July 1, 2024 • 38 mins
How come music reminds one of a place? Today’s episode explores stories of people coping with feeling homesick by listening to music. Our guest, Jaimie Matthews, helps train and supervise resident advisors for college dormitories. This role allows her to help young adults transition to being on their own, often for the first time in their lives. Jaimie’s experience helps us understand why and how music can become such a powerful reminder of the places we call home. Musical memories by Emily Jo Schwaller, JT Chen, and Devin Bayly help us explore music and the feeling of homesickness.
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(00:00):
Lifetimes of Listening.
(00:06):
If you're a Schwaller, you've got to know the Campfire songs.
That brings me back to, I would say, the best time in my life.
And it was this incredibly restorative experience.
Lifetimes of Listening.
Welcome to Lifetimes of Listening.
It's a podcast that seeks to understand why music is important in people's lives through
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hearing people share their memories related to music.
Now, today's topic is a really interesting one.
It's homesickness and the relationship of homesickness to music.
Brian Moon and I are co-hosts of the podcast, and we found that many of the people we've
spoken to for our musical memory archive over the last, what, three, four years now have
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experienced music as a really important means of support and comfort and even inspiration
during times that they're away from home, whether off to school or camp for the first
time or traveling in a faraway place.
Homesickness is a very real thing for many people, and music can be, for many people,
a way of dealing with homesickness.
(01:14):
So Brian, I'm curious, have you ever viewed music in this way as a bomb or comfort of
sorts when you were experiencing homesickness or loneliness away from home?
I have used the music of Jimmy Buffett regularly to take me back to Pascagoula.
So Jimmy Buffett is an artist known for his Florida connections, but he was born in Pascagoula,
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Mississippi, grew up on the Alabama Gulf Coast near Mobile, and his songs often reference
Pascagoula, Biloxi, and New Orleans and a lot of the places nearby.
And for whatever reason, particularly his kind of slow, wistful songs that reference
these songs, songs like Biloxi, they've just always, they've been a place that I've gone
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when I was aware I was missing, you know, my family, which is largely from the Gulf
Coast, and missing that area and or thinking about those moments in my life.
I knew, I went first grade, kindergarten to 12th grade there, I knew even early on I wasn't
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going to grow up there and wasn't going to live my life there, and yet it's still, I'm
still rooted to that place in a very real way.
And the music helps you with that connection.
And these songs bring me there, you know, get me there.
How about you?
Have you ever found music to be a way to connect to a place or bring you some solace when you're
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feeling distant from home?
Yeah, I have a very specific story to tell about that.
Some years ago I had the opportunity to travel to West Africa to study the music and art
and culture of West Africa.
It was a very important, meaningful trip for me.
The core trip was going to be three weeks, but then after that core trip, which was with
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a group of a couple dozen people, two other gentlemen and I traveled across West Africa
from Ghana into the nation of Burkina Faso and then into Mali and suddenly, unexpectedly,
I found that I was going to be traveling by myself across the rest of West Africa and
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to Spain unexpectedly.
So one day I woke up and realized, oh, I'm on my own.
And I wound up traveling, I think probably for 10 days or so, a week and a half or two
across West Africa to Morocco, to Dakar, Senegal, ultimately to Spain where I then flew home.
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And during that time I carried with me on the trip, because I knew it was going to be
important, I carried with me a device that some people never heard of.
It was called a mini disc recorder.
Did you ever have a mini disc recorder?
I remember them.
I didn't have one, but no.
It was kind of somewhere between CDs and MP3s anyway.
So I had this mini disc recorder and I loaded all kinds of great music on it.
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And I can remember a particular time after all these weeks of travel in West Africa,
then traveling through Spain by myself on a train and listening over and over and over
again to a group that was becoming one of my favorites and still is to this day, an
Americana group called Nickel Creek, which I think I've told you about my love of Nickel
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Creek.
And somehow that music, which is such American music and so meaningful to me on many levels,
helped me during a time of being completely by myself on a train, traveling and having
that music to comfort me and help me out.
And many, when I was with the group, the larger group of a couple dozen people, other people
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commented that to this to me as well, that they had brought along their whatever, their
CDs, their MP3s, whatever technology they were using so that they could connect with
music from home while they were traveling in this foreign place.
And for many of us, it was the first time for such a thing.
So that was the first time one of a kind experience for me.
And music really helped me get through some, some times of loneliness and being literally
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by myself unexpectedly for a couple of weeks there.
So that meant a lot and still does.
And still, you know, if I listened to a certain couple of songs off the first Nickel Creek
CD, I am there.
Interesting.
I am there on that train again, traveling northward in Spain, seeing the hundreds of
thousands of sunflowers smiling at me.
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It's a very visual experience.
So that's mine.
That's really wonderful.
So we both have them.
It's great.
Well, we're looking forward today to exploring the topic of music and homesickness with our
guest, Jamie Matthews.
Jamie's involved in residential life on the University of Arizona campus and in training
resident advisors to work with incoming freshmen, many of whom are spending their first days
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away from home as they arrive on campus.
So we'll welcome her to our conversation in just a moment.
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Our guest today on Lifetimes of Listening is Jamie Matthews.
Now, Jamie is a senior associate director of residential education, housing and residential
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life here on the University of Arizona campus.
She tells me she's also a string bass player with a community orchestra here in Tucson
and a doctoral candidate at the Center for Higher Education at the University of Arizona.
Jamie, welcome to Lifetimes of Listen.
Thanks so much for having me today.
We're curious to get to know you a little bit.
(07:25):
How did you get involved in the work that you do around residential life here at the
university on campus?
It really started when I was a freshman in my college at Truman State University in Kirksville,
Missouri.
After my high school that went there, I was just looking to make friends.
I just wanted to make as many connections as I could while also being introverted.
I wanted just some people to get to know.
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One night there was a sign for, hey, who wants to come to Hall Council on Sunday?
I said, well, I'm free.
So I went there and got to meet some people.
They wanted someone to go to this other larger organization to get involved.
I said, okay, I'm also free Thursday.
So just by raising my hand, I quickly became in charge of campus-wide programming for our
campus two months into my freshman year.
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Got to meet a lot of great upper-class students, a lot of campus advisors.
I went to some national conferences where I learned that people work at colleges in
this line of work.
That just really set me on a path of I was highly involved in college and student leadership
and student housing.
I also did some psychology research as an undergrad looking at well-being of college
students because I knew pretty early on in my college career I wanted to go this path
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and knew that I wanted to work with college students at this really fun time of figuring
out who you are, figuring out what you want to be, how you interact with other people,
and just the magic of doing that in a housing setting, living in dorms with other people.
It's just a great opportunity to bring all those things together.
Sounds like it's for you a very gratifying line of work.
Absolutely.
