Exploring Creativity with Craig Klonowski: A Journey Through Music, Education, and Artistry

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, thanks for being here.
We made it to episode two Yahoo.
Today we're talking to CraigKlonowski.
He is an all-around great humanbeing and he's a composer, a
performing artist, an educator,and you're gonna hear all about
him.
Let's go, let's do it.

(01:41):
So Thank you, hello everybody,and welcome to the Identity
Podcast.
Today I am sitting with CraigKlonowski.
Hi, craig.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Hi Cammie.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
So, before we started the podcast, I asked Craig to
share with me in his own words Iknow people send their bios.
I asked Craig to share in hisown words, like how, how he
would identify himself, how hewould, uh, introduce himself.
And so these are craig's wordsthat I'm about to read.

(02:12):
Something stirs in the darkesthours, when the world is silent
and thoughts run deep.
Craig klanowski's debut album,comeback, takes shape in these
quiet moments.
It's more than just music.
It's a journey through theshadows, tracing the path from
loss and heartbreak to hope andrenewal.

(02:33):
Acoustic folk melodies, pianoand cello set the scene, guiding
you through down-tempo balladsand more upbeat songs, capturing
the full spectrum of life'sexperiences.
Craig, you are your music.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
I am.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Oh hi Hi.
Of course I need to.
Before we even dive in, I needto tell the folks some of the
things that you have done inyour life, because you've you've
done a lot of things andbecause this is a podcast about
identity, you know we are ourexperiences and we're going to
talk about that, but I wanted tokind of give them a summary, a
review, if that is that coolwith you.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Oh yeah, I mean my music is kind of a summary of
all of that, all those crazythings and adventures I've been
on.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Absolutely Summary of all of that, all those crazy
things and adventures, I've beenon Absolutely Legit, okay.
So Craig Klonowski is amulti-talented musician,
composer, arranger, educator andrecording artist with over 20
years of experience in the musicindustry.
His career reflects acommitment to excellence,
community engagement and thetransformative power of music.

(03:44):
His versatile artistry spansclassical, folk, musical theater
, film scoring and education.
He's a seasoned double bassistand has performed with
prestigious ensembles, includingthe principal double bass for
the united nations symphonyorchestra I might pronounce this
wrong Camerata New York and theGalactica String Quintet, which

(04:07):
he founded as a composer,arranger and performer.
He's also collaborated intheatrical productions such as
Still Within the Sound of myVoice, the songs of Linda
Ronstadt earning a Bistro Awardand Urinetown.
He's a composer and arranger intown.
He's a composer and arranger.
He has scored award-winningfilms, including when the World

(04:27):
Goes Dark, which received aCollege Emmy Humanitarian Award,
and Choices, featured innumerous film festivals.
His arranging work has beenperformed by ensembles like the
United Nations Chamber MusicSociety and various New York
orchestras.
He's a tenured music teacher inNew York City's public schools
and he has built programs thatintegrate strings theory and

(04:48):
composition, reaching studentsfrom underserved communities,
and this past year, in 2024,craig released Come Back here,
his debut single, followed byMilestones.
Back Home One Last Night andHeard of it.
His music blends folkinfluences with themes of
resilience, renewal andconnection.

(05:08):
This release builds on hispassion for storytelling,
complementing his extensivebackground in live performance
and composition.
Look at what you do, dude.
It's so weird to hear it allback Uh-huh.
That's why I wanted to read it,because I was like we don't
actually like take in, like allthe things that we've done.

(05:31):
You have done so much stuff,lots of stuff, yeah, stuff and
things.
I, when, I, when, when you sentme your list of all the things
you had accomplished, I kind ofcategorized them into four
separate clusters of youComposer, educator, performer

(05:55):
and performing artist.
Does that feel like itencompasses all?
What am I missing?

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's pretty much the.
Those are the four mainelements Right by your power
combined.
Yeah, Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Plus dog owner.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Dog owner.
I really love plants and treesI make.
I play around with bonsai treesin my free time.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
I didn't know this.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, these are other little tidbits, my little
secrets.
I love it, yeah, and I like Iexplored acting for a hot.
I didn't know this.
If you want to do well, that'sone of the ways we reach people.
So I've found that I can getthat satisfaction through all my
other elements still.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
I love it.
Yes, it's accurate.
Yes, or read whether it wasyour words that I asked you to
share or, um, like your bio.
What do you claim like today?
This we're, we're taping thison a Sunday, this day, this

(07:14):
Sunday.
What are you claiming as likewhat's leading the way?
What part of you is leading theway today?

Speaker 2 (07:20):
it's, it's oh god, that's so hard.
Because it does.
I mean, I'm glad you asked thequestion that way, because it
does change from day to day.
Yeah, and like I'm I'm rightnow, I'm like a performer
educator I and I list them inthat order.
I'm really working on this, likeseeing myself as different
things right and um I don't knowthe educator of it.

(07:43):
I've gotten so good at it and Iknow that I, like I, can reach
people.
It's, it's pretty cool.
And and um, that's somethingthat I feel like I, a skill that
I have that I give to otherpeople.
Right, and performing andrecording and creating music is
something I I start by doing formyself, um, and so it's kind of

(08:03):
a yin and a yang and you know,I try to balance out what I
create, what do I learn from itand how do I give that to other
people.
And you know, you're talkingabout these four main roles and
it kind of distills down tothose two things I think we've
talked in the past about being,you know, the line between being
a consumer and being a creator,and each of those roles kind of

(08:24):
does a little bit of both.
But you know, right now Ireally I'm really proud of my
education stuff that I'm doing.
I'm doing really cool thingswith people of all different
ages and I'm really proud of thestuff that I'm making.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
I love it.
I feel like of the like, thefour kind of like roles,
categories that I kind of likepulled out.
They all feel tied to yourcreative self, Absolutely.
How do I put it?
How do you fuse that with allthe other parts of your life?

Speaker 2 (09:02):
How do you fuse it with all the other parts of your
life?

Speaker 1 (09:06):
I don't know if I'm even asking that.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
I'm not sure I understand the question.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, like do you bring that into other parts of
your life too, Like when you'renot a teacher, when you're not
creating music?

Speaker 2 (09:17):
It's like impossible not to.
It's sort of a thing about whoI believe I am.
I guess is like I'm like asmuch as you say, like I put on a
hat right, I'm a teacher forthe moment and I put on, but
none of those other things goesaway at any time during any of
the other, any of the othersituations.
They're all bubbling andboiling on the back burner and

(09:39):
every once in a while I need tograb something out of that tool
bag.
And so I'm like, oh wait, Ineed to grab something out of
that tool bag, and so I'm like,oh wait, I, I need to be a
teacher for a moment.
And so, you know, they, they,they're each a pillar that holds
up sort of the wholepersonality.
Uh, you know, and when one isin the foreground, the other
ones are all they're stillmaking that able to, you know,

(09:59):
to be delivered.
Yeah, so, like while I'mteaching, while I'm teaching,
there are moments where I willjust suddenly like make up a
song for the kids and like it'llhelp them to learn, or I will
do some silly little dance justto distract them and throw them
off and bring them back in andget focus on me for a moment.
You know you have to grab alike I know this works over

(10:20):
there, let's see if it workshere.
Sometimes it does, sometimes itdoesn't.
Yeah, and you know it's a lotof trial and error.
We've we've talked about a lotabout how everything is an art.
So if you can pull from moredifferent kinds of art and and
and think about how that, youknow, relates to what you're
doing, boy you've got.
You've got the best toolkit inthe world.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Heck, yeah, yes, yes, I love it.
Well, okay, I feel like in whatyou had said, you said like you
have a passion for storytellingand that complements.
So I feel like we're kind oflike telling a story of Craig
through all of these differentroles that you play.
So, like, if we're going totell the story, what's our, our

(11:05):
first chapter?
Where do we go?
Composer, educator, performer,performing artist.
Do we start with where, whereyou're feeling you are today?

Speaker 2 (11:12):
um, I don't know.
I mean, like I'm I'm sort of aliteralist with these things,
like I'm picturing myself atfive years old swinging my feet
on a piano bench you know theone who's dragging mom to get me
to go to the, the piano lessonyeah, were you the kid that like
was forced to go to pianolessons and hated it?
no, I was asked that's what I'msaying.

(11:32):
I mean, I was like, mom, it'stime to go, come on, we're gonna
be late, get in the car.
And I and I just she didn'thave to ask me to practice.
I loved it up until there wasone thing that happened.
So I started when I was aboutfive, around 12 or 13, um, I, I
had been enrolled.
I started taking bass atcleveland institute of music,
like pre-college, and I loved it.

(11:54):
My sister, my twin sister, wasplaying violin and she
encouraged me to join theorchestra.
Yeah, I was supposed to playthe cello.
They ran out of cellos and theysaid we'll give you a bass.
And uh, I don't know, 30 someyears later, I'm still playing
the bass.
I got my own cello, um, but thepoint is, uh, what happened is
my parents said let's take, whydon't you go to the next step
and take piano at clevelandinstitute as well?

(12:14):
And I got this uh, reallyintense guy I won't say his name
, but like I'm like this isn'tfun anymore and I lost, like I
kind of fell out of love withthe piano.
I focused on the bass and Ididn't come back to it until I
was in college.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Oh, that's so valid when you have that teacher,
that's so like disciplined andlike authoritative in your
lessons and suddenly it loses,like the buoyancy of the art.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
It's such an important thing for us, I think,
is it not just experiencinglike who you want to be as a
teacher?
For me, there's this componentto it.
It's a lot of who you don'twant to be.
We go through all theseexperiences I know you have.
I've shared some of mine where,like you've had some traumatic
arts experiences yes, I have.
It's like I can even see themcreeping out in my teaching
sometime.
I'm like I don't want to bethat person.

(13:06):
I'm not going to do that tothese.
My first teacher, miss haynes Ithink she's still around.
She lives in brecksville.
Ah, lovely, lovely lady.
But we learned I had a book oftv themes, like I learned the
oscar meyer hot dog song andlike she asked what do you want
to play?
And so I brought in a wholebook and I learned nothing but
phantom of the opera.
And I went to this new guy andwe spent like two months doing

(13:27):
like scales and I'm like, yeah,I get now as a teacher, like
that's important, yes, but ifyou don't like it, like it's not
kind of fun, especially forbeginners and I find this true
for adult beginners as much as afive-year-old or a 60-year-old
if they're not having fun doingit, you are wasting your time
100%.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
I think that's what makes it hard for adults to
start something new, especiallyif it's something like learning
an instrument or learning like anew creative outlet, because
we're adults, we've alreadymastered so many different
things in our lives like goodenough to like live right in our
lives, like good enough to likelive right.
So if we're going to addsomething to our life, we think

(14:07):
we're going to have that samelevel of mastery that we did,
like that we have now witheverything else.
But we've had like decadesworth of practice doing those
things.
So then we pick up somethingwe're not good at, we don't have
a sense of mastery over, and wethink, like we generalize it,
we go like, oh god, I suck, soit's gotta have that like some
that little bit of play in it tobe like I'm doing this for the
sake of doing it and I think italso gives it a sense of

(14:31):
ownership.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
When you're when you're making music or you're
making art that's satisfying toyou, you're not doing it for,
like, doing scales, for example.
You're doing that becausethat's a tool to get to an
abstract.
Other thing you're going to doin the future yep if you can
play like the big note versionof uh, you know again the oscar

(14:52):
meyer wiener song.
You have made something nowthat is recognizable and you
think is fun or cute, right?
yeah and and, and there'ssomething really profound in the
, the instant tangibility of theproduct that you're like.
Okay, I'm making something,especially with young people.
I think older people have.

(15:13):
We've talked about frustration,tolerance, and that's a lot of
what this is.
You're frustrated, you haven'tmade the thing you want to make
yet, and I think adults have alittle bit further vision in how
to get there.
But equally, I mean, we allhave that inner child that just
says I can't do this.
I'm not a musician, you know.

(15:33):
I'm a tax lawyer.
I can't play the piano.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Why not think it's like for for adults, especially
like we get so ingrained in aspecific part of our identities.
So, like, speaking from my ownexperience, right, so you, you
knew me when I was in theaterand then I walked away from
theater to go to grad school tobecome a drama therapist and I
had this fantasy like, oh, it'sfine, I'll see like clients

(15:59):
during the day and I'll do showsat night.
Like that's, that's how it willwork.
I will have this whole life.
That's like blossoming withcreativity and and expression
and and helping support peoplethrough whatever they're going
through using theater arts.
But it's therapeutic and yeah,but then like the, the, the
pathway to become like an actuallicensed therapist is so

(16:22):
intense that like it was allconsuming and suddenly
everything is about the clinicalwork and like all these
creative parts of me just fallaway and it becomes so amplified
.
So then I'm like I'm atherapist.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
And then it's like, wait a minute, you know I mean
you also I've watched you enoughthat, like, those things are
all there, they've just evolvedinto something.
I I mean because I went throughthe same process.
I've talked about the, the ideayou go to music school and they
and and it's very definitive,from the moment you take the

(16:55):
entrance exam, are youperformance, are you education?
right those are two.
They're like you.
You have to choose a path andgo down that one.
Yes and uh.
I chose education because Ibelieve that I could still be a
performer and, kind of like you,I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go to
new york city and I'm gonna, youknow, I'm gonna teach by day

(17:16):
and I'm gonna do auditions andplay in pit orchestras by night,
and like it doesn't work thatway.
So then you find ways of makingit work together.
I do shows at my school.
I teach kids how to you know I,I had them sing like their own
little cabaret songs or like youknow you you find a way to fit
it in.
And then finally, when you getcomfortable enough like you're

(17:38):
making a podcast, you are makingsomething, you are creating
something new you finally get toa point where you're like, no,
I can do this, uh and this andit does.
All these elements start tocome back together, things that,
like you asked me that questionhow do I identify?
I'm all of those things.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yes, it's not an, or it's an and.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Yes, it's all.
And.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, and they don't fall away.
Like, of course, like thelonger you're away from a
particular part, the more likethe skill sets fall away, but
they don't fall away for good.
Like I mean, my, my musictraining is as a vocalist.
So, like all of my music skills, my music theory, my music

(18:23):
training is like where, likeplacement, and like resonance,
and like what is my range andlike where is my break and like
how do I use my mix, and allthat kind of shit.
But like I thought, likerewinding back a year when I was
doing the identity project andI did that final thing and I was
like, okay, well, I'm gonnasing that I'll do something that

(18:44):
I have mastery over, but Ihadn't actually practiced the
thing I had mastered decadesbefore.
So I was like, oh my God, Isuck at the thing I had mastered
.
Now I suck at oh no, I'mterrible, but it's really about
like, oh, like, can you sit withwhere you are now and actually
give yourself space to findthose parts of yourself again,

