Latest / Adventures in Adversity: an inspirational podcast / Ep. 52: "Life Review - The Hospice Musical" w/Benjamin Kintisch - from a chaplain’s heart to centerstage

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Ep. 52: "Life Review - The Hospice Musical" w/Benjamin Kintisch - from a chaplain’s heart to centerstage · Adventures in Adversity: an inspirational podcast

• 0:00
  All right, we are back. Episode #52 you're on our way.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the Adventures and Adversity podcast.
• 0:08
  So for those of you who are new, this is 05215252.
• 0:15
  I was like 52. Can you believe it?
• 0:18
  52 continue. No, it's fine.
• 0:22
  This is a podcast about really just feature real people.
• 0:26
  I always say it's got to be a real person, real people, true
• 0:29
  stories. And essentially my goal is to
• 0:32
  provide daily inspiration for anyone who is going through
• 0:35
  adversity because I feel like as a human being adversity, you
• 0:39
  know, from time to time we might go through it once or twice.
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  So I with that, I am very, very excited to introduce my new
• 0:48
  friend Benjamin. Kintish rhymes with Mintish.
• 0:51
  You got it. You said it right the first
• 0:53
  time. Well done.
• 0:54
  Thank you RE Wilson, we decided your name is cheese slash
• 0:58
  volleyball. Yes re like the cheese Wilson,
• 1:01
  like the volleyball. You just did that.
• 1:03
  Thank you. So Ben gosh, we got connected.
• 1:07
  I can't even through some digital media.
• 1:09
  Instagram e-mail my podcast. Yeah, and I am super stoked to
• 1:15
  talk to you because I think what you have created is not only
• 1:19
  amazingly creative, but so inspirational and necessary for
• 1:24
  for life. And that is a musical called
• 1:27
  Life Review. The Musical.
• 1:29
  Did I say it correctly? Very, very close Life review.
• 1:32
  The Hospice Musical. Hospice.
• 1:34
  Music. It is a brand new musical comedy
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  I've created inspired by my real life experiences as a Hospice
• 1:40
  chaplain over 10 years ago. Bree I was working as a beginner
• 1:45
  chaplain, doing my internship hours visiting room to room.
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  Part of the work a young chaplain does is to have these
• 1:54
  interview kind of conversations to help unearth stories and
• 1:59
  important themes from a person's life as they get ready to wind
• 2:03
  it down. The name of this technique is
• 2:05
  actually Life Review. So that beautiful phrase that
• 2:09
  named my play, not an original Ben Kintish phrase, I borrowed
• 2:12
  that one. But I always found it beautiful
• 2:14
  as an idea. And in practice, it resulted in
• 2:17
  these wonderful conversations, sometimes with the person who
• 2:21
  was in the bed. And if they were no longer
• 2:23
  verbal, they're plus one, they're their spouse or adult
• 2:27
  child, whatever the case may be. So I heard amazing stories.
• 2:30
  And one evening I was driving home, I got on the the cell with
• 2:35
  my wife. I said, honey, these amazing
• 2:37
  stories I'm hearing, I think they want to be songs.
• 2:40
  She said, OK, get writing. So that night I opened up one of
• 2:45
  those black and white journal books.
• 2:46
  You know the kind they used to give us an elementary.
• 2:49
  Composition. That's right, composition books.
• 2:52
  Speckled pattern. Yeah.
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  So it turns out those are a favorite of songwriters
• 2:57
  everywhere. Later on, you can get fancy and
• 3:00
  get the nicer ones, but these work very well.
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  So I grabbed one of those books and I started scribbling down a
• 3:05
  song. It ended up being the first song
• 3:08
  in the show. Was thinking about a person
• 3:10
  imagining their life after their own death.
• 3:13
  I borrowed a phrase from my mother in law's poem.
• 3:17
  The the title of her poem was Will it Still Snow?
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  And with permission, I use the same phrase as a song title.
• 3:24
  And I just started writing this big song about, you know, if you
• 3:28
  know when when you're a person living, you look forward to the
• 3:32
  seasons changing for those annual rituals.
• 3:35
  In the case of this character, she was from Western
• 3:38
  Massachusetts and so she loves skiing with her family.
• 3:42
  So where some people fear the winter and winter storm, for
• 3:46
  her, snow was beautiful. Snow is time for families.
• 3:49
  Snow is skiing. Yeah.
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  But then she's wondering, is it going to keep snowing when I'm
• 3:53
  gone? Are is my family going to go on
• 3:56
  without me? Are the seasons going to keep
• 3:58
  turning over? So it's as small as as the
• 4:01
  family concerns, but as big as will the world go on when my
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  world stops? So that was the first song I
• 4:08
  wrote. It was a little rough when I
• 4:10
  shared it, but I did share it in a song sharing workshop where
• 4:15
  the room ended up in tears. I was told by the leader, this
• 4:19
  is something special you've created, You gotta keep going.
• 4:22
  And and then I I kept going. And you ended up writing and now
• 4:26
  you perform the entire musical. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
• 4:29
  And we're now at 11 or 12 years in, depending on which version
• 4:33
  of my history I'm up to, but definitely over a decade.
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  So I wrote the lyrics to 16 songs.
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  I Co wrote them with two main musicians, composers Jason
• 4:44
  Spiwack and Michael Miller. Andy Bossov of blessed memory,
• 4:50
  wrote one song along with me and did some arranging.
• 4:54
  So did another friend named Miriam Cook.
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  So it takes a village. 4 main musicians.
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  Now a fifth musician named Dennis Erickson is getting
• 5:02
  funding from a grant. I got to do arrangements, taking
• 5:06
  the piano music and turning it into orchestral music.
• 5:09
  So we're growing it. So it's really beautiful.
• 5:12
  It is evolving, yeah. That's cool.
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  Yeah. And so that's been an
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  interesting journey all this time.
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  And you know when when I connected with you, I had two
• 5:21
  big adversity stories in mind. One of them is specific to this
• 5:25
  play and one predates it. So when you're ready to ask that
• 5:29
  question, I'm ready with both. But.
• 5:31
  Totally so no, so this musical, so tell me a couple of sort of
• 5:36
  like getting the facts about it, please, looking at the website
• 5:40
  and you can go on your website and see the trailer.
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  It was like it was I loved it because it takes you on that
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  journey of like, wow, that's really beautiful.
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  And then the laughing and then kind of up down and I just
• 5:51
  that's like what life is, right. And like one of the people in
• 5:55
  the interviews in the trailer was saying, you know, death is
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  such is this topic that everyone's like like, you know,
• 6:02
  hey, why you got to bring it, bring it down, you know, and
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  it's like it's going to happen, right.
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  So why not? Like there's beauty in finding
• 6:11
  the humor and like all the emotions around it and we all
• 6:14
  have to go through it, whether with somebody or we will
• 6:17
  ourselves, right? Well, that's true.
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  In fact, your statement of fact, we're all going to go through
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  it, as in we're all going to face our own mortality, is a
• 6:26
  central premise of the work. In fact, our opening number is
• 6:29
  called Spoiler Alert Parentheses.
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  Everybody dies in the end. So it's a comedy number.
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  It goes on for a really long time.
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  It was originally written as an ensemble number, but I bring it
• 6:43
  up now because the big work has been reconfigured as a smaller
• 6:47
  one man work, which is a COVID pivot.
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  We can come back to the how of that later if you want, but when
• 6:53
  I perform it by myself, I sing all 8 songs, including this
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  doozy of an opening number that goes on forever.
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  Most songs are like 2 verses and a bridge.
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  This one has 3 or 4 verses and a bridge and a bonus.
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  You know, it just goes on and on and it's in the key of Z, so
• 7:11
  like very high notes. Wow, OK, so you so that one
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  moment in the car driving home and then your wife being like
• 7:20
  let's. So she said, get writing.
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  And, and The thing is, there were so many stories percolating
• 7:25
  already before I made the project a thing.
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  Because, look, I had already been a very novice songwriter in
• 7:34
  a sense. I was.
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  Once you decide in your heart that you are a songwriter or a
• 7:39
  poet or a story writer, you start gathering little pieces of
• 7:43
  language or little pieces of story.
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  More so if you're like in a program or taking a class and
• 7:50
  and a teacher is giving you tasks.
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  But I'll tell you as a songwriter in conversation, if I
• 7:55
  hear say someone say something interesting, I say that's a song
• 7:59
  title. And then I will sometimes
• 8:01
  literally take out my phone and do a voice memo song title.
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  Because it's a moment of Vince Burt, right?
• 8:09
  That's it, and I'll write the two or three words down.
• 8:12
  More importantly, if it's a title or an idea related to a
• 8:15
  project that's currently percolating, like I'm working on
• 8:19
  one main musical, put a couple of others in the back burner.
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  So that's three different projects where if I have an
• 8:25
  idea, I want to make sure I get it down right.
• 8:28
  Yep, Yep. Grabbing them before they fly
• 8:30
  away. I have some of those kind of
• 8:33
  techniques and instincts that I've cultivated because I've
• 8:37
  completed one entire project. A lot of these things I didn't
• 8:41
  know how to do the first time because I was a novice making my
• 8:44
  way. Now I'm a grizzled veteran, you
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  know, with the Obama Gray and my beard indicating the stress and
• 8:52
  in making a musical or just being a person these days.
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  Hey, you know, it's there's some adventures and adversity in life
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  and some yes, I got some grey, you know, I got to get a little
• 9:02
  touch up you. Know yes, well hidden and.
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  Thank. You just just the right just the
• 9:07
  right color. So talk to me about now you're
• 9:12
  you said you were because you came at this as a music budding
• 9:16
  songwriter with some musical background and as a chaplain.
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  That's right, I was in my first year of chaplaincy training.
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  So for those of you who don't know listeners, a chaplain is a
• 9:26
  faith professional who is trained in therapeutic and let's
• 9:32
  say therapy adjacent skills. Amazing to be of assistance to
• 9:37
  people in their time of need. Specifically, the term we use in
• 9:42
  chaplaincy is spiritual distress.
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  Now, it doesn't mean like I'm on my sick bed and I'm having a
• 9:48
  crisis regarding Jesus. That's like a certain kind of
• 9:52
  spiritual distress. But sometimes it's just someone
• 9:55
  who's in their sick bed dying and they're lonely.
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  And you're the chaplain doing rounds and you knock on the door
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  and you say, I'm a chaplain, would you like a visit?
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  And you say, sure. I mean, there's a, there's an
• 10:06
  old expression. There's no atheists in a
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  foxhole. Meaning in times of crisis, very
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  few people stay true to a lack of faith, probably because it
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  feels hopeful to believe in something beyond your present
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  bleak circumstances. Thus no atheists in a foxhole.
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  So it's not totally true in my I've done, you know, I did 4
• 10:29
  years of training, two of which were Hospice, two of which were
• 10:33
  elder care. So people in varying degrees of
• 10:37
  with it Ness, you know, ability to communicate, verbalize
• 10:41
  different degrees of illness and need.
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  But one commonality is people like company, those who consider
• 10:49
  themselves of faith, they enjoy the experience of a prayer at
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  the end of a visit. I tended to travel with a
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  guitar. You see, I've got a guitar in
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  the background. So that one I had in a backpack,
• 11:02
  gig bag, and depending on the person in the mood, sometimes I
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  would offer a song. That was often useful for people
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  who were dealing with cognitive decline and therefore the sort
• 11:15
  of interpersonal conversation might not be available anymore.
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  But amazingly, a song can sometimes unlock a little bit of
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  a verbal response. Differently, a guitar and a song
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  could be used to soothe someone who was in bed and not verbal.
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  Sometimes their plus one could just be sitting bedside sad
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  because mom or dad are dying and I could be strumming or playing
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  a hymn, that kind of thing. I developed sort of a repertoire
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  of what I would, I called them soothing songs, slash lullabies,
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  and they're all kind of grouped together because they all worked
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  in Hospice. Of course I knew the up tempo
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  peppy stuff from my time as a school teacher and a camp
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  counselor and all that, but it's a different subset of music
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  because it had a kind of a soothing aspect for people.
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  Exactly. So, so that's a little bit about
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  what a chaplain is and then with a little bit of extra musical
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  wow entertainment added to the mix.
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  So that's what a chaplain is all about, providing that kind of
• 12:19
  therapeutic loving help, but with that religious bent.
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  So I trained as a chaplain for real in real life when I was a
• 12:27
  young Cantor that's a Jewish music minister working in a
• 12:30
  synagogue. I noticed that there were a lot
• 12:33
  of older people in my community. So I had a lot of funerals to
• 12:36
  work, a lot of bereavement house calls, and certainly a lot of
• 12:40
  hospital, nursing home, rehab home visits.
• 12:43
  So I liked visiting with those people, but I also sensed that
• 12:47
  it was a particular skill set I didn't have that was super
• 12:50
  strong. So that was the beginning of my
• 12:52
  chaplaincy journey. It was about improving skills so
• 12:57
  I could better serve my community.
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  That's how I first became a chaplain.
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  And it was then, in that first year of chaplaincy that happened
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  to occur at a residential Hospice where I was meeting
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  these people, and the stories came bumbling up and turned into
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  song. But how cool is it that you got
• 13:14
  to kind of like not kind of you literally created this at the
• 13:18
  beginning to kind of carry you through your life as a chaplain,
• 13:21
  right? Like the the musical is the
• 13:23
  soundtrack to your. I mean, in a way, right?
