actually feel an internal impetus and desire
to make music? And sometimes that is a little bit Okay, Well,
I do have a concert tomorrow and I really want
to sound good, but it's not I'm supposed to get
better because that's how people prove something. No, I'm going
(29:15):
to play because I want to play it, because I
love exploring it. And when I pick up the cello,
I'm in a different state of mind. I'm ready, I'm
approaching it a different way. I'm never sitting at the
cello thinking, oh, I have to do this, even though
I loved it before a lot of times I'll admit
now it was guilt or it was some other thing.
(29:35):
And what I was training myself to do was to
ignore that part of myself and try to force the
cello to be a tool. And again, that's a proxy
for a part of myself. Force myself to be a
tool and service of something else. To deny my state
of being would have any effect on it. Sure, in
a moment of crisis, maybe you need to push past,
(29:58):
but especially when we're talking about scratching a wooden box
to bring people joy, like, what the hell, no, you
kind of like pay attention to how you feel.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I love this example so much because this whole season
is about coping strategies, which, when used in the way
you're talking about them, where it's compassionate and patient. These
things are great, But any good coping strategy, whether it's
meditation or kind of taking time to exercise or something,
if you're doing it in this forced way in the
like have do I should weigh winds up not having
(30:28):
the benefits that you might think. And it seems like
even with music you're able to find this like you
have to have a kind of compassionate relationship with this
coping strategy or it's like not going to work in
the way you think.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It's so fascinating. Right, what you're saying is to me,
it's reinforcing that idea that it's all about opening up
the lines of communication in a way, whether it's between
parts of yourself or other people, the understanding. First of all,
there's a relationship, and every relationship needs a certain amount
of trust, and that you just don't actually build the
(30:59):
trust that you need to feel good. If it's all
about checkboxes and improvement. Those things, yes, they're useful, they're
important tools, but if they're the basis of a relationship,
the relationship is not going to grow in actual trust.
It's just going to have a very fancy system of verification.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Another way, that you've been able to grow your trust
to this kind of awful, long COVID incident is to
really trust the importance of rest. Yes, and it seems
like you've also had a lot of acceptance for what
your body can really do. I know you even carry
something with you to remind yourself and other people about this. Right.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yes, I have a card. I have many of them
printed up, and it's something that people can look at
if I have a what I call a crash, which
incapacitates me to various degrees.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
And just so we understand what is that? What would
that look like in public if you had one.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I've really tried not to have them in public, but sometimes,
even walking home, I will have a crash and I
will suddenly look like someone who's just stumbling, barely able
to shuffle forward. My eyes will be closing. And that's
a minor crash if I can still keep walking and
I will push myself to get home. A full crash
(32:15):
is not being able to sit up, not being able
to open my eyes, not being able to speak, often
not even being able to think. It's uncomfortable because it's incapacitating,
but it's not physically painful. I kind of stop being there.
It's kind of crazy, and it's for someone who used
(32:36):
to fix everything by running faster, it's pretty crazy to
be faced with this phenomenon that I still deal with
pretty often.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And so how do you have acceptance for that? Just
seems so hard.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
It's very difficult. And this is where I think the
beautiful irony of kind of getting the lessons that you
need rather than the lessons that you want from life.
I can't push my way through it. Pushing is what
causes crashes. So really paying attention to what precipitates a
crash and whether there's anything I can do either in
(33:14):
the moment to say, oh, this is about to happen.
So I have to stop. I have to leave this party,
I have to get out of this loud place. I
have to grab a cab, instead of thinking I can
walk all the way to this store today or backing
up a step. And this is where it's really been
life changing, is planning my day saying Okay, I know
(33:37):
this is going to take a lot of energy, and
that's going to take a lot of energy. So those
two things can't happen on the same day. Our conversation
is one of two things that I'm going to do
today that require a certain level of engagement and energy
over any kind of sustained period of time. The rest
of the day is going to be a mix of
resting and not taxing my brain too much. I've also
(34:02):
learned how to ask for help, how to delegate. I've
been building a team, I have a business, all these
sorts of things. When you start to prioritize and take
care of yourself and think about the people around you,
all of a sudden you start building structures that give
everyone things to do, and it's just it's much better.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
I also understand that you've been able to kind of
come to terms with your long COVID through your music,
getting back to music as a coping mechanism, And so
how have you been able to do that and kind
of share your vulnerability with others in the same way
you've shared music.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah, thank you for asking about that. It's kind of
interesting because I get the question a lot, like how
does music help you get better? And for me, it's
such a twisted answer because the act of listening to
music even is taxing. So if I sit down and
listen to a mall or symphony, that's a big thing
(34:56):
for the day, not going to also do the Saturday
crossword puzzle that kind of decision making, let alone playing
the cello. So I have really focused on doing the
things that mean the most to me, that allow me
to bring as much as possible to the table. And
(35:18):
my friend Dasha at Princeton University started a series called
Healing with Music, and she was seeing me struggle with
long COVID, and at the time, you know, we would
tell my manager would tell people to expect that I
was going to need to lay down more, that I
was going to have this, and that they should be
ready for that. But I wasn't going around making long
(35:41):
COVID a part of anything I was doing. I said,
I had it on social media couple. I wasn't trying
to hide it, but it was just kind of a
thing in the background, and I was trying to keep
it that way, not to have it interfere with my work.