(19:05):
like finessing them and and andtending to them as if they're
like a young part of you.
Like it's okay, I got you it'stotally that it's.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
It is what you just did.
It is a little hug to thebreast.
Uh, draw it near to your heart,let it feel your breath and
like it's hippy dippy.
But it is totally that 100 itis.
It is so difficult to find thatkindness for yourself that I
struggle with this, like I meanit's part of my upbringing and a

(19:35):
bunch of other stuff.
But like, just be like, hey,you made a thing.
It doesn't matter what anyoneelse say, you did it.
You made's there, yes, and it'snot your choice whether they
like it or not, that doesn'tmatter.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
It doesn't matter.
It's literally that you made it.
It's doing it for the sake ofdoing it, versus doing it for a
product so that others willconsume it Yep, and if others
consume it, great, that's great.
But if they don't, you made athing consume it.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Great, that's great.
But if they don't, you made athing absolutely and I think
that I we've we've touched onthis in the in our in our past
conversations.
But there's this idea of whenyou are creating.
If you're creating specificallylike I want people, you know
this is going to get 400 000streams in the first month, so
I'm going to make money off ofthis.
If you're creating with thatintent, you're creating
something totally different it'slike a different type of art

(20:31):
right yes, yes you're creating aconsumable, you're creating a
product, whereas if you'recreating for yourself I think
that's closer to the concept offine art as we would define it
in like a intellectual senseyou're designing it, you're
creating it simply for thepurpose of making something
right.
Right, which is what this isart, because I said it's art yes

(20:54):
, which is how we define play.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Like play is doing something for the sake of doing
it.
So, like art, art is play,creativity is play.
It's just how we choose tochannel it.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
What medium, what, and I think, when art is is play
it, it becomes something more.
That's what, when you seesomething that like, moves you
like?
I saw sunset boulevard lastnight, the, the new production
and I there's a when I was aflight attendant.
I was a flight attendant forthree years.
Speaking of other identitiesand lives, yes, I remember that

(21:29):
chapter well.
And trainer and, yeah, I had awhole nother while I was doing
my master's degree, but I had aScion XB in this car the one
that looked like a toaster andthe CD player in this car would
eat CDs and it first it ate avita thank god it wasn't
something I didn't like and thenit ate sunset boulevard.
So I literally listened to thison repeat for like months and I

(21:51):
loved it and I'm so.
I know every word of this show.
And then I finally saw the.
I saw the last production whereglenn close uh, did a reprise
of her first performance and itwas unbelievable.
And then I saw it again lastnight and I was just like blown
away at the idea how this artcan evolve.
It was the same notes, it's thesame words, but like when you

(22:12):
go and you see and it'ssomething totally new, the value
was added.
But that happens from somebodysitting with it and playing with
it and taking chances and beingadventurous and not just doing
what.
I know.
This worked in the past, sowe're going to do that one again
, right?
Somebody took a huge chance onthis and it is like it's just
the coolest thing I've seen in,maybe ever.

(22:33):
It's just a really cool idea.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
I don't know well, I mean what that play?
Absolutely.
What that makes me think of is,like, what is the role of risk
in art?

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Risk is quite possibly the most important part
, and it's like taking risk.
It's so funny because the risksare so imaginary most of them.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Most of them yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Because we don't really know what's going to be
and we see it even as a riskonly because we are painting
societal norms and expectationson what we're making.
Yeah, the risk and the risk isnot.
The risk is usually purelyemotional and social with most
art is are they going to like it?
Are they they gonna not like it?
And when we use that as ameasuring stick for art, it's
very, very dangerous, becausethat wasn't what it.
That.
That's like.
Yeah, how heavy am I?

(23:33):
You're six inches heavy, likethat doesn't make sense.
It's the wrong unit ofmeasurement, right right whether
art is good or not right, right.
Oh, I have so much to say onthat and I'm blessed which goes
back to your the wholediscussion of social media and
like how toxic that is to theidea of art okay, let's go there

(23:57):
, because, because we're hereand I don't- can I?
Can I talk about another thingthat came up?
We were talking about the ideaof long form versus short form.
I don't know if you want to gothere.
We can, yes, you go yourdirection when we get there.
Remind me to ask you on some ofthe things, Okay, so?

Speaker 1 (24:26):
so, if I were to, you said today, you were feeling
your educator self and yourperformer self.
Let's talk about educator selffor a second, for a little bit,
um like, because it's it's tiedto what you're you're bringing
into the conversation aboutsocial media, one of the things

(24:48):
you've said to me in previousconversations that sticks in my
head because, like we both workwith kids in some capacity.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
I see the impact of social media on kids' mental
health and well-being, and myown, yeah, I mean I think that's
so important is, as we aretalking about this, we are
experiencing that in a in acompletely different lens,

(25:18):
because we grew up without ityes right.
We know a world as a child thatif you wanted to play you went
outside and found friends.
Like that was a whole notherworld.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
And you're watching kids who don't get, they're not
going to get that experience,and so we're watching them
through a very, very specificlens.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, which is an interesting concept as an
educator today, because you hadthe experience of being exposed
as a younger child.
I mean going out into the worldand playing and creating in
your own world, but alsocreating art as a child, going
to lessons as a child, becausesocial media wasn't a thing.

(26:00):
So you just create, create,create, right.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
I'm in this like five-year window, I think.
So I'm technically a millennial.
I was born in 1982.
And I think it's the first yearthey classify as millennials
between Gen X.
And there is this I've talkedwith so many people about.
This idea is that, like when Iwas in middle school.
It was kind of a new, but itwas a mandatory first for the
first time and within about twoor three years we had to turn in

(26:27):
our papers typed, right.
But it was this weird time likewe didn't have at-home
computers.
So I would go type my paper atthe library on a typewriter, on
like a word processingtypewriter.
But that was like in middleschool and by the time I was in
high school.
Later in high school we had ahome computer, right.
So I'm on this weird planewhere, like, the first half of

(26:52):
my life was analog.
Yeah.
And the second half of my lifeturned digital.
Yeah, and it's such an oddthing, I have such a deep, deep
respect for analog work, deep,deep respect for analog work.
I think that I've been thinkingso much about this.
In what you're talking about ineducation is that I feel like

(27:12):
there's this skip, that we skipthe analog and go right to the
digital and people don'tunderstand what certain things
even mean, like in a digitalaudio, audio workspace if you
add um reverb, right yeah kidsnow know this word is reverb and
it sounds like an echo, butthey don't really understand
what depth is or width, or whatthe wetter or the drier sounds

(27:36):
of it.
And those are real things thatyou would experience in, in in
the analog process ofexperiencing different spaces or
changing you know.
And so there's this disconnectbetween what the digital words
mean, what the software istelling you, and the
understanding of what that meansin function, if you were to try

(27:56):
to create those sounds or thosethings in real life.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Oh my God, oh my God.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
And so I'm and it's weird to be and I think you and
our generation is in this spacewhere we understand the analog
side of how, because the digitalis all a representation of the
analog world, right, right,right, we understand that, but
there is a dwindling capacityfor teachers and professors and
such to have experienced andgrown up learning how to type on

(28:27):
a typewriter before a computer,or play a violin before you
could just do it on your phone,you know, or you know you wanted
to create, uh, I don't know,some artwork.
Now you can do it fairly easy,or edit video or make a podcast.
I mean, these things are muchmore accessible now in a way
that never used to be, but wehave this advantage of having

(28:48):
gotten to do those things byhand.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Tangibly.
Yeah, and there's somethingyeah, you know I didn't, oh man,
yes, yes, yes, because, like Iforget that, like the younger
generations of folks won'tunderstand the concept of the
words behind the things that areon their like software programs
, yeah, that they wererepresentational of what was,

(29:13):
which totally makes me thinkabout like drama therapy and
like the concepts within dramatherapy, and I'm not going to go
down that path but just to saylike, oh, I'm so fascinated by
like, like the interpersonalexchange in person encounter,
and I've been trying to writeabout like online encounter and
what's different about onlineencounter versus in-person

(29:36):
encounter and where we kind oflike miss or what gets like
represented but is not like whatyou're saying with technology,
and I'm like, oh my God, it'strue there too.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
It's true everywhere, yeah, and I think there is some
.
There's some loss, right, and Iwe used to talk, I mean a
literal sense.
I mean like a great example islike if you listen to a vinyl
album yeah and you listen to thesame exact thing as an mp3.
Yeah, whether you know it or not, you're actually hearing less

(30:12):
of the original thing because,in order to convert it to
digital, they have to dropcertain information out, and
even within that world like ifyou listen to mp3 versus a wave
file a wave file has moreinformation in it than an MP3.
And so what we're getting arethese sort of like distillations
of whatever the original realworld thing was and the new ones

(30:37):
.
If you don't understand whatyou're losing, or you don't
understand that it's gone, youjust think this new thing is how
it always was.
Yep understand that it's gone.
You just think this new thingis how it always was.
Yep, and, and there's a.
There is a loss of theunderstanding, like you were
saying, of where these conceptscome from.
Where do these sounds, thesewords?
The?
You know the, the meaningbehind what you're making was

(30:58):
all grounded in in very concrete, tangible reality before it was
on your phone yep you need toknow how to do those things.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
I think that there's just a need to understand where
it comes from right, right, yes,so like you're in a classroom
with a bunch of kids every day,so so something folks should
know about, like who you are asan educator.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Um, you work at the only school with a performing
arts program in lower manhattanwhere I'm in, district
geographic district two, whichruns from like, chinatown all
the way up to midtown.
So not only do we have a wild,wild population, um, so we have

(31:44):
kids like immigrants who don'tspeak English, from Chinatown
all the way up to like, financeand diplomat children in the 50s
and then within the last twoyears, I mean, we had an influx.
Our school has about 1,200 kidsand of those, about 200 in the
last year are immigrants thatjust got thrown on a bus and
sent here.

(32:04):
Our population is about asbroad as I've seen in a school
district, one of the onlyschools in the district that has
, and I'm speaking specificallyof the fine arts.
We have a drama program.
We have I teach strings andthere's a counterpart that
teaches band and all the windinstruments Between us, we have

(32:24):
about 500 in in instrumental,hands-on music.
We have, um, a visual artsprogram and we also have a
ceramics program.
So we have like a kiln.
There's one teacher that justteaches ceramics all day.
It's, it's, it's like theunicorn of unicorns and on top
of that we have anadministration who respects the
arts, which I think is the key.

(32:45):
So our school is really unique.
Most schools will schedule thekids English and math and
science and social studies andthen say where's the room in the
schedule?
Oh, the math teachers need abreak at two o'clock, so let's
send them to music, right?
So we end up being thebabysitters so that the and I'm
using quotation marks realteachers can have their break

(33:06):
and then we get the kids backright.
That's how most schools in thecity operate.
At our school, they actuallythey let the kids choose.
They actually are electives.
The kids choose what they'regoing into and once they select
their elective, they build therest of the schedule around that
and it works.

(33:26):
I don't know why other schoolshaven't done this, because
they're still in the schedulefor everyone, and so, in that
sense, our school, where I teach, we're really lucky to have
administrators that listen to usand say, hey, this is the most
effective way to do this andthis is why it matters.
We're the ones who are putting.
You know, music is language,it's math's math, it's
discipline, it's all of thesethings.
So if you respect us and whatwe're doing, we can make the

(33:50):
other subjects shine.
Yeah, you have to, and it takesa lot of infrastructure.
You got to have a buildingthat's willing to do that.
You got to invest in theinstruments and the materials
and the clay and the kiln andthe time.
Um, and then you have to say,yeah, go, do your thing.
We're not going to tell you howto teach music right, right.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
So like, because of, like the, the program, like what
we were just talking about,like the fact that you know the
analog versus digital world andyour, what you're teaching
students is like the analoginstruments.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
This is as like analog as it gets.
I'm giving them a you know,original model violin based on
the Stradivarius.
You teach them how to take careof it.
You teach them how to tune it.
You teach them how to like allthe physical, the physicality of
you.
Press harder, it's going to belouder.

(34:46):
You move the bow, faster it'sgoing to, you know, be louder.
I keep going with louder, Idon't know.
Actually, this is a funny thingthat just popped into my mind,
saying that is the number onething I struggle with is getting
kids to play loudly.
I'm sure you've done this withvoice and stuff, but like, a kid
will play something.
Totally, I'm like now, can Ihear it?

(35:06):
Can you like?
Yeah, there is this fear inthem of like expression, even
using an instrument.
There's like the, even in a, ina group setting.
Right, they're fearful ofcreating too much sound.
It's, it's a.
It might also be cultural andpart of certain populations I

(35:27):
have, but it's a fascinatingelement and I think I've talked
to you a little about like, justwith social media, we had a
wonderful thing happen.
You've been to a coupleconcerts in the last year, I
think.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
I have maybe one or two.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Maybe one or two, but last year or the year before
our school adopted yonderpouches.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Oh God.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
It was transformational.
I didn't know schools did that.
It is, oh my God, the kidsalready know how to open them
and get there.
But like it almost eliminatedthe problem of the phone and the
social media during school time.
It doesn't eliminate iteverywhere else, but at least
there's some moment.
So now I have kids in my roomwho are there and the most

(36:11):
interesting they can thing theycan do with their time is pick
up an instrument, not the phoneright, yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
so for for those of the folks who don't know what
yonder is, yonder is, um, thisuh company, essentially that.
Uh, they're these littlepouches, and I've gone to
concerts not recently and likelywill go to some in the future
that use them, but Madonna usedthem before the pandemic.
So like there's folks that havethese pouches and you put your

(36:39):
phone in them and then they giveyou a little like valet check.
That valet check, yeah, like avalet ticket.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
They close, close with a magnet and you can't open
it, so you get permission andsomebody does it for you exactly
.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
And so then you know, for concerts, at the end of the
concert you go up to one of therepresentatives.
They're able to likeunmagnetize it, you can get your
phone out, um, and then you getyour phone back.
So for the fact that schoolsare using these, because you
have, you've said to me in thepast like you feel, like I've
written it down you feel like attimes being an educator is

(37:12):
fighting technology.
It's a fight between you andtechnology to get the attention
of the student.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
It's such a funny fight too because, like I mean,
like the perfect example is likechat GPT fight too.
because, like I mean, like theperfect example is like chat gpt
and there are these, it's likethe jets and the sharks where
somebody's over here, no, youcan't use it and I'm over here
going yeah, you can, but only ifyou do this with it, right,
right, and because to me I viewit as like almost like a
calculator for words, right, ah,yeah, you can get if you know

(37:43):
how to use it.
If you just put it in and say,hey, give me my homework back,
that's one thing.
But if you use it to generateideas and try to find the right
words and then use them in yourown voice, that's a different
way of using it, and we'vetalked about this a lot and
that's the battle I feel thereis with technology.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
It's not just like here's technology, go use it.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
It's, what are we doing with it?
Are we?
Yeah, it doesn't have realpurpose, or is it just a toy?
Right?
This is something we're usingto literally cheat and not and
we're cheating ourselves out ofthe experience of struggling
with it.
There it comes again, right,struggling with how to make this
thing.
Yeah, um, I appreciate chat gptbecause I have written a lot.
I've written and written, Ihave written tens of thousands

(38:29):
of pages of words, right, and soagain, it kind of goes back to
I understand the analog side andI appreciate how this is a tool
, not a solution, but a tool tohelp writers, right, right, or
to help an artist, I don don't.
You know, ai-generated thingsare not human-generated, so it
changes what the artwork is inthe end.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Right.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
But there's this constant battle with technology
in that sense of how it's beingused, yeah.
But then there's also thebattle of like put your phone
away.
We're trying to have class.
This is an orchestra.
You can't be texting right nowlike right, that luckily is gone
, but we still get like.
There's certain days, if they,the day after the concert, all
the kids in my room get to havea laptop, we watch the video and

(39:13):
they get some chill time.
And I've talked to you aboutthis concept too.
Which is fascinating is howit's sort of you watch the kids
get sorted very quickly.
The sorting hat comes out intocreators and consumers.
This I like.
You see certain kids sit downand they want to like oh, can I
open GarageBand?
Is it okay if I make like Irecord myself?
Everyone be quiet, I'mrecording something.