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  Like you're. In a certain way, you know, not
• 13:28
  everything. Sometimes my interviewers are
• 13:30
  disappointed to find out I'm no longer working as a chaplain.
• 13:33
  I'm now I have a day job. I'm not disappointed.
• 13:37
  Thank you. I but I do say I continue to, to
• 13:40
  play a chaplain on stage and I do so rather well.
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  I, I look just like the main character who I cast myself as.
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  But you are correct that writing this project was a part of my
• 13:54
  chaplaincy journey. And without oversharing because
• 13:58
  it's not really pertinent to, to today's interview, actually, no,
• 14:02
  it is because of your title name the first year.
• 14:06
  I didn't make this connection before today, so let's jump
• 14:09
  right into it. The the first year of my
• 14:11
  chaplaincy training. You should know just a technical
• 14:15
  term. It's called clinical pastoral
• 14:18
  education or CPE for short. It's a considered a graduate
• 14:23
  level class. You need to have completed
• 14:26
  undergrad and then have some recommendations from faith
• 14:29
  professionals like you've been a volunteer or in my case you've
• 14:33
  completed seminary. So we had some people who are
• 14:36
  full clergy. We had one guy who is a Deacon,
• 14:39
  highly trained layperson in a Catholic Church.
• 14:41
  Interesting mix. Very small class.
• 14:43
  I, I think we had four students and 1 teacher, but typically the
• 14:48
  CPE maxes out at six because the work is so intense.
• 14:53
  And over the course of one school year, you do
• 14:57
  approximately, I want to say it was 250, 300 hours of of
• 15:03
  supervised visits. So you have to schedule your
• 15:07
  professional year to include that number of hours shifts in
• 15:11
  your work week. Yeah.
• 15:13
  And then additionally, an evening class, which is like
• 15:16
  graduate level reading and writing, plus discussions and
• 15:19
  debriefs about some challenging visits and so forth.
• 15:22
  I loved this work, Bree. It was difficult.
• 15:26
  Yeah, I also found it very deep and helpful in a way that
• 15:30
  seminary training honestly wasn't because seminary was five
• 15:34
  years in New York City, one in Jerusalem, 4 in Manhattan, but
• 15:37
  not with practicum style stuff like you'd get, say, in Med
• 15:42
  school. Yeah, so CPE felt the first time
• 15:45
  I was doing the work of visits and then writing it up,
• 15:49
  discussing it with my teacher, discussing with my classmates
• 15:52
  and getting better through intensive reflection.
• 15:56
  This, by the way, this process is similar to what's a lot of
• 15:58
  social workers and therapists do, doing the so-called verbatim
• 16:02
  where you remember what you did, write it up, and then talk
• 16:05
  about. It so it's these core skills
• 16:07
  right to in all these different fields of like where you're
• 16:11
  interacting and counseling. That's right and the core skill
• 16:15
  in this case being super powered listening and and hyper focused
• 16:21
  responses. I need that class.
• 16:24
  Yeah, well, if you're involved in a faith community in some
• 16:28
  sort of meaningful way, you and I could talk about what it means
• 16:31
  to be a chaplain offline, perhaps.
• 16:33
  I'd be happy to do that call because I think there's a
• 16:37
  there's a a big and growing need for for chaplains and people
• 16:41
  adjacent to chaplaincy because of the baby boomers now they're
• 16:45
  calling it the Gray wave, kind of crashing over the elder care
• 16:49
  facilities everywhere. Yeah.
• 16:51
  You know, a lot of those places, they hire a chaplain and then
• 16:55
  just in, in terms of the world of non nonprofits, there's
• 17:00
  chaplains are are all over the place.
• 17:03
  They're in nursing homes and hospices and rehab centers.
• 17:07
  They're in hospitals, they're in professional sports.
• 17:09
  They're sometimes involved with corporations.
• 17:12
  They'll have a chaplain. It's a calming, it's like
• 17:15
  calming. And again, my from I've never
• 17:18
  talked one-on-one with a chaplain other than now.
• 17:21
  And my perception of a chaplain is like calming force, calming
• 17:25
  presence. Some there's some like.
• 17:28
  That's the right idea. Well, hopefully, yes.
• 17:30
  In fact, I'll introduce one of my favorite Hebrew terms that
• 17:34
  that's fun to say. It's called team Tsum.
• 17:38
  Try saying it. Team Tsum.
• 17:40
  Team Tsum. Well, that was really good.
• 17:42
  So it's Hebrew and it means the withdrawal of oneself or making
• 17:47
  oneself smaller. There's a famous legend that a
• 17:51
  rabbinic legend that to create the world, God originally
• 17:55
  occupied all of the universe and then God had to make God's self
• 17:59
  smaller to make space for creation.
• 18:03
  So God and all of God's omnipotence had to make God's
• 18:05
  self smaller to make space for God's creation.
• 18:08
  Now, that's kind of crazy deep metaphysical to think about, but
• 18:13
  for ourselves as clergy people, especially in the chaplaincy
• 18:18
  world, we have to go against all of our normal clergy instincts
• 18:25
  in order to be effective chaplains.
• 18:26
  In fact, I use this as a plot point in my play and I'll, I'll
• 18:29
  come back to that in a second, but basically you think about
• 18:32
  who is a good pastor, priest, rabbi, Cantor.
• 18:36
  It's someone who speak, who sermonizes well, who sings well
• 18:40
  if they're music minister and who's very charismatic people
• 18:44
  love them, right? And if you're missing the on
• 18:49
  stage performance as well as the ability to work a crowd, you
• 18:53
  really can't do the pulpit work. You got to do both.
• 18:55
  Yeah, I was great at the singing part, a little bit iffy on the
• 19:00
  working the lunch afterwards because of my old like, social
• 19:04
  anxieties and whatnot. And, and it ended up not being
• 19:07
  the right career for me, which is a shame because I had some
• 19:10
  other good skills. But but pulpit Cantor, at least
• 19:14
  at the time I first tried, was not the right match.
• 19:17
  I'm a very good music team, so I'm OK, but it's it's worth
• 19:21
  noting that the the clergy business and certainly the
• 19:24
  chaplain business, it requires different facets of different
• 19:28
  personalities. So the chaplain takes that
• 19:30
  loving, warm part that we want from our clergy, but it puts
• 19:35
  aside the ego in a major way that is challenging for a lot of
• 19:40
  regular clergy. The team too, right?
• 19:43
  The withdrawal of oneself. You step into the room and you
• 19:46
  say, may I have a visit? And then you take a chair and
• 19:50
  you move it close to the bed. You don't do any visit standing
• 19:54
  unless the person you're visiting is standing up.
• 19:57
  Do you want to guess why, Bree? Because it's comfort, right?
• 20:03
  Is it like soothing? Like it's when someone's.
• 20:05
  Standing so yes comfort, yes soothing, but think about the
• 20:08
  levels if I'm standing up and you're in bed it's.
• 20:11
  Like the like, like authoritative kind of.
• 20:13
  That's right, there's a power dynamic implied.
• 20:16
  Have you ever been in a bed for whatever reason, in a hospital?
• 20:20
  Having kids. Yeah, all right.
• 20:22
  God bless. About it, yeah.
• 20:23
  But you remember in that moment of like, the height of your
• 20:27
  womanly superpowers, you're about to birth a child.
• 20:30
  You're also in a bed, in the most vulnerable position of your
• 20:34
  life. And all these people, many of
• 20:36
  whom are men, are like, hello, let me look at your privates.
• 20:39
  Like hey. Nice to meet you.
• 20:42
  Where's? No, you're very vulnerable.
• 20:44
  You're a. Very vulnerable and if and when
• 20:47
  anyone got down low next to you, you probably noticed it and
• 20:51
  appreciated it. I bet you the nurses or the
• 20:54
  midwives got down low to make eye contact.
• 20:57
  A lot of doctors don't. They stay up.
• 21:01
  So one of the techniques, I mean, that's a very specific
• 21:04
  concrete technique that a chaplain learns, is to lower
• 21:08
  themselves. I happen to have a, a bad back.
• 21:11
  So I would always in every facility, locate a bridge chair,
• 21:15
  as in a folding aluminum chair. And then when I did my rounds, I
• 21:19
  would literally travel with it because in a lot of hospitals
• 21:23
  the only chair in the room weighs about £400.
• 21:27
  Smart. It's sort of like an
• 21:29
  indestructible easy chair. Can you picture it?
• 21:32
  Yes, yes, yes. Terrible for visiting bedside.
• 21:35
  But yeah, you you knew. It's the body language.
• 21:40
  And like how? Body language is important.
• 21:42
  Everything right? Yeah.
• 21:43
  So you want to be close, you want to be quiet, you want to
• 21:47
  listen. In the pre COVID era, there was
• 21:50
  a lot more gentle touch with permission.
• 21:53
  May I hold your hand? May I stroke your hair?
• 21:56
  Yeah, there's probably less of that now, but if it happens
• 22:00
  always with permission. But it's one part of, you know,
• 22:05
  I mentioned a plot point. So at the beginning of the play,
• 22:09
  our hero again, he looks like me.
• 22:11
  His name is Rabbi David and he is trying to find his way as the
• 22:15
  new chaplain. He makes a terrible blunder when
• 22:18
  visiting a family. The young man in 20 something is
• 22:23
  dying of cancer. So it's the middle-aged mother
• 22:26
  who is a wreck, grieving for her dying son.
• 22:29
  The young rabbi chaplain tries to be clever and invokes the
• 22:33
  story of Job. Do you know Job I?
• 22:36
  Know Job, it's one of my favorite books.
• 22:39
  It's a good book, but it is it's well known as problematic,
• 22:43
  Difficult time. Really tough time.
• 22:46
  And some, you know, I, there is a joke that I include in the
• 22:50
  play where where after he does, he basically he talks about Job
• 22:54
  and he says Job was a man of faith and his kids all died.
• 22:59
  And as soon as he says it, you can see like he wants to dial it
• 23:03
  back. And the mother is furious.
• 23:04
  She's like, get out of here. You think that's OK, Don't come
• 23:09
  back. And he's in the hallway And he's
• 23:11
  like, what have I done? They said in chaplaincy
• 23:14
  training, don't ever talk about Job.
• 23:16
  And I. So that joke actually sometimes
• 23:19
  gets a laugh from the crowd, but only if you're like a Bible
• 23:22
  scholar. No, yeah.
• 23:24
  And you understand Job is thorny as as heck because it is a man
• 23:28
  of great faith who suffers terribly because God and the
• 23:31
  devil is having a wager. It's craziness, yes, and you
• 23:35
  don't want to bring that up to a real life woman with a real life
• 23:39
  dying child. I can tell you humor can be used
• 23:42
  in chaplaincy, but with great caution.
• 23:44
  That's yeah. Yes, that that is his low point
• 23:48
  early in the play. OK.
• 23:50
  And then he needs to recover. And the lesson learned aside
• 23:53
  from don't talk about job, is basically don't be too clever.
• 23:57
  Your job in as chaplain is not to be the scholar in residence
• 24:01
  for people in need, not the rabbi sermonizing or the priest
• 24:06
  pastor sermonizing. You're there to be quiet, to
• 24:09
  step in the room and then step back to sit on the chair, make
• 24:12
  eye contact, hold hands with permission.
• 24:14
  MMM. And and then say something like
• 24:17
  what's going on? You're creating a space for
• 24:19
  like, yeah, you're not coming in.
• 24:21
  That's it's a very, I feel like it takes a very special person
• 24:26
  to do that, you know, like to be able to be 8, let's say you're
• 24:29
  good at it. And then to be emotionally like,
• 24:31
  again, I know we could talk for years about that whole journey,
• 24:34
  but how did you, if someone listening right now like is
• 24:38
  going through something and they're like, or maybe they're
• 24:41
  trying to comfort someone who's going through something long
• 24:43
  term, how do you like, I had asked the therapist friend of
• 24:46
  mine who was my last guest, how do you actually know if you're
• 24:49
  creating a space that's like, what are how do you, it's like
• 24:52
  the sitting down, it's the quiet.
• 24:54
  Right. Are you asking sort of Chaplain
• 24:58
  101 for someone who wants to help a friend?
• 25:01
  Is that what I'm getting? Yeah, I'm basically saying, how
• 25:03
  do we be your friends? Chap.
• 25:04
  So sure. Well, first of all, I, I, I
• 25:08
  appreciate the question and I will immediately sidestep it by
• 25:11
  saying, OK, your most loving role when your friend is in
• 25:16
  distress is to be a good friend and try try to avoid confusing
• 25:21
  your roles. So for me, because I'm trained
• 25:23
  as a chaplain and I've had this conversation with my wife and my
• 25:27
  own therapist, I have to be careful not to try to be
• 25:30
  chaplain and definitely not social worker to my aging
• 25:33
  parents, right? Yeah.
• 25:36
  Therapists need to make sure they're in therapy and that
• 25:39
  their loved ones have their own therapists who are not them,
• 25:42
  right? Yes, yes.
• 25:43
  And so in my family, I don't provide spiritual care.
