Welcome to the Walks of Life podcast. This is Russell Smith, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Michael Cirigliano II. Michael studied and trained for decades on the clarinet before embarking on a marketing and writing career. Today, he helps orchestras and other classical music creators reach new audiences.

He also writes a beautiful newsletter called Shades of Blue about the stories behind, and power of, melancholy music. Michael’s approach and philosophy have a lot in common with what I write and talk about; slowness, solitude, internal peace, and seeking outward harmony, and discovering what Michael terms, the beautiful, more perfect world.

When I receive Michael’s new missive every other week, I can’t wait to dive in. We enjoyed a wonderful conversation and I know you will enjoy it. You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript below. Thank you, Michael!

Russell Smith: I want to talk for a few minutes about your introductory essay, where you announced Shades of Blue. It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of writing that I’ve ever read. It was thoughtful and, in its way, concise, and I want to ask a few questions about it.

You wrote: “Growing up in the flat, unremarkable world of suburban Connecticut in the ’90s, classical music became my form of rebellion against the aggressive music my parents enjoyed. At any point in my childhood, you could hear Ozzy Osbourne’s wail on Black Sabbath’s Paranoid erupting from my father’s stereo on one end of our house, while the sweet sighs of Beethoven’s violin concerto wafted through the air outside my bedroom on the other.”

I’m wondering: did you take anything positive, uplifting, memorable from the music your parents liked?

Michael Cirigliano: Yeah, absolutely. The joke I like to make is that my first musical obsession as a child wasn’t Ludwig van Beethoven, but Eddie Van Halen. So it wasn’t like warring factions in the house.

A lot of the music they listened to was definitely formative to me. I use the Black Sabbath example in my essay because it’s about as far as you can get from classical music. But to my parents’ credit, they also introduced me to David Bowie and Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, all of whom still stand among my favorite musical artists.

What was really cool is I learned much later they were all inspired in some way by classical music — a full-circle moment. And of course, Bowie, Zeppelin, Floyd — they all wrote songs that live in that same world of melancholy and longing that felt like home as I discovered more and more classical music. “Let’s Dance,” “Stairway to Heaven” — they’re still incredible songs that move me profoundly today.

But something happened as I got older. My ear, which is connected to my mind, which is connected to my heart, was increasingly craving the quieter, more intimate moments I had discovered in classical music. That’s where I started to hear the more aggressive music my parents listened to as too aggressive for me.

Then, as a teenager, this music — especially the kind my father did not care for — became my act of rebellion. So it wasn’t that I was totally against the music they listened to. It was that I knew the music I listened to wasn’t very well liked, especially on my father’s side, and that became my point of rebellion.

As my musical training progressed, I started playing the clarinet in fourth grade and began playing in more and more ensembles. I fell in love with the sound of a symphony orchestra, and that was the rabbit hole that led me to explore more and more classical music.

It’s interesting, because people are often surprised how much music I listen to that’s outside the classical realm. I even published one of my melancholy mixtapes on Shades of Blue last summer that was the only one to feature no classical music whatsoever — my favorite songs by Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Björk, and Lana Del Rey.

It was pretty revelatory to certain readers, which is funny to me, because the forms those songwriters use are going to be much different from a Mahler symphony, but the emotional content is exactly the same. Anyone who profoundly loves Britpop or Brit rock — I wouldn’t be surprised if they also love Elgar or Vaughan Williams.

But for some reason, when people hear someone is really obsessed with classical music, they think that’s it — that there’s this level of pretension, this difference between classical music and everything else. I don’t subscribe to that in any way, shape, or form. The way I connect to music comes down to emotional content, pure and simple, no matter the form.

Smith: Did you attach to anything in that “flat, unremarkable world of suburban Connecticut in the ’90s”? What lessons about how you wanted to live came from that?

Cirigliano: It’s so interesting — looking back on that essay, the words I used to describe it as flat and unremarkable, I could still picture that view outside my bedroom window as a kid. It’s not that there was anything bad about where I lived. We had an amazing school system with a great arts program. But I think why I wanted to point that out is: it’s easy to look out your bedroom window as a kid and believe that’s all there is — that the world is small, that the paths you could take are limited.

On the street where I grew up, everybody worked a job, most of which they disliked. They had their half-acre or acre of land. They were married, had a family, two cars. Even as a kid, it seemed so prescriptive to me.

But the arts — music was a great passion, but visual art too. I loved drawing and painting as a kid. The arts as a whole sphere could serve as a passport outside that bubble. They launch you into the wider world — not just geographically but historically.

That’s what I love about classical music and painting especially. We’ve only had rock, rap, and metal music for sixty years or so. But classical music as we know it today has been around for four or five hundred years, so you get an incredible sense of how human creativity, how expression through music, has evolved over time.

Every album I got, I would devour the liner notes. That was my first introduction to program notes, which I write today for the country’s biggest orchestras. But it was the stories in there that fascinated me and put the music into context.

Learning all that, I realized there was so much I wanted to explore in the world. But I grew up working class. Money was always tight. My family didn’t take trips to Paris so I could walk in the footsteps of Ravel, or go to Vienna to walk in the footsteps of Beethoven or Brahms or Schubert. So until I became an adult and could make that kind of travel a reality, getting to know the world involved a lot of adventures of the imagination. I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and I think a lot of that came from having it fed and fueled by art and music as a small child.

So to go from that one view outside my bedroom window to everything I’ve been able to explore, and all the places music has brought me — that’s the most remarkable thing to come out of growing up with an unremarkable view outside your window.

Smith: Your first essay on your newsletter looked at Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. You called that essay a manifesto. Do you still stand behind it? Has your thinking evolved? If you rewrote it today, what would you add, cut, or keep the same?

Cirigliano: I’m sure I’d find several unnecessary adverbs I could cut — that tends to be my style. But as far as the manifesto of it all, I still stand proudly behind it. I believe classical music has a huge marketing and PR problem, one that’s sadly perpetuated by the industry itself.

The reason I even transitioned from being a performer in an orchestra to becoming a marketer for symphony orchestras and classical music presenters is because it drives me nuts how classical music is marketed — advocating for an art form purely because you call it important, or because it has a storied legacy.

I feel that’s so misguided today, especially when music education isn’t as prevalent in schools, and classical music isn’t as prevalent in popular culture as it used to be. Leaning on historical legacy and importance is misguided, because nobody is attracted to exploring new art because it’s important.

Advocating for an art form by telling someone about the transcendental experience they can have, how they can focus all their senses on the sound as it moves through them — I know firsthand, from the work I do, that this connects with a lot more people.

Here’s the example that was one of my first sparks toward making this my platform as an arts marketer: if I came up to you, Russell, and said, “Are you interested in hearing Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony? It’s about forty-five minutes of music for a full orchestra, written in the late nineteenth century, and I think it’s really great” — you’d probably say no. Maybe you’d say yes because we’re friends. But if a stranger said, “Listen to this because it’s important,” you’d say no. Yes, it’s a famous piece, but what’s the incentive to spend forty-five minutes of our busy world on it?

But if I said, “This music will make you feel like time stands still,” or “Watch it performed on YouTube — take in the sound of fifty or sixty string players playing as one, moving their bodies as one, phrasing as one. It’s going to remind you of the trust you can place in other people, the importance of friendship and collaboration” — or if I told you about the genesis of the piece, about Brahms himself. He was a super sensitive, super insecure artist, just like we all are, trying to make a name for himself in Vienna in the second half of the nineteenth century, in a very crowded field. Any German, Austrian, or Bohemian composer who wanted to make a name for himself had to go and find his way in Vienna.

It took Brahms nearly twenty-five years to write that first symphony. He was so overwhelmed with anxiety about how the music would be received — worried everyone would compare it to Beethoven, who was the be-all, end-all of German music in Brahms’s lifetime. If you were going to write a first symphony, people expected it to be a continuation of Beethoven’s style.

So Brahms wrote and wrote for years, then put most of the manuscript pages into a fire and burned them. He was notorious for burning his music. He wrote more, wasn’t happy with it as a first symphony, took the scraps he liked, and created a completely different piece from them. By the time he finally finished the score, it had been more than two decades. He was in his forties — talk about a late bloomer.

It’s magnificent to behold. But you can hear that frustration, that anxiety, right at the beginning. There’s this roar of sound, this pulse throbbing in the drums. It doesn’t relent — it drives the beat forward, and the strings rise up in a melody that’s painstakingly rising note by note, while the woodwinds behind them play a falling melody, like a waterfall of tears. Are those tears of frustration? Relief? Joy? Pride? All of the above. That’s how you sell someone on listening to Brahms’s First Symphony for the first time. Who wouldn’t want to experience that kind of emotion, seeing themselves mirrored in it?

That’s the kind of storytelling, the kind of marketing, the kind of experience people should know they could have when they devote time to music like this.

Smith: That answer is exactly what I love about your newsletter. You talk about a piece, and I want to go listen to it right then. I wrote down in my notes as we were talking: “Listen to Brahms’s First Symphony right after this.”

Cirigliano: I love it. Please follow up — send me an email after you listen. What moved you in that roar of sound at the opening?

Smith: What, if anything, has changed or evolved about your approach to the newsletter in the three years since you began writing it?

Cirigliano: It’s been wild that I’ve been at it for three years. It took me probably three years of cultivating confidence just to get it started, so the fact that there’s this body of work now is really incredible to me.

From day one, I’ve considered writing this newsletter an act of service. I want to share music that could bring people relief, respite, a few minutes where they can shut out the world and turn inward — to connect with beautiful, moving, human expressions of joy and loss and love and ecstasy. Things we don’t make much time for anymore.

Over the first year, I realized I could do that through a couple of different formats to meet readers where they are. I’m a content marketer by day, so I know not every reader reads the same way. I have full-length essays that go deep into one piece, and then things in between — the melancholy mixtapes, where there isn’t much storytelling. I’ll give a sentence or two to introduce the work, and people can take it on the go, listen without any commentary, or listen with it the first time and then make it their own.

What’s changed most in my mindset is realizing this newsletter isn’t just an act of service for readers — it’s an act of service to myself. Writing about the music I want to write about, in the way I feel will connect with others, is a gift I don’t get in my day job. I’m hired by orchestras to write about the music they’re performing. Sometimes there’s great overlap and I get an assignment about a piece I love, or a piece I don’t know, and in researching it I realize it’s incredible. Other times the piece is just okay, and I try to find the human story that will excite people to listen.

But sitting down with music of my choosing — some works I’ve known for decades. I just published my third-anniversary post, about Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony, which I’ve known since high school — thirty-two years now. Other times it’s a work I just discovered and can’t stop listening to, with an incredible story behind it. Writing this newsletter, I’ve never had more opportunity to follow my curiosity and make connections I wouldn’t otherwise have had space to consider.

One of my favorite quotes, which relates to being a writer in charge of what you write, is from Marcus Aurelius: “The soul becomes dyed with the color of the mind’s thoughts.” Watch what you think, because your soul will become dyed with those thoughts. If you live your life from a place of anger, resentment, hostility, that will infect you. But if you choose to live from a place of calm and connection and inspiration, healing yourself and healing others, that will transform your soul too.

Living in this world of melancholy music for three years now, especially with the cataclysmic ups and downs of the outside world, I know my soul has been dyed the most beautiful shade of blue from spending time with this music, and with everyone who engages in the comments, who writes to me. That’s probably the most profound shift — realizing I’m giving a gift to others and to myself through this creative venture.