And she asked if I would be okay building a
program around my experience with long COVID and playing the
music that had helped me heal. Her asking that question
(36:05):
gave me an opportunity to think about things in a
different way. And for the maybe the very first time
to think about music not in terms of one of
two ways. This is what people expect to hear on
stage from a cello, so I'm going to do that,
or two, this is something I think other people will
find interesting, and so I'm going to do that. But
(36:27):
what seems really meaningful to me, like why am I
doing this? Let's put that on stage. And it was
really successful. I felt really good about it. It fit
together in a way that I could stand behind. I
didn't feel like I was projecting a false sense of
intellectualism or something like. No, this was the music that
(36:50):
I loved and that was giving me a reason to
play the cello and the story of why that was,
and that story was long COVID and is long COVID.
And from that experience built a project that I call Immunity,
where now it's everything from playing for other people with
long COVID and long COVID clinics to advocacy on the
(37:14):
hill to these residencies, and it's opened so many doors
and given me such a sense of purpose to be
able to not question whether what I'm doing is using
my energy. Well, the answer is yes, this is what
it's for this is what my energy is for, and
(37:37):
how can I build a life and the kinds of
relationships and team in life and work in artistry that
allow that kind of impact and connection in those relationships
to flourish.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I'm so grateful that Joshua Roman was willing to share
his journey with us today. His story shows just how
amazing music is as a coping strategy. It's such a
quick path to joy and togetherness for musicians and listeners alike.
But there's a second component of Joshua's story that I
really appreciated. Traumatic experiences like getting long COVID do suck,
(38:17):
but they can also help us grow, often in unexpected ways.
It's really helpful to remember that adversity does have a
bright side. It can help us appreciate all the stuff
we took for granted. There's one final episode left in
this special season on creative coping strategies, and it's devoted
to a sport that I have recently become a massive
(38:38):
fan of. It's a game that's skillful, competitive, fast paced,
and fun. It's called cornhole. We have under eighteen players
competing in the pro field against adults. I've seen players
throw on crutches. I mean, we have players that have
no arms, that throw at their feet. Literally anybody can play,
So now all of a sudden you get to compete
(38:59):
and there's no limitations or boundaries to that.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yes, we'll be learning how we can cope better with
cornhole next time on the Happiness Lab with me Laurie
Santos
Pushkin. This season of The Happiness Lab is all about
coping strategies, and one of my favorite go to coping
strategies is music. With just a few clicks on my phone,
I can pick a track that will help calm me
down in times of stress, or pump me up when
I'm facing a challenge, or transport me back to happier
(00:37):
times when I'm feeling blue. But as a professional composer
and celebrated cellist, my guest on today's episode has developed
a way more profound relationship with music. Joshua Roman began
playing a child sized cello at age three and gave
his first public recital at age ten. He's now played
with great orchestras and collaborated with some of the top
(00:59):
names in classical music. Joshua was a huge rising star
and driving himself to ever greater heights until he was
struck down by long COVID.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
And it took a debilitating condition to strip me of
all ability before I let myself just be and that
has changed everything about how I feel with music and
really with life and the people around me.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
So to continue our journey into the coping strategies that
real people use to tackle real problems. I've asked Joshua
to explain how music has not only helped him during
times of adversity, but also how those times of adversity
have helped him to regain something he'd lost in his
relationship with music. But before jumping into all that, let's
start at the beginning, the overture, as it were, Josh's childhood.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It's hard to know exactly the moment when the love
of cello took over, but I do remember the day
that cello arrived. I was three years old. I remember
the house I was in. We only lived in that
house for maybe half of a year. The ups two
livery lady with her brown shorts, and the box was
bigger than me. It was a small cello, but still,
(02:16):
and I don't remember ever not loving it. And I
know that by six I was telling people that this
is what I wanted to do with the rest of
my life. But there's not really a moment where there
was a transition. It just feels like it was always
going to happen.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And So tell me a little bit about your childhood
and how cello fit in. I'm kind of thinking about
the things that you went through and how cello was
helping you cope back then.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, I grew up in Oklahoma, and it's not the
place with the biggest infrastructure for classical musicians. My parents
were church musicians that were recently retired. Now, my dad
was the choir director at that point getting his degree
or whatever it is that makes him officially a reverend,
So he's officially a reverend, but he was always focused
(03:01):
on the community and engagement and especially music, so very
much a musical family. My mom would play the piano
companying the choir, and that's kind of what I fell into,
is just music being a part of our everyday lives
and a part of our experience with the people around us.