• 25:48
  I don't, I don't do therapist style open-ended question.
• 25:52
  So how does that feel like, yeah, I mean, my daughter would
• 25:55
  say that's cringy and she has her own therapist, right?
• 25:58
  Like she doesn't need daddy. So that's and and and I think
• 26:03
  that's a great point. I mentioned that because those
• 26:06
  of us who are not trained in the therapeutic arts, if we are not
• 26:11
  social workers or therapists or chaplains, etcetera, but we're
• 26:14
  just regular people wanting to help, we sometimes overestimate
• 26:18
  our therapeutic skill by virtue of our interest in being
• 26:22
  helpful. I really want to help.
• 26:24
  Therefore, I'm going to be effective at helping.
• 26:27
  No, that's not correct. You just really want to help.
• 26:29
  So here are two separate things you can do to be most of
• 26:33
  assistance. One, if your person's in crisis,
• 26:36
  lovingly guide them, holding their hand, pushing, pulling,
• 26:40
  kicking and screaming to get the professional help they need.
• 26:45
  So if they are literally in some sort of spiritual crisis, like
• 26:49
  the kind where chaplain is in mind, does your loved 1 belong
• 26:53
  to a faith community? If they go to a church,
• 26:56
  synagogue, mosque or other place of worship, you might remind
• 26:59
  them your faith leader might be a good person to talk to,
• 27:03
  especially if they're like therapy averse.
• 27:06
  That's the nice thing about chaplains.
• 27:08
  For people who are scared of therapists, psychologists,
• 27:10
  psychiatrists, sometimes they're more comfortable with a faith
• 27:13
  professional. So chaplains can be like, it's
• 27:16
  not sneaky, but like a different way to get people the help that
• 27:19
  they need. But in but in the same way that
• 27:21
  if you're friends with a drunk or you used to be, just like you
• 27:25
  used to always go drinking on the weekend and then you notice
• 27:28
  your friends drinking devolved. At a certain point, there may be
• 27:32
  a challenging conversation, but it's not actually your job, but
• 27:36
  to help your friend on the sobriety path.
• 27:38
  Yeah, it might be just to say, hey, maybe it's time to talk to
• 27:43
  someone and then it's up to them.
• 27:45
  It's to guide them. It's to guide.
• 27:47
  Them to a better path knowing that they probably won't listen
• 27:50
  to you and it's risky. Now that said, the the someone
• 27:55
  comes to you asking for specific kind of help, I recommend you
• 27:59
  lovingly add, offer a little help, but not a lot of help and
• 28:04
  then see if they're ready to actually take it or listen.
• 28:07
  So if someone were to come to me knowing, Oh, Ben, you're trained
• 28:10
  as a chaplain and they kind of implicitly ask for some kind of
• 28:14
  chaplain E type help, I would listen a little bit and think
• 28:19
  what is their presenting problem?
• 28:21
  Like for instance, if someone is super religious and then their
• 28:24
  loved one is dying, that can cause a crisis because it's like
• 28:28
  God has forgotten me. So I might say, like, you seem
• 28:31
  really lost right now. Where do you usually go to find
• 28:34
  your way, or where do you find comfort?
• 28:37
  That's probably going to be helpful.
• 28:39
  Now it's a. Great question.
• 28:40
  Ask somebody. Yeah, what I mean a less
• 28:44
  metaphysical way is like what usually works to make you feel
• 28:47
  better. That's like a teacher technique.
• 28:50
  Like the kid is upset and, you know, to try to find the person.
• 28:53
  Like do they have self soothing techniques?
• 28:55
  Yeah, a lot of us grown-ups know how to self medicate with like
• 28:59
  softer hard drugs or alcohol, tobacco and so forth.
• 29:02
  And then there's like the non pharmaceutical version of
• 29:07
  exercise, meditation, breathing, whatnot.
• 29:09
  And then I guess there's prescription pharmaceuticals
• 29:12
  that are somewhere in that judgement spectrum of what's OK
• 29:16
  and not, I would say judgement free zone coming from this guy
• 29:21
  because I use just about everything.
• 29:23
  But I would say this, as long as you're safe and you're not
• 29:27
  hurting anyone, yes, do what you need to, to get through what
• 29:31
  you're going through your adversity and to take care of
• 29:34
  yourself and your loved ones. The essence of your question is
• 29:38
  sort of like, well, if a chaplain isn't available, what
• 29:41
  can I do for my friend? And I think the number one thing
• 29:44
  is if they need a chaplain, help your friend find a chaplain.
• 29:48
  If your friend needs a therapist, help them find a
• 29:50
  therapist. Because oftentimes here I'm
• 29:53
  going to bring up a pain point for me.
• 29:55
  I, I will just use the initial. A dear friend of mine has for
• 30:00
  years struggled with mental health stuff.
• 30:03
  And we have a different kind of friendship because we've made
• 30:06
  some art together. Oh yeah.
• 30:09
  And so as, as music makers, you know, we're not just like
• 30:14
  buddies on the, on the kickball team or whatever.
• 30:17
  And we also didn't come of age like when we were both 20.
• 30:21
  But he's going through some stuff right now that I know is
• 30:24
  quite intense. And, and he revealed to me
• 30:27
  recently that in the past year since I'd seen him, the
• 30:31
  intensity of his struggle were such that he was hospitalized
• 30:34
  for a little bit like the kind of stuff that like serious,
• 30:38
  serious stuff, right? And I bring this up because
• 30:41
  that's a great example of a friendship where I get on the
• 30:45
  phone with him and I say to myself, not his chaplain, not
• 30:48
  his therapist, not his chaplain, not his therapist, because my
• 30:52
  most needy friend, the one who was hospitalized for his
• 30:55
  struggles, he just needs a friend.
• 30:57
  He was, I mean he, he may or may not currently be accessing the
• 31:02
  many services that have been provided to him in the past.
• 31:06
  I know for a fact he has a team in place, a character.
• 31:10
  Care team. Yep, right, because once you're
• 31:13
  hospitalized, you're on people's radar.
• 31:16
  Whether he's taking his meds, doing his thing, like that's
• 31:19
  between him and his meds and his loved ones at home.
• 31:23
  That's beyond my sphere of influence.
• 31:25
  And, and maybe that's the other piece of, of advice I want to
• 31:28
  say here before coming back to, to whatever else is on your mind
• 31:32
  when you have a loved one in distress and, and you can hear
• 31:38
  from the upset in my, my story, it is super upsetting.
• 31:42
  And to keep yourself sane and healthy, you may need to remind
• 31:48
  yourself again and again and again, where does my influence
• 31:52
  begin and end? You said your mother, are your
• 31:55
  children still at home? Are they grown?
• 31:57
  8 and 10 years old. OK, Yeah.
• 32:01
  So tell them they're going. Out of the company, they're
• 32:03
  still no, yeah. Yes, they've they've been,
• 32:06
  they've been wage earners for four years.
• 32:08
  They're very independent. I love it So.
• 32:11
  So you still have them in in close proximity and you have to
• 32:14
  worry? Worry about them?
• 32:16
  Yeah. Mine is 14.
• 32:17
  So she's getting new kinds of independence in all sorts of
• 32:21
  ways. Yes, there's preening and yes,
• 32:23
  there's love and all of it, and I say good luck, have fun, be
• 32:27
  safe, and call me if you need a ride.
• 32:29
  That's basically. It flora song or a musical about
• 32:33
  your life? Yeah, but, you know, like with
• 32:36
  our own children, we learn where the influence begins and how
• 32:41
  quickly they establish autonomy, including as a young baby.
• 32:45
  Yeah, like that old aphorism about you can lead a horse to
• 32:49
  water, you can't make them drink.
• 32:50
  It's the same with like babies and a boob for babies and solid
• 32:56
  food. Like for millions of years
• 32:59
  they've been doing this and we still need a consultant to help
• 33:01
  us in many cases. And I, I'm not equipped with,
• 33:04
  with that gear, but like as the dad who did the, the bottle and
• 33:09
  the, and the, and the wet food, the dry food, it was amazing.
• 33:12
  Sometimes I'm like, you don't like this look, Daddy likes
• 33:17
  apricot and peas puree. Good stuff.
• 33:21
  But it's a great point. It's a great point.
• 33:24
  You know they may or may not take the food we give them or to
• 33:27
  come back to your. What do you do with friends and
• 33:29
  help they may or may not accept our suggestion about getting a
• 33:32
  therapist are are generic tips about Wellness Are you getting
• 33:36
  sleep? Are you getting water?
• 33:38
  Let me remind people though, having been close to people in
• 33:42
  great grief and distress, specific offers of help are
• 33:46
  always better than asking them to tell you what to do.
• 33:50
  So if you do you have a bereaved friend or loved one, someone
• 33:53
  who's person just died, instead of saying what can I do?
• 33:57
  Show up with some food or buy them $100.00 gift certificate to
• 34:01
  their favorite restaurant and and drop that off to the house
• 34:05
  because they'll get tired of the casseroles after a week or two.
• 34:08
  I don't know what it is with people and casseroles, but
• 34:10
  they're not actually appetizing. Multiple nights in a row.
• 34:14
  Yeah, especially the same one more lasagna.
• 34:18
  Why? God, why?
• 34:19
  Here again, big tooth love and but.
• 34:22
  But the joking aside, like people need all different kinds
• 34:26
  of things. If you're comfortable to lawn
• 34:28
  mower, you might say, hey, I'll take care of lawn care for the
• 34:32
  next three months. You don't even have to worry
• 34:34
  about it. Specific that just they don't
• 34:36
  have the capacity or energy to think.
• 34:38
  Yeah, or you like doing laundry most than your typical more than
• 34:42
  your typical person. Say, I'm happy to do laundry for
• 34:46
  you once a week, me and my teens will come over and do laundry on
• 34:49
  the weekend for you. That's a great way to help
• 34:51
  someone in crisis. And that might be someone with
• 34:55
  a, a recent death in the family, someone with a hospitalized
• 34:58
  loved one post criminal trauma post, you know, traffic accident
• 35:06
  or, or traffic crash, bike crash, anything like that.
• 35:09
  When, when everything seems upside down, go in and be
• 35:12
  specific. The other thing, remember when
• 35:15
  they are diminished and their victim, they are not well
• 35:18
  equipped to be the best friend. So don't expect them to be the
• 35:23
  best friend. Give them grace and give them
• 35:25
  patience. You can't hold grudges against
• 35:27
  people. And that includes somebody who
• 35:29
  like just had their husband leave them or you know, divorce
• 35:32
  is also a trauma and a grief event.
• 35:35
  You know, my because my show is about death and dying, It
• 35:38
  includes a lot of grief stuff. So I talk about grief and I
• 35:41
  remind people that for some people, you can have a grief
• 35:45
  event that is traumatizing or acts like trauma in your body
• 35:49
  and in your heart and in your mind.
• 35:51
  That can include a divorce. It can include the loss of a
• 35:54
  beloved job. It can include the loss of a
• 35:56
  beloved home or a move that could or, you know, leaving a
• 36:00
  neighborhood can be a trauma, especially for kids, but for
• 36:03
  grown-ups too, you know, So there's a lot of hurt around us.
• 36:08
  And it also means that when our friends or loved ones, as you
• 36:11
  were asking, are reaching out, what can we do?
• 36:14
  So the number one thing is acknowledge their hurt.
• 36:17
  Don't compare it. Say thank you so much for
• 36:20
  trusting me with your hurt or thank you so much for sharing
• 36:23
  this. I appreciate that.
• 36:25
  If you're comfortable restating it you could just say something
• 36:28
  like it sounds like you're going through a lot or like that is
• 36:32
  terrible them validating them in a non clinical way.
• 36:37
  Yeah, yeah. You don't want to diagnose the
• 36:40
  psychological thing. Sounds like you're going through
• 36:42
  clinical grief or anticipatory grief.
• 36:44
  Like they don't want that. Yeah.
• 36:47
  Especially if you're a therapist, because then you're
• 36:48
  like slipping into that role. You don't want to be but but
• 36:51
  being quiet. I mean, that whole thing of
• 36:53
  seemed zoom of being in the room and then stepping back.
• 36:57
  You you can practice that as a layperson or a quote regular
• 37:00
  person. You know, if you're going to a
• 37:03
  bereavement call of whatever faith tradition, a lot of times
• 37:08
  the person is sick of talking about the dead person.
• 37:11
  So you could just say, hey, I'm here for you.
• 37:14
  Is it OK if I sit next to you? Keep it simple.
• 37:17
  Yeah, yeah. And then you can also like hook
• 37:20
  a brother or sister up by attending to their bodily
• 37:23
  functions. Like if you're close, be like,
• 37:26
  hey, have you used the restroom in the last couple of hours?
• 37:30
  Do you want a bathroom buddy? I'll go with you.
• 37:32
  And if you need to cry and I can help you fix your mascara, if
• 37:36
  it's someone who wears mascara, you know, or a lot of times
• 37:40
  people who are grieving, they forget to eat.
• 37:42
  So you can say like, there's a nice spread out there.
• 37:44
  Have you had any food today? I always do this.
• 37:47
  I mean, I'm also a school teacher and and I always say to
• 37:51
  my colleagues, like, if I see their stress, I say, did you
• 37:54
  have breakfast or lunch? It's very, it's so accurate and
• 37:58
  it's very when someone asks, have you eaten?