Smith: Michael, where is your line of demarcation between melancholy as insight and embodied experience versus melancholy as indulgence?

Cirigliano: That’s such a great question, because I don’t consider embracing the melancholy aspects of life an indulgence at all. Maybe more people feel this way than I think, but I think certain people picture melancholy as Proust lying in bed for decades, sleeping all day and writing his epic at night, thinking only about tea and cookies.

But that’s not truly engaging with the melancholy aspects of life. Our society today is out of touch with what humans need to flourish, to fully embody our place in the world. We make so little room for expressions of emotion — they’re even demonized. Nonsense like “boys don’t cry.” What is that supposed to mean? Even empathy has become a dirty word in certain corners of the world.

I don’t consider it indulgence at all — I consider it an aspect of truly embracing our humanity and our place in the world. I love that you put it as melancholy as insight, because I think that is what melancholy offers us when we choose to explore and embrace it. It becomes a point of perspective from which to observe the world. That’s how we improve our lives — by observing the world, realizing our place in it, and realizing what we can do to make it a better, more loving, more beautiful place.

We can only do that, we can only truly live the totality of our experience, if we realize that joy has to dance with sorrow, that life is precious because it’s fleeting, that love fuels the universe. I don’t think anyone who spends their days exploring that kind of perspective would ever harm someone or call someone a slur in public. Maybe it’s the budding Buddhist in me, but if you take the time to experience the profound beauty of the world, you will not want to harm it.

In those terms, melancholy transcends discussions of aesthetics and mood and vibe — it becomes a philosophy to practice, to get better at moving through the world, to be less surprised by the sorrow and the challenges everyone will face. It teaches us to embody every aspect of our lived experience with grace and gratitude. I think we need so much more of that in this world.

Smith: You talked about this earlier, but I want to hear an elaboration. Can other types of music take us on the same internal journey toward what you wrote as “the beautiful more perfect world”? I think a lot about jazz and blues, but can other music besides classical take us on these inward journeys?

Cirigliano: Absolutely. First, I want to make sure that phrase — the beautiful, more perfect world — gets its proper credit. It’s actually a quote from Susan Cain, an incredible writer. She wrote a book about a decade ago called Quiet, on the power of introverts, and then, four or five years ago, a second book called Bittersweet, on how longing and sadness help us connect more with the world. That proved a catalyst for me writing Shades of Blue, because I’d been throwing around the idea of a newsletter about classical music but didn’t have my angle. Reading her book, I realized so much of the classical music I listen to lives in this world of melancholy, this bittersweetness — and when I sit down and listen to it, it transports me to that beautiful, more perfect world. So I want to make sure Susan Cain gets credit for that.

But to answer your question — absolutely. I touched on it earlier with Radiohead, Portishead, Björk, Lana Del Rey. There are plenty of musicians outside the classical realm whose sense of the bittersweet resonates with me profoundly. I wish I were better versed in jazz or blues, honestly. A few artists hit that melancholy sweet spot for me — Chet Baker, Billy Strayhorn, Bill Evans. But I don’t know that much jazz or blues, and it’s interesting you bring it up, because when people come to me wanting to get into classical music and don’t know where to start, I respond to that so much, because jazz and blues is also this huge body of music and artists, and I don’t know where to start either.

I hope at some point to find someone doing the Shades of Blue of jazz — someone bringing that kind of perspective to that music, because I know there’s a lot I’m missing out on. I see the same kind of overwhelm in trying to get into jazz and blues. That said, I think this sound world can live in every type of music, because again, it’s not the form, the structure, or the instruments — it’s the content. What’s the expression being made?

One thing that gives me a deeper sense of why classical music speaks to people in this way is the time involved. You could meditate for five minutes and get some sense of calming clarity out of it. But if you meditate for thirty minutes twice a day, you’re digging deeper into that inner ocean of feeling. I feel the same way about music. I can listen to a five-minute song that immediately brings me into the emotional world I’m craving. But if I sit down with Mahler’s Third Symphony, which is eighty-five minutes, and find the focus and flow that comes with a work of longer duration, it gives me more time to dive deep into that emotional world and come out refreshed. Sometimes certain pieces change you on a cellular level. With the length of a lot of classical works, that pool of emotion you’re swimming in is there for longer, and it moves through you on a much deeper level.

Smith: What are you listening to now? What’s on your playlist these days?

Cirigliano: Definitely stuff for Shades of Blue. But I think what’s getting the most play on my Tidal account these days — I was obsessed with it when it came out about a year and a half ago, and I’ve recently become re-obsessed — is a recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations by the pianist Víkingur Ólafsson.

The piece is one of the most miraculous things written for the keyboard, and every pianist who wants to make their name in recording has recorded it. But there’s something very specific about the way Ólafsson performs it — and a lot of his music. If you’ve read Shades of Blue for a while, you’ve seen his name and his performances come up several times. There’s something about the way he approaches the music that creates a state of mind that’s meditative and calm, where you’re just positioned to absorb what the music is doing as it moves through you.

His technical abilities are incredible. The Goldberg Variations open with a simple little theme Bach called the aria, then thirty variations of different levels of complexity, speed, and emotion, and then the aria returns at the end. In terms of structure and technical prowess, it’s astounding. But two of the thirty variations are slow and melancholy, and those are the ones that fascinate me most. I’ll find time at some point to dive into them on Shades of Blue.

These two movements are instances where it feels like time stands still — like there’s poetry being spoken through the piano, through the touch he brings to the keyboard, the range of colors he creates, the emotions coursing through him as he performs. It’s such poetry, and there’s not a single word to it.

This was an assignment Bach received. The legend goes he composed it for a keyboard player employed by a count who had insomnia — the count wanted music to listen to as he tried to fall asleep. So it’s eighty or ninety minutes, mostly in the same key, all these variations, so the mind can keep following what’s going on but also essentially tune out at any moment, because it’s all one idea being thrown through. The most uninspiring of commissions, and yet fascinating to think there was a time when rich people commissioned music to fall asleep to. Ólafsson finds some way to transcend all of that and just provide poetry for us to experience. That’s what’s filling my ears these days.

Smith: I can just picture this count trying to fall asleep in bed with people actually playing the instruments in his bedroom.

Cirigliano: Exactly. And it’s interesting — the two slow variations, one is about halfway through, one about two-thirds of the way through. I think it might be the golden mean position. I like to think those slow sections were put in to make sure the count fell asleep, and maybe the pianist could call it quits a little earlier than usual — picturing him peeking over: “Is he asleep? Is he asleep?”

Smith: Do you like to listen to music alone or with others? Or does it depend?

Cirigliano: It definitely depends. For sitting and discovering music, for researching, for sitting with the music I’m going to write about, I like to be alone, especially since listening to music can be a form of meditation for me. I practice transcendental meditation twice a day, but if I can find twenty or thirty minutes to sit with one work and really dive into it, feel the music moving through my body, note how my mind and my heart are responding — there’s such power in listening alone.

But there’s an equal power in listening with others. I love sharing music. Part of the fun of going to a music conservatory is that all your friends are as into music as you are, and the body of classical music is so large you can spend lifetimes exploring it and not know everything. Especially at eighteen, nineteen, twenty, when someone says, “I just heard this for the first time, you’ve got to listen to it,” and you’re sitting across from someone with a huge smile on their face pointing out, “Isn’t this part great?” — there’s nothing quite like that spark of excitement when people share music that’s meaningful to them.

If it were a more analog world, I’d love nothing more than to start a Shades of Blue listening club, where we all got together, everybody brought one work, about five minutes of music they love, and told us why they connect to it — does it bring back a memory, a certain experience? I can’t think of anything more inspiring than hearing about other people’s experience with music. Just like I want the way I connect with music to be a portal into other people’s experience, I crave that from others too. That’s the entry point. So if we were back in the days of record clubs, I’d absolutely want to do that. It could be just as great to listen alone as in a group, depending on how you want to experience it.

Smith: I want to ask you a few questions about your career. What did playing the clarinet for twenty-three years, many of them professionally, teach you about life? I never played music professionally, so I don’t have that reference point.

Cirigliano: That’s a great question. As I mentioned earlier, I think the first thing is that music serves as a passport for discovering the world — but that’s true of the arts in general. In terms of playing the clarinet specifically, it was my first entry point into honing a discipline, honing my focus, in a way that not many other experiences can do. Of course, you could get that from sports, from woodworking, from writing. But what I learned most from playing clarinet, specifically from playing in orchestras: the clarinets sit relatively in the center of an orchestra. The cellos are to my right, the drums and horns behind me, the bassoons and violas to the left.

Being at the center of the sound of an orchestra is absolutely electric. But being at the center of a group of eighty or ninety people working together gave me an incredible perspective on all the different parts of an orchestra at work. I learned to interpret body language — the woodwinds are guided by the principal flute, whose voice sits at the top of the section. When the whole section needs to enter together, the flute guides everyone in with a shoulder gesture or a lean. It’s a subtle visual cue — not trying to be the conductor, since we still have a conductor on stage, but giving a cue: let’s all do this together.

You learn the art of negotiation like very few other experiences can teach you. There are so many people on stage, so of course there are disagreements on matters of style — how long should this note be held, how hard should you attack a note that has an accent, should it be a ping or a thwap. Every one of those matters, even in a forty-five-minute piece where you’re discussing how to attack one note. Every one needs resolution — if not agreement, then at least everyone coming to a point of, “okay, that’s okay with me.” You can’t go it alone in an orchestra. For an orchestra to excel, there has to be an impenetrable sense of harmony created by every part working together. I think there’s a lot of society at large, and governmental bodies in particular, could learn from how an orchestra works.

Smith: Did playing the clarinet and working in an orchestra make you a better marketer or a better writer?

Cirigliano: As a marketer, I think in terms of the deep knowledge I have of these works — I’m very rarely approaching a piece I’m marketing for the first time, so I already know the story behind it. A big part of my job for part of the year is copywriting the program descriptions for an orchestra season — twenty performances, each with three or four pieces. It’s not just what am I writing about each work, but what’s the thread that unites them, what’s going to make people say, “That’s a mix of ideas and emotions I’d really want to enjoy — that sounds fascinating.”

But I think being submerged in music has made me a much better writer than I probably would have been otherwise, because rhythm and melody are the connective tissue between music and speech, or writing. Spending so much of my life playing clarinet, focusing on rhythm, on how rhythm moves a piece along, on melody and the pace a line unfolds — does it blossom slowly, does it drive right through to a pivotal note you’re not expecting, what’s the harmony blossoming underneath — gave me a sense, in writer’s terms, of sentence structure, word choice, essay structure. Being able to think about how my writing hits the reader in terms of melody and rhythm helps me every day. So many stylistic ideas around pacing, cadence, and flow that a writer spends a career thinking about relate directly to rhythm and melody.

One of my favorite compliments is when a reader writes and says, “Your writing is so musical,” or, “The structure of this essay felt like moving through a four-part symphony.” Compliments like that always make me smile, because I know the only reason I can make that work is that I devoted the first two decades of my life to performing and studying music. Even though I don’t perform anymore, I’m still thinking constantly about rhythm and line and harmony, and imparting those ideas to others through words.