(39:35):
And you know, like the otherhalf of the class is they're
just watching TikTok withoatmeal coming out of their ears
.
So it's just a fat meal.
Yeah, out of their ears.
So it's just a fat meal, yeah,no, you're right, oatmeal.
It'd probably be like pockies.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
That would be what it is absolutely pockies and a and
a coke but yeah, the, the, ohgod, so that there's so many
layers to this, because like,okay, so yeah, the, the division
between creator and consumer,my mental health part of me
wants to say, like, what does itdo to the mental?
Like, what is the mental healthexperience of the consumer

(40:11):
versus the creator?
Right, that's one piece of it.
The other piece of it makes mego like, oh gosh, okay.
So we're also talking about,like, how you are, like the
analog versus digital experienceand like what you're teaching
is the most analog of analog,right, because it's strings,
it's creation of music, learningnew things and all of this.

(40:36):
It keeps coming back tofrustration, tolerance, right.
So if we use AI, how are weusing it as a tool versus a
crutch?
Yes, absolutely.
And if, like, ai is thecreation, it is the source of
the creation, then where's thehumanity go?
And then, also, like, theanalog experience of humanity,

(40:57):
where does it go?
um but that also makes me thinkabout god, this, I'm firing so
many the synapses, they be afire and um, but like it makes
me think about, like the analogexperience of taking in art and
we've talked about, like thelong form, art versus social
media.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Tell the, tell the folks about your thoughts,
because I, when you talk aboutthis stuff, I'm like, oh my god
so again, I mean, it kind ofcomes back to what we were
talking about just a few minutesago, this idea of of you and I
were brought up in a in you know, if you, if you wanted to
listen to a song, you bought thealbum, you bought the cd, you
bought the cassette tape, right,and you didn't just get that

(41:38):
song, but you would end upexperiencing it as a part of a
larger piece which was designedby an artist or a studio or
whatever.
But it was part of a biggerthing.
Yeah, um, pretty mucheverything we consumed
artistically was like that, evena comic strip.
I was obsessed with calvin andhobbes, but you could go to the

(41:58):
library and check out.
You know there was a wholeshelf of these books and it was
part of a bigger scale of things.
And I've I've had, I've had aninteresting conversation with my
husband about this, but whatI've noticed is that the
consumption in large part hasbeen shrinking into like smaller
and smaller tidbits, and I wasexpressing that.
One of my concerns is that thesmaller bits aren't necessarily

(42:21):
a distillation of the quality ofa larger work, but that they're
just these snippets, and kidsare gaining a very different
concept of what dancing, or youknow what is a dance, what is a
work of art?
And I'm not saying that thesethings are not, they're just a

(42:41):
very limited view of what theyare.
And then this was reallyfascinating to me, though, which
was the flip side of the coin.
I was talking to my husband,and he was talking about binge
watching things, which issomething that we can do now
because of the same technology,and this is what I was going to
bring up like.
I can't tell you how many kidshave come to me in the last
couple years and have suddenlywatched 10 seasons of friends,

(43:04):
right and they did it in a weekover break what took us 10 years
to consume.
A kid can sit down now and do ina weekend yeah and it like that
idea kind of also blew my mind,but only if they have to be,
like led to it.
Right, they have to be.
There has to be some incentiveto go consume that much.

(43:25):
And on the same side, there'sother.
There are, I think they're morelimited.
We talked about, like wagnerianscale, like art creation, art
for art's sake, the artist thatcreates the theater and the
costumes and the, the entireproduction.
They are the mastermind of thewhole thing.
And while that doesn'tnecessarily exist in as great

(43:46):
frequency as it might have inthe past, there are these things
like the hair, like HarryPotter or the Lord of the Rings
or the Marvel Universe, wherethere are these huge scale, you
know, concepts with, or evenlike that's, multiverses that
kids can somehow wrap theirminds around.
Yeah, um, but again, I'm I'mgonna like really press, as a

(44:10):
asterisk on that is we'retalking about consumption, yes,
consumption of those things.
The creation of those things isis now like if you think of the
marvel universe, I mean, we'retalking about hundreds of
thousands of people that go intocreating this product.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Even like the Harry Potter, world was mostly created
by one person at first.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
But within two or three books, I mean, it was an
entire again capitalist industryright Creating this, and it
changed what the art was.
It changed it into somethingsellable.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Right.
So then, where does the role ofrisk?

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Well, the risk to me in those franchises and things,
the risk becomes making art.
That is art, not somethingthat's going to please the
masses.
You're making it because Ithink this is good.
The character is supposed todie here.
Right, that we don't kill offcharacters in most of our
stories.

(45:10):
You know, oh, I know that'sgoing to be the main character
because somehow he survived thatsituation.
But you know, like there's,there's been some, I think.
Uh, a great example was game ofthrones.
Part of what made it magical islike in the first episode they
spent all this expositionintroducing you to this
character.
In the end of the episode thecharacter gets killed.
You're like wait, you're notallowed to do that, wait that's

(45:33):
not how we write things.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
What are you doing?
But that's the risk it's sayinglike, this trope of how we tell
stories doesn't have to be theonly way to tell them right yes
and and so like I think there isthis sort of I would call it
almost a counterculture towardsthe analog.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Again, like I have kids who are excited because
they got a new album.
There's kids who are buyingvinyl they're 10 and they're
like I got a new album thisweekend.
Or, like you know, a kid camein the other day.
He's like I got a new ocarinaand I'm like what?
And he was like, oh, I learnedabout it because in Zelda you
have to get a, an ocarina, as a.
And I'm like, okay, well, playme a song.

(46:16):
And the kid, like, played asong on it.
I'm like, okay, what a twistedway.
Now you got a video game taughtyou about a old, ancient,
southwest, southwesterninstrument that you now brought
to school to show me again the.
There's so many ways this, thisgoes right, oh, dude, that's

(46:37):
fascinating to me.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
um, okay, let's talk a little bit about you as
performer.
Okay, I mean like, and I thinkhonestly, composer, arranger, is
a separate identity thanperformer.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
But sometimes do they combine?
They do.
Well, that's a whole nother canof worms, weasels, can of
weasels.
I'm going to clean that up.
I'm stealing it.
Go for it.
Worms, weasels, kind of weasels, I'm gonna call that stealing
it.
Uh, no, like there's one placethat I think of those two things
intersecting, and that isimprovisation where you are.
You are a composer and aperformer in the same moment,

(47:18):
and I bring this up because itis the it is about.
The scariest thing to me as anartist is when someone's like oh
, just make something up for me.
I was not really taught how todo this, not in public school,
not in my bachelor's program andnot in my master's program.
It's technically a part ofsomething they're supposed to
teach us, but it's somethingthat I've had to teach myself

(47:41):
and in that sense, I do feelthat composer, composer,
arranger and performer do cometogether.
If you've watched any of mylike Instagram reels where I
like do covers of songs, that'sa spot I've been and it's kind
of a place where teaching evencomes in, because I never
learned how to read chordsymbols.
I only learned how to readindividual written notation.

(48:03):
Right, I understood what chordswere, I understood how they
worked.
I took theory.
I even taught theory for awhile, but I never sat down and
just played chords, and so a lotof that project for me I didn't
give it a title or anything,but it was my little experiment
with myself was to how do Ilearn to play chords and sing
along with it.
So I was doing three things.
I was teaching myself how to dothat to how do I learn to play

(48:25):
chords and sing along with it?
And when you're doing so, I wasdoing three things.
I was teaching myself how to dothat.
What's the difference between amajor and a minor?
Do I wanna play it inverted?
Do I wanna play it in thisregister down here?
Is it one voice, Is it twovoice?
What rhythm am I using?
And in that sense, I'mimprovising in the moment, but
then I'm also performing thisfor other people and actually I

(48:46):
want to throw one other elementin there, the reason I started
doing this.
I was watching, um, we werewatching a series, uh, the last
of us oh yeah and we got to thethird episode and I don't know.
So this is a weird place andwhere binge watching led to me
doing all this.
And in the third episode wenever watched past it because I

(49:06):
thought it was one of the mostperfect episodes of television.
There's this whole side storythey take where Nick Offerman
has this romantic relationshipwith another man and they live
in this abandoned town together,like in the.
In the.
In the episode they go throughtheir entire life and at the end
of it he sings a long, longtime by linda ronstadt at a

(49:27):
piano and it and it'sbeautifully, beautifully
imperfect, it's just you cantell they just recorded him
sitting at a piano singing thisand it's like almost unedited
and there was something in thatmoment.
Watching I was like I think Ican do that and it's if you go
back and look, it's actually thefirst one that I posted.
I did my interpretation, Iimitated Nick Offerman doing

(49:51):
this thing and it I was like Iwant to try another and another,
but what it did is that youknow, this consumption of all
this media yep, kind of said tome, I can do that, I want to try
that again.
And so it led to me kind ofcombining these things education
and improvisation andperforming which led to me

(50:13):
posting all this stuff online,which led to our conversation
about.
It was weird.
What I was doing is I wassitting in my, I had my piano
and I put my phone there and Iwould play it and then I would
do it again and I would do itagain and I could go through it.
I would have 50 takes, right?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
And so it became what we talkedabout, this thing like who am I

(50:35):
performing for?
And I was just performing this,literally this black box, right
?
Not?
any performing for an imaginaryaudience that hadn't even seen
it yet yep and that was reallydangerous for me actually at
first, because I really got inmy head and I was really, I mean

(50:58):
, you know these toxic cycles ofthinking you're like bad, and
it's combined with thatconservatory experience where
nothing you do is ever goodenough.
Right, it doesn't matter howgood you play For anyone that
doesn't know.
If you go to music school, justbe ready.
I think I compare it to themovie Whiplash, like that's just

(51:20):
one professor and the rest ofthem are doing the same thing to
you.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
It's a very difficult and it leads you to be
incredibly self-critical oh forsure, like I just remember, like
I, a few weeks ago I wastalking to my dad about this,
about how he would come see mein shows, and he would be like
but he and my mom would be like,oh my god, like what?
Wow.

(51:44):
Every show we see it getsbetter and better and better.
And my first response to himwas always oh god, like I did
this wrong.
This was the worst it eversounded.
I couldn't have, I couldn'thave fucked up that scene more.
And it was so hard to talk toyou after your shows because you

(52:05):
couldn't sit in.
Someone saying what you did upthere moved me.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
I still struggle with this.
Like it's, I would say.
One of my more toxicpersonality traits is I.
Someone says oh, that wasfantastic.
And my like.
The first thing is like no, itwasn't.
Like you don't know anything.
Then it's a cruel, cruel thingthat we do to artists when we

(52:32):
make them.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Right.
So I mean there's a whole topicof the systemic stuff that I'm
going to just kind ofacknowledge and know there's
these big systemic things thatwe could talk about, but I want
to stay true to Craig as a humanin the world.
But specifically about Craig asthe performer, what is the role

(52:55):
of your inner critic increation and performance?
How loud does it get, and is itmotivational or is it a?
Is it wwe smackdown?

Speaker 2 (53:05):
it's.
It's so funny because it itreally depends on what it is
okay.
When I play with the unsymphony I don't like.
It's almost like I feel likeI'm there as a gift to me.
I just absorbing, I know how todo it well enough right, I have

(53:26):
enough confidence.
Even when I make a mistake, I'mlike I know that wasn't that
bad, it's fine.
Nobody noticed or I that was awrong bow direction or wrong
note or whatever, and I am ableto just be present and enjoy the
like.
If you see me perform with that, I'm like I enjoy every minute
of it and I'm there, like inmyself in the moment yeah uh,

(53:48):
you mentioned that lindaronstadt show.
I did this was for someone whowas had already written the show
and they had already producedit somewhere else.
Uh, there was a guy who wasproducing it, who was a producer
from sesame street, like, and Iget in my head like, oh, these
people are watching.
I gotta get this right, becauseif I get this right, then maybe
I'll get another opportunityand and you remove yourself from

(54:09):
the actual making of the of thething.
So for me it depends on likewho's there, who's seeing it and
it, and it has gotten betterover time.
But like those again, thoselittle weasels, all like, they
all come in and they're like hey, what about that one?

Speaker 1 (54:26):
They're walking through, well, and I think too,
like, yeah, like coming up inthe universities, the
conservatories and all thoseplaces, it's like they might be
those people's voices, like theteacher, that's like the
authoritative teacher, thatpiano teacher that you had, that
was like no, we're going to doscales for like a year, like and

(54:47):
and it's so interesting becauseit's all about balance.
Right, it's like you must havethe technical skills in order to
be able to complete the task,but you also have to be able to
find the emotionality, you haveto be able to connect with it,
not just emotionally, butspiritually, internally.
But then also, like all ofthose voices, all of those
experiences, become internalmessages that you carry about

(55:10):
who you are as a performer, aswhat you're capable of.
Like they become the likeself-limiting beliefs.
I mean, like I don't and we'vetalked a little bit about like,
like I don't, I say I don'tperform.
And yet, you know, yesterday Iwas sitting there telling
somebody else like, well, youknow, if you directed this show,
I would audition.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Yep, you can't.
I think once you, once you geta taste of it, it's with you
forever.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
Forever.
Like it's just that I haven'tdone a thing, but it doesn't
mean I'm not Like.
We talked about that at thebeginning of the podcast.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
It reminds me of in Evita.
There's that line where shegoes they called me a whore.
Can you believe that?
And the guy responds he's likethey still called me Admiral,
even though I gave up the seayears ago.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Yes, it role, even though I gave up the c years ago
yes, it's kind of a great linein the whole show.
It's so snarky and it's so true.
But it's like, yeah, you stillcarry like when, whenever I'm
sitting with clients and we'retalking about trauma, like we
talk about, like you know, youknow the developmental age and
the chronological age which theywere when the trauma happened.