• 38:00
  It's very like, it feels like very nurturing.
• 38:03
  I'm like, oh, you want to make sure I've eaten?
• 38:05
  Yeah, so nice. It's.
• 38:06
  Just nice. You know, it's, I think that's
• 38:08
  very elementary school teacher. It's daddy in a certain sense.
• 38:12
  You know, in the Jewish tradition, they don't call the
• 38:14
  clergy father. That's more a priest thing,
• 38:17
  right? But but in many ways, clergy
• 38:20
  people are like mother, father, grandpa, grandma rolls to their
• 38:24
  flock. Yes.
• 38:26
  You know, so we try, we try to provide comfort, but you know,
• 38:29
  we, we also, you know, to, to kind of wind up wind down this,
• 38:33
  this little conversation, as lovely as it is, I think we are
• 38:36
  all able to provide comfort to one another more than we
• 38:40
  realize. And I think that's a nice lesson
• 38:43
  for your podcast because it is true that in times of acute
• 38:47
  adversity, what I might call trauma making in events or
• 38:51
  emergencies or disasters, death, dying, etcetera.
• 38:55
  Yes, there are the people with the official coats or jackets,
• 38:59
  the white coat doctors or the high vis doctors of EMTEMS
• 39:05
  police, right? And in a certain sense, like the
• 39:08
  clergy, you know, I used to put on my yarmulke as part of my,
• 39:12
  my, my, my Jewish clergy person gear.
• 39:14
  And then of course, like the dangly badge, you know, visitor
• 39:17
  clergy, it goes with it. But you know, we all suit up as
• 39:21
  professionals. I think us regular people, I'm
• 39:23
  going to call us laypeople now that I'm not currently working
• 39:26
  as clergy. We are able to be loving
• 39:29
  presences for each other in ways that are not clinical but are
• 39:32
  super important in different ways and involves.
• 39:36
  The biggest one is showing up. I often tell people that an
• 39:41
  implicit message of my musical is about visiting so that you
• 39:45
  can hear these stories because the stories give life to
• 39:48
  connection and so forth. I remind people that our hero,
• 39:52
  yes, he's a chaplain in a sense. Excuse me, in a sense, he's
• 39:56
  different from us because most random Americans are not
• 39:59
  chaplains, statistically. I know and it's not a.
• 40:01
  Huge job but we all have people we all have people who end up
• 40:07
  older and therefore are in nursing homes rehab centers,
• 40:11
  even 55 plus communities. Sure, right.
• 40:14
  That are active living. Guess what active living they
• 40:17
  still want the adult children and the grandkids to come visit.
• 40:20
  Yeah. You don't have to be sick or
• 40:22
  dying to want those visits. So I remind people and every
• 40:25
  every chance I have a conversation like this, Bree,
• 40:28
  you know, visit your people. Yeah.
• 40:29
  And then if you're if you're nervous about if you're not sure
• 40:33
  what to say, you can use this fabulous device in your pocket,
• 40:37
  the tech to mediate the awkwardness, you know, use your
• 40:40
  photo app to give a little slideshow.
• 40:42
  Everyone loves photos. Yeah, yeah.
• 40:45
  And if you have, if you're doing a multi generational thing, like
• 40:48
  if you, you and I are in the sandwich generation with older
• 40:52
  living parents and younger children we take care of.
• 40:55
  So when it gets awkward, I say to my daughter, hey, go sit next
• 40:59
  to grandpa and show him some photos on your phone and just
• 41:02
  tell him what you're showing. And she'll do that for like 20
• 41:06
  minutes easy. Yeah, no, if anything, I'm like,
• 41:09
  honey, that's really good. Just slow down a little bit.
• 41:13
  You get excited and you go fast. And and of course, if the
• 41:16
  younger child, it's a different kind of interaction.
• 41:19
  It might be like grandpa read me a children's book.
• 41:23
  And so part of the visit that parents we facilitate is maybe
• 41:27
  we go to the local library to shop for a few cute books that
• 41:30
  we're going to bring to our older people when we visit them
• 41:33
  at the place. If we are music making people,
• 41:37
  we can talk about doing a sing along with our instruments or
• 41:41
  with our recordings. If we are art making kids or
• 41:45
  grownups, we can make art with our older people, meaning that
• 41:49
  like doing the kinds of activities that old people
• 41:53
  facilities run for their elders. Yeah, we can do that
• 41:56
  unofficially or join into the official visits.
• 41:59
  Like if we're nervous about it, Grandpa, it's it's bingo time.
• 42:03
  Let's go together. He'll love it or she'll grandma
• 42:05
  will love it. So those are my free tips for
• 42:08
  visiting. But again, it's all about
• 42:10
  showing up. You don't have to do the
• 42:11
  professional work of the therapists.
• 42:13
  You and you shouldn't. It's not your job, Yeah.
• 42:16
  You're not going to be. That's a really important
• 42:18
  because you can't take on you can as a friend.
• 42:22
  You're a friend. You're.
• 42:23
  Yeah, and as a loved one, you're a loved one.
• 42:25
  Yeah, question for you. Yes, please.
• 42:28
  There was, and you know me, I'm kind of all over the place.
• 42:31
  We've talked about your musical. Everyone's like, yeah, Bree, we
• 42:34
  know you're we've talked about the musical.
• 42:37
  And you, now you're a music teacher.
• 42:39
  I am. Middle school music.
• 42:40
  Teacher, right? I teach K4 music and then I'm
• 42:43
  also coordinator for lessons for the entire K8 school.
• 42:48
  So I hire and manage music education majors from nearby
• 42:54
  University of Maryland. I train them and how to teach
• 42:57
  good group lessons. Hopefully I can keep them on for
• 43:00
  several years. Yeah, and so and all of this
• 43:06
  sort of, you were a chaplain, you wrote this musical, which
• 43:09
  you're still performing right as yourself and and in a, in like a
• 43:13
  ensemble, right. Right.
• 43:15
  So I'm trying to stand up the ensemble piece in partnership
• 43:19
  with a theater. So if to your listener, you're
• 43:21
  involved with a theater and you're curious about Life Review
• 43:25
  the Hospice Musical, you're going to visit my website,
• 43:27
  lifereviewmusical.com and learn more.
• 43:30
  There's a contact us form. You can also reach me on
• 43:35
  Instagram at Life Review Musical view musical.
• 43:38
  I answer all the DMS I get, so hit me up if you're curious.
• 43:43
  Now we are doing the one man show.
• 43:45
  I've done it at fringe festivals, I've done it at house
• 43:49
  shows inside people's homes. I've performed it at big
• 43:52
  synagogue community shows. I got a grant from Maryland
• 43:55
  State Arts Council in this past year that paid for a couple of
• 43:59
  shows, hired some musicians. We're doing some great stuff.
• 44:02
  In the new year, I hope to get another grant and get more of
• 44:06
  the music orchestrated to perform with musicians again.
• 44:10
  I'm hoping to do more synagogue appearances around the country
• 44:13
  and if I get a bigger grant, maybe even record an album.
• 44:16
  I'd love to do that to share the music with more people.
• 44:19
  So if you're listening guys and you're curious, the one Man show
• 44:23
  is the most nimble. I'm able to come to your church,
• 44:26
  synagogue, mosque community. I've done convention
• 44:28
  appearances. I can do trainings where I do
• 44:31
  the show and then we do group discussions afterwards to
• 44:35
  discuss the themes. And then I'm also, you know, a
• 44:38
  talented teacher, so I can do this in, like, a college setting
• 44:45
  and then work with young playwrights and aspiring
• 44:49
  songwriters to work on their craft.
• 44:51
  So there's a lot of different things to do.
• 44:53
  Yeah. But the biggest dream for sure
• 44:55
  is to bring this thing to Broadway.
• 44:57
  And if you want to bring this really beautiful and engaging
• 45:01
  show to your local theater, hit me up.
• 45:03
  We'll see what we can work out. But the one man show, super
• 45:07
  nimble. I will travel to you or perform
• 45:10
  through this. Hey, this white dot in your
• 45:12
  computer, I will try not to do too many comic lean insurance.
• 45:16
  I put a black curtain on that back wall.
• 45:18
  I've performed over a dozen times from this room and I still
• 45:23
  make him cry and laugh. I believe it.
• 45:25
  I believe it. OK, well, all of that stuff is
• 45:28
  going to be in the show notes, obviously, but I'm not totally
• 45:32
  done with you yet. If you have a second.
• 45:35
  Bree, I'm happy to go over. I have no hard stop and
• 45:38
  obviously you edit for a time and 30.
• 45:41
  When you like totally, totally no and I.
• 45:44
  Keep asking questions. I will, I will because this is
• 45:46
  super cool and I want to just give you an opportunity.
• 45:50
  I know like obviously this show, we have so many different types
• 45:53
  of guests and I always say actually everyone has such
• 45:57
  different stories. Some people have this like one
• 46:00
  big adversity story. Some people just adversity is
• 46:03
  sort of their daily, you know, just depends on your life.
• 46:06
  Coming into this interview, I knew we were going to talk about
• 46:09
  this amazing musical that I'm going to come see on Broadway.
• 46:13
  When it's on Broadway. Are there any other sort of
• 46:16
  adventures, not sort of adventures and adversity that
• 46:19
  you would kind of like to share with my audience?
• 46:23
  And that's all I want to ask you if there's anything else.
• 46:25
  Sure, I've got 2. There's one that's pre play and
• 46:28
  one related to the play. So the first one happened when I
• 46:31
  was a college kid at the height of my youthful foolishness.
• 46:35
  I was known as someone who could climb from the first floor
• 46:40
  window, sort of do a half leap up to the second window, pull
• 46:43
  himself up, and then Jimmy the window for a kid who was like
• 46:47
  locked out of OK, save them 50 bucks and not having to call the
• 46:51
  campus police. So this is something I did at
• 46:53
  least a dozen times. One day I was summoned to get to
• 46:57
  the third floor. I couldn't climb from down
• 47:00
  below, so I use ropes from up above.
• 47:02
  The ropes I use did not support my weight.
• 47:04
  I fell a great distance, I was later told a fatal distance over
• 47:08
  30 feet. I landed on both feet because I
• 47:11
  was a former roofer, so I knew how to fall in a way that saved
• 47:14
  my life. Fractured one ankle and also
• 47:17
  landed on my bottom. So that impact went up my spine
• 47:20
  and one of my vertebrae instead of like this.
• 47:24
  It's like a a trapezoid now. So a fractured vertebrae as
• 47:27
  well. I was not paralyzed amazingly,
• 47:29
  but a pretty major back trauma that happened with like one year
• 47:34
  left to go in college when everything was going awesome and
• 47:38
  that terrible injury happened and it was awful, unbelievable
• 47:41
  pain. In the months that followed,
• 47:44
  chose to stay in college, used a manual wheelchair to kind of
• 47:49
  push myself around campus and we could do a whole long
• 47:52
  conversation about it. But briefly, I you know that
• 47:57
  aphorism from To Kill a Mockingbird that Atticus Finch
• 48:00
  teaches understand a man you have to walk a mile in his
• 48:03
  shoes. So I spent two months and change
• 48:07
  living as a disabled person and also living with spectacularly
• 48:11
  awful pain related to injury. So that was life changing.
• 48:16
  I befriended a young man who was also disabled, happened to have
• 48:21
  muscular dystrophy. So like, I met him in the dining
• 48:24
  hall. I was like, hey, you're in a
• 48:25
  wheelchair. He's like, I know.
• 48:27
  And I found that funny. And then, like, we became
• 48:29
  friends. Like dumb shit.
• 48:32
  Exactly, exactly. So we we compared notes about
• 48:35
  how it was a pain in the ass on a fancy old New England College
• 48:40
  campus. You know, some buildings have
• 48:42
  good accessibility and some are grandfathered in inaccessible.
• 48:45
  And so I discovered that first hand.
• 48:49
  And so ever since then, I've always had an awareness about
• 48:55
  accessibility issues that an able bodied person doesn't have.
• 48:59
  I pay attention to things like curb cuts and when there's
• 49:02
  elevator access, a ramp access, is it around the front, the
• 49:05
  side, or is it around the back where the garbage is?
• 49:08
  Because my friend Pete and I had to enter the back of the
• 49:10
  building near where the garbage was, which was really
• 49:13
  humiliating. And after he graduated, his
• 49:17
  family, which had a lot of money helped to pay for a, they call
• 49:21
  it universal design entrance. Basically a ramp up front that
• 49:25
  greets the public properly anyway.
• 49:28
  But it shouldn't be up to disabled rich people to make the
• 49:31
  world accessible. So to my friend is no longer
• 49:34
  alive. His name was Pete.
• 49:36
  So rest in peace piece to my friend Pete.
• 49:39
  And you know, he also kind of taught me through that
• 49:42
  adversity. This is maybe a little bit of
• 49:44
  the moral of many Hollywood movies involving disabled people
• 49:48
  or people with disabilities, but it's it's the people first idea.
• 49:52
  Like he and I came together as buddies because we are both
• 49:56
  college kids in wheelchairs. But our friendship was sustained
• 50:00
  by the adventures that we shared and our commonalities.