Smith: You’ve written about getting burned out as a professional musician. What was the actual breaking point that moved you from performing into making a shift? Was that burnout specific to the music industry, or have you worried about burnout as a marketer and writer too? Those are both high-performance careers under a lot of external pressure.

Cirigliano: Very honestly, I think about burnout every single day. The PTSD of a former life as a performer is very real, and there’s enormous pressure as a writer too, a lot of it self-inflicted. But the difference between the burnout I faced as a performer and what I sometimes feel as a writer is that with writing, I choose how I move through the work, the pacing of it. Depending on my energy level, on how good a night’s sleep I had, I choose which threads of research to follow — is today a research day, a writing day, an editing day. Those trigger different parts of the brain. Because I worked as an editor before becoming a writer, editing has a lot less pressure for me. Once I get past the first draft and the top-down rewrite that follows, the copyediting stage is where I have fun — clarifying every image, finding better words, stronger verbs.

Being able to pick and choose how I do my work each day as a writer makes the pressure so much easier to navigate, because you don’t get that in the music world. When you’re in rehearsal, especially as an orchestral player, you have to be one hundred percent on. You could have five hours of rehearsal in a day — usually, with union rules, two and a half hours in the morning, an hour break, then two and a half more. If you’re not feeling well, if your dog was sick all night, you still have to show up and do your part. Same with performances.

I get a little misty-eyed thinking about not performing anymore — being part of that roar at the opening of Brahms’s First. But then I think about all the nights where it was the last movement of the last piece on a concert, and there’s a big solo you have to nail, and it could be ten o’clock at night, but you have to nail it. No other choice. If you’ve prepared well enough, you’ll have the muscle memory — you’ve played it hundreds of times, rehearsed it with the orchestra for a week, and you trust your instincts to get through it. But it’s still ten at night, and once I hit my early thirties, my body and mind told me I couldn’t keep performing until ten or ten-thirty at night. As a freelance musician, you might be playing with an orchestra two hours from home — you pack up your instrument, get in the car at eleven, might not be home until one-thirty. That fast-tracked my burnout, because classical musicians are as much athletes as they are artists, and in some ways as much nightlife entertainers — the same way a DJ is working at ten-thirty at night, or a drag queen is getting into her wig to start a show at ten-thirty. A classical musician could be on stage that late, and that’s just not how I work.

So even though there’s more self-inflicted pressure as a writer, you learn to work through those challenges and respect your body and mind in a way you just don’t get as a musician.

Smith: Your marketing headlines read — let me quote — “Copy that demystifies classical music and inspires a lifetime of engagement,” and, “Grow your fan base with friendly, human-centered storytelling that makes classical music relevant and enjoyable as part of people’s lives.” I love every word of this. Tell us more about your work today — what you do, and who you do it for.

Cirigliano: Thanks — as a copywriter, I appreciate that the headline and subhead get a reader excited. When I stopped performing, I got into the editorial world, and the visual arts world was the first to snatch me up. I worked as a writer and editor for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for several years, then the Whitney. Then I realized what I was doing there, I could be doing for classical music — I missed the musical part of my life. For about six years now I’ve been working as a freelance arts marketer, specifically with classical music presenters — orchestras most of all, but also chamber music presenters and recital series, so a wide range of ensembles and music. It’s interesting moving between writing about an orchestral program and a piano recital, because those come together in very different ways.

My work falls into two categories. The first is marketing copywriting — everything from season brochures to program descriptions, email marketing, the newsletter space that’s become my forte, and more conversion-based things like digital ads and out-of-home campaigns. The second is longer-form storytelling — program notes. Anytime you go to an orchestral or classical concert, you get a program book with short essays about each work, giving you a sense of who the composer was and what to expect.

Both excite me, but I especially love the longer-form storytelling, because I feel program notes are usually abysmal. You’ll open a program book and read, “Beethoven was born in 1770, his father was this, his mother was this, he had two siblings, and at eighteen he moved from Bonn to Vienna, and then he did this.” By paragraph five, before you even get to the piece you’re about to hear, I’m checked out — and if I’m checked out, with a lifetime of interest in this, most people are too.

My whole idea is to plunge people right into what was going on when the composer was writing that piece. Take Brahms’s First Symphony — no one cares where he was born, what his father did for work, how many times he moved as a child. What matters is the heat of the moment of composing. What was going on in the composer’s world, and in the world outside his door, as he was writing this?

People love Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” — magnificent, grand melodies, lots of fanfare. Beethoven wrote it after his hearing loss had started, which is miraculous enough on its own — that’s the point you should open with. But he was also writing most of it holed up in his brother’s basement, because the Napoleonic Wars were happening outside in the streets of Vienna. He was downstairs with a pillow over each ear, trying to protect his hearing, and writing this work. As a human, are you going to feel more inspired by a greater sense of resilience and creativity and the indomitable human spirit hearing that story, or hearing that his father got drunk a lot and made him practice piano as a child?

I feel very blessed to do this work. As a child, getting those records and reading the liner notes was so formative to my exploration of music, so to be writing program notes for the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Oregon Symphony — some of the biggest orchestras in the country — and to have fifteen hundred people a night pick up one of those programs, read the essay, and hopefully get inspired, is an absolute blessing. It goes to show your life can take very circuitous routes and still bring you to the thing you dreamed of doing as a child.

The ups and downs of a freelance life are very challenging — it’s not for the faint of heart. But building your own business as a writer, in a world where writers are getting less and less value and respect, makes it a lot easier to go through the work knowing that the work is meaningful and important.

Smith: I have just a few final questions, and they relate to why I reached out to interview you — I see a lot of confluence between your work and mine, your newsletter and my newsletter, the themes we talk about. Earlier, when you talked about Brahms’s First Symphony taking twenty-five years, that resonated with me about slowness in life, about taking the time things take. There are people who strike gold the first time out, but many more of us take apprenticeship, effort after effort, to do something worthy of note in the world.

Do you agree with that? Do you think our two approaches — melancholy music and walking — converge? Where do they converge, and where do they part ways? And do you personally walk as part of your meditative or creative process?

Cirigliano: Walking is very important to me. I remember when we first met a couple of years ago, being so excited that someone was writing a newsletter from that perspective — how we become better people, better creatives, cultivate more creativity through walking. It’s the simplest, most human thing we can do.

I’m very lucky to live in a walkable city. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the walks I take around my neighborhood remind me how lucky I am to live there. They help me cultivate a sense of calm, but also make me realize the abundance around me — especially this time of year, when everyone’s gardens are blooming and these mighty trees, some of which have surely been standing for centuries, form these beautiful canopies over the streets. About a fifteen-minute walk from me is Lake Harriet, one of the chain of lakes Minneapolis is famous for. It’s a wonderful way to get out of my head and into the larger world.

Like so many writers and composers — Beethoven, Mahler — I know they wrote about going on walks in the country to think through their music, though I don’t actively use walks that way myself. If I go out purposefully to work something out, that puts pressure on me, because then the whole point of the walk is to figure it out. Instead, I just go for a walk and let my mind empty out. I don’t stay attached to any thoughts — I let the subconscious do the work. The biggest revelation I’ve had as a writer is learning to let go and let the subconscious do the work when it’s necessary, and there’s no greater mechanism I’ve found for that, other than meditation, than walking.

I love walking on my own, but nothing makes me happier than taking long walks with my husband, or going on a hike. It’s fundamental to me. In fact, we’re having a huge heat wave in Minnesota right now, and nothing makes me sadder than it being too hot for my afternoon walk — I need it, but I can’t deal with a hundred, hundred-and-five-degree heat index and still feel like a creative person afterward.

As for where walking and melancholy music converge — I think it’s as simple as this: both invite us to look inward and outward. They call us to observe the world around us, to move through each day knowing we’re part of a larger tapestry. Walking does that externally — seeing everything growing around you, seeing the bees on the flowers. We’re of no more or less value than that bee. Music does it internally — it invites you to realize that emotions a composer felt three or four hundred years ago resonate within our bodies the same way today. They’re invitations to dig deeper into those feelings, that experience of life, and they let us slough off the anger and the rage and the division we encounter in politics, online, and so much of the larger world.

It’s really impossible to feel stressed or overwhelmed when you’re in the good flow of a walk — when you realize you meant to turn right five blocks ago but were so enraptured in your thoughts, or in the trees you were admiring. The same is true of music. To take a walk, to sit down and listen to a beautiful piece of melancholy music — it’s a choice. A choice to choose calm over rage. A choice not to let anxiety or despair fester, but to alleviate it, to find a release for it.

There’s so much scientific evidence, so much literature, on the physical and mental benefits of both. But I think the most important thing is that musical experience and walking return us to our humanity. I don’t think anything could be more important in a world that’s spiraling out of control. We crave meaningful experiences, beauty, connection — they’re the only way we can truly flourish. Every time we choose a route to walk, or a piece of music to listen to, we’re giving ourselves the chance to experience beauty and connection. We give ourselves room to be human. And when time seems to be collapsing, when life seems to be getting faster and faster, I don’t think there’s any greater gift we can give ourselves than the room to be human.

Smith: Michael, I have totally loved this conversation. I’ve learned so much, I’ve had so much fun talking with you. Let me get you out of here on this last question. Besides reading Shades of Blue, which I think everyone listening should — what’s one thing you’d recommend to people who want to, or are open to, learning more about classical music, listening to it, making it part of their lives?

Cirigliano: If you don’t know whether it’s for you, or if you’ve self-selected out of classical music, the first thing to do is go experience a concert live. We all listen to a lot of music through earbuds — you get a sense of the music moving through you. But if you can attend an orchestral concert, spend an hour and a half or two hours watching seventy or eighty people create music in unison, thinking and moving as one — if you can sit through that and see the couple next to you hold hands during a tender moment in a slow movement, or see me start crying at a certain point and still think, “This isn’t for me” — well, that’s the only real way to find out it’s not for you. And then I might ask you to sit down and spend more time with your emotions.

The first thing to do is go see music performed live, because not only do you get the full, supercharged experience of being in a space where everyone’s energy and focus creates this almost religious, transcendental experience — everyone focused, the music moving through everyone — you understand how visceral that can be. Then it’s just a matter of finding the music that’s right for you, that speaks to you. The great thing about classical music is there are about five hundred years of it. You’re going to find works that speak to you — works I may never have heard myself — and you’re going to be excited to share them with others.

There’s nothing I love seeing more than scrolling through the comments on an orchestra’s Instagram post and seeing someone write, “I loved the experience so much, I’m going back next month and bringing a friend.” You want to share that experience with the people you respect and love and care for. Sharing music is a message of love. We all deserve things in our lives that rev us up, that make us excited to be part of the world. Go experience that with fifteen hundred other people in an auditorium, and you’ll be surprised at the change that takes place in you, and how much it inspires you to realize, “I could be experiencing this all the time. Sign me up.” Then reach for Shades of Blue to figure out where to start.

If you want to channel the absolute power of a large orchestra, I’d give you a whole different set of recommendations. If you heard a Shostakovich symphony he wrote during World War II, while bombs were flying outside, that power, that aggression — you’ve got a whole world of music to explore. And if you want the melancholy, sentimental, sweet side of it, that’s when you come to Shades of Blue. But either way, you’re going to find something that resonates with you.

Smith: I love it, Michael. I loved our conversation. Thank you so much for joining me — I’m very grateful for your time.

Cirigliano: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Russell.