(56:22):
But they are not onlythemselves today, as them at,
let's say, like 35.
They are that.
They are them as 35.
They are them as a 25 year oldwho was just just coming out of
the trauma and realizing, like,what am I going to do with this?
They are them as a 35 year oldand a 15 year old who was
navigating the world in aconfused way and didn't have any

(56:43):
guidance or leadership.
They're the five-year-old whowanted to play and was told to
you know, don't cry, or I'llgive you something to cry about.
Like all of those things.
They are all of thoseexperiences.
And then there are 35-year-oldperformer being told like well,
well, express your inner worldthrough the piece.
And it's like well, do you knowwhat my inner world?

Speaker 2 (57:03):
yeah, are you?
Sure it's like there's somestuff but it's a little heavier
than you think and I'm like giveme the dark, give me the juicy
what's there brahms lullaby, theemo punk version, oh I would
eat that shit up, yeah right oh,it's so true.
I kind of think of it as Ialways.

(57:24):
I'm like this is the, theconductor in me.
It's just nothing but analogies.
But I think of the uh.
Like, if you're a mac user andyou go to the uh, when you have
to go to the um, what do theycall that?
The time machine to find yourold because you messed up some
file, and you this like there'slike you can go all the way back
in time, but it's all stillthere and it until I like click

(57:46):
on that button, I'm like, oh mygod, it is all still there.
And I always remind, like Ialways kind of feel that way
about it's all still here, youjust tucked it away somewhere
exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
And you know, the body keeps score, the body
remembers.
I don't know why I said it likeit was sultry.
I'm talking about trauma, I'mall like trauma.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Yeah, you went on the npr on me there welcome to npr.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
I am your host.
Um, okay, so, like, okay.
So, as a performing artist,like, so you're a performer,
you're stepping into these partsof yourself, that it's a gift
to you to be a part of thesymphony.
But then you started sayingwhat else?
And what else that's myfavorite question and what else?
And you decided to impersonatethis performance from the show

(58:39):
and put a video online.
And and then that grew to whatif I?
How did it get from there tosaying how do I keep expanding
this and stepping outside mycomfort zone?
Oh, I think I'm gonna record asong.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Well, it's a long, long road.
Um, I've mentioned before likeI had a favorite book when I was
a kid.
I actually actually should getthe book out.
I have it in the closet, but Istill have the original.
It's falling apart and heldtogether with a binder clip at
this point, but around 2014,.
It was kind of a what else andI tried my hand at composing

(59:15):
music.
I composed a bunch of stuff forthese short films.
You know rick hamilton, right?

Speaker 1 (59:21):
yes, I do choices.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
The movie you mentioned early was by him
that's rick's movie a bunch ofthose film scores I did were for
him.
He's.
It was only this.
See, people don't understand.
Kim and I met doing the showcabaret and during the show I
met one of my best friends, brad, and his husband, who became
his husband.
They met at the show and then Imet this woman who was playing

(59:44):
a Nazi piano player.
She offered me my assistantshipat Cleveland State, which got
me my bachelor's degree.
I'm now having thisconversation with you.
Rick Hamilton contacted me a fewweeks later and asked if I
would score some films for him.
Like it is astonishing whatthis doing, saying yes to this
show, which I wasn't going to do.

(01:00:05):
I was living in columbus and mydad sent me a clipping in the
mail from like, snipped out ofthe classifieds from the plane
dealer, and it was like, and Iwas driving back and forth from
I should not have done this show, but I said yes and I did it
and it was like thetransformative moment that led
to me being because I went andworked at cleveland state, I met

(01:00:25):
a pilot that got me a flightattendant job and if I didn't
have that job I wouldn't havebeen able to come to new york
and have the interview and youknow it's just insanity, right
yeah, it's the.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
It's the door that opened the doors there's.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
There's so many other layers to that story, but
that's.
That's a whole nother, a wholenother series.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Uh, I forgot the question that we were going for
um I I was talking about thejourney um from performer to
performing.
Artist writing your own.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
What what ended up happening is.
I started, I tried my hand.
I had done these short films.
I had a friend that asked me todo the one that won the emmy.
That was the college emmy wewere friends from.
We played football together inhigh school and he went into
animation at the clevelandinstitute of art.
I think he's the head ofanimation there now.
Um, yeah, uh.
And then I was kind of like well, let me try to make something

(01:01:14):
of my own.
And for a lot I'm talkingdecades I had had this idea of
turning this book into a musical.
I just think it's the mostperfect story that anyone can
relate to.
It's a hero's journey.
And I started writing and themusic was just garbage.
I go back, I saved it and I goback and listen and it's bad.
And so I did it again and itwas a little better.
And then I did it again and itwas a little better.

(01:01:34):
And then I showed it to someoneand let them listen to it.
And then they took the feedbackand I got a little bit and it
just it was, I mean, at least adecade, a decade and a half, of
late nights and just playingaround with sounds and and kind
of having fun with it.
And then it slowly grew.
The pandemic came and I had alot of free time, uh, and I
ended up writing a full-lengthmusical of it.

(01:01:56):
I adapted the entire book intoa musical.
I soon found out that you can'tjust do that and give it to.
You can do it for yourself, butyou can't just do it and give
it to people.
So I have this musical, youknow, just sitting in a sitting
in a hard drive somewherewaiting, waiting for the moment,
and I got really depressed whenall that happened at the end.

(01:02:16):
I'd put, you know, a decade ofwork into making this happen.
I learned how.
I taught myself again thatintersection between composer
and performer.
I taught myself how to how touse the audio workspace and make
midi sounds and record myselfand get a microphone and use
auto-tune and like.
So I was performing all thevoices, I was writing all the
music.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
I it like it's one of the again, wagner jason siegel
is jason siegel, and forgettingsarah marshall with his like um.
Are you familiar with thatmovie?
I'm not no oh, I love it.
I love jason siegel.
I think he's brilliant, butlike um he he writes a musical
about um dracula and like he'sgoing through this like huge
heartbreak and he sits in hishouse and writes.

(01:02:58):
He's a, he's a composer and hewrites like jingles and
background music for shows andstuff.
I've never seen this and yeah,so he writes a musical and then
he finally gets to perform themusical and it's like Dracula
and it's all him going through abreakup and using the art as
coping.
Yeah, that's, I mean Everybodyknows the season, the scene of

(01:03:18):
him showing full frontal, andthat's why everybody talks about
that I will have to go watchthis now.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Yeah, yeah.
And so when I got to the end ofthat, I it was really, I was
really sad that like nobody wasgoing to get to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Especially, I think, writing in that like nobody was
going to get to see it.
Yeah, especially, I think,writing in that genre and art
form.
I had written it with the ideaof like, like I know what
musicals mean to me, I know what, how you can use it as a a
metaphor for your own life andyou, you find ways of connecting
and understanding yourself byconsuming art like this and, of
course, I want that and I wantto share it with people.

(01:04:01):
Um, and my husband's like, justokay, set it on the side and go
make something.
Make something for yourself.
If you can prove that you canmake music, maybe someone will
be more inclined to come listento the other stuff that you've
made.
It took me a few months and Iwas like, yeah, yeah, I can do
that.
And then I had this hard timebecause I was going to take all
the music from the musical and,like repurpose it and I haven't

(01:04:23):
quite, uh, gotten to the pointwhere I'm okay to rip that one
apart yet.
Yeah, that's all sitting thereand I started making new stuff.
I went through my old journals,I found lyrics and I just sat
at the piano and like mycreative style was just mess
around and if I like it, maybesomeone else will like it, and
so I would come up with a melodyor some chords and I would

(01:04:44):
build off of that.
And then, uh, I went to therapy.
I had, uh, you know, I got tothis point where I was really
struggling mentally and as apart of my therapy, in one of
the early sessions I got thispiece of homework it was about
expectations, what you expect isgoing to happen a certain
situation or other.
I had to, I of homework.
It was about expectations, whatdo you expect is going to
happen in a certain situation oranother.
And I had to.
I, of course, waited till thenight before and I didn't do my

(01:05:04):
homework.
At the last minute I wasthinking I had started this
string quintet, which is anotherjust throwing spaghetti at the
wall thing I wanted to try.
I love the vitamin stringquartet who does arrangements of
pop songs and stuff.
Because of Brad and Chris'swedding I don't know if you know
that I they bought me finale soI could start writing music and
I wrote all the music for theirwedding.

(01:05:25):
I wrote all the arrangements Iput the group did.
That was my first movement intoand they were like it was
golden girls, it was, it was, Imean, it was just the most fun
thing.
And I was like god, I love this.
And so I tried my hand at doingthat here and I hired people.
I wrote I don't know, maybe 30or 40 arrangements.
I had these menus.

(01:05:45):
We're going to sell it forweddings.
This is the gay wedding list.
This is the anyway, and it justdidn't.
It was too much and I couldn't.
I couldn't keep it going and Igot recordings.
I've got you know, samples andeverything, and I felt so
embarrassed that I failed atthis thing that I couldn't make
it happen.
It's still again.

(01:06:06):
It's another one, that's justit's sitting.
The cellist went on to play ontour for Waitress and on
Broadway he was self-taught.
Anyway, his name's Nick and Iwas like there's no way this guy

(01:06:28):
is going to like want to talkto me because, like, I wasted
all of his time doing this thing.
Anyway, I used that as myexample for this therapy
homework and I said there's a inmy head.
It was like there's a 60 to 90chance.
He's just not going to respondand he's not going to want to
talk to me and all this others.
And I sent him a message andhis first thing was like, oh my

(01:06:50):
god, this is awesome.
I had such a great time when wewere in that ensemble together
and I think you're such a greatmusician.
And like all those doubts, justlike they were all made up.
And he's my producer, we Ithought it was going to be a
four or five tracks he was goingto help me make and I've got a
12 track album.
I just finished the last onecouple weeks ago, holy crap, and

(01:07:12):
so it.
It was this.
It's like these teeny babysteps.
I mean, it's from me living inmisery in Columbus Ohio.
My dad sent me a newspaperclipping right.
You got to meet people.
It's improv in the sense thatyou have to say yes.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Yes, and like you said, and what else?
Okay, work, let's try somethingelse.
That didn't quite work, yetlet's try something else.
And not being scared to go backand say, okay, that didn't
quite work, yet let's trysomething else.
And not being scared to go backand say, okay, that didn't work
.
But maybe there's somethingelse there that I haven't
explored yet and I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
There's like all kinds of hidden, hidden
treasures in these things I mean, yeah, and it's like when you
said like I'm not ready to liketake apart my my musical yet and
I'm just like, well, maybe youdon't even have to frankenstein
it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
It evolves like it exists and some theme from that
appears in something else later,or it influences you and gives
you different skill sets orconfidence enough to try the
next thing that you did there'salso this very real thing for
artists which is, like I wassaying, like the first couple

(01:08:20):
drafts were awful, and it's likeI've heard other artists say
this, like if you're going backand listening to your earlier
stuff and it doesn't embarrassyou or you're not like boy, I
could have done that, thenyou're not growing.
So a lot of this stuff I use.
Also, I go back and listen tomy stuff all the time.
I have to do it for myself, toremind me that that I am moving

(01:08:45):
forward, that it is gettingbetter and that, and so
sometimes, like I think in a waylike what we were talking about
earlier is you do create thesethings for yourself.
You're creating your, your ownhistory of yourself as an artist
.
Maybe nobody will ever see someof it, but you have to do these
things you have we've talked alot about you have to get it
wrong.
A whole lot of times art isfailure.
I mean it's like if it was on ascale of one to a hundred, it's

(01:09:09):
the first 99 and a half timesyou're not going to get it right
, and then there's going to beone that like nope, that's it.
It was that and then the nexttime around you might get 95 of
them wrong and it's a littleless.
And the goal, like we've talkedabout, is always towards, uh,
progress.
We, I think and I kind of bringit back to that conservatory

(01:09:30):
thing is this idea.
They, they instill this idea ofyou need to be perfect.
Right, perfection is the onlything that is accepted.
You will not get work if youare not perfect.
And if you think you're perfect, you need to take a closer look
and it's like so kind ofretraining your brain to listen

(01:09:50):
to the work you've done andnotice that you're making
progress.
Yeah, it's not perfect, and thenalso being okay, it's never
going to be, it's always goingto be growing.
I've talked to you about thatmoment.
You get the master back and youstill hear things in it like oh
man, I wish that word was on adifferent beat and it's like
nope, it's done, it is done itlives there now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
That's how it exists and it's not perfect, and that's
what makes it art, and that'swhat makes it beautiful well,
going back to what you weresaying about that show, where
you said it was like the end,and he's singing a song and it's
imperfect.
I mean that's where the, that'swhere the humanity is.
Like there was a certain timein broadway, I want to say like
the 70s and into the, into the80s, where, like, they weren't

(01:10:35):
hiring, like all the, the, thesingers who were like the, the
clearest, cleanest voices, andthat was what the leading, uh,
the leading decision maker wasto cast that person, they, they
were hiring the people that werelike I energetically or like um
, energetically, and howeverthey wanted that character to be

(01:10:59):
and how they expressed it.
So, like nowadays you go, andit's just like I met with
somebody this week, who's whodirects a lot, and they said, um
, you know, like, like, I want alot of, like, I want a lot of
good singers, like in what I'mdoing.
It's like, yeah, you can havegreat singers, but if it's
perfect all the time, like youwere so moved by that show and

(01:11:22):
the music at the end of the showbecause it was imperfect,
because that's where thehumanity lives, it's like
there's that.
What is that?
The Japanese practice of?
Like the broken cups?

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
The broken bowls with the gold.
Yeah, I don't know what it'scalled, but I know what you mean
.
It is that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
It's that it creates the beauty in it, and it is that
it's that it creates the beautyin it, and that's what makes us
feel connected to one anotheris through broken parts.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
I love Tom Waits.
A lot of people can't stand hisvoice, but there's something
and he plays out of tuneinstruments.
And another example is why isit Hallelujah?

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
Leonard Cohen.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
Leonard Cohen.
He actually even has a line inone of his songs.
It's something about uh uh, thecracks are there because that's
where the light comes in yeah,it's that quote, that quote yeah
and and that, but that's whatit is and I love the
imperfections of these.
I know I was just talking aboutsunset, kind of.
Why I pull it out?