• 50:04
  So I think that's, that's worth remembering because sometimes in
• 50:09
  our adversities, we find like I had cancer, you did too.
• 50:15
  We will share that story and that that will be a source of
• 50:18
  bonding and that can be special. And it's also important to
• 50:22
  remember all the things other than your shared miseries or
• 50:26
  your shared adversities that bring you together.
• 50:30
  So, so that's that's one thought about that.
• 50:32
  Now pivoting to the life review thing, that adventure began over
• 50:38
  10 years ago and it was going well, slow and steady
• 50:42
  collaborating, Co writing, presenting.
• 50:44
  And if you want to learn more that we have quite a bit of a
• 50:47
  history on that website, lifereviewmusical.com.
• 50:51
  So it so happened that our biggest workshop, the one that
• 50:54
  you actually see some footage of with our our nice video that's
• 50:58
  on that website, the footage that was taken was from the live
• 51:01
  show that happened January 20. Before.
• 51:07
  Before everything shut down, Yeah.
• 51:09
  So COVID came crashing through March.
• 51:14
  Yep. March 2020, so I believe it was
• 51:19
  like January 15th, January 20, something like that.
• 51:22
  We had standing room only. It was very exciting.
• 51:25
  People cheered and in my heart of hearts I was like, my dream
• 51:28
  is taking off, this is going. I love your excited face.
• 51:33
  I know what. Happened next what was happening
• 51:35
  next? What was happening next?
• 51:36
  Am I get a book here? Am I get a book there?
• 51:38
  You know everything seemed to be popping off now of course what
• 51:41
  happened unbeknownst to me, this this virus was quietly taking
• 51:46
  over in in China and then going to be spreading around the
• 51:48
  world. So when live theater shut down,
• 51:52
  you know, projects like mine were certainly on ice right
• 51:55
  away. And so that was devastating to
• 51:58
  me. I was so excited.
• 51:59
  I was so motivated. I thought this thing was was
• 52:01
  going to, yes, it was going to take off, take off and then
• 52:04
  boom. So I ended up connecting, You
• 52:07
  know, I went through some very difficult times, a little bit of
• 52:10
  depression. I worked with a wonderful
• 52:13
  creative coach. Let me give her a shout out.
• 52:15
  My name is Alex Paulding. She runs a business called the
• 52:19
  Hustling Creative. If you're a creative person and
• 52:22
  you need some business help, chef's kiss, she's the best.
• 52:25
  So she worked with me at a time that I was dealing with my own
• 52:29
  COVID heartbreak and she had an Off Broadway contract that she
• 52:33
  was sitting on for an April one start.
• 52:37
  So that show never happened. My show never took off and we
• 52:40
  were sad together. And what she told me is you can
• 52:44
  put this thing in a drawer and leave it there or you can figure
• 52:48
  out a way to pivot. So that was how the big show
• 52:51
  became a one man show. That was the pivot to take the
• 52:54
  full length show that required an ensemble and read configure
• 52:59
  it as a one man show. Basically.
• 53:01
  I said, all right, I have a strong opening number and I have
• 53:04
  a good closing number that's two of eight.
• 53:06
  So I need to pick my 6 strongest songs and probably not the
• 53:11
  ensemble numbers unless it's really good and it's worth
• 53:15
  redoing. And then I was like, OK, so the
• 53:18
  theme, yeah, that one. And then like it became very
• 53:21
  clear which songs were must keeps kind of tent poles
• 53:25
  musically and thematically. And then, you know, because part
• 53:30
  of the conceit of the play is the stories of the individuals
• 53:34
  come to life. I say it's like Fiddler on the
• 53:37
  Roof meets A chorus line. So chorus line people say their
• 53:41
  stories, their monologues in musical form.
• 53:44
  Yeah, right. Like I can do that.
• 53:46
  Or at the ballet, Fiddler on the Roof, because there's this
• 53:49
  dialectic talking up with the heavens or the the stage lights
• 53:53
  above the proscenium, that conversation with God.
• 53:56
  Like God, I believe in you, but what's happening down here on
• 53:59
  earth, that's the that's trouble that Tevya has throughout the
• 54:02
  play. He has different troubles.
• 54:04
  It's mostly about his daughters, you know, daughters.
• 54:07
  But it's really the, the, the conflict between tradition and
• 54:10
  modernity. I did a whole master's thesis
• 54:12
  about this, so don't get me started, but suffice to say that
• 54:15
  there's some real talk between him and the God he believes in,
• 54:19
  because the world he believes in is betraying him, right?
• 54:23
  That is the very similar faith problem of most believing
• 54:28
  people, chaplain included, who work in a Hospice, or arrive in
• 54:32
  the Hospice as a patient, or arrive in the Hospice as a + 1.
• 54:36
  If you Bree believe that your faith in God buys you a pain
• 54:42
  free existence, a life until old age without injury or illness or
• 54:47
  a life until old age without injury or illness for all of
• 54:51
  your favorite loved ones, you have a theological crisis coming
• 54:56
  the first time. That fallacy is proven right.
• 55:00
  And the problem that so many faith traditions give us is we
• 55:03
  teach our little boys and girls, our little children, if you're
• 55:06
  good and you come to church and you say the prayers, Santa Claus
• 55:11
  will bring you the the presence, right?
• 55:13
  Have we ever gotten more literal than that?
• 55:15
  And like that, that's also like all kinds of problematic
• 55:19
  materialistic nonsense for your December episode, right?
• 55:23
  But but if you believe that if you're good and you're faithful
• 55:26
  that grandma will never die, you've got another thing coming
• 55:29
  to you. There's no such thing as people
• 55:32
  on earth that live forever. Now, some of us believe in life
• 55:35
  after death that goes on forever in a day.
• 55:37
  And that's a different podcast as well.
• 55:41
  Yeah, no. And I'm happy to.
• 55:43
  But the the truth is like the fundamental faith crisis that so
• 55:47
  many people have in Hospice or hospital is that belief that
• 55:51
  because there's a famous Jewish book that that was a best seller
• 55:55
  for all faith traditions called When Bad Things Happen to Good
• 55:58
  People. Yes, I know that book.
• 55:59
  It's written by Rabbi Kushner. Yes.
• 56:02
  And he wrote this after his death.
• 56:04
  His his elementary age son died of cancer.
• 56:07
  Horrible tragedy. We would not wish it upon our
• 56:10
  worst enemies, right? Childhood cancer, death.
• 56:13
  And here was a pious man who believed all the stuff and
• 56:15
  everything went wrong. So my fictional character, Rabbi
• 56:19
  David, he's a rabbi. He wants to be a chaplain.
• 56:22
  He wants to help the people in the Hospice.
• 56:24
  But we discover both of his parents are dead.
• 56:27
  Why? No reason.
• 56:28
  Because parents die, that's why. Especially when they're older
• 56:32
  than you. I mean not to be callous.
• 56:34
  No, it's. Very.
• 56:36
  It's very true. My wife and I, we, we, we have
• 56:39
  got, we are blessed that our daughter who turned 13 in the
• 56:42
  Jewish tradition, she had a bat mitzvah with four grandparents.
• 56:46
  You don't always get that. That is not common.
• 56:48
  Yes, exactly. Thank you.
• 56:49
  Well done. Well done, peace be with you and
• 56:52
  also with you. You know that that that blessing
• 56:55
  is not shared by all Jewish children.
• 56:57
  A lot of grandparents don't make it to the to the bat mitzvah,
• 57:01
  especially depending on how long you wait.
• 57:04
  Have you ever met any of my grandpas?
• 57:06
  Yeah. Like there you go and that's.
• 57:08
  Sad, yeah. You just don't have Grandpa Mary
• 57:11
  memories and that's sad. So we talk about it with great
• 57:15
  appreciation about the luck we have, the blessing we have.
• 57:18
  And yet because of the way aging goes, we recent we were having
• 57:24
  his heart to heart and my wife said something like my parents
• 57:27
  are healthy and they don't last forever.
• 57:30
  That's a painful thing to say out loud, but I was proud of her
• 57:33
  for saying it. And I'm glad she did because her
• 57:36
  husband who wrote a play about Hospice, he talks about death
• 57:39
  and dying all the time, right? I'm like dying la, la, la, la,
• 57:43
  la. But like, I'm glad, I'm glad my
• 57:46
  my significant other is having some honest conversations with
• 57:51
  yourself about the mortality about her elderly parents.
• 57:54
  They're in the mid 80s. Come on, that's old.
• 57:57
  My husband and I both have two sets of parents and we have the
• 58:01
  same thing. Or we're like damn, like a we're
• 58:04
  so lucky. Half my friends don't B God like
• 58:08
  we're like like I'm trying to like start now in my mind so I'm
• 58:11
  not like shocked, but I'm like no wait.
• 58:13
  Yeah, you want to try to be in this moment, Take photos, take
• 58:17
  videos, take audio recordings, asking questions.
• 58:21
  You'll never regret that Get. Them on the podcast.
• 58:24
  Exactly on the podcast or just an old fashioned digital
• 58:28
  recording is that is that now old fashioned?
• 58:30
  Yes, the other day I said let's have an old fashioned cell phone
• 58:33
  call. And then I was like, wait,
• 58:34
  that's not it's not old fashioned no, but we that's
• 58:38
  again, that's part of the meta message of life review.
• 58:41
  You know, have those conversations, make those visits
• 58:43
  while you can because those stories, those amazing stories
• 58:47
  that I dramatize through the power of musical theater, those
• 58:51
  stories are sitting in your loved ones, especially of the
• 58:54
  older generation. They want to be shared.
• 58:57
  So I encourage all of you, dear listeners to ask those people if
• 59:01
  you want help. They're actually apps now that
• 59:03
  you can purchase their card games.
• 59:06
  You can get a description letter service there's.
• 59:09
  No excuse. No excuse, I mean, and except
• 59:13
  probably the the big scary thing, which is what makes some
• 59:16
  people uncomfortable with my project, right?
• 59:19
  Death and dying is frightening. Let's name that the specter.
• 59:23
  Especially if if honest about how scared our own mortality is,
• 59:29
  then it's definitely scary as hell to think about the
• 59:31
  mortality of our loved ones. And if we're blessed as parents,
• 59:35
  God knows the mortality of our own and children.
• 59:38
  Nothing scarier. Nothing scarier.
• 59:40
  So that's why that stuff is all over our fairy tales.
• 59:46
  It's all over our pop music. It's all over our musical
• 59:50
  theater and our stage plays. It's definitely all over our
• 59:53
  fiction, whether it's popular or literary.
• 59:56
  It's in movies because it's an essential part of the human
• 1:00:00
  experience. Now does that make it
• 1:00:02
  comfortable? No, but I, I tend to think that
• 1:00:06
  with the death dying stuff, Bree, it's it's the kind of
• 1:00:10
  conversation that thoughtful adults ought to be having.
• 1:00:13
  In the same way we need to talk about sex, alcohol, drugs,
• 1:00:17
  things that make us a little bit uncomfortable because it's part
• 1:00:20
  of the human experience. It is it is now the the
• 1:00:25
  adversity piece of. Of the COVID time was when I
• 1:00:29
  couldn't do the full length show because of the logistics
• 1:00:33
  involved. I didn't want to make a a
• 1:00:37
  so-called pretend movie and my my coach Alex said then maybe
• 1:00:42
  you can smush it down to a one man show.
• 1:00:44
  I did it. I had to rewrite the thing.
• 1:00:47
  I saved the 8 best songs. The rest were were not
• 1:00:51
  eliminated. They weren't deleted, they're
• 1:00:53
  just on the side. And I successfully did this
• 1:00:56
  thing approximately a dozen times during the pandemic,
• 1:01:00
  performed it for a big fundraiser.
• 1:01:02
  I did a professional conference, I did a training.
• 1:01:05
  Maybe the coolest one was at the local big nursing home where I
• 1:01:09
  had been an intern, head of activities, got my feed, piped
• 1:01:13
  it through their cable, so it was in hundreds of rooms
• 1:01:16
  throughout multiple buildings. People didn't have to leave
• 1:01:19
  their bed to see the show. So that was really cool and, and
• 1:01:23
  the fundraiser raised a bunch of money for my project and Denver
• 1:01:27
  Hospice because people, surprise, surprise, were ready
• 1:01:31
  to pay money to be entertained online, which I was surprised
• 1:01:35
  with. But that's been one of the COVID
• 1:01:38
  keepers, a lot of people who never, ever wanted to pay for
• 1:01:41
  pay-per-view. They got used to paying for $10
• 1:01:45
  here, $5 there, $20 there. And it's it's been enormous for
• 1:01:50
  some small and medium sized cultural arts institution like
• 1:01:53
  my local Symphony is Baltimore, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
• 1:01:58
  They have like incredible streaming things.
• 1:02:00
  It's a whole space. Yeah, and I don't think they did
• 1:02:04
  any of this before COVID. Well, it's like the whole market
• 1:02:07
  emerged, right? Yeah, and I'm personally not a
• 1:02:11
  guy who's going to spend 5 or 10 bucks for the Symphony, but like
• 1:02:15
  if it's a really cool program and I missed out and I'm like,
• 1:02:18
  oh shoot, maybe I would. I don't know.