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Last year, I interviewed my friend Sarah Landenwich about her newly-published novel, The Fire Concerto. She and I enjoyed a lovely conversation about the novel, her writing process, researching Polish history, her next book, and much more. Next week, on Tuesday, June 2nd, the paperback edition of The Fire Concerto becomes available. I've already ordered by copy. To celebrate this moment, I'm re-releasing the podcast interview with Sarah.

Below, I share my review of the book, along with some further reflections. Episode links are at the bottom. I hope you enjoy the discussion. Definitely check out Sarah's gorgeous, touching debut novel — in hardcover, e-book, audiobook, and soon in paperback!

In fact, here's what I wrote about it a few weeks ago:

“This will go down as one of my very favorite books this year. I stayed up past 1:00am three nights in a row to finish the book. And let me say, I am no night owl.”The story, masterfully crafted by debut novelist Sarah Landenwich, kept me seeking more and my heart racing. What will happen next? And next? And next?

“My wife, also powerfully drawn into the story, sprinted through it too.

“The novel is about music, mastery, loss and renewal. Mostly, to me, it sang about love. Can we love who we were, and no longer are, and never will be again? And can we love who we are and who we might become? Can we reach out to something — or someone — to walk that tense tightrope, the weaving of past, present and future, with us? Can we love what we find inside of us, and also open our eyes in love to what we discover outside ourselves?

“Beyond beautiful, I cannot recommend it highly enough!”

After our conversation, a few thoughts kept returning to me:

* In the episode, Sarah tells the story of her long journey to getting the book published. It was arduous, but Sarah used it to good effect, learning and improving the steps she was taking. I admire her persistence. It may seem like a simple point, but in the moment, keepin’ on keepin’ on does not always appear as the obvious or correct choice.

* I love her sticking to her guns about where she saw her novel fitting in the market. She believed it had a broader appeal than upscale fem lit. She sought to work with an agent who also viewed it more expansively. And I agree — it is a book for a broad audience. Again, Sarah showed remarkable persistence.

* In her writing, Sarah uses tools that work for her — a legal pad and pen. I did not take her point as "analog tools are better than digital ones for everyone." I took it as analog works for her — and the lesson is to experiment in finding the right tools that work for you in your specific workflow, with your unique proclivities.

* We discuss some forgotten female composers and musicians, such as Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska. (Also read Sarah’s essay about some of them, “What If Your Biography Was Just a Footnote to Somebody Else’s?”) Like Sarah, I found it sad that so many stunningly talented female artists have been lost or nearly faded from history. I also took away another consideration — how beautiful that someone cares about them and their work — enough to write a beautiful story based on them — centuries later!

I can’t speaking highly enough about Sarah’s book and this conversation was a total blast for me! Enjoy!

Episode Links

* The Fire Concerto

* Sarah Landenwich’s website

* Other media coverage of The Fire Concerto

* A playlist of music that helped inspire The Fire Concerto

Information about some forgotten female musicians:

* Marie Moke Pleye

* Maria Szymanowska

* Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska

Thanks for reading Solvitur Ambulando. If you enjoyed this podcast, I’d appreciate it if you would share it!

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Welcome to the Walks of Life podcast. Today's guest is Bryan McGrath, a longtime friend who writes The Conservative Wahoo blog on Substack. Bryan recently retired after a career as an officer in the United States Navy and then as a naval strategist, consultant and advocate. In the Navy, he served as a surface warfare officer, winning the prestigious Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Award for Inspirational Leadership, and then the ship he commanded, the USS Bulkeley, won the USS Arizona Memorial Trophy as the most combat-ready ship in the Navy. He retired with the rank of Commander and turned his energies to consulting on naval matters, tirelessly advocating for a modern, mighty and ever-ready US Navy. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In his writings and in conversation, I always find Bryan a wellspring of clarity and wisdom. I've been eager to interview Bryan for a long time and I know you'll enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Episode Links

* Bryan’s blog, The Conservative Wahoo

* The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, by Thomas Buell

* Wielding the Trident: Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and America’s Victory in the Pacific, by Andrew K. Blackley (to be released March 17, 2026)

* Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment, by David Swensen

(This article contains Amazon Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, which means that by buying from these links, you are supporting Solvitur Ambulando. Thank you!)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sa.life

Welcome to Solvitur Ambulando, which means “Solve It By Walking.” On this journey, we explore the alchemic potency of walking for sorting through life’s puzzles, exploring our world, and transforming ourselves. Like a good walk, you will encounter distinctive ideas, remarkable people and gorgeous scenery. I hope you will enjoy a beautiful walk today. And if you like what you read and hear, please

I love tea. I love the taste, the ritual, the somatic experience of drinking tea. My favorite teas – Keemun Mao Feng Imperial, Nandi Hills, Russian Caravan, and especially Christmas Morning (the greatest tea in the history of teas in this universe or any other universe) —  come from Louisville Tea Company. Two of the owners, Sophia and Sarah Boese, always greet me warmly and point out new teas I might enjoy. I wanted to learn more about tea, the tea business and what makes tea so special, so I asked them to sit down with me. We enjoyed a lovely conversation over a cup of tea. 

Throughout the transcript below, Sophia’s words are in italics; Sarah’s words are in plain text; and my words are in bold. 

This was a fun, spunky, engaging discussion. I loved it and I learned a great deal about one of my passions in life – tea. Enjoy!

Photographs by the amazing Megan Resch.

Let's hit the most important question first. Give me your honest view: can you really live a good, ethical, worthwhile, decent, law-abiding life without tea?

I mean, objectively, yes. I do think my life is better with tea in it, for a lot of reasons. I enjoy tea. I enjoy the way it affects me, caffeine-wise, and the rituals of making it.

I don't know, just the cultural experience of having tea. It's a really fun way to interact with other cultures too. I really like learning more about how the Japanese drink tea and how the Chinese drink tea and being able to integrate that into my day-to-day life. And then also bringing some of their practices into my life outside of tea, which is really nice.

There are so many different traditions. And there are even contradicting traditions within different countries. For example, if I recall correctly, with tea sets in China, having an odd number is considered good luck, whereas an even number of cups is bad luck. But you'll see different things in different places.

You mentioned incorporating tea and non-tea elements from different cultures into your life. Can you share a couple of them? 

My favorite one is actually the Japanese culture of preparing their tea. They sit down and have a full moment with their tea. And I like to integrate that into other parts of my life – I'm going to fully embrace this one thing for this time period and give it the respect that it deserves.

A lot of people who are getting into loose leaf tea for the first time think it's intimidating, so much work and a lot of steps. But that's part of why I like it – having multiple steps to it. You can take your time to breathe and only focus on it and nothing else.

I totally agree. Half the fun is the ritual of it. All the steps.

Waiting for the water.

Waiting for the water.

Actually measuring your tea.

That's exactly right. Are there any other instances you can point to? 

I'm not the biggest fan of meditation. I feel like drinking tea and the ritual is my version of meditation.

You can actually clear your mind and just focus on it.

Yeah, have a think moment of it.

I do love the feeling of having a warm cup of tea in your hands. It's very relaxing. Sipping that warm tea, feeling it in your belly before you go to bed. It's very comforting.

And I know this is a big thing in Chinese and Japanese culture – whenever you break a teacup, and then you're involved with repairing it, you’re involved with the glass, with the gold.

It's kintsugi.

An author I enjoy, Tom White, wrote about these sorts of repairs, kintsugi, recently. 

Mending ceramics with veins of gold. I've also seen it used in jewelry. The idea is that the repair makes the item even more beautiful than it was before.

The mentality that something broken can become so much more beautiful. It's a really nice mentality to carry throughout life.

But in Korean culture, drinking from a cracked or chipped cup is actually bad luck. It's letting bad spirits into your life and you're not supposed to do that. I've had people ask me before to make sure I don't use anything that might have a crack in it. And I'll say, “Yes, absolutely, we'll respect that. Whatever makes you more comfortable.”

Why do you drink tea?

It’s always been a big part of my life. My whole family drinks tea. So I was born into it. But why I still drink tea – first of all, the caffeine. It is amazing. I do love caffeine. But also it just gives me something to drink. I like having different drinks all around. Water gets boring sometimes. So having fun beverages around is really good.

I would call you a beverage girl.

Yeah, absolutely.

Growing up, my mom always liked unsweet iced tea with lemon, everywhere we went. As a teenager, Sophia was already into tea. Nicolette [Spears, Sophia’s sister and Sarah’s cousin, and another partial owner of the shop] was already very into tea. They're the ones that first got me to taste it and realize that tea doesn't need to have stuff added to it. Tea can be really tasty on its own. As a teenager, I also drank a lot of coffee and energy drinks. My caffeine tolerance was very different than it is now. Now, as a 25 year old, I cannot have caffeine after 6pm. And honestly, my black tea cut off is around 4pm. Also, I like the wide variety of tea. We normally have 160 to 200 different kinds of tea in the shop. So when people tell me they don’t like tea, with so many different types, I know there's going to be something you enjoy.

If you're open to it and willing to give it a try, you'll find something you enjoy, even if it is just a chai latte.

It's one thing to enjoy drinking tea, or even appreciate the ritual in making tea, and an entirely different thing  to own and run a tea shop. Tell me how Louisville Tea Company got started and why you are involved.

My sister Nicolette used to work at a tea shop in Arizona. When she moved to Louisville, she realized there was no tea shop in this area. And then I would come visit and we would be in desperate need of tea. And we're thinking, “there's no tea here!”

Sophia would come from Arizona and be tasked to bring tea from the tea shop Nicolette used to work at.

We needed tea here. So then Nicolette and Nick [Spears, Nicolette’s husband and a part owner of the shop] decided to open up a tea business. And I really liked that idea. So after I graduated high school, I decided to come and join them. Then Sarah followed suit soon thereafter.

The business has been open for 11 years now. Soph officially moved here seven years ago. I've been here for six years now. Now, all four of us own the shop. 

I don't know why your answers made me think of this, but tell me about the bubble or baba tea phenomenon.

Boba.

Boba, baba, bubble, whatever.

When you're reading this interview, I totally get you.

Do you like it?

I love boba.

Yeah. I think it's really good. We get boba together a lot. 

We don’t serve boba because we are not set up to make it here. But I'm a big fan., I was a big fan before I came here. As a little kid, my favorite pudding was tapioca. And it still is, which I realize is the old person pudding, but whatever. I always liked it.

Pudding is the old people's pudding.

Yeah. Boba is like a milk tea. You'll have a dark tea base with milk and sugar, and large tapioca pearls. Normally with brown sugar or something inside them.

My kids tell me, “take us to the boba tea place!”

Have you ever had it?

I have taken sips of theirs.

You’re not a fan of the texture?

I think it is the texture that bothers me.

Yeah. I know a lot of people who don’t like the texture.

It’s  funny because my boba drinks tend to not even contain tea. I get lemonades with fun things in them because they're tasty.

Mine tend to be closer to milkshakes.

We definitely love boba and like people who like it.

We get stuff that is so different from what we serve here.

That's a good point. Boba is really different from what you all serve here.

This is a bit of a tangent – but when we first opened, we didn’t have all of this retail. We only had a bunch of tables.

Oh, okay.

So it was more focused on being somewhere to sit and enjoy tea. We had scones and that was about it.

We had a couch here at one point.