(01:12:20):
Because, um, uh, nicole's, whatis it?
Scherzinger is playing the lead, she is, she is.
She's playing Norma Desmond,and what was interesting is we.
This is her week off, so we sawthe understudy.
Yes, I love those days andpeople were saying, well, aren't
you mad you're not going to seeit?
I'm like, no, I want to see theunderdog, I want to see the one

(01:12:43):
.
She's still a celebrity and,like, has done a bunch other
stuff.
But it's like there's somethingabout going to say this person
only has a week to be the starright of the show and she knows,
on monday the actual star iscoming back and but I don't know
, there's something.
You get an extra little, alittle, I don't know what

(01:13:04):
there's something of isspecifically with theater.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
When you know you're getting an understudy, I don't
know I, I, I mean, I rememberbeing an understudy like the day
of my senior recital.
So I was an understudy for agreat lakes theater festival my
senior year in college and youknow you didn't really like
everybody's, like, you won'treally go on.
The show only runs a month.
It's regional theater.
Whatever you get your equitypoints, that's what it's all

(01:13:29):
about.
But then, like the day of mysenior recital, like I had
worked all year on like creatingthis show, my mom had made like
30 different kinds of likepastries and cookies for people
for the reception to enjoy aftermy performance and I was going
to stand there and like peep, my, my, my elementary my first

(01:13:51):
grade teacher was there, my uh,like my voice teacher, my choir
director from elementary schoolwas there.
Like everybody was there frommy life.
And I got a call an hour beforemy senior recital that I had to
go on for the show that I wasunderstudying and I was like
this is the biggest day of myentire like collegiate career.
I put my blood, sweat and tearsinto this and I don't get to

(01:14:14):
relish in it because I have tobe like peace out bitches.
I'm going to Great Lakes and Iliterally had to be like, bye, I
have to go.
I'm understudying and I ran andthere was this like receiving
at the theater, of just like itwasn't like the lead in the show
, but there's this energy oflike well, I mean, I was anxious
af.
I was like, oh my god did, didI learn it?

(01:14:35):
Because I was so focused on myrecital that day.
I was like, will I be able toshoot?
in there, yeah I was like whatif I forgot everything?

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
I think there's something about it too,
especially in that, like thiswas a planned, obviously this
person was supposed to go in,but I think, like that, like
there's so much more pressureand you, but at the same time,
you have this opportunity to belike a superhero, like you
stepped in and did what yeah yes, and it's like, wait me singing

(01:15:09):
and dancing, is that importantto all of you?
wow, right, I mean, there's beentimes I've been asked at the
last minute like, hey, we don'thave a bass player, can you just
show up to the concert?
Yeah, I'm like sure, okay, sucha cool experience because you
don't know the group, you don'tnecessarily know the dynamic
from that perspective, and thereyou are, making art.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Yep.
So coming back to yourperforming self, because we got
a little sidetracked, because Iwanted to tell you the silly
story of my senior recital.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
That's a great one, and also, we've shared so many
in our time, but like so.
We've shared so many in ourtime, but like those only come
from this.
Yes, this is one of.
To me, this like theater, inparticular, is still just dirty
green rooms and grease paint,and like smelly costumes and
shoes and socks and like it'sstill rough.

(01:15:54):
What you see is not what it isback there, right?
No?

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
no, I will never forget.
I was still in high school andI went.
I had, I was the last seat inthe first row for kiss of the
spider woman and for the tourand I could see the.
This was like the, the clinchingmoment for me I could see in
the wings and I could see theother actors messing with the

(01:16:20):
actors on stage.
So they had like a skeletonhead.
That it was like, and they werejust like taunting the actors
on stage and I was like I wantto do this for the rest of my
life you're in cabaret, we okay.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
So for the, when we did cabaret it wasn't in a real
theater.
I mean, it was, but it was realtheater, it was a professional
theater it was, but it was astorefront that had been
converted into a theater, sothere was no real backstage.
You had a very, but the bandhad to be on stage the whole
time and there was a curtainthat would open and close.
And that was like my favoritepart is brad and chris would

(01:16:54):
come up and just mess with me,but you couldn't make a sound
and I was like I love this.
You get to play practical jokesand make art.
Oh, this is fun it's myfavorite.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
It's my favorite thing about performing.
I mean, I love when there's ascene that I can pour myself
into, like I love that.
But it's also my favorite thingas an audience member to look
for those moments, the cracks inthe foundation of like I know
you're a professional, I knowyou're working your ass off, but
there is your humanity and Ilove it.
I do it at show, I do it atconcerts.
Yeah, I mean, that was part ofthe reason why I went to so many

(01:17:27):
concerts last year, because Ior two years ago now oh god, oh
god, two years ago now because Iwas like look at them doing the
thing that I used to do, butthey're in a different media.
Like if you're in like amusician, a popular musician,
but they're in a different media.
Like if you're in like amusician, a popular musician,
but they're like mixingperformance art with being a
popular musician, now that'sinteresting.
And then also watching themmess with each other, like okay,

(01:17:50):
yeah, crack, crack, thecharacter, crack, crack, like
it's my favorite.

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
I was recently and maybe we were even talking about
this idea of like what happenswhen you join a show and how you
like, instantly are a familyyes right, there's that, there's
a there's always a creepy uncle.
There's like the aunt who, like,gets you drunk.
There's like, there's like allthe characters are instantly
there, yeah, and you like andyou bond.

(01:18:15):
It's such a like this, uh, andyou have whatever.
It might be a week, it might bea couple months and there's an
end date and you know, like Ihave this long to be your family
member and then we'll see whathappens after that I don't know
if we'll have any familyreunions.
We'll, we'll find out, yeah but,like you know, there are
certain shows like cabaret and I, every single person that I

(01:18:36):
have talked to that, was part ofthat one in particular yeah it
was a it was a transformationalmoment it was.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
I mean that there was something very.
I mean, we're all wax andpoetic, poetic everybody about
this show, because so this wasmany years ago.
It was 20 years ago now yeah,2005-7, somewhere in there.
Yeah, 2005, because 2006 is theyear I moved to.
Uh, yeah, um, yeah, so 20 yearsago, oh my god, um, we, we were

(01:19:07):
in the show, but it and it was.
I know a lot of theaters docabaret, but that specific
production I mean you thinkabout this like in the like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
If you're making a recipe and you put in certain it
every once in a while, it'sjust the right ingredients of
personality and people and youget everyone everyone like
suspends their disbelief in theright way and everyone's
invested in the illusion and youget this like magical little
gem that you all get to carrywith you on your next adventure

(01:19:43):
yes yes, and nobody else gets toknow that, nobody, not the
audience, no, unless you're init.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
It's such a a unique experience you get from creating
things as a team so that bringsme to the concept of community,
like art, art forms andidentity and community and the
blending of those things,because I think, like with
theater, it doesn't existwithout community of some kind,

(01:20:13):
collaboration with the other insome way shape or form.
But then in your music makingthat you've made like I know it
doesn't because you got donesaying earlier like, well, nick
is your producer's name yeah,nick Anton so like you wouldn't

(01:20:35):
be a recording artist if you andNick weren't working together.
But like the creation of themusic, you can sit in your
apartment and create your musicand then bring it to Nick and
say, like, how do we evolve this?
Whereas theater is an art formwhere it's just like okay, we
are creating this together, Ifeed off of your energy and that

(01:20:56):
will inform how I am.
Like, how does this, like allof these different things that
you've done?
Like where does your creativeself feel most alive?
Like in different scenarios, Iguess I don't know if it's the
same or different.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
It's funny because I think you're touching on two
separate categories of the samething, like when, like I was
talking about my comfort inperforming when I'm with the un
symphony right, there was amoment in this last concert and
we were doing some of swan lake,and there's just a moment I get
to play the open e string on mybass.

(01:21:30):
It's the lowest like and it'sjust like, and what you're doing
in that moment is, and which Ifind this, if I get yeah, if
I've had a little too much andI'm I'm thinking too deep on
this is like Tchaikovsky wrotethis right in the mid-1800s,
like the civil war was going onin America, which also is like
just crazy.

(01:21:51):
So, and here I am with thisgroup of basically strangers and
we are recreating this ideathat was in his head 150, 170
years ago, right, yeah so thereis something in in like
recreating what something wrote.
When you're performing a playlike cabaret, it was written,
there are instructions given toyou and you get to do what you

(01:22:11):
want with those instructions andthere is a sense of
satisfaction in creatingsomething that moves an audience
and you get to put your ownlittle spin on it and that is
its own, like I have.
That's very comfortable to me.
I love doing that, but that ismost of what we're trained to do
from an early age.
You start with a method bookand you are reading notes off a

(01:22:33):
page and that's right and that'swrong, right.
And so there's that's this likeone path of creation and
consumption?
And like, how close is that tothe original?
And if it's, that's this likeone path of creation and
consumption?
And it's like, how close isthat to the original?
And if it's different, is itgreat?
Like I was saying about sunsetboulevard, I have this love for
what it is, and this one that wesaw was something totally
different and I loved it.
It was a whole new idea ofsomething that was very specific

(01:22:56):
set of instructions, yeah.
And then there's the other side, which is sort of improvisation
, right, where you're creatingyour own thing, or I guess
there's kind of a middle of theroad, like writing an album.
I'm making this out of myhistory, my story, what I know
about music, what I know aboutinstrumentation, what do I like
putting my tastes on it, andthere is a satisfaction that

(01:23:20):
comes from that.
That is just otherworldly.
It is not the same thing asgoing on stage and performing a
written work, so and but thenthere's like a weird, there's a
real weird side effect to that.
One is like, once you make it,like at school, kids ask me to
play the song right.
So now I am performing for mystudents a version of a song

(01:23:43):
that I wrote down right, sothere's a whole nother level,
and that is this like I think itstarts to get into this realm
of what you're talking about islike I'm getting feedback from
these people that I really careabout and I really care about
their opinion, and it's strangebecause they don't have the same
understanding of music andperformance and composition that

(01:24:04):
I do.
So they're having this innocentsort of listen to it and I get
to perform my piece for them andhear what they think about it,
and that is its own separateworld of satisfaction, right,
right, even when they hate itand sometimes they do, and it is
hilarious and I love it.
Um, we've talked about like Ilove when they hit it.

(01:24:26):
So there's like there'screating something for some that
someone else made, there's thiscreation, and then we have
these creations that we makejust for ourselves.
They're super private, they'rethey're all our own and you
don't give it to anyone else andthat like has.
So, and I think that's animportant aspect, we've talked a
lot about what is an artist,what is a musician?
Any one of those, all three ofthose?

(01:24:47):
There's other versions of it.
Yep, you, you have to.
If you want to do that, thenyou find the corner of it that
makes you really happy yeah,yeah, I think, and it changes
right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:59):
So, like, because I think I thought I knew what my
little corner was until I waslike, what else is out there?
Oh, there's other things.
Oh, I could do this too.
Oh, oh, I'm not good at thisbut I'm.
But what if I get better at it?
What if I just kept doing itand found out what happens?
Because I don't, I don't knowwhat this pathway is.

(01:25:20):
Oh, but there's something about, like, what you're saying, like
the kids who don't have.
Like earlier or before, when wetalked, you've said, like how
our generation experienced art.
That way of taking in art isdisappearing, it's gone because
of the analog way of living isdisappearing.
It's gone because of the analogway of living is disappearing.

(01:25:41):
And so, like, you're creatingthis like analog piece of art
and sharing it with a digitalage, human, digital age, humans,
and they're like here's myassessment.
So it's like building a bridgeto.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
But I also think there's like something about the
like, the importance ofmodeling and what you're doing
yeah, I think there's likeyou're kind of touching on an
important aspect of this, whichis that, like I am a teacher,
but I happen to be a teacher whodoes the thing that I teach-
yeah and it's something to beable to go to school.
And a kid asks a question islike, how do you, um, you know,

(01:26:20):
how does an album get made?
And like 10 years ago Icouldn't have really and I could
look it up and I could answerthat question.
But you know, I've managed toget to a place where I've gone
and explored so many.
I've been a composer, I've beena performer, I've been, you
know, I've done film, I've donecommercial, I've done pit
orchestras, I've done, you know,like every different thing.
So and I, and I feel like I getto bring all that back and tell

(01:26:42):
kids like, hey, you could trythis, you could try this, it's
not that scary, I did it oncelike it wasn't for me.
And even that, the modeling oflike yeah, I've tried these and
they're not all for me, right,it's an interesting thing to get
to do that to two or fourchildren, right?

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
right.
I mean it's it's it's for youand it's also for others,
because you have to be able togo through it first.
So there's discernment, but youcan't get to the discernment
phase without actually sittingwith the discomfort of unknown
and the instability of it notbeing meeting your expectation.
And you have to be able to sitin that discomfort long enough

(01:27:19):
for it to either evolve or foryou to say it's evolved and I
like it, or it's evolved and Iactually still don't prefer it
and therefore I'm not interestedanymore.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
And the modeling of that for kids having kids watch
an adult like fail.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
Yes, so important.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
I don't think adults let themselves do this in front
of children nearly enough.
No, they don't there's this oneorchestra I have at school and
this girl plays violin.
She's played for like eightyears.
She's so good.
I have kids that have played acarnegie hall multiple times in
my class and I will demonstratesomething on the violin and she
just gives me a look, right, andI'm like, and we make a joke

(01:27:57):
out of it and it disarms it forthe whole room.
I'm like I don't know how to.
I'm like will you demonstrateit then, please?
But watching an adult who'ssupposed to the children you're
their expert, right?
And to say I'm not.
I'm an expert on a lot ofthings, but it doesn't mean that
I know everything.
And making that available toany learner, kids in particular,

(01:28:21):
is absolutely essential,particularly in the arts.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
Yes.
Because so much of it is aboutfailure you have to be able to
sit with it and be comfortableenough with it to come to a
place of peace within yourselfwith it.
Because when you are faced withthat authoritative teacher or
the one who dismisses your, yourworthiness of the art or the

(01:28:49):
performance, you have to be ableto withstand your.
You've weathered your owninternal thunderstorm, so now
you can weather the externalthunderstorm of somebody else's
opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:29:00):
Yes, and that is just that.
Just that one thing.
There's the key, just that onething.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
It's so easy.
I said it like a little boozybitch.
It's so easy darling, you justsay oh, you're a thunderstorm.
No, no, no, darling, it's sunnyover here.
Go fuck yourself.
And that's no, no, darling,it's sunny over here, go fuck
yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):
And that's the thing about that too.
It's like it gets easier, therejection and the failure and
everything, but it never, evergoes away.
Oh yeah, definitely, and Ithink that's one of the golden
things we get as artists andperformers is we get a life of
rejection.
I mean you get a life ofrejection.
I mean you get a life oflearning.
And the people who stop doingit and they leave a lot of times

(01:29:44):
it's because it just becamesomething that was hard to deal
with and it is.
There are times when it isoverwhelming and seemingly
insurmountable.
How many times, kim, how manytimes have you said I'm done,
I'm never doing this again, I'mgoing to go sell shoes.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
Like it's.

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
There have been periods where it's every day I,
you and me both, I I mean thisweek alone.
I mean I will release a songand then I will go into a
tailspin of panic of what peopleare going to think about it and
like, or you know, I we talkedabout expectations.
You know, I expect this song isgonna.
Everybody's gonna love thissong and nobody likes it.

