Talking to Strangers (About Music)

It was quite the coup to get one of my teenagers to come on to the podcast. After all, they are independent humans with ideas of their own about how to live life, and doing my bidding often takes low priority, as it should be. Over the years, I humiliated them bi-weekly with my Fearless Parenting column in the Brooklyn Paper, subjected them to a few awkward photo/video shoots for newspaper and TV and regularly interrupt family outings by...yes, talking to strangers (at one point stopping to give them gold stars.) But I am thrilled and humbled that Oscar chose (with only a small bribe) to chat with me for an episode of Talking to Strangers. He is lucid and articulate about what it's like to be a teen, why they (he) only share a miniscule portion of themselves with their parents usually, and why INDEPENDENCE is a good thing. It was a fun thing to chat with Oscar for a recording, and see what it is he is willing to share with me, and with strangers. I'm thrilled that we got this time together:)) Remember to push to talk to your teens, even when---most especially when--they begin to feel like strangers!! Dialogue is always crucial for both us and them!

When I first met the lovely Emily Sause a few years back, she was 'head of community'
for a stunning Manhattan co-working space called The Assemblage. It was part of her job to be welcoming, but she seemed to go above and beyond with her bright-eyed enthusiasm. While I didn't end up joining the super-cool workspace, I did manage to come for a couple of events, including Emily's 'vocal toning' workshop, which was one of the more relaxing deeply meditative hours of my life. We got together a number of times for fun events--hers or mine--and I so appreciated Emily's great positive spirit every time. We have seemed to be so in sync. Funny then that, having lost touch for a bit, we would run into one another in an antique store upstate, where she had moved, post-Covid, and I had just bought a house. Life sometimes changes dramatically on a dime. Emily is now turning her great ability to connect and communicate to the plant world, living and working on a gorgeous farm owned by friends just above the Hudson River in Catskill, NY. She has applied the same loving, nurturing energy she showered on people and events in the city to the kale and tomato plants she cares for now, and her passion for learning about and teaching about this important world of 'permaculture' is palpable. Listen in as we chat, two one-time strangers finding connections along our path...

“I’m Italian,” he said. He grew up in Monaco though. Maybe I learned that then, or later, that relationship between his Italian roots and growing up in France. It read on his face, though, his pondering of things, his strong opinions, and I liked him immediately. We became friends. I had just started my nonprofit, InspireCorps, and he helped me in a variety of ways, including walking and talking with my dog, Ginger (seriously, they had a language), and tutoring my boys in math. He was a good friend in general, with his truthful straight-up philosophy of life. When he met the lovely always-smiling Sarah, a great poet and writer, in a philosophy class at the New School, it was a perfect match. The way two people can light up talking about Kierkegaard...amazing. They became regulars at our dinner table, often dog-sitting when we went away. We would see their incredibly high Scrabble scores on scraps of paper when we got home, and be impressed. It wasn’t until now that we played with them. I recorded a bit of that game, at the end. It is funny what we learn about others and ourselves when we play games, when we see them win or lose, when we win or lose ourselves, how we handle it. Listen in. 

When I run out of coffee, I am always glad because it means I can take a walk over to Java Joe. For so many years, I have been going to this little shop on 8th Street, in Park Slope, to buy their deliciously strong Black Magic espresso beans. The shop is adorable, run by a lovely frank Irish lady, and besides the INCREDIBLE mint malted milk balls (a holiday gift staple) I always have a good chat. In this episode, I went in for beans and a new mug (I have too many, but always want a new one when I see their fun selection) and I ended up in a great conversation with Ben, the lovely owner's son. He is a great young man, and we have discussed before his love of techno music, which he composes and plays loud over the store's speakers. I learned so much more than I'd known before about the store, about him, about his expectations of life...It is not easy or particularly lucrative to work retail, in a small business. We talked about how the neighborhood has changed, and what it was like for him to grow up there. Ben's eyes were bright and expressive over the top of his mask, and I so appreciated the frank conversation, as I always do when I enter Java Joe. Thank God some people are up for a long chat about how they really feel. I smiled thinking that he clearly got that gift from his mother. Honesty plus great coffee is a winning combination  Listen in to my chat with Ben. And head over to Java Joe if you're ever in Park Slope! 