• 1:02:20
  I know my daughter knows how to plug in the TV and the laptop,
• 1:02:24
  so there's a visual. She knows how to do it.
• 1:02:27
  I don't. But I know the right person to
• 1:02:28
  call, right. So getting through the adversity
• 1:02:31
  for me was getting past the disappointment of the path that
• 1:02:35
  I wanted, and then with the help of someone who saw a different
• 1:02:39
  path, accepting her, her help, rewriting the project and then
• 1:02:44
  performing it for that white dot.
• 1:02:46
  Let me tell you, not not fun at first.
• 1:02:49
  Anyone listening? Well, I mean, you're great on
• 1:02:53
  camera, Bree, and I'm guessing you're better at episode 50 than
• 1:02:57
  you were at #1. Yeah, the first one I was like,
• 1:03:00
  what? So did you ever do on camera
• 1:03:03
  work professionally or as an amateur before?
• 1:03:06
  No, no. OK, that surprises me.
• 1:03:09
  You're quite good. Good work.
• 1:03:10
  I'll give you a virtual high 5. I'm just very obnoxious and.
• 1:03:14
  OK, so if you're not easily embarrassed, that helps.
• 1:03:18
  I'll tell you, I am a seasoned performer, so there was a
• 1:03:22
  certain amount of text piece like, you know, getting the good
• 1:03:27
  microphone but not blocking my face.
• 1:03:29
  What are you talking about? No, here you're like, Oh yeah,
• 1:03:33
  where you don't. Yes, so those things were a new
• 1:03:36
  set of skills. But to be engaging and talking
• 1:03:39
  freely, that was a skill I had already.
• 1:03:41
  Yes, But I'll tell you, I quickly learned that performing
• 1:03:46
  virtually was still performing. As in I wrote cabaret show that
• 1:03:52
  still to this day runs about 55 minutes soup to nuts.
• 1:03:56
  So that is an introduction song, narration, song, narration song
• 1:04:02
  all the way till I get to song #8 concluding remarks.
• 1:04:05
  Take a bow. That's 55 minutes.
• 1:04:08
  And there's no other cast. So I don't I don't like get to
• 1:04:12
  go off stage and catch my breath while there's like the dancing
• 1:04:16
  Hospice nurses or something like I might get in the full version.
• 1:04:20
  So even though it's quote just and use the word Justin with
• 1:04:23
  caution people, even though it's just a one man show, that's just
• 1:04:27
  55 minutes. It is so exhausting.
• 1:04:31
  And I learned Bree, that it doesn't matter if you're doing
• 1:04:34
  it for a room of 500 or a room of 1 laptop.
• 1:04:39
  In fact, I believe the one laptop may be a harder gig.
• 1:04:45
  It's a harder gig because I I need to sing to the best of my
• 1:04:50
  ability and bring that performance with no one there.
• 1:04:55
  Right, you don't. Right, There's no like, there's
• 1:04:58
  no Conversely, I love live audiences.
• 1:05:01
  Surprise, you're. Like hey.
• 1:05:03
  Yeah, no. And even like I've done fringe
• 1:05:06
  festivals where structurally you get small rooms, like they
• 1:05:10
  literally do rooms of 203040 people.
• 1:05:13
  So if you're like a big hit, you've got 40 people.
• 1:05:16
  Yeah. So in a room like that, you can
• 1:05:19
  make eye contact with every single person.
• 1:05:22
  And the one who's crying a lot, you can hold it and sing to them
• 1:05:26
  while they're weeping. And it's powerful, man.
• 1:05:30
  You don't do that with a laptop, right?
• 1:05:32
  So it's a whole different piece. And what I learned is Despite
• 1:05:36
  that, you still, when you're done and you sign off, you need
• 1:05:39
  to like do the green room thing, sit down.
• 1:05:44
  I, I would text my wife and daughter, be like, I'll see you
• 1:05:46
  guys in, in 15 minutes. I just, I need to veg, you know,
• 1:05:51
  so performers learn that in person and, and over the
• 1:05:55
  computer. But the pivot like this was the
• 1:05:57
  COVID, one of the COVID keepers. I sort of learned two things,
• 1:06:01
  you know, three things during COVID while I was all in on
• 1:06:03
  piano. That was like my COVID hobby,
• 1:06:06
  and I do great. Yeah. 2 was podcasting.
• 1:06:09
  I started doing a lot of podcasts and I got good at it,
• 1:06:12
  and it was one thing that I could do when everything was
• 1:06:15
  shut down. I could get on a podcast and
• 1:06:18
  that was a skill. With practice, I got better.
• 1:06:20
  Now on my website I think there's over 30 recordings,
• 1:06:24
  might be getting close to 40 now.
• 1:06:25
  And the last thing was this one man show or or cabaret show.
• 1:06:30
  It was made of Kovid circumstances.
• 1:06:33
  But then once it was available when the world opened up, here's
• 1:06:36
  what I could do. I could bring it to a Fringe
• 1:06:40
  Festival where the window is 1 hour only, and I've done it now
• 1:06:45
  at 3 Fringes, Asheville Fringe in North Carolina, Charm City
• 1:06:48
  Fringe in Baltimore City, and Southeast Theatre Conference.
• 1:06:52
  That was in Baltimore a year ago.
• 1:06:55
  I've done it for synagogue communities.
• 1:06:57
  I've done some house shows with The One Man Show.
• 1:07:00
  I got a grant from Maryland State Arts Council that paid for
• 1:07:04
  musicians and we did orchestration.
• 1:07:07
  So we've done lots of cool things with the project.
• 1:07:10
  I am still hoping to find that theatrical partner who can stand
• 1:07:14
  it up and happy to keep bringing The One Man Show to any
• 1:07:18
  audience. So the One Man Show wasn't a
• 1:07:21
  thing until it had to be a thing.
• 1:07:24
  And I'll tell you as I was going through it and I was busy being
• 1:07:28
  mad and disappointed, I didn't want to hear about the pivot.
• 1:07:32
  And I think that's one of the best, like meta lessons of my
• 1:07:36
  little story is when you're when you're trying to help, I mean
• 1:07:40
  you earlier when we were chatting more broadly about
• 1:07:43
  helping people in need, I think one of the biggest no Nos I
• 1:07:47
  didn't mention is you don't tell them what to do.
• 1:07:50
  People in crisis need to figure it out on their own unless
• 1:07:54
  they're literally saying tell me what, tell me what to do.
• 1:07:57
  If someone is so devastated by like a sudden death that they
• 1:08:01
  can't dress themselves, I can imagine them saying to like
• 1:08:05
  their sister or their best friend help me pick an outfit
• 1:08:08
  and that lost right. But but most.
• 1:08:11
  You don't need to be told what to do.
• 1:08:13
  You. You just.
• 1:08:14
  Yeah, I think so. I don't know in in terms of my
• 1:08:20
  adversity, I was struggling in that COVID heartbreak, but I at
• 1:08:26
  least had the sense to ask for help.
• 1:08:29
  I believe I was in therapy at the time.
• 1:08:32
  I was finishing up my chaplaincy training, which acts almost as
• 1:08:36
  like a group therapy kind of sounding board the five of you
• 1:08:39
  in a group. So I had different circles of
• 1:08:43
  support even as I was going through this difficult and
• 1:08:47
  disappointing time. And you know, when we are going
• 1:08:53
  through it, though, sometimes we're ready to accept that help
• 1:08:57
  and sometimes we're not. I mean, I mentioned my temporary
• 1:09:00
  disability incident in college. I did not access my parents for
• 1:09:05
  help, which had a lot to do with my aggressive independence of
• 1:09:09
  like college kid. I don't know that that was the
• 1:09:13
  best choice. I mean, I made it work, but I
• 1:09:17
  probably could have used my parents at that moment.
• 1:09:20
  I mean they knew it was happening, but I basically said
• 1:09:23
  I got this. I got it, yeah.
• 1:09:26
  But you know, like 20 year olds are really stupid, especially
• 1:09:29
  young men. We don't have pre, what is it?
• 1:09:32
  Prefrontal cortexes fully formed, but but that said, like
• 1:09:37
  I have enough time and distance that I can kind of joke about
• 1:09:40
  that. However, that old trauma I still
• 1:09:43
  live with because the injury was so bad that I still have chronic
• 1:09:47
  back pain. Like I have bone spurs in my
• 1:09:49
  lower back. I have arthritis as a 45 year
• 1:09:52
  old. Like it's pretty nasty that the
• 1:09:54
  pain I live with in my life and I have to deal with that.
• 1:09:57
  But I also try not to like self flagellate for one stupid
• 1:10:01
  moment. Sure, on an ongoing basis
• 1:10:04
  because like, you got to forgive yourself.
• 1:10:06
  The COVID challenge that shut down my play or temporarily
• 1:10:11
  halted its progress, I didn't personalize that because it
• 1:10:14
  wasn't my screw up. But it was still a really,
• 1:10:18
  really hard time. And I would say in that moment,
• 1:10:21
  partially because I was a more evolved man, I was smart enough
• 1:10:25
  to access help wherever I could look for it.
• 1:10:28
  I mean, we were all so lonely during those times.
• 1:10:31
  I think those of us who struggled the most were probably
• 1:10:34
  those who didn't reach out. And I think the people who did
• 1:10:38
  best during COVID were the ones who joined a bunch of random
• 1:10:42
  Zoom groups and did hobbies and did mask tikes and all that
• 1:10:47
  stuff. Because too much alone is never
• 1:10:50
  good for people. Yeah.
• 1:10:53
  So, you know, the unexpected creative zigzag that came of
• 1:10:58
  adversity has now become its own entity.
• 1:11:03
  I mean, I have a particular Broadway dream, which I believe
• 1:11:07
  is the ensemble cast, though a friend of mine pointed out to me
• 1:11:11
  that a guy named Alex Edelman who wrote a fabulous one man
• 1:11:15
  show, started in fringes, then toured it, then he got produced,
• 1:11:19
  and then he was on Broadway as a one man show.
• 1:11:22
  Now, I don't think that's exactly my path, but heck, I
• 1:11:26
  wouldn't Pooh Pooh it if that unfolded.
• 1:11:29
  Yeah, who knows? I would prefer to do my play
• 1:11:34
  with an ensemble because I think a lot of the magic in the full
• 1:11:38
  length play comes from the dialogue.
• 1:11:41
  You know, the, the stories happen in conversation.
• 1:11:46
  And also I think I paint a lot of really sweet vignettes of the
• 1:11:52
  loved ones and the plus ones. There's an elderly, super
• 1:11:55
  elderly man who's like 104 and his baby sister who he teases
• 1:12:00
  for being so young, who's like 95.
• 1:12:02
  And there's an old married couple, a couple of cute Jews.
• 1:12:06
  They're probably in their mid, mid 70s or 80s.
• 1:12:09
  And they're just like very sweet and cute old married couple.
• 1:12:14
  Yeah. His song sounds like Sinatra,
• 1:12:16
  the older African American guy. His song sounds like gospel.
• 1:12:19
  The woman who dies a little bit young through to her generation,
• 1:12:23
  her power ballad sounds like Carole King.
• 1:12:26
  So we have music signifiers throughout, but every one of
• 1:12:30
  these patients, they have a plus one.
• 1:12:32
  They have someone who's there with them in the Hospice, be it
• 1:12:35
  a romantic interest or a sibling or a, or a child grown, because
• 1:12:41
  that's, that's the environment of Hospice.
• 1:12:44
  No one arrives alone. And if they do, I guess it's a
• 1:12:47
  different story. But, but, but most of the times
• 1:12:49
  people have their, their close network who are there as well.
• 1:12:52
  And I wanted to tell their stories.
• 1:12:54
  So we try to bring that together.
• 1:12:56
  And maybe that's the meta adversity part of my story, that
• 1:13:01
  Hospice in a certain way is a particular kind of adversity for
• 1:13:06
  people. Sure, Hospice workers do their
• 1:13:09
  best to reduce the pain and suffering, to minimize the
• 1:13:14
  symptoms associated with death and dying, but you can't make it
• 1:13:19
  absolutely pain free and you can't make it absolutely without
• 1:13:22
  symptoms. So there's going to be some
• 1:13:24
  challenge in going through the dying process physically.
• 1:13:27
  And we know for sure there's always going to be an adverse
• 1:13:31
  adventure in terms of walking the psychological path for the
• 1:13:36
  plus ones. Yeah.
• 1:13:37
  Who love their person and are doing anticipatory grief.
• 1:13:41
  Dad, you're still in the bed. I loved you and I know you're
• 1:13:44
  dying. And.
• 1:13:45
  And they're already crying even though he's not gone.
• 1:13:47
  That's. Yeah.
• 1:13:48
  That's what we call anticipatory grief.
• 1:13:49
  And, you know, there can be conflict all around the bed.
• 1:13:54
  You know, that comes up. All of this stuff is real and
• 1:13:57
  it's raw and it's difficult. I'm not able to do everyone of
• 1:14:00
  those permutations. But a lot of the drama and much
• 1:14:03
  of the comedy has to do with those dyads.
• 1:14:06
  So that's why I hope we get to have the full length show with
• 1:14:09
  all of the comedy. But you know what?
• 1:14:11
  The one man show is pretty funny too.
• 1:14:13
  And there's music. Well, by the way, Bree.