(01:30:23):
And then this one that Ithought was just going to be
some trash I just put outbecause I'm like that's the hit.
They like this and that, like.
It trains you to lowerexpectations.
My older sister gives me allthese little nuggets of wisdom,
but one of them that she gave merecently is uh, what is it?

(01:30:46):
Uh, expectations are justfuture resentments yes, they are
yes.
If that doesn't apply to what wedo, I don't, because when you
put out in the world you haveeven sometimes, as you're making
it, when you know that it'sgoing to go out into the world,
you immediately start thinkingabout what people are going to
think of it oh, of course whichI is the most dangerous aspect

(01:31:09):
of being an artist yes becauseit doesn't matter well, well, I
mean it does I mean it?

Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
does it does because you do want somebody to hear it
and go, hey, yeah, I get it.
Because I think, at the end ofthe day, no matter what it is,
art or just living, we wantothers to say I see you.
I see myself in you and yourexperiences and I see you, I

(01:31:37):
hear you and I look all over theworld.
I hear it in therapy sessionswith clients.
I see it in art that I consume.
I see it in conflict betweenpeople that you know it's.
Do you hear me?
Do you see me?
And art is the way we navigatethat when we want to know, like,

(01:32:05):
just how others experience it,like, do you get me, do you get
it?

Speaker 2 (01:32:11):
It's like an emotional translator.
Yes, it like allows us to belike.
This is how I experience thisemotion.
Maybe you do too.
Yes, and it might be song, itbe dance, it might be both, it
might be a doodle, it could beanything right.
It could be fashion, it couldbe your hairstyle, all of these
things.

Speaker 1 (01:32:30):
And I think the wider you open your mind to what art
is and what expression is, itallows you to let more in yes,
so we're talking about like whatyou model for the kids and
modeling failure and modelinglike risk, because, again, I'm
just so these big like choicepoints keep popping up.

(01:32:51):
I'm hearing risk, I'm hearingfrustration, tolerance, I'm
hearing like connectivity andcommunity, but connectivity with
the other right.
We're talking about youmodeling for others who were
your models for these things oh,my god.

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
Well, my dad, who showed me every style of music
I'm going to talk about.
And there was another thing.
So my dad, my dad went to aschool at cleveland state as
well.
He got a degree in art and heended up working in a screen
printing company.
And then, at some point I wasprobably around the age of four
or five he got fired, and my momat the time was an aerobics

(01:33:31):
instructor.
She quit her job and helped himand they started their own
business.
Um, about four years late, theystarted from nothing.
Uh, someone set arson to thebuilding, to the ground.
Parents had to take a secondmortgage.
We lived off food and clothesfrom the city, like it was.
I mean, we were in extremepoverty.
And, uh, they managed torebuild the business and they

(01:33:54):
went into a new place and theguy skipped out on their lease.
So they moved into a new place.
They did really well and theybuilt their own building.
They were like, okay, we'regoing to like really own this.
They built the building andthere was a sinkhole under it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:07):
No, this can't be what.

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
The building is across from LTV Steel on
Pershing Avenue and 77.
It's pink.
Go see it, be careful in theparking lot and so so, like
through my parents, I just wantI mean resilience was the theme
right.
They were not going to give up.
But the other people like um,if I were to talk about like

(01:34:31):
sort of media consumption as achild, mr rogers was like my god
.
Even to this day he's like I,like I.
I find him like just anabsolute inspiration.
But I had a first grade teachernamed miss pillish.
Miss pillish used to walk abouta mile to school every day.
She always walked.
She lived a few blocks from usand she was so kind.

(01:34:54):
I don't know if this was aroundthe same time that my parents
building burned down.
I don't know.
Now, as a teacher, I try toimagine what she was thinking
about me as a teacher, but Iremember there were a couple
things like, as an example, she,uh, um, we were growing plants
and she gave me and I'm inquotations cactus seeds, right,
and the next day, all that, weall come in.

(01:35:15):
We're about whatever five orsix years old and I, I still I
don't have a lot of memoriesfrom that time in my life that I
can visualize.
We came in and everybody's bowlwas empty and mine had a whole
field of cactus.
She had gone out and bought alike, a whole little like
prepackaged cactus oh my god.
But it's like as an adult,looking back on these things,
I'm like, oh my god, thesepeople just wanted.

(01:35:38):
So it's like one me we want tocry like I'm it's like one
example of how fantastic thisteacher was and the other
teachers I had that would like.
I never.
I had like severe socialanxiety.
I was closeted in high.
I didn't know it, I mean untilmuch later, but I never went to
lunch.
I would always go to the musicroom and I would go practice and

(01:36:00):
just hang out there and to thisday I don't take lunch.
It's actually kind of miserablesometimes, but I always make
sure, if I'm able, that I havemy classroom open for kids.
A lot of them don't even comeplay, they just need somewhere
to go.
That's not the bully, noisylunchroom, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:36:18):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):
So all of these music teachers in particular, and
then my grandma, my dad's, mydad's uh, mom, grandma helen, uh
, she grew up during thedepression and, again, just a
person who was resilience andlove and kindness.
She was a little off the beatenpath but like I liked that.
You know it was.
She wasn't traditional.
She taught me how to do snotrockets, like you know she was,

(01:36:42):
that.
She was a little rougher, butwe loved her.
She also taught me how to bakeand, like I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
Hopefully those two things that she taught you were
not in the same.

Speaker 2 (01:36:52):
You haven't tried my snot rocket pie.
Snot rocket Alfredo.

Speaker 1 (01:37:02):
Oh my God, that's's gonna make me throw up in my
mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
No, but it is, it is.
It is fascinating how formativethese things are.
And then, as I got older,learning about artists like um,
my parents were obsessed withjanice ian and I my older
sister's name is janice she's'sactually named after Janice Ian.
But then, like it's not onlylike I fell in love with her
music, but then I started likelearning who she was and she was

(01:37:27):
closeted and she had a managerwho stole all her money and like
.
And then like you see themstill making great music and
overcoming that.
So I guess that's kind ofanother big theme for me.

Speaker 1 (01:37:39):
That's interesting.
Is this therapy or a podcast.
You're welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:37:45):
You've been therapized I guess, like
perseverance, like that is areally important uh and it
really shows up in a lot of themusic that I write is this
concept of overcoming challengeand and particularly around
relationships the challenges andstruggles that come from
interpersonal relationships,whether with family, with

(01:38:07):
friends or particularly withlovers.
Yep, yep and because thosethings all go wrong for everyone
.

Speaker 1 (01:38:15):
Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):
And generally in only a handful of ways they go wrong
right, yep, the, the.
The source, reason for thatgoing wrong is different for
everyone, but there's certainnumber of things that happen and
I feel like if you listen toenough music, you get there
actually, which brings me backto another important point,
which is sad music yes, I'vetalked to you about this idea

(01:38:38):
that kids don't really?
there's always that subset ofreally sad kids, but like they
don't like sad music, they onlywant to listen to the new banger
and your students don't listento sad music don't like sad

(01:39:03):
music and teaching them how tolisten again.
This is a frustration thing,because sad songs in general
take a lot more effort to listento.
You have to think this.
This is so funny because I'vehad to teach english so many
times and teaching to the testnot to bring it full back to
where we were before.
Yeah, the question that kidsstruggle with.
There's categories of questionson standardized tests,
particularly English tests, andthey have to read a passage and

(01:39:25):
answer questions and themultiple choice questions they
get fall into.
Certain there's ones that areabout like what was it about
what?
And then like, as you get intothese tougher, what was the
moral of the story?
They struggle with this.
The concept of finding what'snot explicitly written in the
text right and the one thatthrows it is the number one
thing across millions ofstudents in new york city.

(01:39:45):
It is the category of author'sintent.
What did the author intend forthe reader to take from this?
It's such a deep and difficultquestion that I think we
innately get through.
Being in the arts, that is whatyou are, especially that
category I talked about earlierof recreating another person's
work.
That's what you're doing.

(01:40:06):
What did they want me to do andhow can I deliver that to the
audience?
Right, but I think,particularly with sad music,
kids are told so often like, oh,just smile, it's okay,
everything's going to be allright.
Well, you know what?
No, it's not.
Sometimes it's really fuckingawful.
I mean die.
You know there are wars, thereis famine, there are horrible

(01:40:30):
things, and this is a way thatyou can soften that and
understand it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:36):
Normalize it yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):
Yes, if you normalize it, yeah, yes, there's this
whole wedge of emotions thatlike don't get addressed in pop
culture enough, I think um well,I think it's part of culture's
huge like push to like fix, like, oh, oh, you feel sad, don't
worry, we'll fix it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
Let's distract you, let's numb you yeah, you're not
really allowed to be sad right,and I, I mean you know I focus a
lot of my work on grief.
So, like a lot of it, of thegrief, the grieving process is
unlearning because, like, noneof that script works with grief
and if anybody tries to meet youin your grief and that well

(01:41:15):
then you know that's not aperson you can like,
authentically be, and who youare as a human in that moment in
time, instead of you just say,oh, I just can't be myself
around you.
That's all I've learned fromthat exchange.

Speaker 2 (01:41:26):
Like I, oh, oh well, it puts me into this, because I
was thinking about this while Iwas watching sunset boulevard
last night.
I was thinking I have thisthing with dissociation right
when I get into, uh, conflictand it's and it's linked for me
to abandonment.
I've learned this throughtherapy, that you know conflict,

(01:41:47):
whether it's in conversation orotherwise, um, often leads to
the other person in thatconflict leaving me whether it's
family or friends or cowhatever, right, right.
And so I struggle with conflictand I was really like deep
watching the show last night andI was thinking about people who
are in that Dissociation isjust a teeny, tiny tiptoe away

(01:42:16):
from suspension of disbelief.
Right, I think that people whoare drawn particularly to
theater, that we have thisability that, like I, can't
process the real world yet andbut I understand what they're
doing on stage and it gives us Iwas talking about this being

(01:42:36):
like a trans, an emotionaltranslator, where you can watch
them going through it and thenbe like, oh, that reminds me of
this thing that I'm goingthrough.
So we, as people who strugglewith these emotions, are able to
access them because we seesomeone else doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:56):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's like.
Whether it's like taking in apiece of art or going to what,
witnessing a piece of theater orlistening to a piece of music,
it gives us permission to feelthe feelings that maybe we feel
shame about feeling.
We see someone like express it,and we say, oh, that, like

(01:43:20):
whenever shame pops up, we'regoing to shut down.
So, like witnessing someoneelse express it says, wait, it
might be okay for me to expressit, and for some people, it's
only through the arts that theycan express it, and for others,
it's like that was theinstigator that gave me
permission to finally releasewhat I am carrying, whether it's

(01:43:42):
like I think like journaling isa form of creativity, and and
because it's like express, like,yeah, like express, express,
express and and.
But we have to be able to sitwith that feeling enough, and
what often happens is peoplenotice what, what has brought
that feeling up for them andthey feel it and they get stuck

(01:44:04):
there because they're like, oh,I'm not supposed to.
So, instead of expressing it,rather than express, my choice
is to withhold that expressionand shut down and carry it, and
that's where the dissociationpops in.
Yep, shove it down and suppressyeah I'm allowed to have those
feelings yeah you are.
I mean like I feel like whenwe're talking about technology
and all the things, I often feellike my job as a therapist,

(01:44:27):
specifically as a dramatherapist, because when I've got
people up on their feet and inan imaginal realm saying I want
you to find a way to expresswhat your experience is as not
you, then they feel like it'ssafe enough to express it.
But then like express what yourexperience is as not you, then
they feel like it's safe enoughto express it.
But then like, if we actuallyexpress it, what happens?

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
Yeah, I think you're kind of touching on the same.
I ask my kids all the time likewhat if?
Well, what if we try it thisway, or what?
Okay, I mean, that might not bethe best one, but like what if?

Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
What if it is?

Speaker 2 (01:45:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45:05):
Yeah, so to kind of bring us towards the end, since
you know we've been chatting fora minute, what have you had to
unlearn, to expand what you doand to grow and challenge
yourself?

Speaker 2 (01:45:21):
Oh my gosh.
Oh wait, do you have thatquestion written down?
I?
Do I want to throw one otherthing at you that popped up
while you were talking earlier.
Yes, you were talking aboutwatching stuff online and like I
think we are, so one of my oh,the little buttons that are

(01:45:42):
underneath posts right, you havelike.
For a long time, the onlychoice you had was to like
something.

Speaker 1 (01:45:49):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:45:50):
But, like it was funny, you were talking now and
you were saying something.
I was like why is that not a?
I see you.
Why is that not a button?
Like I hear you, that's enough.
Like, okay, you don't have tolike it, or or anyway, I'm sorry
, I just had this moment that'sso, that's so fucking real.

Speaker 1 (01:46:04):
It's like I.
I don't like this, but I seewhat you're experiencing.
I feel you, I hear you.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
Or when someone posts something that's tragically
funny, you can't click like,because that's not right.
You can't click dislike, youcan't click.
Ha ha ha.

Speaker 1 (01:46:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:46:20):
It's so funny how and I think again talking about
kids there is a reductivelanguage in how we talk about
emotions.
That is just really hardcore,reinforced by social media.
You have, I mean, on Facebooknow, I think you maybe have five
options.
On Instagram, you have one.
You can either like it or not.
It's just fascinating to methat these things that are out

(01:46:44):
there that way that those arethe only options left for you to
express how, anyway, that wasall.

Speaker 1 (01:46:51):
Yes.
Options left for you to expresshow.
Anyway, that was a yes, and themeaning making behind all of
the choices to, to react withany of those reacts is specific
to that individual.
There's no set of rules thatuniversally says this is what
this means and this is what thatmeans.
So, like in the whole socialmedia world, that's where like
and there's there's also likethese other layers to it.

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):
It's like other people are gonna see how you
reacted and it's documented, orlike we've had that moment like
somebody's I don't know if thishas happened to you someone's
like I posted something, youdidn't like it, like like no, I
don't, maybe I didn't see it yet, and like I don't know.
It just gets weird well, yeah,we could.

Speaker 1 (01:47:30):
We could do a whole different that's a whole other
thing.

Speaker 2 (01:47:32):
What would you ask me ?

Speaker 1 (01:47:33):
one more question there, but the other there's.
There's two other questionsthat I had, and one is um, what
have you had to unlearn toexpand?
What you do to grow andchallenge yourself as an artist
or like in all of the roles thatyou have because, like, you've
evolved so much I.

Speaker 2 (01:47:50):
You know what it's.
It's such an interesting thingabout being an artist because we
talked a little bit about theconservatory side so you have to
learn a certain set oftechnical skills in order to
execute the art form that youchoose, right, right, so you
spend, I don't know.
For me, I started, like I said,at five.
It kind of began and then I gota little more serious at it

(01:48:11):
around 13.
And you've talked about thesethings happening, not just that
when they happened in time, butalso your developmental state
while they were happening.
And so I think that there'sthis you spend all this time
learning this technical skillthat's right, that's not.
That's in tune.
That's too loud.
That's an up bow, not a down.

