The Jimi Hendrix of the Cello (with Joshua Roman)

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1:52Pushkin.

2:17But as a professional composer and celebrated cellist, my guest on today's episode has developed a way more profound relationship with music. Joshua Roman began playing a child-sized cello at age three and gave his first public recital at age 10. He's now played with great orchestras and collaborated with some of the top names in classical music. Joshua was a huge rising star and driving himself to ever greater heights until he was struck down by long COVID. And it took a debilitating condition to strip me of all ability before I let myself just be. And that has changed everything about how I feel with music and really with life and the people around me.

3:06So to continue our journey into the coping strategies that real people use to tackle real problems, I've asked Joshua to explain how music has not only helped him during times of adversity, but also how those times of adversity have helped him to regain something he'd lost in his relationship with music. But before jumping into all that, let's start at the beginning, the overture, as it were, Josh's childhood. It's hard to know exactly the moment when the love of cello took over, but I do remember the day the cello arrived. I was three years old. I remember the house I was in. We only lived in that house for maybe half of a year.

3:45the UPS delivery lady with her brown shorts. And the box was bigger than me. It was a small cello, but still. And I don't remember ever not loving it. And I know that by six, I was telling people that this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. But there's not really a moment where there was a transition. It just feels like it was always going to happen. And so tell me a little about your childhood and how cello fit in. I'm kind of thinking about the things that you went through and how cello was helping you cope back then. Well, I grew up in Oklahoma and it's not the place with the biggest infrastructure for classical musicians.

4:25My parents were church musicians. They're recently retired now. My dad was the choir director at that point, getting his degree or whatever it is that makes him officially a reverend. So he's officially a reverend, but he was always focused on the community and engagement and especially music. So very much a musical family. My mom would play the piano accompanying the choir. And that's kind of what I fell into is just music being a part of our everyday lives and a part of our experience with the people around us. Music was something that happened at lessons on Thursdays or Wednesdays or whenever that was.

5:04And you would practice and prepare for that. But in between, music was all the time. We were always singing. We were always playing whatever instruments were lying around. From a very early age, I was just taught to try it. Like, why not pick up the trombone, play the guitar? And that's something that I really cherish is just music as a way of being in community with other people. And that connection and shared experience, I think, is very powerful. It also seems like music was a bit of a constant for you when other things were changing around. I understand you kind of moved a lot as a kid. Can I describe what that was like?

5:42We did. We were in a lot of different houses. I think by the time I was 35, I'd lived in more than 35 places. And a lot of that was when I was young. But when I didn't know how else to connect with people, I could at least join the band. For example, when we moved to Mississippi from Oklahoma, I learned to play the bass guitar. I would make the cello work in certain bands. I could find the pianists and play with them. Music was always a way of connecting with people pretty quickly. You start to make sound together and you don't have to talk. It's great. It also seems like you started noticing the benefits of music really early on, right?

6:28One of the ones that we know from the science is that music is incredibly rewarding, right? Listening to music activates all the same reward areas as things like food and money. And it seems like music was sort of your go-to reward for, you know, a lot of the time you were growing up. Yeah, you know, looking back, a lot of that is reward. And some of that might have also been the only thing that felt good in that moment. there was lots of stuff going on. Scouts, orchestra later, that came later. Soccer, I was always in soccer. I loved studying too. I was a real math nerd. I loved all those kinds of things.

7:05But with music, I could work on it in the room alone. I could shut the door and say, my brothers and sister have to stay out because I'm practicing. And I could make progress. I I could get better at something. I could go, oh, this is cool. I really want to do that now. And then I could go share it with people. Music let me have what felt like, I guess, better interactions or more rewarding or meaningful interactions with people because I brought something to the table. And that was maybe a version of what you're talking about, for sure. Yeah, exactly. It also seems like music is super good at helping us regulate our emotions, whether we want to kind of get pumped up and kind of hyped up or whether we want to wallow in our kind of sadness, but kind of have a beautiful thing to wallow in.

7:50Oh, yeah. Is this something that you found with music early on, too? Yes, absolutely. And I would do that with the cello, of course, but I would also do that with the radio and with tapes and CDs and sometimes records. And there's a lot of stuff that I guess I didn't understand or have the right context for how to process. you know, teenagers have so much going on. And music was a place where even if I couldn't work through the details, I could feel it, I could express it and get some sort of sense that that was okay. There's also lots of evidence that music can kind of make us feel more present.

8:34It can make us mindful. And I think especially when you're playing music, you can get in this state of flow, which is this kind of wonderful happiness inducing state that the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talked about a lot where you're kind of in the zone, time is passing, you're kind of forgetting your bodily needs, but you're just like feeling great and kind of challenging and pushing yourself. And it seems like especially early on, this was something that you got out of playing the cello a lot. I would obsess overflow, not just in the cello. I think cello was where it was most accessible, is most accessible to me because you're doing so many of the things that flow requires in terms of openness and focus at the same time.