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I think people wouldn't stay in it if it wasn't gratifying and if you weren't finding meaning
and purpose no matter what your role is.
Our episode today is about homesickness.
I'm wondering how often is homesickness an issue for students, freshmen and dorms?
It's definitely a really widespread issue and something that we often talk about with
our staff.
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We often like to think that it's just freshmen students and it's going to be especially those
who are from far away.
It's going to be really highly concentrated in August when they first get here.
While all those things can be factors, we really talk about how it can sneak up on you
and it can hit students in different ways at different points of time.
So it is a very prevalent issue that we frequently see and talk about and help students work
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through as part of their college experience.
How do you prepare our residential advisors?
How do you prepare the people that are right closest to the students to identify and help?
So we have a really robust training schedule for our resident assistants.
They are really tasked with a lot of responsibilities on campus from being that peer connector,
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being a leader responding to crisis and emergencies.
And so we really want to emphasize with them that their first role is to connect with students
and to build that connection, to get to know them one on one.
From there they also can help students get to know one another within the community level.
So the RAs have like a floor of students of 35 to 50 students that they're in charge of.
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And so again we're just forming connections and that is one of the key pillars of what
our programming offers here at the University of Arizona and pretty frequently across any
college campus that you're going to find.
So with that foundation we then talk about homesickness as part of the student journey.
And so what we do with our resident assistants and what me and my team do is create a student
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journey map.
And so we look across the year of a student, what you might experience at different times,
what are the challenges a student might face, what are the barriers, what are the things
they might be excited about.
So from there we can talk about August and how they might be really excited to be away
from home.
They might not be really excited to be away from home or maybe they're used to being away
from home.
And we can talk about there's lots of things going on at the university.
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So if a student is feeling a little bit isolated or a little bit more hesitant to talk and
engage we can introduce them to some other things going on around campus.
We can look at November and say that with Thanksgiving and the holidays coming up that
might be a different time where we're seeing different types of homesickness of the stress
of school but also those traditions that they might have with their family.
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Maybe they can continue those, maybe they can't.
So we talk about some of those just in time moments that homesickness might come up.
We talk about January when you're coming back to campus.
Maybe winter break was a really good time but also reminded you of what you miss about
being at your home location if that is where family is for you.
So again we kind of point out that student journey map for our resident assistants and
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it's all things that when they look at it they go yeah that actually makes a lot of
sense.
Hearing you talk about this makes me wish that when I was a freshman at college I'd
had somebody like you to make me feel more integrated.
I wound up going away to school and just basically falling in with a group of people who became
my close friends.
But my involvement in other things on campus was pretty limited because I never took that
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time or had somebody to work with.
So it sounds like really important work that you're doing.
We've got one musical question we want to ask you that Brian mentioned here.
Do you mind if I pose this question?
The question is do you have, do you Jamie happen to have a specific song or type of
music that reminds you of home?
I have some songs that remind me of like my family and so Oh to Joy or Beethoven's Ninth
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is one that has special meaning to my family and has since I was a little kid.
And so that when I hear that that reminds me of home it takes me right back to several
different moments in time.
Some happy occasions some sad occasions but it represents that coming together and community.
If my family's going through a hard time I often will I have a lot of different instruments
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at home and so I'll bust out the cello and play Oh to Joy and just send a quick video
to my mom if I know she's having a rough day.
Just this weekend I was traveling and I was at a German beer house and with a big old
alpine horns.
They were playing Oh to Joy so I interrupted the conversation I was having and said hold
on I got to record this and send it to my family.
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So that's just a nice memory and a few years ago my parents and I got to see the Kansas
City Symphony play the entirety of Beethoven's Ninth.
Which is a special moment I have a classical music background so it meant a lot to me.
My parents are also able to with not a strong background appreciate just the beauty of that
piece of work.
Do you do you ever have you experienced being away from family and and then heard a snippet
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of it somewhere and it brings you back to that to your family other than like you mentioned
the alpine horns but that's is that is that a sort of common thing or are there other
other times like that.
Absolutely probably so many that I can't really call them any specific ones but it specifically
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reminds me a lot of my grandma who has since passed away but I think like the stars commercials
like the old stars movie channel I don't know if they're still around but that was their
movies movies movies.
My grandma hated that because she thought it really like did injustice to a song that
meant a lot to her.
So anytime I hear it like being used in like a kitschy commercial way I enjoy it and laugh
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and think grandma must be having some opinions about this from the great beyond.
So just different moments like that for sure.
Jamie we're really glad to have you here and in a second we'd like to share with you several
musical memories that we have gathered about the experience of homesick and music's ability
to play a role with that and we'd like you to listen to them and maybe respond with your
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with your already training hat on maybe and and and give us the perspective of of because
these are although these stories are of older older adults they are stories that often reference
this 20ish sort of college moment a little bit college and early grad student moment.
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So that chance for you to respond to those interviews is coming up in just a moment here
on lifetimes of listening.
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So now Jamie we have three musical memories about the topic of homesickness to share with
you on the program today.
Each of these stories that we've recorded with people we've met over the last couple
of years each of them points to the important role that music can play in the midst of the
experience of homesickness.
So this first musical memory today is from University of Arizona student Emily Jo Schwaller.
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She's a member of UCAT here on campus and she shares in this musical memory a way that
music helped her to deal with homesickness when she moved far away from home.
I'm Emily Jo Schwaller and I work in the University Center for Assessment Teaching and Technology
at U Arizona.
I think for me it really comes back to campfire sing-alongs with that side of the family and
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we compiled a book of different songs we sang things from like classics like American Pie
and House of the Rising Sun to like more specific things.
We're a very German family so there's a song called Dupaster Conductor and it's very fun
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and I think that it's been really special to see how some of those songs have really
come like brought our family together.
I have a three-year-old niece and seeing her with my 98 year old grandpa singing Dupaster
Conductor has just been really cool and something that I love to see and there's like just a
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sense that no matter how old you are like if you're a Schwaller you gotta know the campfire
songs and it's great.
So I grew up in Montana and then when I went to get my MA I moved all the way to North
Carolina and I had never been there and I was feeling really homesick and I came across
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this place called the Busy Bee Cafe where musicians can just come bring instruments
and sing songs and some of the songs they were singing were these folk songs that I
hadn't heard since the campfire and so that was really magical and like a little slice
of home when I was so far away.
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Anytime someone from my family came to visit I took them there and was like listen it's
like being home together with these strangers and so yeah I definitely would go there as
much as I could.
Even though as strangers it felt like home you know it felt like being in this space
where we were all together.
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When I think of those campfire songs I can also smell like the ponderosa pines and things
like that so I think that it's all kind of woven together in a cool way.