In this episode, I head to the beach to drum, and I talk a bit about how we learn to trust ourselves and others. It's not easy. I often use the metaphor of music, and work with people, including homeless men, to try to get at thoughts about connection, and trust and flexibility through drumming together. What we can create together, quickly, us strangers, with a little music, is nothing short of magic. Have a drum or something to hit your hands on to make rhythm with me at the beginning. Listen as I talk about a recent experience with my Get in Tune workshop at a shelter, and meditate with me at the end...Connecting to ourselves is a crucial step in our ability to talk to strangers, and try to connect to them! 

What I loved about Samir LanGus from the first time I saw him was how comfortably he seemed to mix cultures seamlessly and stylishly. As a Moroccan musician steeped in the classically spiritual Gnawa music of his homeland, he is always sporting American fashions like his favored Adidas jackets or running pants along with more traditional Moroccan garb. The look is representative of Samir's extremely nimble balance of traditional and modern, which has shown up in the collaborations he has forged with all different kinds of musicians including British L.A.-based DJ Bonobo, who partnered with his band Innov Gnawa in 2017 for a beautiful haunting Grammy-nominated song that features the classic Gnawa qraqebs (castanets), sintir and vocals along with electronic beats. https://www.npr.org/2017/06/07/531753920/songs-we-love-bonobo-bambro-koyo-ganda-feat-innov-gnawa-analog-version

More recently, on his own, Samir has been working with a variety of other musicians to fuse Gnawa with jazz and funk, and create arrangements that modernize the traditional trance music. I was a big groupie of Innov Gnawa, having met Samir and other members of the band at the shows of another of my all-time fave bands, The Brooklyn Gypsies. It was great to catch up with Samir to reminisce about those days and hear what he's doing now, and to thank him for all the evenings of healing music. We agreed that the collaboration of musicians onstage--people who may come from all different backgrounds--is magical and crucial. "Music is love," Samir says. And it's true. One can feel Gnawa music in the heart for sure. Listen in to our chat, and follow Samir's culture-crossing musical collaborations at https://www.youtube.com/c/SamirLangus/videos and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SAMIR.BIQINE
Attend his Gnawa workshop this Thursday, Sept. 24th, with Michael League from Snarky Puppy.
https://www.crowdcast.io/snarkypuppy

I'm "friends" on Facebook with a lot of people I've never met. Maybe we have mutual friends, maybe they read something of mine or listened to my podcast, maybe I heard them play somewhere. Neither Chris Rael nor I remember exactly how we became "friends," though we have a long list of friends in common, mostly musicians (since he is one.) Even though we've never met, I reached out to Chris recently after a post of his caught my eye, and asked if he would be on my podcast to discuss it.

In it he said: "Our fear stokes our anger & this society is currently melting down in both. Somehow, even during periods of conflict & pain, we must find our way thru ourselves to the place within where the love resides. Our compassion, ethics & accountability to others grow from there. Fear is not cowardice; in fact it may provoke great courage. When I look in the mirror, I see a pretty brave, albeit pretty scared guy. Today I renew my efforts to be kinder to myself & feel less afraid. If you face anything similar, I wish the same for you."