This lower bar wasn't here, if I remember correctly. But it didn't bring in a whole lot of revenue. We were still new. We didn't have a known customer base. We shifted to carrying a lot more retail and teaware items. We realized no one was fulfilling that niche here. If people wanted those items, they had to buy them online. Today, half of what we are is essentially a gift shop. I will see a lot of regulars only around the holidays because they're buying gifts for people. They're not even tea people themselves.

What are your all's favorite teas?

I am a big traditional person. I used to be a lot more into flavored teas, but nowadays I feel like I'm mostly doing traditional teas.

When you say “traditional,” what does that mean? Black tea?

Black teas, white teas, any tea that doesn't have anything added into it.

So no fruit or flowers?

Traditional teas tend to be only the tea leaves from the plant.

The way our menu is organized – the first couple pages are traditional teas. These are the straight tea leaf, nothing else. The following pages are the flavored teas, which includes a wide array of teas. They can have spices added or orange peel, for example. 

Anything with flavor added into it is on the flavor pages. That's what most people get. Again, there's no wrong way to drink tea.

The very first tea from here that I dranks was Bourbon Cream, which is a very rich, cocoa heavy black tea. But nowadays it's a little sweet for my palate. I drink a lot of Peaches n’ Cream, which is a peach vanilla black tea, when it's hot, it tastes heavier on the vanilla. And when it's iced, it tastes more peachy; it’s a little more refreshing. I also like Black Pearl, which is a traditional dark oolong with undertones of apples and honey. I really like that one because it can be resteeped – you can use the leaves more than once. They're actually a rolled leaf. Each time you brew it, it unrolls a little bit more and you get a slightly different taste.

You mentioned oolong. Can you tell me a bit about the different types of tea? Black and oolong and green and so on?

So first things first, all tea comes from the exact same plant.

Do you want to be fancy? It's the camellia sinensis plant.

All tea comes from the exact same plant. What makes different types of tea is how it's processed after it's picked or when during the season it's picked. White teas are the lightest of the teas. They tend to be the first picked and the least processed of the teas. Black teas tend to be the last picked and go through more oxidation.

White tea is picked and almost immediately dried. Whereas black tea goes through almost 100% oxidation. Oxidation refers to its exposure to the air. It can mean roughing up the leaves a little bit. But with black tea, oxidation makes the tea much darker and much more caffeinated. It can also make it more bitter.

That's also where the color of the tea comes from. I'm drinking a white tea right now. You can see that it's very light in color when compared to this black tea. 

One of the easiest ways to explain it is looking on a scale. Black tea is your strongest, darkest and most caffeinated. Below that you have oolong tea. If black tea gets oxidized 100%, then oolong gets oxidized somewhere between 70% and 30%.  You can have dark oolongs with more oxidation versus light oolongs with less. Below oolong tea is green tea, which gets  oxidized at about 20% Finally, at the bottom of the scale, there is white tea, which doesn't get any oxidation.

Then Pu-erh tea is special. It’s fermented, which is a different process than what happens to other teas. The fermentation makes pu-erh earthy and dark. .

The fermentation also makes it really good for your digestive system. If you want something to help with gut health, we recommend pu-erh. It can be a bit of an acquired taste because it is so earthy and so dark, but it's not too heavy in caffeine.

What about matcha tea?

Matcha is a Japanese green tea that has been ground up into a fine powder. With  most teas, you brew the tea then you strain the leaves out. With matcha, the powder is dissolved into the water and you drink it whole. 

That's why it's so caffeinated.

You're getting all your green tea benefits, but at a higher level. Matcha gets mentioned in a lot of health articles.

Are there any other big categories of tea we haven't talked about?

Yeah, so there's a lot of different ones. There's like yellow tea, there's purple tea, there's dark tea.

But those ones get really niche. We tend not to have those in our shop. We have a purple tea. Most purple and yellow teas can be categorized as a type of green tea.

Yellow and purple teas tend to be very rare In our shop, we usually only carry yellow teas with our “Extraordinarily Rare Tea Sampler” around the holidays. Occasionally we’ll carry one in limited quantities. 

Dark tea is basically a fancy pu-erh. It goes through the fermentation process in a slightly different way than regular pu-erh. 

Talk to me about different tea growing regions. It’s grown in India, China and Japan, right?

Again, all tea comes from the same plant. But the ground, the soil, the climate in which it is grown makes a huge difference in how it tastes. Japanese tea doesn't taste anything like Chinese tea. 

The same tea grown in different regions is going to taste different. Here are interesting examples of this phenomenon: our Sencha High Grade, which is a Japanese green tea, and our Gyokuro, which is another Japanese green tea. They are exactly the same, except the Gyokuru is grown on the side of a mountain in the shade. So it has to fight a little harder to survive. Those different conditions make for different tastes. Also, the same tea can vary from year to year based on different weather experienced in that region.

One of the funny things we say about tea is the harder the plant has to work, the better the tea normally is.

Suffer for us!

Exactly. If it's struggling to grow in the shade, it develops a much greater depth of flavor.

We had one tea, a purple tea, Purple Wild Buds, named that because it was actually picked wild. It had a really unique nutty flavor. It even had differently shaped leaves, much larger than most tea leaves.

Tea is pretty picky about weather. It likes pretty damp weather, but not too damp. Normally if an area can grow rice, it can grow tea. There are a few places in America that grow tea – around Charleston, South Carolina, for instance.

We visited Charleston Tea Garden last July, which is their picking season. They have the oldest tea plants in the country – a crossbreed of Indian and Chinese plants. It was also abandoned at one point, so some random crossbreeding happened too.

Which actually makes the tea a lot more fun and interesting to taste.

It does.

If the tea's growing into too much of a controlled biome. You're like, this tastes weird.

The amount of harvest you get per year is normally going to be weather dependent. Really dependent on how many inches of rain you get.

So like most crops.

Yeah, exactly.

It is a plant after all.

The standard is what, three harvests per year?

I think so, yeah.

If you've ever heard the term “first flush,” it means the first pick of the season. It tends to have some of the most delicate, highest quality taste.

And is that in spring? 

Yes. Spring.

So spring, and there's one in summer, and then there's one in fall?

Basically. It’s in late summer rather than fall.

You all sell a really cool kind gift pack of teas around the holidays, the “Exceptionally Rare Tea Sampler.” How do you put that together and choose those teas? 

We mostly find those teas from a tea convention that’s a worldwide tea expo. It’s very big, there’s a lot of people there, it’s very fancy.

And I have not been invited!?

You cannot go because it's only a business thing. I'm so sorry. It is exclusive to people in the business.

I have an LLC and I'm interviewing people about tea right now! That is my tea business. I'm a writer in the business. How am I not in the business?

I don't know what their press stance is. 

You should look into it. It's the World Tea Expo and it happens in Las Vegas every year. It is very fun to go.

Yeah, go for it. 

And there's a really big showroom in the arena where you can walk around and taste a bunch of teas and interact with a lot of people.

But the expo is focused on getting new teas or new retail products to sellers. There are of course a lot of classes, which focus on topics like tea mixing or tasting notes. I took one class in which a wine sommelier talked about how tea and wine have a lot of the same tasting notes and use a lot of the same tasting language. I do find being here in Louisville, many people know a lot about alcohol and alcohol tasting. So I can say certain words to them and it makes sense to them. With traditional teas, since they are straight teas, you have to describe them based on their undertones. I can say “this tea has a cocoa note to it, there's no chocolate in it, but their undertone is cocoa.” That's how you differentiate it. Someone with experience with alcohol tasting, it’s normally a lot easier to get them on board with that description. One of the reasons we were actually working with a wine person is we were trying to get tea into restaurants. It can be hard to get a restaurant to commit to new teas, especially loose leaf teas, because they’re worried about the process and the time it takes. But if they have a wine sommelier, they normally advocate for good, loose leaf teas. They know the taste and smell and experience benefits of selling fine teas in the restaurant. We currently work with a few different restaurants, coffee shops and breweries in town. 

TEN20 Brewery is the new one carrying our teas. 

Okay, so I diverted us from the question about the “Exceptionally Rare Tea Sampler.”

Attending the World Tea Expo is normally how we find those teas.

Another way is by getting samples from our suppliers. Specifically for the Exceptionally Rare Tea Sampler, we want to get really rare, really high quality teas that we wouldn’t be able to sell otherwise. And putting six of them in one sampler means we can sell them at a more approachable price range than if we sold one of those teas by itself. Back to yellow teas, I think including them in the Sampler is the only way we’ve sold them. 

Because yellow tea tends to be a very high price point, and it's just not an approachable price point for most people. By putting it in the sampler, people who want to taste these super fancy teas have a way to do that.

Going back to the notion of having a wine sommelier – one year I hosted an afternoon tea for some of my Mom’s friends. I came here for the tea. A friend hosted with me. She keeps telling me, “Russell, you need to become a Japanese tea master.” Is there such a thing? Can I become one? 

No, you can't become one.

Technically you can be certified to do certain things, especially in Japan.

What does “certain things" mean?

We’ve talked about matcha a bit, right? With matcha in Japan, there are actually very particular ceremonies around it. There are different levels of particularity. You can get a certification to be able to perform them traditionally and officially. They can get very fancy. For instance, if you're going to be part of the ceremony, you're not supposed to eat or drink beforehand. You're not supposed to talk during the entire ceremony.

These ceremonies take at least an hour. Sometimes they can take seven hours, depending on how many people are participating. There’s no certification for “I know tea really well.”  It’s not like that. But you can be certified for certain practices of tea. It depends on the culture that you're talking about  too.

So I cannot become a tea master because I am not Japanese?

Non-Japanese people can become certified, but you have to live in Japan. 

If I remember correctly, I don't think there is an official title of tea master.

So you’re saying I can make it up? “I AM A TEA MASTER!”

You can absolutely lie to people about this.

I don't know how many people will respect that.

I've worked here for like seven, seven plus years, honestly, and I would not consider myself a tea master. I know so much about tea. It's a long road to learn about tea. You’d be studying for years and years. 

I have so much to learn. I have  confidence in saying that  because I'm of the mindset that there is always more to learn. And there is always new information coming out, such as the idea of matcha having all these health benefits. Now you are reading articles about it all the time, but in the West, that is a new thing. And news and insights about tea are constantly coming out.

But also, America is not, shall I say, an especially ritualistic society.

It's fast-paced.

Right – it's not a ceremonial society. The idea of simply sitting down for an hour and only focusing on your tea –  that would blow people's minds. Americans wouldn't know what to do.

We noticed that since Covid, there has been a major uptick in people interested in tea sets. Maybe because people were at home more, they got more interested in making it more of a ceremony, more of a process, and taking their time with it.

Covid made people slow down and appreciate the small things in life.

That being said, at the Expo in 2019, we were looking at stats. Tea, in the U.S., is mostly about ready-made drinks. Bottled pre-made tea, even more than tea bags.

Honestly, that was a big trend in China and Japan too – buying your pre-made bottled tea at the convenience or grocery store.  

In Japan, villages that for generations grew and picked tea, the younger generations are no longer interested in it. They cared more about boba or fun pre-made drinks.

Like McDonald’s sweet tea or Lipton Brisk iced tea?

Not so much that. Still a little more Japanese. But there is a labor problem too. Villages where tea is grown – those people are starting to age and the younger generations aren’t as interested in that work.  