Wow like that just brings so many good memories and I don't know this individual so I just
appreciate that story and I think it points to just so much about how music can take you
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back to certain spaces and certain people.
I love that detail of it takes you back to the smell of the ponderosa pines because I
think that really is of like how do we get all of our senses involved and especially
when you're going through a rough time or just not feeling connected we really try to
encourage deep conversations and asking follow-up questions when we're connecting with people
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and certainly for the resident assistants but just as humans ask like what tell me more
about that and so I really enjoy this example of this is what the importance of that song
was okay paint a picture for me like help me get to know what you're experiencing right
now as much as you want to share and so those are the exact questions that we'd really want
our staff to if someone's lighting up and getting that kind of twinkle in their eye
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and starting to to loosen how they're sitting and they're beginning to be a little bit more
vulnerable with you lean into that and ask and to let them guide the way about what they
want to share and I think when music is involved you really get a great chance to learn more
about that culture and to learn more about what that family upbringing was.
I think we all like some sense of familiarity right so if you're in a new location but all
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of a sudden you have the space to talk about these traditions and to talk about the intergenerational
connection that you all had you feel you matter a little bit more and you never know who you're
going to talk to and if they have some similarities with that or if they just want to ask you
more because that really intrigues them maybe they didn't have that experience but they
think that sounds really awesome like let's dive more into that it's just music just so
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powerful in that way and I think it's just a great way to share a little bit about who
you are and get that conversation rolling.
This idea of feeling like being at home with a bunch of strangers because of music like
that music could bring that feeling of home so much that it just didn't really matter
where you were you know that it was just it was it was really about something about the
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music just brought it all together I find it really powerful.
Okay we're going to share with you another musical memory Brian and I met a young man
named JT Chen it's been several years ago now when we were a part of the University
of Arizona's presence at South by Southwest in Austin Texas and JT shared I believe I
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was the one who interviewed him and he shared with me a particular time in his life when
music really really meant something to him in this kind of context of being away from
home and and homesickness so let's listen now to the story his musical memory this is
JT Chen.
My name is JT so I'm an industrial designer I'm originally from Taiwan moved to the US
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in 2009.
I remember when I was I was in high school that's in Taiwan so there was a really really
popular fan called Mayday they were alumni of our high school so really took pride of
that we we joined the guitar club to memorize every single song from them kind of becomes
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like a like a sub identity of our school now I look back those music are so like student
you know and then now when I hear those music that brings me back to I would say the best
time in my life so far so those those songs bring me back to the time sometimes the music
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like no matter how lame they are I will put it like run it for hours because I get into
a state of zone out and just pure homesick sometimes by by accident or sometimes I intentionally
want to bring me back to that that moment I will get into a state of happy and sad at
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the same time you get like like you get the notion of those time will never come back
and how much you like wish you did it differently like the music is just a trigger yeah your
thoughts on JT's sharing but really just the ability to be happy and sad at the same time
like wow what a what a powerful comment there and I think just so accurate to the human
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experience and I think sometimes we think that music needs to make us happier needs
to make us sad like there's like we need to be we're sad we need to be happy or just kind
of we only experienced emotions in that really one-dimensional way but I think that speaks
to like music and why we look like we can be happy and sad at the same time and music
can help us like recognize the beauty in that and help us know that regardless of our levels
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of happy or sad or whatever emotions that there's something greater out there and that
we are comforted in we do have like a purpose and where we're going within our lives there
I also just enjoy the song and it just brings you right back to a moment in time because
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I think lots of us can have that and I think part of also what we do in college is help
establish like what are your songs right now and so reminded me of oftentimes so back in
my day which wasn't too long ago we would make mixed CDs and everyone on a floor might
be able to contribute a song at the beginning of the year that represents who they are now
you can make a Spotify playlist if you wanted to but we do that to build some community
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and then it's also fun to do it at the end of the year and see how not your musical taste
necessarily but just who what represents you now nine months later after your freshman
year of college and so I think that's kind of the same idea of this high school it built
some community around the song and then years later he can still listen to it and have that
experience and that's what we do it just in different ways in community settings and I
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think it still applies of what that looks like I know I solicit a CD is from 2006 from
some of the other RAs that I worked with and I know exactly who's that song was and I know
exactly kind of why they put it on there and what that meant to them and I'm flooded with
all these memories of a really great college experience and I'm sad that that's not what
my current life is but I also realize like how far we've come the academic careers that
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everyone has created and I can really appreciate the foundation that created and the music
that still connects us to those memories because they it's great to hang on to those memories
even if it's like a nostalgic kind of feeling this idea that music can elicit sadness from
us especially in relations that say important memories but that we really enjoy that sensation
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I read an article I can't recall who was by that was titled why do sad songs make us feel
so good but they do because music has this ability a very unique ability to connect us
with important things in our past in our lives relationships and so forth and even if the
music is making us sad it's a very profoundly positive experience for us it's it's kind
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of a unique unique quality of music forgive me because I only half know one of Brene Brown's
recent projects where she's working on just trying to make people aware that that we tend
to have words for like five emotional states but there are really hundreds and hundreds
and we just haven't figured out the ways to communicate that and and I love and so I'm
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sure his English was his second language and yet he still found a way to just beautifully
sum that up the happy sad yeah yeah just finding a way to like to to capture to capture that
just so perfectly because that it is it's the happy sad that the homesick is the happy
sad a little bit and and and and I really also made me think back to your idea of helping
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students find their journey and and because he's you know he's he's in a job you know
in in America and another country in a job but every once in a while he wants to experience
that that sense of place and home and he can do that using music that even now he feels
like it's not as complicated I guess as as other musics that he listens to but he that's
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this that's how he gets there there's so much there I think regardless of if it's like a
second language or I just some people express and experience emotions differently and so
I think especially for some of our students that maybe they're not used to being able
to express their emotions or they haven't like had to experience levels of sadness or
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any other words I love I have a feelings wheel that I use all the time that has lots of different
words that sadness and then it branches out to all the different types of sadness or happy
or fear or anger and I just think music is a great tool because maybe some students just
need an excuse to understand a little bit more about why they're feeling so maybe they
don't know they're feeling sad and maybe it's okay for them to express it a little bit more
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based off music and it opens up the opportunity for them to experience those motions on their
own but I think especially the age of students in college it just we see a wide range of
students with different levels of emotional intelligence and capacity to understand what
they're experiencing let alone express it and learn how to work through that.
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Well we've got one more really interesting story that we're going to share with you Jamie
in just a minute or so about a student who was traveling abroad and music was very helpful
in helping this person to overcome feelings of homesickness then we'll ask for your thoughts
on that one as well that final musical memory is coming up in just a minute on Lifetimes
of Lysate.