Music was something that happened at lessons on Thursdays or
(03:24):
Wednesdays or whenever that was, and you would practice and
prepare for that. But in between, music was all the time.
We were always singing, we were always playing whatever instruments
were lying around. From a very early age, I was
just taught to try it, like why not pick up
the trombone, play the guitar. And that's something that I
(03:45):
really cherish, is just music as a way of being
in community with other people, and that connection and shared experience,
I think is very powerful.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It also seems like music was a bit of a
constant for you when other things were changing around. I
understand you kind of moved a lot as a kid.
Kind of describe what that was like.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
We did. We were in a lot of different houses.
I think by the time I was thirty five, I'd
lived in more than thirty five places, and a lot
of that was when I was young. But when I
didn't know how else to connect with people, I could
at least join the band. For example, when we moved
to Mississippi from Oklahoma, I learned to play the bass guitar.
(04:27):
I would make the cello work. In certain bands, I
could find the pianists and play with them. Music was
always a way of connecting with people pretty quickly, and
you start to make sound together and you don't have
to talk. It's great.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
It also seems like you started noticing the benefits of
music really early on. Right. One of the ones that
we know from the science is that music is incredibly rewarding. Right,
Listening to music activates all the same reward areas as
things like food and money, And it seems like music
was sort of your go to reward for you know,
a lot of the time you were growing up.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, you know, looking back, a lot of that is reward,
and some of that might have also been the only
thing that felt good in that moment. There was lots
of stuff going on, Scouts orchestra later, that came later,
A soccer I was always in soccer. I loved studying too.
(05:23):
I was a real math nerd. I loved all those
kinds of things. But with music, I could work on
it in the room alone. I could shut the door
and say my brothers and sister have to stay out
because I'm practicing, and I could make progress. I could
get better at something. I could go, oh, this is cool.
I really want to do that now, and then I
(05:44):
could go share it with people. Music let me have
what felt like, I guess, better interactions or more rewarding
or meaningful interactions with people because I brought something to
the table and that was maybe a version of what
you're talking about, for sure, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
It also seems like music is super good at helping
us regulate our emotions, whether we want to kind of
get pumped up and kind of hyped up, or whether
we want to wallow in our kind of sadness but
kind of have a beautiful thing to wallow in. Oh yeah,
Is this something that you found with music early on too?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yes? Absolutely, And I would do that with the cello,
of course, but I would also do that with the
radio and with tapes and CDs and sometimes records. And
there's a lot of stuff that I guess I didn't
understand or have the right context for how to process.
You know, teenagers have so much, so much going on,
(06:39):
and music was a place where even if I couldn't
work through the details, I could feel it, I could
express it and get some sort of sense that that
was okay.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
There's also lots of evidence that music can kind of
make us feel more present, it can make us mindful,
and I think especially when you're playing music, you can
get in this state of flow. Is this kind of wonderful,
happiness inducing state that the psychologist me Hi Cheek set
me High talked about a lot. While you're kind of
in the zone, time is past, you're kind of forgetting
your bodily needs, but you're just like feeling great and
(07:13):
kind of challenging and pushing yourself. And it seems like,
especially early on, this was something that you got out
of playing the cello a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I would obsess overflow, not just in the cello. I
think cello was where it was most successive, is most
accessible to me because you're doing so many of the
things that flow requires in terms of openness and focus
at the same time. And I mean, I would really
geek out about this. I pretty young read The Inner
Game of Tennis, which talks about flow. But I was
(07:43):
always really into that basic idea that you could find
a state of awareness or of being that allowed you
to have that feeling like time didn't exist.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And so you found a way to get these benefits
kind of permanently as your career. I love that you
announced at six years of age, like, oh, do playing
the cello forever? But yeah, you actually kind of went
good on that. I announced at six years old that
I was going to be a dolphin trainer, but I
did not make good on that. There's still time, still time, right,
but you jumped in early. So tell me about the
paths of becoming a professional cellist.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh my gosh. Well, I guess I'm glad that I
didn't know what I was doing when I said that,
and no one around me knew either. Again, no infrastructure
for classical music in Oklahoma. I was studying with a violinist.