That’s a fascinating point. Craig Mod is a writer I enjoy a great deal. He's an American, but he lives in Japan. He wrote a book called Kissa by Kissa. A kissa is akin to a coffee house. They have limited menus – coffee and usually a few food items. They're all dying out. The owners are all elderly, usually well past retirement age – and none of their kids want to be involved in the kissa. These kissa tend to be on little country roads connecting different towns. Not Tokyo.

Yeah – that's the thing. You see it more with the smaller villages because the younger generation is just not staying there.

Younger generations always want to rebel against older generations. That's just a fact of life.

Speaking of coffee – how do people connect differently with tea than with coffee?

There are people who get really into coffee and I am not one of those people. But as a casual enjoyer of coffee, I feel like it's on the same level of how we partake of and enjoy tea. There are a lot of nuances to enjoying coffee.

There is an American culture connected to coffee, especially in workplaces. “I need my coffee to get going and to be able to function throughout the day.” Break rooms or cafeterias in office buildings are a lot more likely to have coffee in them than tea. If they do have tea stuff, it's usually only tea bags. I have a lot of regulars who come during their lunch breaks a few times a week. They work in offices which only supply coffee in the break room. In America, I think coffee is much more accessible in the workplace than tea. 

It's just one of those things that's always there. So it's easy to get into.

Whereas with tea, of course you have Southern sweet tea. Or you have people who see tea as something medicinal – “I only drink tea when I'm sick or when I want to fall asleep.”

Or – “I only drink matcha because it's super-healthy for me.”  And that is a good reason to drink matcha. One of our biggest clienteles is people looking to get healthier with tea. You should also be drinking matcha because it tastes good! I feel like having that health-only approach with tea can be negative sometimes. 

Or it can be limiting. People come in with a list of herbs and they say, “I want tea with these herbs because I read that they have health benefits.” You absolutely can do that – we have a medicinal section in our menu. But it’s a bit of a different view of tea, and I don't think people approach coffee in quite the same way.

Definitely.

I want to come back to the question of connecting with tea. How do you see people connect with tea?

A lot of people come in who do like the taste. They love exploring the different flavors. We have a lot of different teas for a reason, even if it can be intimidating. 

It's such a person-by-person, intimate experience. There are definitely people who only drink it for health benefits. Then there are some people who drink tea every day because it's part of their ritual and it's their favorite thing to drink.

I love the experience of people coming in to buy tea for other people. It’s an easy bonding point –” I know they like tea. It's the easiest thing I can get for them that I know they'll enjoy.” It's a safe move.

Exactly.

My sister-in-law and I – one of our closer bonding points was how much she loves tea and her getting  my brother to start drinking tea finally. For a long time he would only drink tea when he wasn't feeling well.She opened him up to enjoying it. And he's a big coffee drinker, – like four shots of espresso per drink. So that was a big thing. Now when I send her tea, he has requests too.

Tea also tends to be a community thing – sharing like a teapot with a friend, for example.

Even in that medicinal vein, I'll have people come in and say, “My daughter-in-law is having her first baby. So I want to get her the New Mother's Tea.”

My wife doesn't love tea, but she loves going to tea. That's one of our favorite things to do as a family over the holidays.

One of my favorite memories with family visiting us here – Sophia’s now sister-in-law and my mom were in town. We went to Sister’s Tea in Buckner, Kentucky. They had the three-tiered tea trays. We all dressed up. It was a whole experience and it was lovely. Unfortunately, that place has closed. 

How many people come in here asking for coffee?

A lot. Most are joking. When they’re serious, I will say there is a reason we don't carry coffee. We have some really delicate teas and if they were stored next to coffee, they would start tasting like coffee. So if the options were having a wide range of teas or having teas and coffee, we chose the wide range of teas. There are a lot of amazing local coffee businesses.

Tea and coffee, they are so similar. Many people view them as on the same plane. But they are also so vastly different because they involve vastly different brewing processes.

I'll enjoy a cup of coffee, but I could not tell you how to properly brew anything fancy.

I've never drank coffee in my life.

What are some good books or articles about tea?

I do have one off the top of my head – 19 Lessons on Tea. It’s an easy intro on all the basics, like the different types of tea, what makes them different. Uh, actually, I think Nicolette, my cousin, is quoted or thanked in it.

Away from the shop, could you tell me about some of your tea rituals? What does tea mean to you? How do you celebrate it? How do you drink it? 

On my perfect day off, if I have no obligations, I'm sitting at home and I love to make tea in the Gaiwan style. So it has a full little cup and a little lid. You make a bunch of brews of the same tea over and over again. I like to do this with the Tung Ting Oolong that you can steep multiple times. It goes all day. It's ridiculous. Something about the process of making the same cup of tea over and over again and noticing the small details in it and being able to appreciate this full tea for what it is. It's really good.

Tell me more about gaiwan. I have a gaiwan travel set, but I don’t use it much. I have this set.

Honestly not trying to push it, but I love carrying this set around. I mean, it’s  just so cute.

This is the one I use at my own house too. I love this set.

I really like the glaze on it. It's a very satisfying feel.

Yeah. It's amazing.

Not to be all product placement. It is wonderful.

I'm not endorsing it. I'm saying it's good. Gaiwan is a really great way to brew tea. It's the traditional Chinese way to make tea. It opens up the tea leaves for a much different experience than you would have with brewing the tea.

Now you're convincing me to take this on my trip.

With the Gaiwan, you put the tea directly in and then pour the water on top. Then you gently strain the tea. But most of the tea leaves remain, so you're drinking it with tea leaves still in the cup. That’s the best way to drink tea because you get the full body flavor of it and all the nuances of it.

If you ever order a sample cup in the shop, it's made in a Gaiwan. We brew it stronger than we normally recommend brewing tea and you'll get a little bit of the leaf in the cup. So you get the truest flavor.

Just hook them with the caffeine.

Exactly.

You're supposed to use a heaping teaspoon per every eight ounces of water. For our sample cups, we use a heaping teaspoon per every five ounces. So it's not an insane amount!

It's a little bit more than you generally would use. 

You can get the real depth of flavor that way.

Do you all drink the Global brands of tea, like Lipton and Bigelow?

I'm going to be real. I only drink our tea. The only time I don't drink our tea is if  I’m out at a restaurant and want a cup of tea with my meal. If I'm at a sushi restaurant, I'm going to drink tea. Or, when someone gives me a specialty tea, I will absolutely drink it. Or, when I'm traveling, I like to visit other tea shops and I will drink tea there. But day to day,  I only drink our tea.

It is rare that I drink other teas. One of the lovely things about working at a tea shop is people will say, “ I traveled to this country and I brought some tea back. Do you want to try it?” And that is awesome! We also get samples from our suppliers so we can taste a wide range of teas and that is always fun!

But it's not like you sit in the back of your shop and pound a McDonald's sweet tea.

No. We will have the occasional Arizona Ginseng Tea, but that’s almost more of a juice.

Besides here and Trader Nicks Tea in Florida, what are your favorite tea shops?

Sadly, we have not left America. That is something I want to do in my life –  travel and taste teas from outside of the country.

Being able to have freshly picked tea from a Japanese tea-growing area would be amazing. 

Literal dream stuff like that. Within America, if we happen to be traveling to a city, it’s fun to see what’s out there. We’re originally from Phoenix, and when we’re there, we go to the local tea shops to visit family or friends. 

In Phoenix and all of Arizona, I am a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf fan. They are obviously a coffee shop, but they also have a really nice selection of loose leaf teas. If I have a matcha craving it's my go-to, because  they'll give me something good.

One of the funny parts about going to different tea shops is that I am so intimately familiar with the wholesalers that sell loose tea. So I'll be looking at other places’s menus and I'm thinking, “I know exactly where you buy your tea from. And I know exactly what tea I'm getting here because I sell it.” Sometimes I go to tea shops, and it doesn't feel like a new experience because I already know all of their teas because we sell the same teas.

All right. We're done with the nice questions. Tell me about the tea mafia.

The sketchy stuff.

The sketchy side of the tea industry.

The backdoor deals. Yeah. Sadly, it's not that sketchy or anything.

Oh, come on.

I hate to disappoint you. I'm not secretly buying tea from someone at the back door.

The bricks of thousand dollar bills hidden in tea. I know they exist. Come on.

The sketchiest thing we have to do is wire money to people in Japan because we're getting a giant order of  fresh tea from Japan.

Generally speaking, we work with about a dozen main suppliers and a few specialty suppliers.

All of our Exceptionally Rare Tea Samplers, we only contact those suppliers for those special teas.

A lot of the exceptionally rare teas are small batch or they come from companies that only do hand picking. So, they have a limited quantity. That's why if a tea is in the Exceptionally Rare Tea Sampler, it's unlikely we will ever be able to get ahold of it again. One time I was at a tea expo and I had a Colombian white tea. It was the sweetest natural tea I've ever had while still being delicate and light. We can no longer find it.

I still think about that tea too, honestly. It's sweet. It was a really good tea.

That's awesome. That's great.

We had a 2007 Hunan dark tea that had natural buttery caramel notes. I would drink that as often as I felt comfortable doing for it being such an exceptionally special tea. We carried it the first two years I was here. We sold out and we can never get it again. And it is probably my favorite tea I've ever had.

Tea is definitely one of those things that gets better with age. Aged tea is a very big thing. If you get something that's aged from a specific year, you're never going to be able to get that tea again. It's aged from that specific year.

These logs over here are from 2012. I'll actually open this up for you.

I don't think you ever found a way to sell one of those to me.

Get out, people! Have you never seen this?

No, I’ve never seen it.

This is an aged tea from 2012. It's wrapped in bamboo. It gets more expensive with age because it is actively aging in there.

The price increases every year.

What's the price right now?

It's $65 for the little one. We sold a couple of the little ones. We had a customer who was drinking it on the regular and they said it lasted them about a year.

Right now, this large one is $285. If you're drinking tea daily, it will last you about three years.

If somebody buys that today, will it actually be better at the end, in three years, than it is today?

Sophia: Yeah. If you store it properly. Of course, if something happens to it.

Mostly, you need to make sure it doesn't get exposed to moisture.

We would recommend that you piece off a chunk of it and then seal it back up.

Let me ask a different question. One dirty secret in the restaurant business is – everyone says “sea bass” on the menu, but it’s really some much cheaper fish. You know, like bluegill from Kentucky lakes. What is the sea bass of the tea world?

It would technically be China Keemun, but it doesn't feel like a dirty secret, because we openly tell people about it.

We are pretty honest as a company about our dirty secrets.

We are pretty straightforward with people about this, but China Keemun is a very standard black tea. On it’s own, it doesn’t have much of a unique flavor. It's our cheapest black tea at the moment. It is the base of a lot of flavored black teas.

This isn't a tea that you would want to drink by itself much. If you're a big fan of Kentucky Morning? This is what Kentucky Morning is made of. Then the other dirty secret – but again, we are very open about this – is the Milky Oolong controversy. Milky Oolong is a fake tea.

What is it?

Milky Oolong and Milk Oolong are two different things. This is a real Milk Oolong. It’s only oolong tea, nothing added. It gets its taste naturally. It has that creaminess. It tastes like milk. When you steep it several times, it gets milkier. It gets better. Milky Oolong is not that. It has things added to it.