(28:38):
Sure our last musical memory today is by now a staff person here at the U of A named Devin
Bailey but he was a student and studied abroad as Dan was saying and it just we also heard
this story when we were at South by Southwest a couple years ago and when he told this story
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it just I mean it was one of those things where you could tell he was opening up and
he had already has a relatively high emotional intelligence but part of it I think was because
of the way that he allowed music in this moment to speak with him so anyway let me stop talking
about it and let me play it.
My name is Devin Bailey and I am a data and visualization consultant for the research
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technologies department at the University of Arizona.
In my second to last year as an undergrad at the University of Arizona I got to do an
internship abroad.
I was in neuroscience and I went to Geneva to work with this group called the Blue Brain
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Project and they did computational neuroscience and it was an incredible experience but it
was also incredibly lonely I was displaced around the globe I was living in a in an Airbnb
that was jam-packed with people and you know my work was very stressful and I found myself
you know very quickly in the grind of go to work read papers try to make progress on a
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very difficult question go home repeat and I was on the light rail or the trolley in
Geneva and I looked up and I saw an advertisement for Julia Holter who is a singer songwriter
that a friend of mine you know one point said I bet you're gonna like some stuff from Julia
Holter and sure enough I did and it was so strange to you know feel like here I was sort
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of lost in this this unfamiliar world of work and things that I felt out of my depth and
and here was the sort of like hook and and I just remember sitting you know in my like
I was the only person in the row that I was in and she was on stage in that spotlight
on the piano and it felt like it was just the two of us and it was this incredibly like
(30:54):
restorative experience you know and it was an incredible moment you know to to then have
two more months in the internship but then to feel like I had been sort of renewed and
I could carry on because I had made it to that one show no I just left you know full
of emotion and went off on my own and I was like she'll never know but this was very
(31:19):
very important to me realizing that that music had this impact on me but it was pretty profound
I think just the restorative nature of music is just so great to hear coming through among
any other themes from from that story there and I think it really calls to mind for me
within our work with college students is that especially during times of high stress when
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students are just going from one thing to another maybe midterms or finals Devin talked
about it like about the grind of what he was going through with his really amazing opportunity
but sometimes you just need to remember like who you are and what you did before all these
opportunities and what did you do before you had that internship before you had all these
finals and just get back to that even if it's just for a small moment and so I appreciate
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that that was going to a concert and hearing some live music and then that was it like
that was like restorative and that gave the comfort and the confidence that we can continue
on and finish out that internship and the the wonderful coincidence of being in this
faraway place and there's one of his this artist that he so much loves and getting to
reconnect with that yeah on his very much on his own didn't sound like he invited a
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bunch of people just like this is going to be good for me and I'm going to go take it
in I loved also Jimmy how you reframe that story because I as I was listening to it I
was I identified more with a performer than with Devon you know like I and the idea that
that that Devon is using that musical moment to reconnect with with a big part of his identity
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so that he can then bring himself more fully to the opportunities that that's that's a
that I you opened that story up for me thank you I was gonna say it I might be putting
some story into to Devon's experience but listening to it is really calls to mind my
experience as a graduate student it was the first time I was further away from home than
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usual but I wasn't playing in a community orchestra I played in college orchestra throughout
college and it was the first time I wasn't actively playing music with other people and
I just was not feeling myself and one day someone was like hey why don't you why don't
you go try out this other band like I got involved with another organization on campus
and they're like you're a different person when you get back from those rehearsals so
(33:37):
I stuck with it and it just was like it really called to mind of I was getting so caught
up and being a graduate student I was so excited to be there but I forgot what was giving me
joy and giving me comfort beforehand and so that's kind of what was bringing to mind of
I felt like she was feeling a little bit stressed and but everything was going on and just going
from one project to another and sometimes you just need that connection and you you
(34:00):
might not realize that you're missing it until you get back to playing or you get back to
the audience of music whether it's live or you turn on a song or anything like that.
The place that this story takes me is is actually another podcast it's an interview of Amos
Lee a singer songwriter by Dan Harris a former Good Morning America host who has a podcast
(34:26):
called the 10% happier podcast and this interview both Dan Harris and Amos Lee have severe
severe anxiety like the crippling kinds of anxiety but Amos Lee is a performer you know
like his job is to go on stage every night and the way that he reframed it for him that
(34:47):
allows him to walk on stage every night even though he's got this inability to do that
as a as an individual you know he's not wired for it is he began to think of whom in his
audience needed that music at that moment because he could share his songs with somebody
(35:07):
to help them even though you know and that took him out of the place of being anxious
about going on stage and I and I tell Amos Lee's story on that podcast to a lot of students
that particularly ones that I know that are that have anxiety stage fright anxiety issues
as it was like you know just let's reframe it a little bit so so that I was really identifying
(35:30):
more with the artist in this case and I was thinking about that so I was thank you for
bringing it back but I think it's also really a wonderful story and that we can all have
so many ways into it.
So thanks so much for responding to these three musical memories it's been a really
great experience with with having you here on the program Jamie Matthews with the University
of Arizona's Residential Education and Housing Life thanks again so very much for being our
(35:55):
guest today on Lifetimes of Listening.
It is my pleasure thanks for having me today.
(36:25):
Thank you for listening to Lifetimes of Listening.
If you haven't done so already please follow us or subscribe to our show on your favorite
podcast app.
We hope you'll also consider participating in our project by telling us your story.
You know we always like to remind listeners that we're really grateful for the now upwards
of 200 people who have recorded a story for Arizona Musical Memory Archive.
(36:50):
Those interviews those stories are allowing us to better understand the ways that people
value music in their lives and if you haven't visited our website you can do so it's musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
On that website you'll find the full length interviews of the ones that we have posted
here.
You can also submit a musical memory of your own via a sound file an essay a poem even
(37:15):
an illustration of some sort or suggest somebody you know who would like to share their musical
memory with us.
So please take a look at musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
I'm Brian Moon.
And I'm Dan Cruz.
Thanks for listening.
(37:37):
The executive producer of Lifetimes of Listening the Arizona Musical Memory podcast is Brian
Moon.
The program is produced and edited by Dan Cruz.
The Lifetimes of Listening website was created by Cynthia Barlow principal information technology
manager with the University of Arizona School of Music.
(37:58):
Music is from zapsplat.com and from pixabay.com.
Special thanks to the University of Arizona School of Music and the UA College of Fine
Arts for their continued support of the Lifetimes of Listening Musical Memory Archive and this
podcast.
For more information and to get involved in our research visit musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
(38:23):
This is Lifetimes of Listening the Arizona Musical Memory podcast.
Lifetimes of Listening.
(00:06):
If you're a Schwaller, you've got to know the Campfire songs.
That brings me back to, I would say, the best time in my life.
And it was this incredibly restorative experience.
Lifetimes of Listening.
Welcome to Lifetimes of Listening.