I didn't even have a cello teacher. I was playing
the cello and he would be on the violin demonstrating,
(08:39):
and I would copy on the cello. But basically my parents'
thought was, we can't find the cello teacher that we
want that will agree to take a three year old,
so we'll do the next best thing. We'll just find
the best musician that will take a three year old,
and that happened to be a violinist. So from the
(08:59):
very beginning it was kind of a hodgepodge of things that,
on one hand had these very deep values, you know,
we're gonna do the best possible with what we have.
At the same time, it was a lot of different
things pieced together. It was a violin teacher I was
in Oklahoma. Most of my formative chamber music experiences were
(09:21):
with rock bands, essentially me and my friends. Often I
would be on the cello, sometimes I would grab a
different instrument or just seeing I think my first string
quartet experience wasn't until I was thirteen or something, and
I'd been playing for ten years at that point, which
is a long time to go thinking this is what
(09:43):
I want to do with the rest of my life
and not experiencing what the usual path would be.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
But you were able to kind of jump into this profession.
You were thriving in your career. You were killing it.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, you know, as a classical cellist. I don't know
what people think of that career or what it entails.
The particular thing that I do as a soloist is
I don't regularly play with any particular orchestra. I'm not
a member of an orchestra, a member of a group,
or anything like that. I don't teach at a university.
I travel around as the guest artist with an orchestra
(10:17):
when they played what we call the concerto, where there's
a spotlight on the guest artist who is the soloist.
The piece of music they're playing is often from centuries ago,
sometimes it's brand new, but it's always a big feature.
And this was my dream. It's incredible to be able
to do this at all, let alone nike a living
(10:39):
doing it. It's very difficult. There are only a handful
of cellists in the country who are able to do
that and not also do other things. So I felt like,
despite all of my insecurities, I was really I was
really on the right path.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
But what happened in March twenty twenty when COVID hit.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, I think it was March twelfth. My manager calls
and an entire year of work was just wiped off
the calendar. At the time, I was also doing a
residency for composing, so I was living in Santa Barbara,
and so all of my belongings were in storage in
New York City. I had no fixed address. I was
(11:24):
not in any of the systems that you needed to
be in to get unemployment. So that phone call where
everything was wiped off the map was like pretty devastating.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Was that a time that you turned back to music
to kind of cope?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Laurie. I'm curious about this.
I don't think I did it in the most healthy way,
you know, Like I don't actually have any home at
that point, and I'm very lonely because I went out
there for solitude, for beauty of nature, to have inspiration
to write music, and I don't feel like I had
(11:59):
much of a choice but to double down on that,
So I did. I doubled down on that. I was
trying to compose. I started doing a live stream every
day day for a while.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, just trying to feel connected to people. But I
was actually just alone. So music was kind of that
desperate lifeline. And it's hard to say that it made
me happy, but I guess it kept me going.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
But a lot of things changed back in early twenty
twenty one. And so tell me what happened that fateful
day in Florida.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
All Right, So twenty twenty one, COVID had been going on.
This was January, So for a good nine ten months,
almost all of my concerts were canceled. One of the
only ones that wasn't was this performance in Florida. And
you know, I didn't have as many restrictions, and the
orchestra was extremely careful and great, so I felt comfortable
(13:01):
going despite everything else, and there was no way that
I was going to cancel one of the only opportunities
that I had in a whole year to perform and also, frankly,
to work and get paid. Not only was this an
important concert because it was one of the only concerts,
it's also this incredible piece. It's the Sinfonia Concertante the
(13:24):
Symphony Concretto by Sergei Prokofiev, which is a mammoth work.
The cello is just crazy. It goes all the way
up to the heights, serene, it plummets down to the depths.
It's wild and frenetic and chaotic. It's so difficult technically.
And this was my first performance of this piece ever
(13:45):
with an orchestra. And I got to Florida and played
the first concert. We're so excited. The next morning I
woke up and I couldn't really taste the toothpaste very well.
The thing that I remember as thinking, uh oh, and
grabbing a box of altoids and stuffing my nose in
(14:06):
it and nothing, And I was, no, this is not good.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It wasn't good. In fact, it was about to get
far worse than Joshua ever expected. But more on that.