It's artificial. Milky Oolong has been steamed with milk to give you that milky taste. The first couple steeps have the strongest milk taste, but it goes away with multiple steeps, basically the reverse of a Milky Oolong. People will come in asking for Milky Oolong. We can do that. But I tell them we have a true Milk Oolong too, which currently is our Jin Xuan Jade. 

And again, we are open about this. I want to tell people that we are not lying to you. We just have a Milky Oolong and a Milk Oolong.

Some last few questions. What’s your favorite thing about being involved in the tea world, having a tea shop and getting to interact with people in a retail environment, but a highly specialized, unique one? 

I might be reiterating this, but it’s the communal aspect. We get an immediate connection with people because we already have this shared interest.

Tea can be such a niche interest. When  you find someone who also really likes tea, you just want to talk about tea.

It's a strong connection immediately. Comparing it to coffee, coffee is so broad. You're not going to find similarities with people simply because you both like coffee.

Everybody's at Starbucks.

Yeah, like, “oh wow, you drank a cup of coffee this morning.” But if you say, “I drank a cup of tea this morning,” another tea lover reacts, “Ooh, a tea!”

I love when someone comes in, traveling from out of state and they're so excited to see new tea stuff. And they’re excited that someone cares about tea and is excited to talk about it. There's so much to tea. You could be excited about so many different aspects of it.

People come in a lot asking about the right way to brew tea. We have an answer for you. We can tell you how to brew tea.

We have our standard. I tell people the general rule of thumb – a heaping teaspoon per eight ounces of water.

But there's so many different ways to make tea. It depends on the tea. And it also depends on what culture you're interacting with. Someone born in India will brew their Indian chai in a different way from how I will recommend someone from here brew it. The person from India already knows how to do it. They've done it their whole life.

A classic, traditional Indian way of making masala chai is putting the spices and the black tea on the stove with milk and brewing it in milk and then straining it out. But we tell people – letting the black tea sit in hot liquid for that long will actually release a lot of tannins and make the tea really bitter. A lot of our Indian teas are on the much stronger side, because that's more of the palate. In fact, a lot of English tea drinking comes from Indian teas which has a really strong, dark tea base. That's why you'll see people in England putting a lot of milk and sugar in it, to balance out that strength. Then we have some black teas that I would not recommend putting milk and sugar in, because it's going to taste like watery milk and sugar.

You're drinking jasmine green tea? You put milk in it – that's not the right way.

That's a choice. But with Gongfu style, you brew tea for 10 to 30 seconds. And you do that six times or more. That's such a different method from what we normally tell people. That's why I don't like saying there's any hard or fast, right or wrong, ways of brewing tea. People ask what sweetener we would recommend with teas. And I really think that is personal preference. You're the one drinking it, you should enjoy it. You should make it and enjoy it how you like.

Another one people ask about a lot is when to end steep times. Like, don’t ever steep for longer than five minutes or the tea will taste bitter. But some people like bitter tea. If you want to steep it for seven minutes to pull out more astringency, go for it. 

I probably steep my tea less than three minutes.

And there's nothing wrong with that either.

Drink it how you enjoy it. I make my tea strong.

I make my tea so strong.

I'll use a 12 ounce cup and put two teaspoons in it.

When we make cups for regular customers, we add two teaspoons in these 16 oz. cups. Every time I make tea for myself, I add three teaspoons because I like my tea strong. I want the added flavor in there.

If I'm making a tea for a health benefit, it wouldn't be wild for me to put six teaspoons in there.

I have absolutely made a cup this size that has eight teaspoons of tea in it. But I've also made a cup this size that has one teaspoon of tea in it.

This is why you can be energetic at the end of the day.

Exactly. This is why we have so much energy.

When I brew our caffeine free teas, most of them don't over-brew.  Our labels say to steep five-plus minutes on them. But I'll just tie them off and leave the bag in the cup. I have people who come in and ask me to do that with their regular black teas, which I would never personally do for myself, but it's how they prefer it.

I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life if you're enjoying tea.

You’re the one drinking tea.

OK, so I am curious – what’s your favorite book? 

I'm actually a very big reader. I read books every day. And asking for my favorite book is like asking for my favorite tea. I do not have one. I will just ramble about 70 of them!

What's your favorite recent book then?

My favorite recent book is either Song of Achilles or Iron Widow, because I've read them in the past month. That will change next month. I will have a new favorite book, just like I'll have a new favorite tea next month. But I don't know. It also depends on my mood because my favorite fantasy book is nothing like my favorite romance book. My favorite romance book is nothing like my favorite sci-fi book.

Or ones with like childhood nostalgia. So I have a very different answer, because what I consider as my favorite book, I first read in sixth grade. I was about 12 years old. The Giver by Lois Lowry. I read a lot when I was younger, say fourth grade. Then I had a bit of a lull where I didn’t. Then in sixth grade, I picked up The Giver and I was so invested in it, it got me back into the habit of reading. I wrote a book report twice as long as it needed to be because I was so enthusiastic about it. I own a few copies of it because I have some special versions of it. I haven’t read it in years, but it still has a place in my heart. 

Multiple versions of books –  totally underrated. It’s amazing.

I do it too, honestly. I have fancy editions and then I have copies I actually read because I don't want to read my fancy editions.

That's exactly right.

If I have a signed copy of a book, I have a trash version of it too.

I'm not gonna read that signed version.

I've got about 10 versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey.

I have at least four versions of The Iliad.

I want to see different covers and read different translations. 

Sophia's brother, my cousin, Andrew does bookbinding, with his company Optics Binding. So we've received gifts that are very fancy versions of books.

That's awesome.

We both love to read. I think together we have over 600 books at our house. I like to read basically everything. I'll read comics, I'll read whatever I can get my hands on.

If we are talking about books, I have to give a shout out to Percy Jackson, the children’s series. 

I read it when I was 12 and I still love it. I have feelings about Percy Jackson the way that a lot of people have feelings about Harry Potter.  It was such a big part of my childhood, part of why I love reading.

It got me super into mythology – not only Greek mythology. Sixth grade was when we started studying world history and looking into different mythologies. I still love to look into them. 

I own mythology textbooks because they're really fun to read. Percy Jackson got me into that.

I'm not huge into non-fiction books. But mythology got me a lot more into world history and culture.

Well, Sarah and Sophia – this has been so much fun! It’s been awesome! 

Thank you! This was great –  I'm so happy we did this! This was very enjoyable!

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sa.life

Welcome to Solvitur Ambulando, which means "Solve It By Walking." On this journey, we explore the alchemic potency of walking for sorting through life's puzzles, exploring our world, and transforming ourselves. Like a good walk, you will encounter distinctive ideas, remarkable people and gorgeous scenery. I hope you will enjoy a beautiful walk today. And if you like what you read and hear, please

Today I am joined by one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite people – Sara Campbell. How to describe Sara? Writer, coach, marketing executive, Zen Buddhist practitioner and now lay teacher, we met through the writing collective called Foster. Meeting her in person during a Foster retreat highlighted that experience.

I view Sara as one of the few people peering deep into the heart of modern society, facing it honestly, and reflecting back something worthy of our attention. Her Substack, Tiny Revolutions, is on my short list of must-reads as soon as a new issue comes out. To me, most importantly she is a friend.

Sara and I enjoyed a far-ranging conversation. We discussed community and whether a vibrant community can exist without some in-person contact; her Mount Rushmore of writers; the fast-evolving world of creative work; her attraction to Zen Buddhism; the passing of her mother and becoming buddies with her father; why we need to stay close to who we are in this hectic, sometimes crazy modern world; and much more.

We enjoyed a beautiful, heartfelt discourse. I keep returning to the themes we discussed:

* Sara has been a writer her entire life. She has coached and now has become a Zen teacher. The interplay between writing and teaching makes sense, and not only for research-intensive, university-level teachers. In some ways, both teachers and writers seek to leave something of themselves to posterity, to eternity.

* The mandate of the Oracle at Delphi to “Know Thyself” always struck me as an urgent calling into introspection. Perhaps. But Sara articulates another side — we know who we are, in part at least, by and through our lives in community. As she says, “I don’t think we can truly become ourselves without other people.”

* Sara urges us to keep our Why at the center of our work. As the former Hindu priest Dandapani writes, “Discovering your life’s purpose should be your sole focus if you don’t know it. Don’t stop until you discover it. Then you can spend the rest of your life living in alignment with that purpose.”

* We find ourselves under perpetual bombardment from people, companies and brands telling us who we should be, how we should spend our time, what we should buy, and what we should aspire to. Sara urges us to preserve time to reflect on and rediscover who we are, what we believe and what we stand for. Whether we engage in zazen, meditation, prayer or another such practice, it is a vital defense against that onslaught.

Thank you, Sara, for such a lovely conversation!

Episode Links

* Sara’s website

* Sara’s Substack, Tiny Revolutions

* Angel City Zen Center

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sa.life

Welcome to Solvitur Ambulando, which means "Solve It By Walking." On this journey, we explore the alchemic potency of walking for sorting through life's puzzles, exploring our world, and transforming ourselves. Like a good walk, you will encounter distinctive ideas, remarkable people and gorgeous scenery. I hope you will enjoy a beautiful walk today. And if you like what you read and hear, please

In this episode of “Walks of Life,” we have a great treat. Joining me is Katy Bowser Hutson. Katy has written a book of poetry, Now I Lay Me Down to Fight, about her way through cancer. Now she is writing a book called Play Book, about how the notions of play and playfulness weave through Scripture. I recently got to meet Katy in Nashville, along with our amazingly creative friend Alice Smith. It was such a joy and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed following Katy’s progress on Play Book through her Substack, Katy Plays. And I cannot wait to read the book when it comes out.

As I’ve reflected on my discussion with Katy, a few points have struck me:

* Katy mentions how Play Book “is the natural consequence of everything I’ve done in my life.” That comment reminded me of a recent “The Narrative” podcast epsiode with Ghost Agency CEO Adam Delehanty: “Don’t follow your passion; surrender to your destiny.” We hear so often, “follow your passion,” and I’ve found that unhelpful advice. Many of us have many passions, so which one do we follow? Or do we follow some or many or all of them? But the sense that Katy gives us is of a natural progression in life. That makes a of of sense to me.

* We talk about play and seriousness — how they seem quite similar and also very different. It reminds me of Roger Federer. Yes, he had serious things at stake as he played tennis — money, rankings, prestige and so on. But he so clearly viewed it and felt tennis as a game, as play. Here we get into tricky advice — such as “you must be desireless.” Well, if I am desiring to be desireless, um, don’t I still have … a desire? True, and yet, the wisdom of the ages speaks clearly — it seems paradoxical and yet that is the aim. So perhaps with play and seriousness — we must run the narrow gamut that seems to separate them, and acknowledge that space is as but a shadow.

* Katy tells us she is writing this book for adults. Kids innately intuit play — they are playful beings. As we age, life beats the play from us. In the modern, hyper-scheduled, everything’s rushed world, we adults must rekindle the fire of play inside us.

* At one point, Katy says, “play is voluntary and self-forgetting.” At their best, so are prayer and meditation. Back to the relationship of play and seriousness.

* As you’ll hear, in this process of writing Play Book, she is exploring ways to infuse play into her life. There is concordance between approach and output. It reminds me of Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. If you’re going to write a book about displaying data, you might have a particular approach about … about showing data. I recall him telling us in one of his classes: “I couldn’t find a publisher who would print this book and the data the way they needed to be shown. So I created my own publishing house to show the data the way they need to be shown.” Again — concordance between approach and output matters.