It's a podcast that seeks to understand why music is important in people's lives through
(00:32):
hearing people share their memories related to music.
Now, today's topic is a really interesting one.
It's homesickness and the relationship of homesickness to music.
Brian Moon and I are co-hosts of the podcast, and we found that many of the people we've
spoken to for our musical memory archive over the last, what, three, four years now have
(00:53):
experienced music as a really important means of support and comfort and even inspiration
during times that they're away from home, whether off to school or camp for the first
time or traveling in a faraway place.
Homesickness is a very real thing for many people, and music can be, for many people,
a way of dealing with homesickness.
(01:14):
So Brian, I'm curious, have you ever viewed music in this way as a bomb or comfort of
sorts when you were experiencing homesickness or loneliness away from home?
I have used the music of Jimmy Buffett regularly to take me back to Pascagoula.
So Jimmy Buffett is an artist known for his Florida connections, but he was born in Pascagoula,
(01:41):
Mississippi, grew up on the Alabama Gulf Coast near Mobile, and his songs often reference
Pascagoula, Biloxi, and New Orleans and a lot of the places nearby.
And for whatever reason, particularly his kind of slow, wistful songs that reference
these songs, songs like Biloxi, they've just always, they've been a place that I've gone
(02:09):
when I was aware I was missing, you know, my family, which is largely from the Gulf
Coast, and missing that area and or thinking about those moments in my life.
I knew, I went first grade, kindergarten to 12th grade there, I knew even early on I wasn't
(02:36):
going to grow up there and wasn't going to live my life there, and yet it's still, I'm
still rooted to that place in a very real way.
And the music helps you with that connection.
And these songs bring me there, you know, get me there.
How about you?
Have you ever found music to be a way to connect to a place or bring you some solace when you're
(02:58):
feeling distant from home?
Yeah, I have a very specific story to tell about that.
Some years ago I had the opportunity to travel to West Africa to study the music and art
and culture of West Africa.
It was a very important, meaningful trip for me.
The core trip was going to be three weeks, but then after that core trip, which was with
(03:20):
a group of a couple dozen people, two other gentlemen and I traveled across West Africa
from Ghana into the nation of Burkina Faso and then into Mali and suddenly, unexpectedly,
I found that I was going to be traveling by myself across the rest of West Africa and
(03:41):
to Spain unexpectedly.
So one day I woke up and realized, oh, I'm on my own.
And I wound up traveling, I think probably for 10 days or so, a week and a half or two
across West Africa to Morocco, to Dakar, Senegal, ultimately to Spain where I then flew home.
(04:03):
And during that time I carried with me on the trip, because I knew it was going to be
important, I carried with me a device that some people never heard of.
It was called a mini disc recorder.
Did you ever have a mini disc recorder?
I remember them.
I didn't have one, but no.
It was kind of somewhere between CDs and MP3s anyway.
So I had this mini disc recorder and I loaded all kinds of great music on it.
(04:26):
And I can remember a particular time after all these weeks of travel in West Africa,
then traveling through Spain by myself on a train and listening over and over and over
again to a group that was becoming one of my favorites and still is to this day, an
Americana group called Nickel Creek, which I think I've told you about my love of Nickel
(04:49):
Creek.
And somehow that music, which is such American music and so meaningful to me on many levels,
helped me during a time of being completely by myself on a train, traveling and having
that music to comfort me and help me out.
And many, when I was with the group, the larger group of a couple dozen people, other people
(05:11):
commented that to this to me as well, that they had brought along their whatever, their
CDs, their MP3s, whatever technology they were using so that they could connect with
music from home while they were traveling in this foreign place.
And for many of us, it was the first time for such a thing.
So that was the first time one of a kind experience for me.
And music really helped me get through some, some times of loneliness and being literally
(05:35):
by myself unexpectedly for a couple of weeks there.
So that meant a lot and still does.
And still, you know, if I listened to a certain couple of songs off the first Nickel Creek
CD, I am there.
Interesting.
I am there on that train again, traveling northward in Spain, seeing the hundreds of
thousands of sunflowers smiling at me.
(05:55):
It's a very visual experience.
So that's mine.
That's really wonderful.
So we both have them.
It's great.
Well, we're looking forward today to exploring the topic of music and homesickness with our
guest, Jamie Matthews.
Jamie's involved in residential life on the University of Arizona campus and in training
resident advisors to work with incoming freshmen, many of whom are spending their first days
(06:19):
away from home as they arrive on campus.
So we'll welcome her to our conversation in just a moment.
(06:41):
Our guest today on Lifetimes of Listening is Jamie Matthews.
Now, Jamie is a senior associate director of residential education, housing and residential
(07:04):
life here on the University of Arizona campus.
She tells me she's also a string bass player with a community orchestra here in Tucson
and a doctoral candidate at the Center for Higher Education at the University of Arizona.
Jamie, welcome to Lifetimes of Listen.
Thanks so much for having me today.
We're curious to get to know you a little bit.
(07:25):
How did you get involved in the work that you do around residential life here at the
university on campus?
It really started when I was a freshman in my college at Truman State University in Kirksville,
Missouri.
After my high school that went there, I was just looking to make friends.
I just wanted to make as many connections as I could while also being introverted.
I wanted just some people to get to know.
(07:45):
One night there was a sign for, hey, who wants to come to Hall Council on Sunday?
I said, well, I'm free.
So I went there and got to meet some people.
They wanted someone to go to this other larger organization to get involved.
I said, okay, I'm also free Thursday.
So just by raising my hand, I quickly became in charge of campus-wide programming for our
campus two months into my freshman year.
(08:06):
Got to meet a lot of great upper-class students, a lot of campus advisors.
I went to some national conferences where I learned that people work at colleges in
this line of work.
That just really set me on a path of I was highly involved in college and student leadership
and student housing.
I also did some psychology research as an undergrad looking at well-being of college
students because I knew pretty early on in my college career I wanted to go this path
(08:30):
and knew that I wanted to work with college students at this really fun time of figuring
out who you are, figuring out what you want to be, how you interact with other people,
and just the magic of doing that in a housing setting, living in dorms with other people.
It's just a great opportunity to bring all those things together.
Sounds like it's for you a very gratifying line of work.
Absolutely.
(08:50):
I think people wouldn't stay in it if it wasn't gratifying and if you weren't finding meaning
and purpose no matter what your role is.
Our episode today is about homesickness.
I'm wondering how often is homesickness an issue for students, freshmen and dorms?
It's definitely a really widespread issue and something that we often talk about with
our staff.
(09:12):
We often like to think that it's just freshmen students and it's going to be especially those
who are from far away.
It's going to be really highly concentrated in August when they first get here.
While all those things can be factors, we really talk about how it can sneak up on you
and it can hit students in different ways at different points of time.