After the break we left Cellis Joshua Roman on a
concert tour, frantically sniffing toothpaste and altoids, checking to see
(14:33):
if a sense of smell really had disappeared, a sure
sign that he'd caught COVID.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I panicked a bit, got a test, and of course
it came back positive. The orchestra canceled that concert. I
found a place to hole up for a while. My
infection was not that bad, it was kind of weird.
I mostly had the unrecognizable symptoms. I wasn't coughing, but
(15:01):
I was short of breath. I wasn't sneezing, but I
couldn't smell or taste. There were weird things going on
with fatigue that didn't just feel like being tired, and
then I just never got better.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So awful, and so describe what that fatigue was like.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It was really strange. It's like I'm wearing a coat
of heavy metal or armor underneath my skin, embedded in
the muscles, like everything is just so difficult to move.
Or if you've ever woken up at the wrong time
with jet lag and not been able to sort out
(15:42):
how to lift your arm, that's a similar feeling.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Okay, I've had bad jet lag, but my arms have
always worked. Like when you traveling to like Europe for Asia.
This is a new one for me.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Well, I the only times that's happened to me are yes,
traveling to Asia or something and then waking up totally
at the wrong time and your body's so confused. If
anyone listening has felt that. Drop it in the comments.
I love the ways that we describe sensations because it's
really difficult to pin down whether we're talking about the
(16:16):
same thing. Yeah, so much of the time. But the
quality of this fatigue is not sleepiness. It has nothing
to do with I need to go to bed. It
has everything to do with I don't know how to
get the energy to move something, or to lift my arm,
or when it comes to thinking. Last night, I was
(16:38):
laying on the ground and I realized in conversation with
my fiance that I couldn't think. I could only speak
like I couldn't conjure up words unless I was saying them.
And I don't know exactly what's going on with that,
but physically, cognitively, this fatigue is debilitating, and sleep doesn't
(16:59):
fix it.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
You also had this condition that I've heard of with
long COVID called dysautonomia. Yes, what's that? And what did
that feel like?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Well? I still have that one, though it's a lot
less inhibiting than it used to be. It's a nervous
system condition. And this is my bastardization of something that
I heard from a doctor somewhere so please forgive me.
But the nervous system generally takes an input like a
temperature change, and then the output would be what the
(17:29):
body does in response, so sweating to cool you off,
for example, or in the other direction, shivering to warm
you up. And similarly, when you're running a marathon in
mile twenty one or whatever it is, when your body
is really trying to slow you down, that feeling is
(17:51):
the nervous system giving you signals because of the information
it's receiving from the body. Otherwise you wouldn't have that feeling.
You would just keep going in damage, tissues and all
that sort of thing. So dysautonomia is when those signals
are mixed up, when those wires get crossed. Yesterday I
(18:13):
was walking up to subway stairs. I had to stop
three times for one flight of stairs. And I know
that my muscles can do this, but my nervous system,
using the sensation of fatigue and heaviness, is screaming You've
done way too much. It's a mix up. It's a
(18:33):
mix up of signals. In the same way that sometimes
I will start shivering uncontrollably, feel incredibly cold, and everyone
else is in shorts and a T shirt.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Fine, So give me a sense of how these changes
affected your life, Like, what was your kind of morning
routine like before long COVID kicked in versus now?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Well, let's start with the sleeping Four hours was kind
of what I considered the necessary six was great and
anything past that was a waste of time. So if
I went to bed at four, I'd be up by ten.
If I went to bed at midnight, which was very rare,
then I'd be up by six. And the passa meditation
(19:18):
an hour in the morning and an hour in the
evening and charge it the day. Let's go run six miles.
How close to one hundred pushups in a row can
we do? Can we clap in between? What if we
do a workout class where we lift weights and then
a yoga class so that the brain will be really clear,
(19:39):
and then I can jump into composing or practicing.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And so what's it like now? I get the sense
that it's very different.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, it's funny. You ask me again. My fiance Ana Luisa,
it'd be funny to get her perspective because we met.
Since I've gotten a long COVID, it's been over four
years now, so I've had to adjust to this to
a certain degree. She doesn't know the difference. She hasn't
seen me wake up and run out the door. I
(20:09):
mean now, I wake up and meditate as close to
twenty minutes as I can get, and sometimes it's not
a full twenty minutes, and I take about an hour
and a half or so to wake up. My body
just feels weird. It has these extra sensations all over
that are not really comfortable, and they stop me from
(20:33):
being able to move with ease. My brain, similarly have
to be really careful because if I do too much,
Let's say, if I do this Saturday morning New York
Times crossword puzzle, then I'm gonna need a break. So
I really have to think about what's coming in the day,
(20:55):
spend a lot more time planning. I go to bed
at ten thirty and I get up at seven fifteen
every night. It's a different world.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And how has that changed your cello practice?