9:12And I mean, I would really geek out about this. I pretty young read The Inner Game of Tennis, which talks about flow. But I was always really into that basic idea that you could find a state of awareness or of being that allowed you to have that feeling like time didn't exist. And so you found a way to get these benefits kind of permanently as your career. I love that you announced at six years of age, like, I'm going to be playing the cello forever. But you actually kind of went good on that. I announced at six years old that I was going to be a dolphin trainer, but I did not make good on that.

9:48There's still time. Still time. Right. But you jumped in early. So tell me about the path to becoming a professional cellist. Oh, my gosh. Well, I guess I'm glad that I didn't know what I was doing when I said that. And no one around me knew either. Again, no infrastructure for classical music in Oklahoma. I was studying with a violinist. I didn't even have a cello teacher. I was playing the cello and he would be on the violin demonstrating and I would copy on the cello. But basically, my parents thought was, we can't find the cello teacher that we want that will agree to take a three-year-old.

10:29So we'll do the next best thing. We'll just find the best musician that will take a three-year-old. And that happened to be a violinist. So from the very beginning, it was kind of a hodgepodge of things that on one hand had these very deep values. You know, we're going to do the best possible with what we have. At the same time, it was a lot of different things pieced together. It was a violin teacher. I was in Oklahoma. Most of my formative chamber music experiences were with rock bands, essentially. Me and my friends, often I would be on the cello, sometimes I would grab a different instrument or just sing.

11:09I think my first string quartet experience wasn't until I was 13 or something, and I'd been playing for 10 years at that point, which is a long time to go thinking this is what I want to do with the rest of my life and not experiencing what the usual path would be. But you were able to kind of jump into this profession. You were thriving in your career. You were killing it. Yeah. You know, as a classical cellist, I don't know what people think of that career or what it entails. The particular thing that I do as a soloist is I don't regularly play with any particular orchestra. I'm not a member of an orchestra, a member of a group or anything like that.

11:49I don't teach at a university. I travel around as the guest artist with an orchestra when they play what we call the concerto, where there's a spotlight on the guest artist who's the soloist. The piece of music they're playing is often from centuries ago. Sometimes it's brand new, but it's always a big feature. And this was my dream. It's incredible to be able to do this at all, let alone make a living doing it. It's very difficult. There are only a handful of cellists in the country who are able to do that and not also do other things. So I felt like despite all of my insecurities, I was really on the right path.

12:34But what happened in March 2020 when COVID hit? Yeah, I think it was March 12th. my manager calls, and an entire year of work was just wiped off the calendar. At the time, I was also doing a residency for composing. So I was living in Santa Barbara. And so all of my belongings were in storage in New York City. I had no fixed address. I was not in any of the systems that you needed to be in to get unemployment. So that phone call where everything was wiped off, the map was like pretty devastating. Was that a time that you turned back to music to kind of cope? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Laurie, I'm curious about this.

13:18I don't think I did it in the most healthy way. You know, like I don't actually have any home at that point. And I'm very lonely because I went out there for solitude, for beauty of nature, to have inspiration to write music. and I don't feel like I had much of a choice but to double down on that. So I did. I doubled down on that. I was trying to compose. I started doing a live stream every day for a while. Yeah. Just trying to feel connected to people, but I was actually just alone. So music was kind of that desperate lifeline. And it's hard to say that it made me happy, but I guess it kept me going.

14:05But a lot of things changed back in early 2021. And so tell me what happened that fateful day in Florida. Right. So 2021, COVID had been going on. This was January. So for a good nine, 10 months, almost all of my concerts were canceled. One of the only ones that wasn't was this performance in Florida. And, you know, I didn't have as many restrictions. And the orchestra was extremely careful and great. So I felt comfortable going despite everything else. And there was no way that I was going to cancel one of the only opportunities that I had in a whole year to perform and also, frankly, to work and get paid.

14:52Not only was this an important concert because it was one of the only concerts, it's also this incredible piece. It's the Sinfonia Concertante, the symphony concerto by Sergei Prokofiev, which is a mammoth work. The cello is just crazy. It goes all the way up to the heights, serene. It plummets down to the depths, it's wild and frenetic and chaotic. It's so difficult technically. And this was my first performance of this piece ever with an orchestra. I got to Florida and played the first concert. We're so excited. The next morning I woke up and I couldn't really taste the toothpaste very well.

15:36The thing that I remember is thinking, uh-oh, and grabbing a box of Altoids and stuffing my nose in it and nothing. And I was just, oh no, this is not good. It wasn't good. In fact, it was about to get far worse than Joshua ever expected. But more on that after the break. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well. For me, the Quince piece that I reach for over and over again is their washable stretch silk-tiered maxi dress. I originally bought it in black because it was something I could wear to dinner, layered up with a nice sweater.

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19:26We left cellist Joshua Roman on a concert tour frantically sniffing toothpaste and Altoids, checking to see if his sense of smell really had disappeared, a sure sign that he'd caught COVID. I panicked a bit, got a test, and of course it came back positive. The orchestra canceled that concert. I found a place to hole up for a while. My infection was not that bad. It was kind of weird. I mostly had the unrecognizable symptoms. I wasn't coughing, but I was short of breath. I wasn't sneezing, but I couldn't smell or taste. There were weird things going on with fatigue that didn't just feel like being tired.