So it is a very prevalent issue that we frequently see and talk about and help students work
(09:33):
through as part of their college experience.
How do you prepare our residential advisors?
How do you prepare the people that are right closest to the students to identify and help?
So we have a really robust training schedule for our resident assistants.
They are really tasked with a lot of responsibilities on campus from being that peer connector,
(09:57):
being a leader responding to crisis and emergencies.
And so we really want to emphasize with them that their first role is to connect with students
and to build that connection, to get to know them one on one.
From there they also can help students get to know one another within the community level.
So the RAs have like a floor of students of 35 to 50 students that they're in charge of.
(10:19):
And so again we're just forming connections and that is one of the key pillars of what
our programming offers here at the University of Arizona and pretty frequently across any
college campus that you're going to find.
So with that foundation we then talk about homesickness as part of the student journey.
And so what we do with our resident assistants and what me and my team do is create a student
(10:39):
journey map.
And so we look across the year of a student, what you might experience at different times,
what are the challenges a student might face, what are the barriers, what are the things
they might be excited about.
So from there we can talk about August and how they might be really excited to be away
from home.
They might not be really excited to be away from home or maybe they're used to being away
from home.
And we can talk about there's lots of things going on at the university.
(11:02):
So if a student is feeling a little bit isolated or a little bit more hesitant to talk and
engage we can introduce them to some other things going on around campus.
We can look at November and say that with Thanksgiving and the holidays coming up that
might be a different time where we're seeing different types of homesickness of the stress
of school but also those traditions that they might have with their family.
(11:24):
Maybe they can continue those, maybe they can't.
So we talk about some of those just in time moments that homesickness might come up.
We talk about January when you're coming back to campus.
Maybe winter break was a really good time but also reminded you of what you miss about
being at your home location if that is where family is for you.
So again we kind of point out that student journey map for our resident assistants and
(11:46):
it's all things that when they look at it they go yeah that actually makes a lot of
sense.
Hearing you talk about this makes me wish that when I was a freshman at college I'd
had somebody like you to make me feel more integrated.
I wound up going away to school and just basically falling in with a group of people who became
my close friends.
But my involvement in other things on campus was pretty limited because I never took that
(12:10):
time or had somebody to work with.
So it sounds like really important work that you're doing.
We've got one musical question we want to ask you that Brian mentioned here.
Do you mind if I pose this question?
The question is do you have, do you Jamie happen to have a specific song or type of
music that reminds you of home?
I have some songs that remind me of like my family and so Oh to Joy or Beethoven's Ninth
(12:35):
is one that has special meaning to my family and has since I was a little kid.
And so that when I hear that that reminds me of home it takes me right back to several
different moments in time.
Some happy occasions some sad occasions but it represents that coming together and community.
If my family's going through a hard time I often will I have a lot of different instruments
(12:55):
at home and so I'll bust out the cello and play Oh to Joy and just send a quick video
to my mom if I know she's having a rough day.
Just this weekend I was traveling and I was at a German beer house and with a big old
alpine horns.
They were playing Oh to Joy so I interrupted the conversation I was having and said hold
on I got to record this and send it to my family.
(13:15):
So that's just a nice memory and a few years ago my parents and I got to see the Kansas
City Symphony play the entirety of Beethoven's Ninth.
Which is a special moment I have a classical music background so it meant a lot to me.
My parents are also able to with not a strong background appreciate just the beauty of that
piece of work.
Do you do you ever have you experienced being away from family and and then heard a snippet
(13:39):
of it somewhere and it brings you back to that to your family other than like you mentioned
the alpine horns but that's is that is that a sort of common thing or are there other
other times like that.
Absolutely probably so many that I can't really call them any specific ones but it specifically
(14:01):
reminds me a lot of my grandma who has since passed away but I think like the stars commercials
like the old stars movie channel I don't know if they're still around but that was their
movies movies movies.
My grandma hated that because she thought it really like did injustice to a song that
meant a lot to her.
So anytime I hear it like being used in like a kitschy commercial way I enjoy it and laugh
(14:23):
and think grandma must be having some opinions about this from the great beyond.
So just different moments like that for sure.
Jamie we're really glad to have you here and in a second we'd like to share with you several
musical memories that we have gathered about the experience of homesick and music's ability
to play a role with that and we'd like you to listen to them and maybe respond with your
(14:44):
with your already training hat on maybe and and and give us the perspective of of because
these are although these stories are of older older adults they are stories that often reference
this 20ish sort of college moment a little bit college and early grad student moment.
(15:06):
So that chance for you to respond to those interviews is coming up in just a moment here
on lifetimes of listening.
(15:27):
So now Jamie we have three musical memories about the topic of homesickness to share with
you on the program today.
Each of these stories that we've recorded with people we've met over the last couple
of years each of them points to the important role that music can play in the midst of the
experience of homesickness.
So this first musical memory today is from University of Arizona student Emily Jo Schwaller.
(15:53):
She's a member of UCAT here on campus and she shares in this musical memory a way that
music helped her to deal with homesickness when she moved far away from home.
I'm Emily Jo Schwaller and I work in the University Center for Assessment Teaching and Technology
at U Arizona.
I think for me it really comes back to campfire sing-alongs with that side of the family and
(16:20):
we compiled a book of different songs we sang things from like classics like American Pie
and House of the Rising Sun to like more specific things.
We're a very German family so there's a song called Dupaster Conductor and it's very fun
(16:42):
and I think that it's been really special to see how some of those songs have really
come like brought our family together.
I have a three-year-old niece and seeing her with my 98 year old grandpa singing Dupaster
Conductor has just been really cool and something that I love to see and there's like just a
(17:05):
sense that no matter how old you are like if you're a Schwaller you gotta know the campfire
songs and it's great.
So I grew up in Montana and then when I went to get my MA I moved all the way to North
Carolina and I had never been there and I was feeling really homesick and I came across
(17:27):
this place called the Busy Bee Cafe where musicians can just come bring instruments
and sing songs and some of the songs they were singing were these folk songs that I
hadn't heard since the campfire and so that was really magical and like a little slice
of home when I was so far away.
(17:48):
Anytime someone from my family came to visit I took them there and was like listen it's
like being home together with these strangers and so yeah I definitely would go there as
much as I could.
Even though as strangers it felt like home you know it felt like being in this space
where we were all together.
(18:10):
When I think of those campfire songs I can also smell like the ponderosa pines and things
like that so I think that it's all kind of woven together in a cool way.
Wow like that just brings so many good memories and I don't know this individual so I just
appreciate that story and I think it points to just so much about how music can take you
(18:34):
back to certain spaces and certain people.