• 1:14:16
  You just teed up what I was going to ask you to do.
• 1:14:18
  You want to do a song? Well, I was going to say,
• 1:14:21
  Speaking of one man show, please.
• 1:14:23
  I don't know if you had a couple seconds to perform anything.
• 1:14:26
  Yes, sing anything for any amount of time, yeah, sure.
• 1:14:31
  But I feel like you're not shy. So it's.
• 1:14:32
  Oh, I'm ready for you. So we'll do this one.
• 1:14:37
  This is the title track, and it's called Life Review.
• 1:14:42
  So this song is performed by the main character, the rabbi
• 1:14:46
  chaplain. You're looking at him.
• 1:14:48
  His name is Rabbi David. And you'll experience the rare
• 1:14:52
  opportunity to step into the play itself because I will
• 1:14:56
  address you in the second person.
• 1:14:58
  I'll be singing to you. And so as you, dear interviewer
• 1:15:02
  Bree, and dear listener out there, dear viewer out there,
• 1:15:05
  listen to the song and try to put yourself into that bed.
• 1:15:08
  Imagine how would you answer these questions?
• 1:15:10
  Questions if a chaplain visited you.
• 1:15:12
  Oh, wait a second. I think, let's see.
• 1:15:14
  Can I get my piano accompaniment?
• 1:15:16
  I think I Can I. Was like, I didn't know if that
• 1:15:19
  was part of it. I was like.
• 1:15:20
  Is he? Yes, the knock, knock.
• 1:15:22
  I was going to do it acapella, but it sounds a little bit nicer
• 1:15:27
  with the track. Come on, Kentish, you can do it.
• 1:15:30
  There it is. There it is.
• 1:15:31
  Positive self talk. Are you hearing that?
• 1:15:33
  I am. Hi, I'm the chaplain.
• 1:15:36
  Can I visit with you? Who are you?
• 1:15:40
  What did you do? Where did you go?
• 1:15:44
  Who did you know? Who did you love?
• 1:15:50
  Who did you lose? When you had a choice, how did
• 1:15:56
  you choose? Tell me a story.
• 1:16:00
  Give a glimmer of your glory, how you got to here and now.
• 1:16:08
  I am here to hear you now. We are here to hear you now.
• 1:16:15
  Life review. Sing of joys and heart breaks.
• 1:16:22
  We can hear your voice even as it fades.
• 1:16:28
  Life review through the triumphs and the sorrows, with more
• 1:16:35
  yesterday's than tomorrow's. Time to do a little life review.
• 1:16:44
  Is it there? OK, Broadway, I'm coming to see
• 1:16:47
  you one day. Thank you, Bree.
• 1:16:51
  OK, and I, I with your energy and just this whole
• 1:16:55
  conversation, I have no doubt that that is the tip of the
• 1:16:59
  iceberg for like the ride that that musical takes you on,
• 1:17:03
  right? Of like up, down the whole range
• 1:17:06
  of emotions, right? Yes, such as life.
• 1:17:09
  Yes, I I take the listener, the audience member, on a ride six
• 1:17:14
  months in a residential Hospice. From the opening scene when the
• 1:17:17
  main character is on his knees planting daffodils in the dirt
• 1:17:20
  in memory of his deceased mother, to spring when it's all
• 1:17:24
  over and the daffodils are blooming, a symbol of hope.
• 1:17:27
  Well, I think what you have put together is just fantastic.
• 1:17:32
  And I love, I love your energy and your storytelling and your
• 1:17:36
  humor. I've just honestly learned too,
• 1:17:40
  Like you can't be everybody's everything, right?
• 1:17:43
  But you can be be a listening ear, a safe presence, a, you
• 1:17:47
  know, a friend who's laughing. That's right.
• 1:17:50
  Through all of this quiet presence, right?
• 1:17:52
  The quiet presence is the hardest of all of those things.
• 1:17:57
  You don't have to remember the funny Hebrew word tsum.
• 1:17:59
  Tim. Tsum I.
• 1:18:01
  Said kind of like Tim Tsum. But literally sitting next to
• 1:18:06
  your person and breathing or if that feels awkward, put on their
• 1:18:10
  favorite music and listen together.
• 1:18:12
  That's a great activity. The sidesteps, like the Zen woo
• 1:18:16
  woo stuff. If quiet in the hospital room or
• 1:18:19
  a nursing home feels awkward, listen to music.
• 1:18:24
  Music is always safe. You can share your favorite
• 1:18:27
  music as visitor or honor the the visit T by playing their
• 1:18:32
  favorite music or take turns. It's a great activity.
• 1:18:35
  And then if the if the mood goes to that quiet place, your music
• 1:18:40
  can go there. You can bring down the volume,
• 1:18:42
  You can bring down the the feel. You can go from up tempo to to
• 1:18:47
  slow tempo or instrumental and so forth.
• 1:18:50
  That that's a nice thing that that music can do, that it can
• 1:18:54
  modulate emotion and and feel well.
• 1:18:57
  Life review I'm going to put all the links to all the things in
• 1:19:01
  the show notes and this has been awesome.
• 1:19:03
  Thank you so much. Thank you for allowing my all
• 1:19:07
  over the place energy to exist. It's.
• 1:19:10
  A great energy and it's fun to chase.
• 1:19:13
  It I think we're going to have to do something because also you
• 1:19:18
  were on the East Coast for college.
• 1:19:20
  You went to Brown. You were.
• 1:19:21
  Nice we are ever true to Brown, Yes.
• 1:19:23
  Yes. When were you there?
• 1:19:25
  What year 02.5? OK, I was.
• 1:19:28
  I went to Harvard. I was there 2000 to 2004.
• 1:19:31
  OK, so if you ever went to a party hosted by by my
• 1:19:35
  fraternity, I was definitely too friendly to you and I think I'm
• 1:19:40
  sorry sort. Of no, no, no, I didn't.
• 1:19:42
  I didn't. Hey, you know, well, I never
• 1:19:45
  went to I I actually did a when I was looking at colleges, I
• 1:19:48
  went with my parents. We looked at Brown.
• 1:19:50
  It was beautiful. Oh, you did not attend?
• 1:19:52
  Not attend. I went, I went to, I went to
• 1:19:54
  Harvard. But I not everyone can go to
• 1:19:57
  Brown. That's fair.
• 1:19:58
  That's fair. Listen, I went to school in
• 1:20:01
  Cambridge. Oh yes?
• 1:20:03
  Well. Near.
• 1:20:04
  It's near Ballston. Oh yeah.
• 1:20:06
  Oh, I get so much shit for that. So.
• 1:20:08
  And then if I say it normal, they're like, well, why are you
• 1:20:11
  acting weird? I'm like, I'm not, You're like.
• 1:20:13
  You're weird. I go.
• 1:20:14
  I went to Harvard. I went to Harvard.
• 1:20:16
  I went to Harvard. Yes, I love the apologetic
• 1:20:19
  Harvard just say yeah, now when I did roofing 2 summers, I was
• 1:20:23
  like, I go to Brown. They're like, never heard part
• 1:20:25
  of it. It's like it's like one of the
• 1:20:28
  least famous Ivy League. Schools.
• 1:20:29
  It's no. Yeah, Harvard, Allen, Princeton
• 1:20:33
  are famous. What?
• 1:20:34
  Well, Dartmouth. Dartmouth and Brown are awesome
• 1:20:37
  too, you know. They're still great schools,
• 1:20:39
  they're just not. There's not.
• 1:20:40
  But. They're not as name brand
• 1:20:41
  famous. I'm OK with that.
• 1:20:43
  Hardest part was getting in anyway.
• 1:20:46
  So are we still talking about adversity or are we now?
• 1:20:50
  There was some adversity there, that's for damn sure.
• 1:20:52
  There was some adversity when I was at Brown that.
• 1:20:54
  Was a weird place, but it's OK. Yeah, very special place and if
• 1:20:59
  you want one last bonus adversity topic before before
• 1:21:04
  you stop me being a creative person and having a dream, it's
• 1:21:08
  a lot of adventures and adversity I.
• 1:21:11
  Would agree. So I happen to be like
• 1:21:14
  relentless and persistent and those are good and necessary
• 1:21:18
  qualities to have a project that goes over 10 years and it's
• 1:21:21
  still going. I'd say you're in it for the.
• 1:21:24
  Your consistency is definitely like something that you don't
• 1:21:28
  struggle with then if you've been able to continue.
• 1:21:31
  Persistent more than consistent. But when I'm consistent and
• 1:21:34
  persistent, that's when the magic really happens.
• 1:21:37
  Really, assistant you're. Assistant.
• 1:21:39
  Yes, all the all the assistants. You got to be.
• 1:21:42
  I also probably need an assistant or two.
• 1:21:45
  That would be the most impactful thing.
• 1:21:48
  Don't want to get a cease and desist?
• 1:21:50
  No, or an unnecessary stint. Or assist while you're getting
• 1:21:55
  or assist and desist. Have your assistant handled of
• 1:21:57
  the cease and desist. This is this is going to so many
• 1:22:01
  exciting places I did not know. Yeah.
• 1:22:03
  It's difficult to have a dream and then people haven't heard of
• 1:22:08
  it or some people say it's a crazy idea or huh, now I've I've
• 1:22:13
  heard every reaction in the book because I've been sharing the
• 1:22:17
  news of this project for literally over a decade.
• 1:22:20
  So no matter what someone says, I say correct.
• 1:22:26
  You're like. That's right.
• 1:22:27
  Like they say that's a terrible idea.
• 1:22:29
  I say you're right. Or like that's a crazy idea.
• 1:22:32
  Percent. That's an awful idea.
• 1:22:34
  Yes, that's why I had to do it. Or that's funny.
• 1:22:37
  It is very funny. It's so sad.
• 1:22:40
  It is sad and we laugh too. All the things.
• 1:22:43
  This. The way you respond to that is
• 1:22:45
  actually funny too. Yeah, you're right.
• 1:22:47
  Thank you. Well, because you know the
• 1:22:49
  reason why my Co writer Jason and I had to write the funny
• 1:22:53
  opening song Everybody Dies in the end.
• 1:22:56
  Like we needed that to break the ice because we knew there was
• 1:22:59
  going to be some discomfort in the room, right?
• 1:23:02
  It's a challenging topic, yes, So we worked hard to break said
• 1:23:07
  ice. And I think we've done it.
• 1:23:11
  I think we've done it. It's a funny song.
• 1:23:12
  I love it, I love it. I can't wait to.
• 1:23:15
  Well, now that I've seen the trailer, I want to see how we
• 1:23:19
  can see this. Well, where are you based out of
• 1:23:22
  Brie? I'm in the Bay Area in San
• 1:23:24
  Francisco. All right, so let me so you know
• 1:23:27
  how to reach me. We can talk about bringing this
• 1:23:29
  little play out to San Francisco.
• 1:23:31
  I know at least one other person in San Francisco.
• 1:23:34
  So now there's two people I know in San Francisco, you know, and
• 1:23:38
  I will wear some flowers in my hair.
• 1:23:40
  And thank you for asking, but only if I'm going.
• 1:23:43
  Hey, you have to. You have to.
• 1:23:45
  I see. I can't.
• 1:23:46
  I needed to. Have you stole my pen.
• 1:23:48
  No. Are there other?
• 1:23:49
  That's the the main one, right? And.
• 1:23:51
  What else about San Fran? Something about a trolley or
• 1:23:53
  macaroni. Trolley, Rice a Roni, San
• 1:23:56
  Francisco treat, You know all the things.
• 1:24:00
  So if I make it to San Francisco, you can Take Me Out
• 1:24:02
  for Rice a Roni. Sounds.
• 1:24:04
  Good, like all the locals. Eat.
• 1:24:06
  You know what? Hopefully I'll take you and your
• 1:24:08
  assistant out as well. Yes, I see.
• 1:24:12
  I was trying to bring that back and it didn't.
• 1:24:14
  It didn't land. No, my assistant should travel
• 1:24:17
  with me when I'm going across the country.
• 1:24:19
  I mean, I was talking to someone about bringing me out and they
• 1:24:22
  said, and my companies, and they're like, wait, you travel
• 1:24:25
  with your companies? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, you
• 1:24:28
  need. And they pause and they're like,
• 1:24:30
  well, could we just find you a local piano player?
• 1:24:34
  And I said it's not the preference.
• 1:24:36
  No. And then I thought about it and
• 1:24:39
  it was like, it's interesting because there is a money
• 1:24:42
  question there, right? Like if you're adding another
• 1:24:45
  plane ticket and lodging, like it's not a $0.00 sum, but but if
• 1:24:50
  you were to bring like a jazz trio, you wouldn't say like,
• 1:24:54
  let's take two and get like a third guy local to save on a
• 1:24:58
  ticket, right? Bringing.
• 1:24:59
  Three out of four boys to men, but actually they do that now.
• 1:25:04
  Right, yes, holograms. They have rival tours, this one,
• 1:25:08
  because if there's a a group of five and they have a Fisher,
• 1:25:11
  they can have this tour with two and this with three.
• 1:25:15
  And you definitely have to go to both if you're a big fan.
• 1:25:17
  For sure. Well, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:25:19
  And splice together the video. No.
• 1:25:21
  So being a creative is very hard.