(01:48:31):
Like you spend all this timeskill, that's right.
That's not.
That's in tune.
That's too loud.
That's an up bow, not a down.
Like you spend all this timedoing that in order to get to
the end and then, like, unlearnit.
It's like right, right.

Speaker 1 (01:48:40):
Well, it's like you memorize all your lines in the
show so that you don't have tothink about the lines anymore.
You can actually be presentwith your scene partner.

Speaker 2 (01:48:47):
Yeah, I mean it's like you spend all this time
learning so that you can spendthe rest of your time unlearning
.
You learn all of the rules soyou know which ones you can bend
and break and when.

Speaker 1 (01:48:58):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:48:59):
So it's such an interesting question to me
because I feel like I'mconstantly learning and
unlearning things.
It's not like you don't just doone for a while and then the
other.
I will have classes at schoolwhere I will like like the kids
will say something and I'm likeI've never thought about it.
They'll ask me a question.
I'm like I never thought aboutquarter notes that way, like

(01:49:19):
some simple, basic, fundamentalthing, and I'll like, and then
there'll be a time in class andI'll like yell at the class and
I have to unlearn that Like Ican't keep.
You know that's not effective,I know it's not, so stop doing
that thing.
You know my first school Iworked at it was very
authoritarian and they were veryhardcore, and so I have some of

(01:49:41):
these bad habits that I have tounlearn.
The number one thing that I feellike I am constantly unlearning
, though, is caring so muchabout what people think about
the art I make.
Yeah, it is just the most toxiclittle weasel Brain, weasels,
oh God.

Speaker 1 (01:49:58):
Well, it's the internalization of all those
messages you got coming up inthe world, and then you don't
even need them anymore.
You carry them yourself.
It's your own voice doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:06):
There's this weird moment.
I'm sure it's happened to you.
It happens, I mean, if you stayin an industry or do a thing
long enough.
I know, sometime around thetime I was about, I mean in the
last, like seven or eight years,35 to 40 it's like all of a
sudden you're the older personin the room and everybody's like
what do you think?
And I'm like, oh, there's noone behind me.
You were talking to me and it'slike you, you, you suddenly get

(01:50:31):
passed into this role of beingthe elder or the, you know the,
the keeper of the secrets, likeeven this podcast, you asking me
these questions.
I'm like I don't, I'm stillfiguring this all out.
This is just my experience, youknow, um, but like, especially
like in when you're teaching andin the classroom, is like
people will turn to you and it'slike, okay, I know I got a big

(01:50:51):
forehead and a lot of gray hair,but that doesn't mean I know
what's going on around here, uh,but and then all of a sudden
you realize, wait, I do yeah, Iam the most knowledgeable person
in there.

Speaker 1 (01:51:02):
I am the one who knows what's going on yeah, you
get to tell yourself oh, thatnarrative doesn't serve me
anymore.
Actually, I do know things andso you have like.

Speaker 2 (01:51:10):
That's a lot of unlearning is again we've talked
a little about like thiscreation of consumers and
creators is there's this pointwhere if you want to keep doing
the thing you, you get stuck asa consumer.
There is a certain level like,and you can get stuck as a
creator.
There are people who do thisand they make a certain type of

(01:51:34):
art and people like it and theykeep buying the same one and
that consumer and the creatorare on the same level and they
just keep making the same oldbeat with a slightly different
melody and different words, butthe same theme and you know they
have their relationship.
But if you, as an artist, wantto keep going, you have to like,
unlearn that and, like you weretalking again, brings back all

(01:51:56):
these things.
It is risk.
You have to try something.
You might lose half of thataudience because they don't like
this new thing you make.
But if you like it, you need tounlearn that.
That's the value of it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:06):
That isn't right.
So like where does the valuefall?
Is it in like how they receiveit, or is it in the creation of
it, especially when it's likesomething that's being produced
for capitalism or consumption?

Speaker 2 (01:52:20):
like for consumption.
Yeah, if the end goal is thatpeople you are making this to
get people to consume it yeah,and I've found in my whatever 42
years I've got all the stuffthat I enjoy the most, the stuff
that is the most unique.
The stuff that everyone else isimitating is stuff that people

(01:52:41):
made for themselves oh, 100 yesand it, and you know that that's
saying that imitation is thegreatest form of flattery.
I mean, like if you makesomething and other people are
like, wow, I want to do thatthing, you've gotten through the
risk, you've gotten through thefrustration and you just made

(01:53:02):
something that's going to last,you know, and that's I mean that
, I think is the highestevolution of an artist.
Not that it's famous oreveryone knows it, but if you've
made a thing and other peoplewant to be part of it or
experience it, there's yourarrival point, that's your
waypoint onto the next one.

Speaker 1 (01:53:24):
Well, I think when fame becomes part of the formula
too, I mean that's a wholedifferent ball of wax and I
could definitely talk about itbecause that's like all I've
been reading about over the lastyear and like, like.
But, like you know,historically, like celebrity and
fame, like fame has existedthroughout the the centuries,

(01:53:46):
first through through the church.
It was like the priests and allthe back to the pharaohs.

Speaker 2 (01:53:51):
I mean egypt.

Speaker 1 (01:53:52):
I mean right, not something new, that's right but
then when, like, we get to likethe 20th century and the movie
studios were like oh, we cansell products if we market like
a star who's in all of ourmovies, and that star says you
know what's really great,marlboro Reds.

(01:54:12):
And then they're like oh, oh,yes, I trust them because I know
them, I've seen all theirmovies, and so therefore, they
become famous no longer for theart that they make but for
existing as this idea of aconcept of a human, of who they
are supposed to be perceived as.
Yeah, which then turns intofame for the sake of being fame.

Speaker 2 (01:54:38):
I think we've hit on this before.
If you're going to make thebest T-shirts, you're going to
source really great cotton,right?

Speaker 1 (01:54:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:54:48):
And what you're talking, what the studios did
and eventually, I think, in the50s, through the're talking what
the studios did and eventually,I think, in the fifties,
through the eighties, whatrecord labels did, is they
basically treated these artistsas the natural resource.

Speaker 1 (01:55:01):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:55:02):
And they, they would just sort.
It's like going to.
We've talked about auditionsand you're like they would.
It's one of the industrieswhere you can still show up and
be like you're too fat, get offthe stage.

Speaker 1 (01:55:11):
I don't like your face and like and we all are
like yeah, okay, yeah, you'reright, yeah, that's how it works
, it's just really that, yeah, Imean even and it doesn't even
have to be professional level,like I think about community
theater, where they're like ohwell, we're casting so-and-so
and it's just like.
You do know, you couldliterally cast anyone in that
role as long as theyenergetically fit that and like

(01:55:33):
what.
You do know that right.
But no, we've got to stick tolike Because you're selling it
and what happens is the.

Speaker 2 (01:55:42):
I feel like it just uses up people.
The artist becomes consumable,right, and what you're talking
about is that thing.
The artist isn't necessarilythe product.
They are like they're juicingthe product out of the artist
like you're the Marlboro Reds,right, they are.
It's that I'm reminded andyou're saying that I'm.

(01:56:04):
One of my favorite artists ofall time is Johnny Cash.
He's just again.
He's like he's perfectlyimperfect.
There is this, just there, andthere's something truly deeply
american about him.
Right and right after he died,they were in a contract and it
got I, I.
This was on npr somewhere and,uh, preparation h was trying to

(01:56:28):
get the rights to burning ringof Fire.

Speaker 1 (01:56:30):
Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 (01:56:32):
And he died and so they ended up not allowing this
to go through and I just it wasalways one of the to this day is
one of these really profound.
What that song meant when hewrote it and like what it would
have turned his legacy intosimply by selling it to make

(01:56:53):
more money off of it is likeprofound and also in my head I'm
like what a perfect song like,but also it would have ruined it
all.
It's like, yeah, it's.
It's so funny when thecommercial comes in to to snack
on the arts, right yeah we justcome in and like, oh, we want
all the taste.
Oh, that's nice, everyone likesthat.

(01:57:14):
Can I have it?
It's like sometimes the answerneeds to be no, that one's ours,
I don't know.
It's just like yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:24):
Yes, so, oh, I had a really good question for you in
the middle of that, because itblew my mind.
Give me a second.
Okay, what is the role oflegacy in your identity as an
artist?

Speaker 2 (01:57:43):
I can speak to myself .
This is not something I'vetalked with other people about,
but I'm trying to kind ofamalgamate an answer because
it's more than just as an artist, because I get to experience,
because people talk about beinga, I get asked at least a few
times a week why I don't havekids and if I want kids okay,
and I and I I'm only.

(01:58:05):
This is a a circuitous route tothe answer to your question, but
I think legacy is reallyimportant for artists.
It's like we work our wholelives and we come to some sort
of realization that we want toshare with the world, and we
come with this creative way thatwe can share it.
That could last, right, you canwrite a play, you can create a
work of art, a song.
You can carry a song in yourhead and take it wherever you

(01:58:27):
want, right, um?
And so I think the idea oflegacy, of of continuing like, I
got this idea, I got to thisarrival on this emotion and this
, this struggle, this strife,this conflict, and this is how I
deal with it, and I want topass that on to someone else and
maybe you can do more with it,maybe you can keep that.

(01:58:49):
And one of the magical things inmy life that I get to do is I
actually get to teach kids howto do that right.
I teach them how to use aninstrument.
I teach them while they'rewatching me write music and fail
and do all these things.
That's part of my legacy is mehanding that.

(01:59:10):
I've literally taught tens ofthousands of kids if out of that
.
I made five or six that go onto make things that last.
I mean, that's I.
Do you know, jackson Brown?
Yeah, no, jackson Brown, what adumb question.
Uh I, when?
Um, do you remember the Pulsenightclub shooting?

Speaker 1 (01:59:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:59:34):
In Florida.
So the moment that, like theday that that happened, I had
never heard of Jackson Brown, Ididn't know his music and I
heard the song For a Dancer andthere's this line in it do the
things that you've been shownand the and and dance until the
dance becomes your very own andI can't remember the lyrics

(01:59:56):
exactly.
But scatter your seeds andyou'll never know the idea.
I'm sorry, I'm reallymassacring it, but the whole
idea of the song is that,whatever seeds you cast, you
don't know what you're going to,what it's going to happen to
them and to me.
That's the same thing thathappens when you create art.
You don't know what you'regonna, what it's gonna happen to
them.
100.
That's the same thing thathappens when you create art.
You don't know what it willlead to.
You don't know what friendships, you don't know whose life

(02:00:18):
you're saving.
You don't know like.
I mean to bring it back to theshow we were in together.
I would have never guessed in amillion years that responding
to that classified ad would leadto me.
I'm writing an album.
I'm teaching in new york city.
I'm on a podcast right now.
I mean, like it's, you don'tknow what the legacy is going to

(02:00:40):
be.
You just hope that there'sgoing to be something, and then
it's going to be better thanwhere we are right now evolution
you don't there's.
There's another great lyric.
You don't have to fix the wholedamn thing, you just got to
leave it a little bit better andlike, if you can do that, to me
that is the measure of successyep 100.

(02:01:02):
Beautifully said my friend I'mjust repeating other people's
stuff that I love well, againlike speaking of legacy, right?

Speaker 1 (02:01:12):
So it's like these internalized messages, like you
had teachers that instilledthese messages in you for better
or worse, and now you'relooking to leave things better
than you received by givingother messages to others as well
, whether it's through your artor whether it's through your
education, whether it's through,like your performance, like
through your words, like andeverything.

(02:01:32):
Yeah, yeah you too.

Speaker 2 (02:01:35):
I mean I.
I can't say how inspired I amby you.
You have been through griefthat some people don't.
I don't even know that.

Speaker 1 (02:01:46):
I understand it, and you don't know it till you know
it you don't, and you can't everknow someone else's grief.

Speaker 2 (02:01:53):
You can only get a glimpse at it, what they share
with you, and even then you'relucky to scratch the surface and
I think what you have done isincredible.
You humanize grief in this waythat it's accessible, it's not
scary, it's something that weall have.
It's it's that sad song, it'sthe thing that connects you and

(02:02:16):
lets you say it's okay and andthen to watch you go through
that and create such beautifulthings and you, like I'll watch
your instagram feed and likeyou'll, you'll be really sad and
you'll have this thing and it'sso poignant.
And then, like a couple, acouple stories later, I'm like
you'll be really sad and you'llhave this thing and it's so
poignant.
And then, like a couple storieslater, I'm like you'll make me
laugh out loud and it's likeyou're telling me I have

(02:02:38):
permission to be sad and laughin the same few sentences that's
okay and it's so beautiful towatch someone do that and
explore it and share it withpeople.
And to me, that is what art is.
We are so lucky to get to dothat and explore it and share it
with people.
And to me, that is what art is.
We are so lucky to get to dothat, and I find you to be an
absolute inspiration you arevery, you're very kind.

Speaker 1 (02:03:03):
I'm gonna do what my, what I used to do to my parents
after shows oh, but you know,like there's so many, no,
instead I'll say thank you I itand I'll be a very therapist
kind of person and say thank youI.
I will have my cats likewhacking me in the face with her
tail, but um, but thank you I.

Speaker 2 (02:03:25):
I feel seen I say'm going to click the seen button.
Right, I say it in a veryperformative voice, because it's
still a very difficult thingfor me to take in.
You're doing amazing things andI cannot wait to see where this
goes and what you do next.

Speaker 1 (02:03:45):
You amaze me.
Tap dance glasses.
Oh great, it says my internetconnection is unstable.
Great, lovely.
Well, we're just about two ofus, not the internet connection
Me me too.
I wanted to wrap up withdiscussing the final topic is
we're talking about you as anartist and your identity, but

(02:04:07):
also like the messaging thatyou're sending out into the
world and one of the things thatI think about a lot since we've
talked about it the first timeto now.
This is a nice topic to kind oftransition out of this podcast
your thesis.
Tell people about what yourthesis was when you were in
school.

Speaker 2 (02:04:28):
So the title, which basically tells it all, is
Factors Affecting StudentMotivation and Retention in
Performing Ensembles Outside ofSchool, and I know that's a
mouthful, but it was veryspecific.
I wanted to know what is itthat gets kids to join community

(02:04:48):
orchestras, join youthorchestras and then to stay in
there.

Speaker 1 (02:04:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:04:56):
And the thing that's that was fascinating to me is
how much of it came down tofeedback.
There was this thing about thefeedback loop and how and it
ties into all the other thingsthat we've talked about about
frustration, tolerance andfailure and mastery and how kids
think about themselves and itturned out it was really really

(02:05:19):
simple.
Feedback needs to be precise,it needs to be really soon after
the thing happens and it needsto be kind.
It was pretty much those threethings.
If someone does something andyou don't say good job, right,
that doesn't do anything forsomeone.
It's like wow, you really gotthat f sharp.
That was.
Yeah, that was tough.