I love that detail of it takes you back to the smell of the ponderosa pines because I
think that really is of like how do we get all of our senses involved and especially
when you're going through a rough time or just not feeling connected we really try to
encourage deep conversations and asking follow-up questions when we're connecting with people
(18:55):
and certainly for the resident assistants but just as humans ask like what tell me more
about that and so I really enjoy this example of this is what the importance of that song
was okay paint a picture for me like help me get to know what you're experiencing right
now as much as you want to share and so those are the exact questions that we'd really want
our staff to if someone's lighting up and getting that kind of twinkle in their eye
(19:16):
and starting to to loosen how they're sitting and they're beginning to be a little bit more
vulnerable with you lean into that and ask and to let them guide the way about what they
want to share and I think when music is involved you really get a great chance to learn more
about that culture and to learn more about what that family upbringing was.
I think we all like some sense of familiarity right so if you're in a new location but all
(19:40):
of a sudden you have the space to talk about these traditions and to talk about the intergenerational
connection that you all had you feel you matter a little bit more and you never know who you're
going to talk to and if they have some similarities with that or if they just want to ask you
more because that really intrigues them maybe they didn't have that experience but they
think that sounds really awesome like let's dive more into that it's just music just so
(20:04):
powerful in that way and I think it's just a great way to share a little bit about who
you are and get that conversation rolling.
This idea of feeling like being at home with a bunch of strangers because of music like
that music could bring that feeling of home so much that it just didn't really matter
where you were you know that it was just it was it was really about something about the
(20:27):
music just brought it all together I find it really powerful.
Okay we're going to share with you another musical memory Brian and I met a young man
named JT Chen it's been several years ago now when we were a part of the University
of Arizona's presence at South by Southwest in Austin Texas and JT shared I believe I
(20:52):
was the one who interviewed him and he shared with me a particular time in his life when
music really really meant something to him in this kind of context of being away from
home and and homesickness so let's listen now to the story his musical memory this is
JT Chen.
My name is JT so I'm an industrial designer I'm originally from Taiwan moved to the US
(21:15):
in 2009.
I remember when I was I was in high school that's in Taiwan so there was a really really
popular fan called Mayday they were alumni of our high school so really took pride of
that we we joined the guitar club to memorize every single song from them kind of becomes
(21:41):
like a like a sub identity of our school now I look back those music are so like student
you know and then now when I hear those music that brings me back to I would say the best
time in my life so far so those those songs bring me back to the time sometimes the music
(22:10):
like no matter how lame they are I will put it like run it for hours because I get into
a state of zone out and just pure homesick sometimes by by accident or sometimes I intentionally
want to bring me back to that that moment I will get into a state of happy and sad at
(22:35):
the same time you get like like you get the notion of those time will never come back
and how much you like wish you did it differently like the music is just a trigger yeah your
thoughts on JT's sharing but really just the ability to be happy and sad at the same time
like wow what a what a powerful comment there and I think just so accurate to the human
(22:59):
experience and I think sometimes we think that music needs to make us happier needs
to make us sad like there's like we need to be we're sad we need to be happy or just kind
of we only experienced emotions in that really one-dimensional way but I think that speaks
to like music and why we look like we can be happy and sad at the same time and music
can help us like recognize the beauty in that and help us know that regardless of our levels
(23:21):
of happy or sad or whatever emotions that there's something greater out there and that
we are comforted in we do have like a purpose and where we're going within our lives there
I also just enjoy the song and it just brings you right back to a moment in time because
(23:41):
I think lots of us can have that and I think part of also what we do in college is help
establish like what are your songs right now and so reminded me of oftentimes so back in
my day which wasn't too long ago we would make mixed CDs and everyone on a floor might
be able to contribute a song at the beginning of the year that represents who they are now
you can make a Spotify playlist if you wanted to but we do that to build some community
(24:06):
and then it's also fun to do it at the end of the year and see how not your musical taste
necessarily but just who what represents you now nine months later after your freshman
year of college and so I think that's kind of the same idea of this high school it built
some community around the song and then years later he can still listen to it and have that
experience and that's what we do it just in different ways in community settings and I
(24:27):
think it still applies of what that looks like I know I solicit a CD is from 2006 from
some of the other RAs that I worked with and I know exactly who's that song was and I know
exactly kind of why they put it on there and what that meant to them and I'm flooded with
all these memories of a really great college experience and I'm sad that that's not what
my current life is but I also realize like how far we've come the academic careers that
(24:52):
everyone has created and I can really appreciate the foundation that created and the music
that still connects us to those memories because they it's great to hang on to those memories
even if it's like a nostalgic kind of feeling this idea that music can elicit sadness from
us especially in relations that say important memories but that we really enjoy that sensation
(25:14):
I read an article I can't recall who was by that was titled why do sad songs make us feel
so good but they do because music has this ability a very unique ability to connect us
with important things in our past in our lives relationships and so forth and even if the
music is making us sad it's a very profoundly positive experience for us it's it's kind
(25:34):
of a unique unique quality of music forgive me because I only half know one of Brene Brown's
recent projects where she's working on just trying to make people aware that that we tend
to have words for like five emotional states but there are really hundreds and hundreds
and we just haven't figured out the ways to communicate that and and I love and so I'm
(26:00):
sure his English was his second language and yet he still found a way to just beautifully
sum that up the happy sad yeah yeah just finding a way to like to to capture to capture that
just so perfectly because that it is it's the happy sad that the homesick is the happy
sad a little bit and and and and I really also made me think back to your idea of helping
(26:28):
students find their journey and and because he's you know he's he's in a job you know
in in America and another country in a job but every once in a while he wants to experience
that that sense of place and home and he can do that using music that even now he feels
like it's not as complicated I guess as as other musics that he listens to but he that's
(26:52):
this that's how he gets there there's so much there I think regardless of if it's like a
second language or I just some people express and experience emotions differently and so
I think especially for some of our students that maybe they're not used to being able
to express their emotions or they haven't like had to experience levels of sadness or
(27:13):
any other words I love I have a feelings wheel that I use all the time that has lots of different
words that sadness and then it branches out to all the different types of sadness or happy
or fear or anger and I just think music is a great tool because maybe some students just
need an excuse to understand a little bit more about why they're feeling so maybe they
don't know they're feeling sad and maybe it's okay for them to express it a little bit more
(27:33):
based off music and it opens up the opportunity for them to experience those motions on their
own but I think especially the age of students in college it just we see a wide range of
students with different levels of emotional intelligence and capacity to understand what
they're experiencing let alone express it and learn how to work through that.
(27:55):
Well we've got one more really interesting story that we're going to share with you Jamie
in just a minute or so about a student who was traveling abroad and music was very helpful
in helping this person to overcome feelings of homesickness then we'll ask for your thoughts
on that one as well that final musical memory is coming up in just a minute on Lifetimes
of Lysate.