• 1:25:23
  Sorry, I I I took you. Off, it's OK.
• 1:25:25
  Being a creative is difficult. There's a term called buoyancy,
• 1:25:29
  which is very important in sales and marketing.
• 1:25:32
  That's relate. You know, if you think of a
• 1:25:34
  buoy, you stay floating. So you know a lot of the truisms
• 1:25:39
  about like, you know, the reject.
• 1:25:41
  I've done the rejection challenge.
• 1:25:43
  Have you ever done the rejection and?
• 1:25:44
  You're like dork and I don't care, right?
• 1:25:47
  Right. But you actually either ask for
• 1:25:51
  things in real life with real people, or you just keep track
• 1:25:54
  of how many things you apply for.
• 1:25:56
  OK, so during COVID I got in one year, I got up to like 60
• 1:26:00
  something. And that included trying for
• 1:26:03
  podcasts, that included trying for contests and fellowships.
• 1:26:06
  And it included like gigs that I tried for.
• 1:26:10
  But it was something magical about chasing a number.
• 1:26:13
  And then at a certain point, asking didn't feel scary anymore
• 1:26:17
  at this point, like the the inquiry that I thumbed to you
• 1:26:21
  over Instagram, Like I've done that to a lot of people.
• 1:26:23
  And some people are like, oh, cool, interesting.
• 1:26:26
  And some people ignore it. And I figure that's a numbers
• 1:26:29
  game at higher levels of sales when I'm not blind texting
• 1:26:34
  podcasts, but being more strategic about, I don't know,
• 1:26:37
  trying to get a meeting with a sure a producer or a, you know,
• 1:26:42
  like, yeah, I imagine I might still have to try for 10 or 20
• 1:26:46
  different producers before someone takes my call.
• 1:26:48
  You know what I mean? Like, I hear you.
• 1:26:51
  And so that is where the buoyancy is important.
• 1:26:54
  If you do one call early in the day and they ignore you and you
• 1:26:58
  say, well, F it, no one's picking up my call, you're not
• 1:27:01
  going to get anywhere. You have to, you have to do the,
• 1:27:04
  the repetitions the same way I was able to like just kind of
• 1:27:08
  randomly sing for you and sing quite well.
• 1:27:10
  It's because I've worked very hard at it for approximately 3
• 1:27:14
  decades. All reps all right.
• 1:27:15
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:27:17
  First voice lessons at age 15. Yeah.
• 1:27:19
  So that's 30 years on and off in the studio.
• 1:27:21
  Sales and marketing. I don't have as much repetition.
• 1:27:25
  However, I'll tell you, the first time I did essentially a
• 1:27:29
  sales call through the computer to someone who's kind of like a
• 1:27:32
  family friend, I thought it would be easier.
• 1:27:35
  I did not bring my A game. And she kind of nodded and then
• 1:27:39
  said, do you have a pitch? And I was like, oh, I just
• 1:27:43
  thought like, because you're friends with my wife, you would
• 1:27:46
  like hand a big paper check through the screen.
• 1:27:50
  You're like, they're not coming over tomorrow night for dinner.
• 1:27:53
  Thanks. No, no, and, and.
• 1:27:57
  And I learned it. Where I've.
• 1:27:58
  Been like, yeah, no, actually. Podcast I'm like, yeah, I just
• 1:28:03
  told you I thought. And they're like, oh.
• 1:28:05
  Yeah, right. No, no.
• 1:28:06
  Getting a friend and family booking actually sometimes
• 1:28:09
  implies you need to be better prepared because you don't want
• 1:28:11
  to look ill prepared for people who are actually going to see
• 1:28:14
  you again when you're done. Yes, when you don't ever have to
• 1:28:18
  see each other again. If you hate this, you know, you
• 1:28:21
  know. Exactly.
• 1:28:22
  Luckily, luckily it it it went pretty well.
• 1:28:25
  But but that let me put it differently.
• 1:28:27
  I think in the theater world, there's always been an
• 1:28:31
  understanding that it's crazy competitive.
• 1:28:34
  In fact, chorus line, which I mentioned earlier in our
• 1:28:36
  conversation, is built around the so-called gypsy dancers.
• 1:28:40
  They no longer use that term, but the chorus line dancers who
• 1:28:44
  would famously line up 1000 people deep to try out to be
• 1:28:49
  among the four boys, 4 girls that was the chorus line they're
• 1:28:53
  hiring for. So 8 spots for 1000 aspiring
• 1:28:56
  dancers. The numbers are still that
• 1:28:58
  brutal in New York in many cases, depending on the show,
• 1:29:02
  and perhaps in some cases the the numbers are worse.
• 1:29:06
  But people do it knowing full well it's going to be really
• 1:29:09
  brutal. And and if you're brave enough
• 1:29:11
  to do it, work your tail off and always be the best prepared in
• 1:29:15
  the room and also get good at other things.
• 1:29:19
  You can pay your rent and keep chasing your dream.
• 1:29:21
  That's good. It's certainly good to be able
• 1:29:23
  to teach, but not for everyone. But I'll tell you, whatever your
• 1:29:29
  second, third, fourth job is, going to those auditions and not
• 1:29:33
  getting it is brutal. Tough on your.
• 1:29:37
  It's tough out there now. A lot of the work that I'm doing
• 1:29:40
  as producer of this show that no one's heard of is less
• 1:29:44
  structured. Like there's no audition set up.
• 1:29:46
  OK, there are playwright festivals that I can apply to,
• 1:29:49
  and I'm going to apply to some of those things, contests and so
• 1:29:52
  forth. A Fringe Festival in a sense is
• 1:29:55
  like a call for submissions. But a lot of this stuff kind of
• 1:29:58
  happens invisibly and you meet people or try to meet people and
• 1:30:02
  they, as I said when we first got on the phone, it's easy to
• 1:30:05
  ignore people. It is.
• 1:30:07
  And that can be very discouraging.
• 1:30:09
  And so one thing that I've learned to help build up
• 1:30:13
  buoyancy is to find find your easy wins, find your easy wins.
• 1:30:19
  And I was recently on a show where we were talking about
• 1:30:22
  creativity and music making. So in a very narrow, creative
• 1:30:27
  way, that might be your first win is completing a lyric that
• 1:30:32
  makes you go. And then, and then a bigger win
• 1:30:35
  would be to complete the the entire song like like the verses
• 1:30:40
  and, and of course, and then a next size.
• 1:30:43
  And the next step up is sharing it with a loved one who's going
• 1:30:46
  to be a generous, encouraging ear.
• 1:30:48
  And then, of course, the big, famous, big deal share is
• 1:30:51
  outside of your home, like a coffee house or an open mic.
• 1:30:56
  But each of those steps are big successes.
• 1:30:58
  And be brave people and keep doing it right.
• 1:31:01
  If you're not a creative person that type, but you just want to
• 1:31:06
  share the thing, I, I say the same thing.
• 1:31:10
  Share a little bit, be brave about it.
• 1:31:13
  Share with someone who's ready to hear you and encourage you.
• 1:31:17
  I think that's that's impactful. And and you don't have to be a
• 1:31:21
  real songwriter or have written a musical to get joy out of
• 1:31:24
  writing a poem or writing a song.
• 1:31:26
  You don't have to to bring it to a coffee house.
• 1:31:29
  Just pick up the pen, start writing to quote Mr. Lin Manuel
• 1:31:32
  Miranda. Hey, you know, honestly, we all
• 1:31:35
  like even just starting to write anything brings out some like
• 1:31:40
  any kind of creative thing, some child in you or some just create
• 1:31:44
  for the joy of creating. You don't have to like end up
• 1:31:47
  somewhere, right? Like even.
• 1:31:49
  If, oh, that's it. Yes.
• 1:31:50
  Elementary school teachers learn to emphasize process over
• 1:31:54
  products. Yeah, especially in art class.
• 1:31:57
  We're not trying to do a photorealistic portrait of
• 1:32:00
  ourselves, but like, look at ourselves and yeah, make a
• 1:32:03
  picture. Just the process.
• 1:32:05
  The the process is the thing, especially when you're learning
• 1:32:08
  something new. Yeah, like you asked earlier,
• 1:32:10
  like just the progression of Episode 1 to now, it's literally
• 1:32:14
  like who you mean, as cheesy as it sounds, it's who you become
• 1:32:17
  in the process. And I'm like, literally just a
• 1:32:19
  different person halfway through the project than when you
• 1:32:22
  started, you know? Absolutely.
• 1:32:24
  Because you at a certain point you learn to fall away into the
• 1:32:28
  computer screen and just have a conversation with the person
• 1:32:32
  sitting there in your monitor, laptop, whatever device you're
• 1:32:35
  looking at, and the microphone sort of disappear.
• 1:32:39
  It does. You get in flow, you're talking.
• 1:32:41
  That's right. Once in a while I say to myself,
• 1:32:43
  wait, am I allowed to cuss on this podcast?
• 1:32:45
  I heard you cuss. So then I did or something.
• 1:32:48
  Does this person, does this host have a hard stop?
• 1:32:50
  In which case I'm watching the timer.
• 1:32:52
  Obviously you didn't, but like that's all good and and we move
• 1:32:56
  through it. One step at a time, because
• 1:32:58
  guess what? Spoiler alert, everybody dies in
• 1:33:00
  the end. Well done, you quoted my song.
• 1:33:02
  Did I do it right? You did no matter, no feel, no
• 1:33:07
  matter your name or country or game, it's the same.
• 1:33:09
  It's the same. Everybody dies in the end.
• 1:33:13
  Sorry to ruin the play my friend.
• 1:33:15
  Love him or hate him, let's come out band.
• 1:33:18
  Everybody dies in the end scene and scene.
• 1:33:22
  Well. I don't.
• 1:33:23
  Know if we can end any more appropriately than that and
• 1:33:28
  kintish rhymes with mintish. Wilson rhymes with Schmelson,
• 1:33:33
  yes. That she's Wilson Schmelson,
• 1:33:36
  like the castaway volleyball. I miss that guy.
• 1:33:40
  He didn't say much, but he had a good, quiet presence.
• 1:33:43
  See, we brought it all back together.
• 1:33:48
  Maybe he was. Maybe he had to go and minister
• 1:33:51
  to another castaway. He was like, listen, I've been
• 1:33:54
  listening to you go on and on for three weeks.
• 1:33:57
  It's time for me to go to that other guy in the other raft.
• 1:34:00
  He's got some stuffed on Verdict.
• 1:34:02
  Maui. He went over to Maui and you
• 1:34:05
  know, Milano over there. OK, well, I'm going to be
• 1:34:09
  messaging you and. Looking forward to it.
• 1:34:12
  You know, harassing A fellow Ivy League crash.
• 1:34:14
  I always like to make Ivy League jokes because I've no one
• 1:34:17
  believes you went to Harvard and I'm like, I know, right?
• 1:34:19
  They're like. Paid that much to get this done
• 1:34:22
  I'm. Like I could hit a softball,
• 1:34:24
  that's that I. Is that was that your secret?
• 1:34:27
  I was recruited to play softball, but I was like.
• 1:34:30
  Well done. I was a Smarty 40.
• 1:34:33
  Hey, I had 40 young woman. Yeah, so I'm typically petite
• 1:34:38
  Jewish man, about 5-7 when my hair is poofy.
• 1:34:41
  I did play rugby for three years.
• 1:34:43
  But sometimes when people like, aren't impressed with my smarts
• 1:34:47
  and then figure out that I went to a fancy school and then they
• 1:34:50
  go, wait, you went to brown? And then I point to myself and I
• 1:34:54
  say, oh, I was recruited as a as a linebacker.
• 1:34:57
  And then they get more confused and I say, let's just move on.
• 1:35:02
  And you're like. And then there we go, Kaplan and
• 1:35:03
  now I, And then they're like, what?
• 1:35:06
  Yes, no, I say a lot of nonsense which confuses and delights
• 1:35:10
  both, both things. I love it.
• 1:35:12
  Well, I loved our nonsense. I think it was hopefully helpful
• 1:35:16
  and. More delightful than confusion
• 1:35:18
  for sure. For sure, episode 5252, we're
• 1:35:22
  going to sign off and. Pre written.
• 1:35:26
  There you go. 52 with an exclamation point.
• 1:35:28
  And I'll let you just do one more note to sign us off.
• 1:35:32
  Any song note. See, I'm very musical.
• 1:35:35
  Any note that you want to sing like something like that?
• 1:35:38
  Everybody dies in the end. That's all.
• 1:35:42
  Bye bye. That was amazing.
• 1:35:46
  Thanks. Are we, are we off?
• 1:35:49
  Are we still recording? Is it still recording?
• 1:35:51
  It says recording it. Says recording.
• 1:35:53
  OK, let's see. Mine says if I hit stop, it's
• 1:35:55
  not stopping. So when I hit leave, it's
• 1:35:57
  probably going to hang up on you.
• 1:35:59
  But all right, thank you. I'll do all my stuff and I'll
• 1:36:03
  I'll send you a link. Appreciate it, I enjoyed
• 1:36:05
  chatting with you. This was a lot of fun.
• 1:36:07
  Amazing, amazing. We'll talk soon.
• 1:36:09
  Thank you. Take care.
• 1:36:11
  Bye bye.