(02:05:39):
I see your fingers in the rightplace.
It's very specific and they butwe do this all the time with
everything.
We give feedback.
We are constant feedbackcreators and consumers.
We're doing it to people andconsumers.
We're doing it to people on thestreet.
We're doing it to the person inthe car next to us on the
highway.
You know you're like you'reconstantly doing this and I
think that there is somethingthere about how we communicate

(02:06:03):
with each other that the artslets us do right.
It teaches us.
I think we have been throughthe very traumatic version of
feedback.
What we were talking about inconservatory and what I was
saying about, like learningabout who we don't want to be,
and that there are other ways ofdoing this.
There are other ways ofcreating musicians and artists,

(02:06:25):
and it doesn't have to bethrough authoritarian.
You know means and you knowcreating an environment for for
for kids to struggle for, andnot just kids for learners to
struggle, for learners to failand feel safe.
I mean, if you can do that, youcan.

(02:06:46):
You can kind of do anything.

Speaker 1 (02:06:49):
Well, I would even expand that, then, and say not
just learners, like if, inrelationships, we give each
other permission to fail, tomake mistakes, to struggle and
say, hey, I really don't knowwhat to do, or I don't know how
to communicate this to you.
Like, that's what makes it'severything, it's like it's

(02:07:10):
relational, it's everything it'slike it's relational, it's
emotional, it's relational.
It's not just in the arts, it'snot just in learning.

Speaker 2 (02:07:25):
Being in therapy I was talking about this in my
last couple sessions Like I'mtrying so hard to be a better
self right.
One of the things I'm workingon that's difficult for me is
boundaries and just saying nowhen I need to, and you know
that whole category of things.
And what you just said reallykind of tripped the switch for
me, which is that like the worlddoesn't give you time to get
that right.
You like I want to be better atthis and like it takes a little

(02:07:48):
trial and error, but the momentyou tell excuse me, you're
telling people I'm trying to fixthis thing about my personality
or about my you know I want todo this thing better.
Is we, as certain people do, andI think artists do in
particular but to give the spaceto fail it at being a better
person?
Like the moment you get itwrong people, they just want you
to be better.

(02:08:09):
Yeah, like it's a process.
All of it is, you know,communication and and and and
compassion and understanding.
All of these things take timeand they take practice and
practice.
Like we said, practice is notabout being perfect from the
beginning.
It's about progress and I don'tthink we make enough room for
people to struggle and make thatprogress as a society.

Speaker 1 (02:08:33):
We don't.
We don't give permission forfrustration.
Tolerance, I mean.
We live in social media worldsnow that act as echo chambers of
validation and so like there'sno space for difference.
So if there's no difference, wedon't learn to sit with
discomfort.
If we don't sit with discomfort, we can't sit with ourselves
when we're trying new things.
We can't try new things if wedon't feel confident enough to

(02:08:55):
be able to do it.
But we have to be able to sitwith discomfort to do that yep,
I mean on the, on the head.

Speaker 2 (02:09:03):
that is exactly, and it's the same thing.
You know someone dislikes yoursong or someone doesn't.
People just unfriend them, them.
Okay, then you're gone.
I don't want to hear that voiceanymore.
Okay, it's gone.
Okay, but that's how the worldworks.
They're not.
They're still there, Right.

Speaker 1 (02:09:19):
Yeah, yeah.
So I guess my question is likeyou said, in your thesis, you
talked about the Maslow'shierarchy of needs and because
I'm a therapist, I'm like, hey,those are some nice words you
got there.
Where does that fit?

Speaker 2 (02:09:35):
into this puzzle.
So there's two things.
Like I didn't know who he was Iprobably should have paid more
attention in one of my undergradclasses, but like I it was
there.
I think I had a good time thenight before that class or
something, I don't know.
Anyway, I basically discovered,I felt like I discovered maslow
and his thinkings while I wasdoing my research old school
analog at the library, where, um, but there were a couple things

(02:10:00):
that just like struck me.
The the hierarchy is one andI'll get to that in a second.
The other was about the idea heactually spent a whole bunch of
time thinking and writing aboutthe arts and how everything is
an art.
These things that we're talkingabout is not limited to
musicians, and the idea was thatwe as a society have created
this elitist idea of what amusician or an artist or an

(02:10:22):
actor or a dancer is.
And I do it myself.
I say I'm not a dancer.
I mean I can move my legs, Ihave muscles, muscles and feet,
but like I'm not great at it.
But that doesn't mean I'm not adancer.
And I think a lot of oursociety just discredits
themselves and says I'm not thatthing, cause I can't do it the
way all these other people havedone it in the past.
And this is what?

(02:10:43):
Again, to bring up thecommercial of it, this is the
commercial idea of what amusician is.
I'm not that, so I'm not amusician.
Um, and he goes into thisconcept of like, and my favorite
one is a taxi driver.
You know, I gotta get fromharlem to to to battery park.
Lane.
Switch for you there.
If you gotta get downtown, itdepends what time of day and

(02:11:06):
what month is the un in session?
Is there a show?
Is a like a street shutdown?
Was there an accident?
And that there's an artistry todoing anything.
Whether there's an artistry, aswe have learned, to doing your
taxes, there's an artistry to,you know, finding an outfit.
There is a.
Everything has things that youwould not imagine are artistic,

(02:11:26):
because art is about findingalternate ways to get to the end
point that you want to.
That is what art is.
We have been talking for thelast hour or so about how we use
art to communicate emotions andcommunicate interpersonal
relationships, but that sameartistry is there for a

(02:11:47):
stockbroker, or it's there.

Speaker 1 (02:11:49):
It's there for what your morning routine is it
absolutely is.

Speaker 2 (02:11:54):
Yep, and and I think that that when you go to his
other stuff, which is like thehierarchy, right?
So he spent a lot of timetalking about the hierarchy of
needs of, like, a human being,like the first one being food
and shelter, and above that islike interpersonal relationships
, and then, like it gets morespecific and for us as a society

(02:12:17):
, we see the arts as this top ofthe top of the pyramid.
If you're lucky to get there,you can enjoy this thing, but
not, not, you can't have anypudding if you didn't eat your
meat.
Right, so you don't get to thetop and so does it have?

Speaker 1 (02:12:34):
does the pudding have hot raisins in it?

Speaker 2 (02:12:36):
oh, I know what that is, and no, it does not.
Are you against hot raisins?
no, no, I'm, but I, I, I, I kindof like ended up in this
concept of does that samehierarchy exist inside of the

(02:13:02):
other things, and specifically Iwas thinking of inside of
learning the arts, like whatdoes it mean to, for example,
learn the violin or learn thepiano?
In order to do that one thing?
There is its own pyramid, thebottom.
You got to have a piano, right,maybe you have to have a method

(02:13:24):
of learning it.
You have to learn how to readnotation, you have to understand
what these symbols mean andthen, like we've done this, you
learn rhythm and you learn pitch.
Great, that's a start.
Now you want to learn dynamicsand articulation, and then you
learn phrasing.
And there is this hierarchy ofneeds within learning an art
form of how you get to being thefine artist.

(02:13:46):
But it doesn't happen withoutthis foundational base and it is
things like having just thematerials to do it.
But it's also emotional pyramid, right, you have to have the
safety.
You have to have that safety toexplore the struggles of
creating that art.
You have to have a teacher, youhave to have an environment

(02:14:08):
that allows you to screw up andlearn from those mistakes.
You can't move sort of to thenext level of the pyramid if you
keep getting beaten down andyou're wrong.
That's not right, and that Imean there's some crazy people
like me who survive that and yougo to the next level right.
And that's why I feel in myteaching it's so important to

(02:14:30):
create access, to create theserelationships, because if you
create a good relationship withthe learner, you can help them
find all these different layersand move and like the cycles of
grief you know it's not linearSometimes you need more of this
or you need to go, and so withinthat concept, I mean my whole
project was to figure out whykids join and stay in orchestras

(02:14:53):
and not.
But what I ended up learningwas this sort of more
metacognitive idea of like howwe do anything, it's all based
on this idea of of safety.

Speaker 1 (02:15:06):
If you don't have the safety in that area, you're not
going to move to the next levelof understanding no, well, I
mean because all of your energyis like your, your energy is
being spent on survival, so likewhether you're in a trauma
response and then trying toliterally survive.
So you're in fight, flight,freeze or fawn, and so that is
what's taking all of your energy, or your, your creative outlet

(02:15:30):
is actually figuring out how tosurvive.
So all your creative juices aregoing to like how am I going to
get from school to home when Iknow I'm going to?
Let's take it out of likereality.
Let's say Christmas story, whenRalphie's like oh no, the
bully's coming.
Like he's using all of hiscreative energy to figure out
how do I get around the bully sothat I survive, not getting a

(02:15:53):
black eye, and get home so thatmy mom can tell me like you know
, no, you, you'll shoot your eyeout if you get a red rider bb
gun for Christmas.
But like if all your energy isbeing expended to that survival,
there's nothing left to create,art or to create.
But it's still.
It's still the samefunctionality within the self.

Speaker 2 (02:16:15):
Absolutely.
I think about like I domaterial checks in my classroom
and the kids get like all bentout of shape and like they I
give all my assignments areworth five points, whether it's
the final test or they're.
So there's not.
No one thing has someexponential weight and will
change your life in my class.
Yeah, but like I create thesethings with this, like this, in

(02:16:38):
mind, right, so like it doesn'thave their instrument, they lose
only one point.
You still have an 80 percentfor the day.
Right, you forgot your music.
You lose one more point.
You're still passing and I havea whole library of books and
you're not gonna get yourselfout of participating in class.
There is a real consequence, butit's not the end of the world,

(02:16:59):
right, and you have to show themthat like, it's okay to make
that mistake.
Just don't keep doing it.
The only way you can fail myclass.
Don't bring your instrumentevery single time.
Then you're gonna have a solike creating these
opportunities to fail.
But it's not like and I watchthem like if they lose a couple
points, they will panic becausethat's how they're treated in

(02:17:20):
their other classrooms, right,the shame spiral takes over.

Speaker 1 (02:17:23):
Yeah, If you get stuck in the shame spiral, well
then you're gone.

Speaker 2 (02:17:27):
You might as well have just left the room but you
know this accountability measurewhat is accountability in
education and what isaccountability in education in
the arts?
Yeah, and and for me it does goback to that Maslow thing you
got to show up with yourmaterials and you got to show up
with an open mind.
If you can do those two things,then we have space to play with
all the rest of this right solike that's like goes back to

(02:17:51):
funding.
If the school could buy me, youknow, 500 instruments and I had
them we could take that, thatfoundational level off the table
right.
We know the kids are going toshow up, they're all going to
have an instrument, they're allgoing to have a book.
But the state of arts educationin america is like the kids
also have to bring thefoundation with them, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:18:12):
Right, yeah, so then it's.
Then it becomes like a, a, a, aplace of privilege.

Speaker 2 (02:18:17):
then it's like well, that as a society as a whole.
That's why the arts is all theway up here is because we don't
fund it.
We don't give it the, the, themeans that it needs to just
exist.
Right it's.
You know you, you've been inenough arts organizations.
You can't run an artsorganization now.

(02:18:38):
You're not going to get hiredif you don't also know how to
write grants like it's not.
Like people are giving us moneyto make this stuff, even though
the entire, I think, cultureloves and appreciates what the
arts gives them.
We're just not necessarilyready to say, yeah, I'm going to
fund that.
Even though I'm not entirelysure what we're making, I know

(02:19:01):
that it's worthwhile.
It's the abstractness of itthat a lot of people just aren't
prepared to support.

Speaker 1 (02:19:09):
The ambiguity of risk .
Yep, there she is again.
She is again rearing herbeautiful, beautiful head.
Because, like again, like it'sabout, like, risk is ambiguity,
it's uncertainty, it'sinstability, and because we
cannot tolerate instability, wewill choose these rigid, stable

(02:19:33):
oh, you are all these littlequotes up around my classroom
and there's one in it and it'sabout navigating uncertainty.

Speaker 2 (02:19:42):
I think it's dr seuss or something it's like, for I'm
not afraid because I'm stilllearning how to sail my ship,
something along these lines,like I'm not scared of the waves
because I'm still learning.
And if you can say I don'tlearning how to sail my ship,
something along these lines,like I'm not scared of the waves
because I'm still learning, andif you can say I don't know how
to do this yet, that's okay.
And and knowing like I have acommunity that'll back me up and
help me figure it out, insteadof laughing at me or saying you
got it wrong or I told you soright.

(02:20:05):
It's like building thatcommunity, building that
kindness and people.
I think it's why I loved MrRogers.

Speaker 1 (02:20:10):
It's like oh my gosh, yeah you're not gonna get it
right, but you know what be kindto yourself be kind to each
other and, if you can startthere, there's a lot of stuff
you're going to be able to do.
Yes, well, that's feels like areally great place for us to end
our conversation today.
Craig, thank you so much forbeing on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:20:34):
The pleasure is absolutely mine.
I love what you're doing.
I love talking about this stuffwith someone else who loves
talking about it.
Love it Go on for days.

Speaker 1 (02:20:42):
I seriously I'm like, oh my God, we can talk about
this, this, this, this, this,this.
So where can people find where?
Where can people find yourmusic?
How do they find out aboutperformances of yours or your
students' performances?
We didn't even mention the factthat your students performed at
the Apollo.

Speaker 2 (02:20:59):
Yeah, they performed twice at the Apollo.
This year we might get toperform at the Shed.
They've moved the event.
My kids were one of the first.
I had the very first groupperform about 15 years ago at
roundabout theater company.
We were the very first middleschool to perform live in a in a
broadway theater.
Um amazing, I had my my kidsperformed for the manhattan

(02:21:20):
borough arts festival.
We were selected and my middleschool kids performed alongside
um high school, the performingarts and laguardia.
I mean, we were one of the onlymiddle schools chosen to do
this.
Um, yeah, I, I theyaze me.
Oh, my god, my kids areincredible.
You can find me on all thesocials.
I'm Craig Klonowski, it's justmy name.
It's me and my new.

(02:21:43):
I have an album, as I mentioned, coming out.
I have five singles.
I've been doing the driprelease, trying to get people to
figure out who I am.
My last single Heard of it justcame out on January 1st.
The album right now the titleis Come Back here.
I've got 12 tracks.
I released the first one theweek of my birthday last year
and my goal is to release thealbum a little bit later this

(02:22:06):
year.
It explores my journey throughum struggle and strife and
there's a little bit of sillyfunniness on there from from you
know, it's all mixed in theretogether, uh and uh.
Yeah, if if you follow me onsocials, you'll see everything
that uh is going on in my life.
Open book open book.

Speaker 1 (02:22:28):
Thank you, craig, you're the best.
Thank you, thank you.

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Exploring Creativity with Craig Klonowski: A Journey Through Music, Education, and Artistry

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