(28:38):
Sure our last musical memory today is by now a staff person here at the U of A named Devin
Bailey but he was a student and studied abroad as Dan was saying and it just we also heard
this story when we were at South by Southwest a couple years ago and when he told this story
(28:59):
it just I mean it was one of those things where you could tell he was opening up and
he had already has a relatively high emotional intelligence but part of it I think was because
of the way that he allowed music in this moment to speak with him so anyway let me stop talking
about it and let me play it.
My name is Devin Bailey and I am a data and visualization consultant for the research
(29:23):
technologies department at the University of Arizona.
In my second to last year as an undergrad at the University of Arizona I got to do an
internship abroad.
I was in neuroscience and I went to Geneva to work with this group called the Blue Brain
(29:43):
Project and they did computational neuroscience and it was an incredible experience but it
was also incredibly lonely I was displaced around the globe I was living in a in an Airbnb
that was jam-packed with people and you know my work was very stressful and I found myself
you know very quickly in the grind of go to work read papers try to make progress on a
(30:09):
very difficult question go home repeat and I was on the light rail or the trolley in
Geneva and I looked up and I saw an advertisement for Julia Holter who is a singer songwriter
that a friend of mine you know one point said I bet you're gonna like some stuff from Julia
Holter and sure enough I did and it was so strange to you know feel like here I was sort
(30:33):
of lost in this this unfamiliar world of work and things that I felt out of my depth and
and here was the sort of like hook and and I just remember sitting you know in my like
I was the only person in the row that I was in and she was on stage in that spotlight
on the piano and it felt like it was just the two of us and it was this incredibly like
(30:54):
restorative experience you know and it was an incredible moment you know to to then have
two more months in the internship but then to feel like I had been sort of renewed and
I could carry on because I had made it to that one show no I just left you know full
of emotion and went off on my own and I was like she'll never know but this was very
(31:19):
very important to me realizing that that music had this impact on me but it was pretty profound
I think just the restorative nature of music is just so great to hear coming through among
any other themes from from that story there and I think it really calls to mind for me
within our work with college students is that especially during times of high stress when
(31:45):
students are just going from one thing to another maybe midterms or finals Devin talked
about it like about the grind of what he was going through with his really amazing opportunity
but sometimes you just need to remember like who you are and what you did before all these
opportunities and what did you do before you had that internship before you had all these
finals and just get back to that even if it's just for a small moment and so I appreciate
(32:09):
that that was going to a concert and hearing some live music and then that was it like
that was like restorative and that gave the comfort and the confidence that we can continue
on and finish out that internship and the the wonderful coincidence of being in this
faraway place and there's one of his this artist that he so much loves and getting to
reconnect with that yeah on his very much on his own didn't sound like he invited a
(32:32):
bunch of people just like this is going to be good for me and I'm going to go take it
in I loved also Jimmy how you reframe that story because I as I was listening to it I
was I identified more with a performer than with Devon you know like I and the idea that
that that Devon is using that musical moment to reconnect with with a big part of his identity
(32:57):
so that he can then bring himself more fully to the opportunities that that's that's a
that I you opened that story up for me thank you I was gonna say it I might be putting
some story into to Devon's experience but listening to it is really calls to mind my
experience as a graduate student it was the first time I was further away from home than
(33:17):
usual but I wasn't playing in a community orchestra I played in college orchestra throughout
college and it was the first time I wasn't actively playing music with other people and
I just was not feeling myself and one day someone was like hey why don't you why don't
you go try out this other band like I got involved with another organization on campus
and they're like you're a different person when you get back from those rehearsals so
(33:37):
I stuck with it and it just was like it really called to mind of I was getting so caught
up and being a graduate student I was so excited to be there but I forgot what was giving me
joy and giving me comfort beforehand and so that's kind of what was bringing to mind of
I felt like she was feeling a little bit stressed and but everything was going on and just going
from one project to another and sometimes you just need that connection and you you
(34:00):
might not realize that you're missing it until you get back to playing or you get back to
the audience of music whether it's live or you turn on a song or anything like that.
The place that this story takes me is is actually another podcast it's an interview of Amos
Lee a singer songwriter by Dan Harris a former Good Morning America host who has a podcast
(34:26):
called the 10% happier podcast and this interview both Dan Harris and Amos Lee have severe
severe anxiety like the crippling kinds of anxiety but Amos Lee is a performer you know
like his job is to go on stage every night and the way that he reframed it for him that
(34:47):
allows him to walk on stage every night even though he's got this inability to do that
as a as an individual you know he's not wired for it is he began to think of whom in his
audience needed that music at that moment because he could share his songs with somebody
(35:07):
to help them even though you know and that took him out of the place of being anxious
about going on stage and I and I tell Amos Lee's story on that podcast to a lot of students
that particularly ones that I know that are that have anxiety stage fright anxiety issues
as it was like you know just let's reframe it a little bit so so that I was really identifying
(35:30):
more with the artist in this case and I was thinking about that so I was thank you for
bringing it back but I think it's also really a wonderful story and that we can all have
so many ways into it.
So thanks so much for responding to these three musical memories it's been a really
great experience with with having you here on the program Jamie Matthews with the University
of Arizona's Residential Education and Housing Life thanks again so very much for being our
(35:55):
guest today on Lifetimes of Listening.
It is my pleasure thanks for having me today.
(36:25):
Thank you for listening to Lifetimes of Listening.
If you haven't done so already please follow us or subscribe to our show on your favorite
podcast app.
We hope you'll also consider participating in our project by telling us your story.
You know we always like to remind listeners that we're really grateful for the now upwards
of 200 people who have recorded a story for Arizona Musical Memory Archive.
(36:50):
Those interviews those stories are allowing us to better understand the ways that people
value music in their lives and if you haven't visited our website you can do so it's musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
On that website you'll find the full length interviews of the ones that we have posted
here.
You can also submit a musical memory of your own via a sound file an essay a poem even
(37:15):
an illustration of some sort or suggest somebody you know who would like to share their musical
memory with us.
So please take a look at musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
I'm Brian Moon.
And I'm Dan Cruz.
Thanks for listening.
(37:37):
The executive producer of Lifetimes of Listening the Arizona Musical Memory podcast is Brian
Moon.
The program is produced and edited by Dan Cruz.
The Lifetimes of Listening website was created by Cynthia Barlow principal information technology
manager with the University of Arizona School of Music.
(37:58):
Music is from zapsplat.com and from pixabay.com.
Special thanks to the University of Arizona School of Music and the UA College of Fine
Arts for their continued support of the Lifetimes of Listening Musical Memory Archive and this
podcast.
For more information and to get involved in our research visit musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
(38:23):
This is Lifetimes of Listening the Arizona Musical Memory podcast.
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