I am struck more and more by those people who try to find and tap into the universal emotions that we are all feeling rather than focusing on divisions. Fear. Anger. Love. Chris and I talked about these universal emotions and a whole lot of other things in a video call, our first-ever meet-up. He is fascinating. I love how we shared so much in common, most especially our belief in the need for artistic expression to figure ourselves and all those crazy emotions we feel...He shared this awesome video of a song he created with his son in a routine "Art of the Day." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BETCRmjbAE&feature=youtu.be  Love it. I'm so glad I reached out and that neither Chris nor I are afraid to talk to strangers:))

I try not to take advantage of my friendship with veteran psychoanalyst Mubasher Naseer. After all, he is clearly easy to talk to, listens well and has many years' experience helping people sort out relationships and other of life's strains and stresses with his sage advice. Since we met, roughly six years ago, Mubasher is always a good person to chat with about what's happening in the world and what people are feeling, including he and I. It is nice to hear what a mental health professional feels outside of the professional setting. I enjoy the back and forth with Mubasher greatly, and appreciate his knowledge and experience. Right now, with life a bit up in the air for folks (to put it mildly), it seemed a good time to have a sit-down with my friend and shoot the breeze about the human psyche:) Why is it that we're so rushed and stressed he wonders, then answers his own question. "Suppression, from an early age," he suggests as one possibility. Don't suppress, express! If you need someone to express to, you can email Mubasher at [email protected]. And listen in for some free insight from a wise soul. 

Since meeting jazz pianist James Carney seven or so years ago in a little bar in Park Slope, I have sat many times in various venues to see and hear him tickle the ivories, his fingers flying fast across the keys masterfully to create rhythms that resound in the soul. It was a pleasure to sit with him again and hear a few of these sounds, this time in his new PianoWorks studio in Brooklyn's cool Industry City complex. While musical performances came to a halt during Covid, James decided to expand upon the piano tuning/repair work he had been doing out of his home into a full-blown piano shop, where as precisely and artfully as he plays, he is building beautiful grand pianos and some uprights back to their original glory. The passion he has for restoration (and his new power tools) is as inspiring as his music, making one think maybe the two are linked. After all, deep understanding of one's instrument could be said to lead one to greater heights as a musician, and James's understanding and continued learning about the inner workings of this complex instrument is immense. Such seems to be case, as Pure Heart, James' 8th album as a leader, is getting rave reviews and much media attention since its debut in June. It's awesome. Check it out at www.JamesCarney.net, and listen in to our interesting chat in the sunny new studio space he now happily inhabits. Stop by yourself if you're in the market for a beautiful piano or maybe, soon, to catch an intimate gathering of great jazz...

It is fitting that in our chat, in her sumptuous living quarters in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn, stylist/creative director Hilary Robertson would quote Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn.

She waved her hand this way and that with her usual English dramatic flair, and the crisp striped fabric of the full-length dress shirt she wore shifted slightly.

"'Truth is Beauty, and Beauty Truth' or something like that," she said, eyes up toward the soaring brownstone parlor ceiling as she rendered the perfectly apropos words. I remembered then, with a smile, the moment many years back when I encountered this wild wonderful woman, how I'd laughed loudly at the discovery of her at a crowded party when she spoke with such conviction of the brilliant beautiful world she was born in to, and lived in still, in her mind.

Hilary Robertson creates beauty and, with it, The Truth, as she so clearly sees it. With the just-perfect placement of a Grecian Urn, together with a plaster lamp, and a horsehair couch, she can make you see it too: Aaaaaah, the joy of living, the art of it!

Her styling of such an artful world and her writing of it in lyrical prose have appeared in the pages of magazines world round, and in the pages of her own and others' books on Interiors, which you can see and learn more about at www.HilaryRobertson.com. When we sat down together over the delicious avocado toast she'd prepared, I was finally able to ask her directly what it's all about, the whole 'style' thing, why beautiful 'stuff' is so important. What impact do our interiors have on our interior life, I wondered aloud, and she went there with me, as she does, with thoughts culled from a life filled with music, literature and art.

There is a soulfulness and a spirituality to the combinations Hilary puts together in her still-lifes. "Authenticity," she said at one point, holding up her pointer finger decidedly. And I nodded. Yes. Strong images, filled with shapes and colors, somehow resonate in our bodies and minds as what is real, and true. And finding an expression for that truth, my friend Hilary well knows, can heal us.