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Well, when I first was trying to play the cello again,
I would play for two or three minutes and that's it.
That's all I could do in a whole day. Just
moving the bow was so exhausting. And I had one
other concert, and I had two months, a little over
(21:26):
two months, I think, so I was trying to practice
every day. Eventually I got up to twenty minutes, which
was the length of the piece that I was playing,
and that was huge. So for a few days that's
all I would do is once a day I would
play that piece. And then I decided to try to
practice it. And practicing is different than playing. When you're
(21:48):
just playing through something, you know, you're just having fun
or you're just going through it. But what I was
doing was I was thinking, Okay, is this in tune?
Could this sound different? Would this be better if I
used different fingers to give it a different feel, you know,
those sorts of analytical decisions. And instead of twenty minutes,
(22:11):
it was about a minute or so, and I was shaking,
had to have help putting the cello away. I couldn't
open my eyes. I had a complete crash. And it
was a real lesson in the different ways of engaging
with music that I was going to have to start
paying really close attention to how I was treating the
(22:33):
cello and then later realizing how I was treating myself
as I practiced.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
And this led you at the time to make a
really tough decision. What was that?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Well, after that concert, I put the cello away. I
just gave up. I thought this is too hard, and
I put it in the case. There was nothing on
the calendar, so I wasn't really in danger of letting
anyone else down. Basically, it was a choice do I
wash the dishes today or do I try to practice
(23:04):
for a few minutes. I was pushing myself so hard
and getting humble by my body for pushing it. I
was just dragged down so far that I didn't think
that there was anything on the other side of all
of this work that was going to make it worth it.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
And what was that like? I mean, my sense is
like a lot of people, you know put their instruments away,
But this seems like it was the first time your
cello was away for more than like a few hours
in your life.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yes, I don't actually remember what the longest amount of
time I had ever gone without practicing was before that,
but suffice it to say, in the past, if I had,
let's say, a flight, I would practice in the airport,
or I would sit with the cello in a hotel
(23:48):
room after it's too late to practice and I would
move my left hand to practice, and I would kind
of fake the right hand so that I could still
be practicing. I was obsessed, and for me to intentionally
say I'm not going to practice even for one day
(24:10):
was such a wild radical concept. But to put the
cello in its case and say, I don't know when
I'm gonna pick this back up again, I didn't think
that would ever happen to me.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I mean, it strikes me that this wasn't even just
like an instrument. It was almost like your friend.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, I mean I played since I was three. It's
human size. It's the little things like the cello has
to fly in a seat on the airplane, so Cello
Roman has been traveling next to me taking the window
seat because you know, you can't climb over in an emergency,
so I for years. You can make all the jokes
(24:46):
and everything, but it's also real, like that's a real relationship.
The vibrations coming from the cello moving through my body
is something that is second nature. My body has grown
around the cello. My right shoulder is shorter than my
left shoulder. My left fingers are substantially longer than my
(25:07):
right fingers because from the age of three, they were
stretching and moving in ways that my right hand was not.
There's all of this stuff that we grew up together.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And now it was in a box, and now I
was in a box. I find it so heartbreaking that Joshua,
who was once described as the Jimi Hendrix of the cello,
was so sick that he could no longer even hold
his instrument. But of course the story doesn't end there.
We'll hear more After this quick break. Long COVID was
(25:45):
wrecking havoc on the career of concert cellis Joshua Roman.
Since the age of three, the instrument he loved so
much had been a constant presence in his life. But
months of overwhelming fatigue forced Joshua to put his cello down,
unsure if he would ever play it again.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
The cello was in its case for almost three months.
This was early April twenty twenty one, and I didn't
I should again until right before Summer Solstice in June.
And I remember that because the reason I did was
that someone had asked me to play for their summer
Solstice party, and I said yes, kind of like sure,
(26:23):
I'll probably cancel later, but I'll say yes. Because I
feel guilty, and then I just forgot to cancel, and
a couple of days before the party there I was like, uh, oh,
this is happening, so I should probably get the cello
out and let's figure out if I still know how
to do this. And you know, this is probably something
(26:44):
I should work with my therapist about not holding on too.