20:12And then I just never got better. That's so awful. And so describe what that fatigue was like. It was really strange. It's like I'm wearing a coat of heavy metal or armor underneath my skin, embedded in the muscles. Like everything is just so difficult to move. Or if you've ever woken up at the wrong time with jet lag and not been able to sort out how to lift your arm, that's a similar feeling. Okay, I've had bad jet lag, but my arms have always worked. Like when traveling to like Europe or Asia, this is a new one for me. Well, the only times that's happened to me are yes, traveling to Asia or something, and then waking up totally at the wrong time.

21:02And your body's so confused. If anyone listening has felt that, drop it in the comments. I love the ways that we describe sensations, because it's really difficult to pin down whether we're talking about the same thing so much of the time. But the quality of this fatigue is not sleepiness. It has nothing to do with I need to go to bed. It has everything to do with I don't know how to get the energy to move something or to lift my arm. Or when it comes to thinking, last night I was laying on the ground and I realized in conversation with my fiance that I couldn't think I could only speak. Like I couldn't conjure up words unless I was saying them.

21:49And I don't know exactly what's going on with that. But physically, cognitively, this fatigue is debilitating and sleep doesn't fix it. You also had this condition that I've heard of with long COVID called dysautonomia. Yes. What's that? And what did that feel like? Well, I still have that one, though it's a lot less inhibiting than it used to be. It's a nervous system condition, and this is my bastardization of something that I heard from a doctor somewhere. So please forgive me, but the nervous system generally takes an input, like a temperature change, and then the output would be what the body does in response.

22:31So sweating to cool you off, for example, or in the other direction, shivering to warm you up. And similarly, when you're running a marathon in mile 21 or whatever it is, when your body is really trying to slow you down, that feeling is the nervous system giving you signals because of the information it's receiving from the body. Otherwise, you wouldn't have that feeling. You would just keep going and damage tissues and all that sort of thing. So dysautonomia is when those signals are mixed up. When those wires get crossed. Yesterday, I was walking up the subway stairs. I had to stop three times for one flight of stairs.

23:20And I know that my muscles can do this. But my nervous system, using the sensation of fatigue and heaviness, is screaming, you've done way too much. It's a mix-up. It's a mix-up of signals in the same way that sometimes I will start shivering uncontrollably, feel incredibly cold, and everyone else is in shorts and a t-shirt, fine. So give me a sense of how these changes affected your life. Like what was your kind of morning routine like before long COVID kicked in versus now? Well, let's start with the sleeping. Four hours was kind of what I considered the necessary. Six was great. And anything past that was a waste of time.

24:06So if I went to bed at four, I'd be up by 10. If I went to bed at midnight, which was very rare, then I'd be up by six and Vipassana meditation an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and charge at the day let's go run six miles how close to 100 push-ups in a row can we do can we clap in between what if we do a workout class where we lift weights and then a yoga class so that the brain will be really clear. And then I can jump into composing or practicing. And so what's it like now? I get the sense that it's very different. Yeah, it's funny. You ask me, my fiance, Ana Luisa, it'd be funny to get her perspective because we met since I've gotten along COVID.

24:58It's been over four years now. So I've had to adjust to this to a certain degree. She doesn't know the difference she hasn't seen me wake up and run out the door. I mean, now I wake up and meditate as close to 20 minutes as I can get. And sometimes it's not a full 20 minutes. And I take about an hour and a half or so to wake up. My body just feels weird. It has these extra sensations all over that are not really comfortable and they stop me from being able to move with ease. My brain, similarly, I have to be really careful because if I do too much, let's say if I do the Saturday morning New York Times crossword puzzle, then I'm going to need a break.

25:51So I really have to think about what's coming in the day. I spend a lot more time planning. I go to bed at 1030 and I get up at 715. Every night. It's a different world. And how has that changed your cello practice? Well, when I first was trying to play the cello again, I would play for two or three minutes. And that's it. That's all I could do in a whole day. Just moving the bow was so exhausting. And I had one other concert and I had two months, a little over two months, I think. So I was trying to practice every day. Eventually, I got up to 20 minutes, which was the length of the piece that I was playing.

26:35And that was huge. So for a few days, that's all I would do is once a day, I would play that piece. And then I decided to try to practice it. And practicing is different than playing. When you're just playing through something, you know, you're just having fun or you're just going through it. But what I was doing was I was thinking, OK, is this in tune? Could this sound different? Would this be better if I used different fingers to give it a different feel? You know, those sorts of analytical decisions. And instead of 20 minutes, it was about a minute or so. And I was shaking, had to have help putting the cello away.

27:17I couldn't open my eyes. I had a complete crash. And it was a real lesson in the different ways of engaging with music that I was going to have to start paying really close attention to how I was treating the cello and then later realizing how I was treating myself as I practiced. And this led you at the time to make a really tough decision. What was that? Well, after that concert, I put the cello away. I just gave up. I thought, this is too hard. And I put it in the case. There was nothing on the calendar. So I wasn't really in danger of letting anyone else down. Basically, it was a choice. Do I wash the dishes today?