But this image that sticks with me of wiping the
dust off the cello case is just wild to me
that it sat. I didn't even move it. It just
collected dust for almost three months. And then I started
to play, and I started with the famous prelude by
(27:08):
Bach Do.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Doooty doo Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do
do you do?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
You know, the one from the car commercials. But it's
the best, It's really the best. And you know, of
course I was feeling for my fingers, like this kind
of rusted over feel that you get when they're used
to doing something and then they don't for a long time.
But what immediately took over was the vibrations against my
(27:35):
chest moving through my body. And it was the most
moving moment that I'd had with the cello in so long.
This rush of emotions and realizations and energy. I was overwhelmed,
(27:55):
but also so suddenly motivated and inspired and like things
just clicked into place, and.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Kind of getting back to music has allowed you to
do lots of things that we talk about on this podcast.
It seems to have involved a lot of self compassion
and a lot of what we call radical acceptance. What
is that radical acceptance meant to you?
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So? I think one of the biggest things is that
I don't play the cello unless I want to. So
there are days when I don't practice, and the me
of six years ago is like, what the heck are
you doing? I don't know if I can swear, so
I'm not going to.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
You can swear, It's fine, what the hell are you doing, Joshua.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
You're supposed to practice every day. But more than anything now,
I treasure the trust in the relationship. You know, the
cello is a proxy for a part of myself. I
know it's just an inanimate object. But there's something about
am I practicing because I feel like I'm supposed to,
(28:55):
or do I actually feel an internal impetus and desire
to make music? And sometimes that is a little bit Okay, Well,
I do have a concert tomorrow and I really want
to sound good, but it's not I'm supposed to get
better because that's how people prove something. No, I'm going
(29:15):
to play because I want to play it, because I
love exploring it. And when I pick up the cello,
I'm in a different state of mind. I'm ready, I'm
approaching it a different way. I'm never sitting at the
cello thinking, oh, I have to do this, even though
I loved it before a lot of times I'll admit
now it was guilt or it was some other thing.
(29:35):
And what I was training myself to do was to
ignore that part of myself and try to force the
cello to be a tool. And again, that's a proxy
for a part of myself. Force myself to be a
tool and service of something else. To deny my state
of being would have any effect on it. Sure, in
a moment of crisis, maybe you need to push past,
(29:58):
but especially when we're talking about scratching a wooden box
to bring people joy, like, what the hell, no, you
kind of like pay attention to how you feel.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I love this example so much because this whole season
is about coping strategies, which, when used in the way
you're talking about them, where it's compassionate and patient. These
things are great, But any good coping strategy, whether it's
meditation or kind of taking time to exercise or something,
if you're doing it in this forced way in the
like have do I should weigh winds up not having
(30:28):
the benefits that you might think. And it seems like
even with music you're able to find this like you
have to have a kind of compassionate relationship with this
coping strategy or it's like not going to work in
the way you think.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It's so fascinating. Right, what you're saying is to me,
it's reinforcing that idea that it's all about opening up
the lines of communication in a way, whether it's between
parts of yourself or other people, the understanding. First of all,
there's a relationship, and every relationship needs a certain amount
of trust, and that you just don't actually build the
(30:59):
trust that you need to feel good. If it's all
about checkboxes and improvement. Those things, yes, they're useful, they're
important tools, but if they're the basis of a relationship,
the relationship is not going to grow in actual trust.
It's just going to have a very fancy system of verification.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Another way, that you've been able to grow your trust
to this kind of awful, long COVID incident is to
really trust the importance of rest. Yes, and it seems
like you've also had a lot of acceptance for what
your body can really do. I know you even carry
something with you to remind yourself and other people about this. Right.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yes, I have a card. I have many of them
printed up, and it's something that people can look at
if I have a what I call a crash, which
incapacitates me to various degrees.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
And just so we understand what is that? What would
that look like in public if you had one.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I've really tried not to have them in public, but sometimes,
even walking home, I will have a crash and I
will suddenly look like someone who's just stumbling, barely able
to shuffle forward. My eyes will be closing. And that's
a minor crash if I can still keep walking and
I will push myself to get home. A full crash
(32:15):
is not being able to sit up, not being able
to open my eyes, not being able to speak, often
not even being able to think. It's uncomfortable because it's incapacitating,
but it's not physically painful. I kind of stop being there.
It's kind of crazy, and it's for someone who used
(32:36):
to fix everything by running faster, it's pretty crazy to
be faced with this phenomenon that I still deal with
pretty often.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And so how do you have acceptance for that? Just
seems so hard.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
It's very difficult. And this is where I think the
beautiful irony of kind of getting the lessons that you
need rather than the lessons that you want from life.
I can't push my way through it. Pushing is what
causes crashes. So really paying attention to what precipitates a
crash and whether there's anything I can do either in
(33:14):
the moment to say, oh, this is about to happen.
So I have to stop. I have to leave this party,
I have to get out of this loud place. I
have to grab a cab, instead of thinking I can
walk all the way to this store today or backing
up a step. And this is where it's really been
life changing, is planning my day saying Okay, I know
(33:37):
this is going to take a lot of energy, and
that's going to take a lot of energy. So those
two things can't happen on the same day. Our conversation
is one of two things that I'm going to do
today that require a certain level of engagement and energy
over any kind of sustained period of time. The rest
of the day is going to be a mix of
resting and not taxing my brain too much. I've also
(34:02):
learned how to ask for help, how to delegate. I've
been building a team, I have a business, all these
sorts of things. When you start to prioritize and take
care of yourself and think about the people around you,
all of a sudden you start building structures that give
everyone things to do, and it's just it's much better.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
I also understand that you've been able to kind of
come to terms with your long COVID through your music,
getting back to music as a coping mechanism, And so
how have you been able to do that and kind
of share your vulnerability with others in the same way
you've shared music.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah, thank you for asking about that. It's kind of
interesting because I get the question a lot, like how
does music help you get better? And for me, it's
such a twisted answer because the act of listening to
music even is taxing. So if I sit down and
listen to a mall or symphony, that's a big thing
(34:56):
for the day, not going to also do the Saturday
crossword puzzle that kind of decision making, let alone playing
the cello. So I have really focused on doing the
things that mean the most to me, that allow me
to bring as much as possible to the table. And
(35:18):
my friend Dasha at Princeton University started a series called
Healing with Music, and she was seeing me struggle with
long COVID, and at the time, you know, we would
tell my manager would tell people to expect that I
was going to need to lay down more, that I
was going to have this, and that they should be
ready for that. But I wasn't going around making long
(35:41):
COVID a part of anything I was doing. I said,
I had it on social media couple. I wasn't trying
to hide it, but it was just kind of a
thing in the background, and I was trying to keep
it that way, not to have it interfere with my work.
And she asked if I would be okay building a
program around my experience with long COVID and playing the
music that had helped me heal. Her asking that question
(36:05):
gave me an opportunity to think about things in a
different way. And for the maybe the very first time
to think about music not in terms of one of
two ways. This is what people expect to hear on
stage from a cello, so I'm going to do that,
or two, this is something I think other people will
find interesting, and so I'm going to do that. But
(36:27):
what seems really meaningful to me, like why am I
doing this? Let's put that on stage. And it was
really successful. I felt really good about it. It fit
together in a way that I could stand behind. I
didn't feel like I was projecting a false sense of
intellectualism or something like. No, this was the music that
(36:50):
I loved and that was giving me a reason to
play the cello and the story of why that was,
and that story was long COVID and is long COVID.
And from that experience built a project that I call Immunity,
where now it's everything from playing for other people with
long COVID and long COVID clinics to advocacy on the
(37:14):
hill to these residencies, and it's opened so many doors
and given me such a sense of purpose to be
able to not question whether what I'm doing is using
my energy. Well, the answer is yes, this is what
it's for this is what my energy is for, and
(37:37):
how can I build a life and the kinds of
relationships and team in life and work in artistry that
allow that kind of impact and connection in those relationships
to flourish.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I'm so grateful that Joshua Roman was willing to share
his journey with us today. His story shows just how
amazing music is as a coping strategy. It's such a
quick path to joy and togetherness for musicians and listeners alike.
But there's a second component of Joshua's story that I
really appreciated. Traumatic experiences like getting long COVID do suck,
(38:17):
but they can also help us grow, often in unexpected ways.
It's really helpful to remember that adversity does have a
bright side. It can help us appreciate all the stuff
we took for granted. There's one final episode left in
this special season on creative coping strategies, and it's devoted
to a sport that I have recently become a massive
(38:38):
fan of. It's a game that's skillful, competitive, fast paced,
and fun. It's called cornhole. We have under eighteen players
competing in the pro field against adults. I've seen players
throw on crutches. I mean, we have players that have
no arms, that throw at their feet. Literally anybody can play,
So now all of a sudden you get to compete
(38:59):
and there's no limitations or boundaries to that.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yes, we'll be learning how we can cope better with
cornhole next time on the Happiness Lab with me Laurie
Santos
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