I loved this talk with Katy! She is witty, fun, imaginative and supremely attuned to language. I hope you enjoy this conversation too!

Episode Notes

Katy’s Substack, “Katy Plays”

Katy’s personal site

Katy’s poetry book, Now I Lay Me Down to Fight

The Practice by Seth Godin

Troy Cady and Playfull

The God Who Plays by Brian Edgar

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson

On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs by Fr. James V. Schall, SJ

Second Act by Henry Oliver (and listen to my interview with him here)

“Kingfishers Catch Fire” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, contained in this edition of his works

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola

Fr. Pedro Arrupe

Blackwing pencils

Sailor fountain pens

Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks (Katy uses size A4 with blank pages)

Switchyards Neighborhood Work Club (Katy’s co-working space)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sa.life

Welcome to Solvitur Ambulando, which means "Solve It By Walking." On this journey, we explore the alchemic potency of walking for sorting through life's puzzles, exploring our world, and transforming ourselves. Like a good walk, you will encounter distinctive ideas, remarkable people and gorgeous scenery. I hope you will enjoy a beautiful walk today. And if you like what you read and hear, please

On this episode of “Walks of Life,” I am delighted to be joined by Sarah Landenwich, whose debut novel The Fire Concerto was published earlier this summer. Sarah is a friend and fellow Louisvillian, and I was very excited to have the chance to discuss her novel with her.

In fact, here's what I wrote about it a few weeks ago:

“This will go down as one of my very favorite books this year. I stayed up past 1:00am three nights in a row to finish the book. And let me say, I am no night owl.”The story, masterfully crafted by debut novelist Sarah Landenwich, kept me seeking more and my heart racing. What will happen next? And next? And next?

“My wife, also powerfully drawn into the story, sprinted through it too.

“The novel is about music, mastery, loss and renewal. Mostly, to me, it sang about love. Can we love who we were, and no longer are, and never will be again? And can we love who we are and who we might become? Can we reach out to something — or someone — to walk that tense tightrope, the weaving of past, present and future, with us? Can we love what we find inside of us, and also open our eyes in love to what we discover outside ourselves?

“Beyond beautiful, I cannot recommend it highly enough!”

Since our conversation, a few thoughts have kept returning to me:

* In the episode, Sarah tells the story of her long journey to getting the book published. It was arduous, but Sarah used it to good effect, learning and improving the steps she was taking. I admire her persistence. It may seem like a simple point, but in the moment, keepin’ on keepin’ on does not always appear as the obvious or correct choice.

* I love her sticking to her guns about where she saw her novel fitting in the market. She believed it had a broader appeal than upscale fem lit. She sought to work with an agent who also viewed it more expansively. And I agree — it is a book for a broad audience. Again, Sarah showed remarkable persistence.

* In her writing, Sarah uses tools that work for her — a legal pad and pen. I did not take her point as "analog tools are better than digital ones for everyone." I took it as analog works for her — and the lesson is to experiment in finding the right tools that work for you in your specific workflow, with your unique proclivities.

* We discuss some forgotten female composers and musicians, such as Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska. (Also read Sarah’s essay about some of them, “What If Your Biography Was Just a Footnote to Somebody Else’s?”) Like Sarah, I found it sad that so many stunningly talented female artists have been lost or nearly faded from history. I also took away another consideration — how beautiful that someone cares about them and their work — enough to write a beautiful story based on them — centuries later!

I can’t speaking highly enough about Sarah’s book and this conversation was a total blast for me! Enjoy!

Episode Links

* The Fire Concerto

* Sarah Landenwich’s website

* Other media coverage of The Fire Concerto

* A playlist of music that helped inspire The Fire Concerto

Information about some forgotten female musicians:

* Marie Moke Pleye

* Maria Szymanowska

* Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska

Thanks for reading Solvitur Ambulando. If you enjoyed this podcast, I’d appreciate it if you would share it!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sa.life

In the last episode of Walks of Life, I posted a 2022 interview with my friend Geoff Cook. We talked again last month, when he caught me up on what’s happened to him over the past 2+ years.

They haven’t been years of all rainbows and sunshine for Geoff. We talk about his continuing job search, a very tough illness last summer requiring surgery, and much more.

As I reflected on this second conversation with Geoff, five thoughts stood out.

* I don't personally know many people stronger, tougher, more resilient, or more determined than Geoff. From the moment Go, life has thrown up obstacles in his way. Especially the past three years, life has repeatedly kicked him in the teeth. A failed attempt to move to Germany, which offers more sweeping support for people with disabilities. A job search lasting over two years. A move back in with his family in upstate New York. On top of his congenital challenge, cerebral palsy, an extended hospital stay last summer after a terrible illness, resulted in an unneeded surgery, another surgery, and continuing illness and discomfort. And yet Geoff keeps going, keeps pushing forward, and with a smile. He admits he has tough moments. One of the most poignant moments in the interview is when he says, in effect, while he's had a disability his entire life, his recent illness has left him feeling disabled to a degree he never has before. I have seen and heard Geoff in some deeply down times. And yet he comes up again and again, ready to make the best of his day, his life, and his opportunities. He is simply one of the most remarkable people I know.

* To continue that point, Geoff lives a full, thriving life — with friends, travel, hopes, dreams, family, worries. All the things. I found his reflections here beautiful — "just because I have a disability doesn't mean I lead a sad life."

* In this talk, Geoff made me think more deeply about problem solving. His points about having a Plan A, B, C, D and F -- where F means "Figure it the F out" — has stayed with me. I can only imagine how mentally and exhausting it would be to have so many backup plans. But I've had a few times in life where, looking back in the cold, harsh light of reality, I wish I'd come up with more thoughtful and carefully considered backup plans. When these moments might come up in life, Geoff has taught me to plan, plan, and plan again.

* He mentions looking at restaurant menus before eating out, so that he can order food that doesn't need to be cut. Why? Because with his cerebral palsy, cutting is difficult and makes him seem weak — or might make him seem weaker than he is to some of his dining companions. There is a pervasive ethos in today's world that we should reveal our weak spots, "be vulnerable." That notion has always struck me as off. Maybe we can share some vulnerabilities with close friends or dear family. But I still think there is worth in keeping some parts of ourselves to ourselves. Maybe you disagree. But I appreciate Geoff's conscious decision to show himself in his strongest light in such moments.

* Geoff loves to travel, is warm and gregarious. He makes easy friends wherever he goes. He has deep, abiding friendships. He mentions his profound desire to "go see my people." Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes! We humans have an innate, inextinguishable desire to be physically present with the people we like, admire and love. Modern life may not always allow the in-person experience. But when we can, be in-person.

Thank you, Geoff, for another amazing, heartfelt and fun conversation!

Episode Links

* Geoff’s LinkedIn profile

* Boudica, queen of the ancient Briton Iceni tribe, who led a revolt against the Roman Empire in 60-61 CE.

* Making Space, which “helps Disabled people build skills and find meaningful work, while supporting employers to hire and retain valuable talent.” Its Ascend Program aims “to connect Disabled professionals with competitive, sustainable employment while helping companies build more inclusive hiring practices.”

* Inside Texas and On Texas Football

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sa.life

Geoff Cook and I met in late 2021 through Seth Godin’s altMBA. We became fast friends and have stayed in close touch since graduation. In this interview from late 2022, Geoff and I discuss his thoughts on the future of reaching your audience; growing up with a disability; differences between countries in how they treat disabled people culturally and legally; his experiences traveling in his wheelchair; and whether baseball will be America’s National Pastime in 50 years. Geoff is poignant and pointed throughout.

I also highly recommend Geoff’s hard, beautiful, and touching essay about his recent experiences traveling in Germany. It is one of the best essays I’ve read in 2022. It’s an eye-opening look into his world and daily struggles – and those of so many of our disabled friends, colleagues and neighbors. It really is a must-read.

Geoff and I talked again recently — May 2025. In that conversation, we discussed what’s happened with Geoff over the past three years. He updates us on his job search, his health, and his living situation. I will release that interview shortly.

In both interviews, Geoff talks candidly about his life as a person with disabilities, his struggles, his hopes, and his aspirations. You’ll enjoy listening as much as I did. Thank you, Geoff!

Tell us your story, Geoff.

That’s a loaded question. I was born and raised in upstate New York, where I am now. I would say I am a wandering soul, a fan of ancient history and language, and sports. I’m excited to use your platform to talk with people about a world that they probably don’t see. This is how we achieve actual change. We have difficult conversations about our life experiences. I appreciate you bringing that to me; that’s the beauty of conversation.

Marketing

I want to ask you some work questions. You’ve worked in marketing your entire career – media relations for the University of Texas athletic department, media relations at Major League Baseball, digital marketing, earned media for large corporate clients, and marketing benchmarking, among other efforts. What is the aim of terrific marketing?

It depends on the stage of the company. My last job was at a 7-year-old startup, so our focus was “awareness, awareness, awareness.” And we did that with “buzzword, buzzword, buzzword.” We tried to convert people into our sales funnel. That was the point of our marketing. But take one of my favorite brands, Nike. Everyone knows who they are; they’ve been around a long time. They don’t want to be one of those older brands which struggle to innovate. Nike’s biggest aim is to stay on the cutting edge – they may not be the very first anymore, but they spend a huge amount of time, effort and money to stay on that cutting edge of technology, social issues and marketing positioning. I think Nike is smart to do that. In marketing or overall business, the worst thing you can say is, “This is how we’ve always done things.” That’s a one-way ticket to corporate death.

What do most marketing experts not properly understand about the world? What’s missing in their worldview?

Oftentimes, marketing gets too siloed. It becomes too much about their own buzzwords, their inside baseball. Companies and entire industries become siloed in their thinking too. We have a hard time getting out of our own way with our jargon. And of course, most customers don’t care about our jargon.

Let’s fast forward 25 years – what does the marketing equilibrium look like? Are we all still going to care about SEO and a few very powerful social media companies? How will effective marketers reach their audience, the right audience?

I’m doing a lot of reading about AI and Web3 now. I don’t know what the marketing world will be in 25 years, but I firmly believe AI and Web3 – or Web4 or Web5 or whatever we get to then – will have a huge impact on marketing. And on life. I don’t want to say it, but I do think we’ll all be much more device-dependent than we are even today. Think how much changed in two years, because of the pandemic. Yes, video conference calling existed but no one used them extensively. Today, from my house in upstate New York, I can “be” in Germany or Britain or Japan or Greece or Peru – all in one day. It’s crazy to think about fast-forwarding 25 years from today.

In 25 years, will the messaging bombardment accelerate and become even more intense? The statistics say the average American sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads every day. Is that going to continue?

I think there will be a balancing act. Let me explain. Yes, the ad bombardment will continue. But I think somehow the social media part of the bombardment will lessen.

Even as someone who works in marketing and spends a lot of time on social media, I hate social media from a business and a personal perspective. In business, there is always a new platform or algorithm adjustment in existing platforms to figure out. It’s incredibly frustrating. Let me give you an example. Two years ago, when Clubhouse was the hot new thing, I worked hard to get an invitation to figure it out for myself and my company. Getting an invitation took forever. Then once we got on it, we spent a huge effort figuring out how to best market through it. You know how this goes. Clubhouse is now irrelevant – and so all those efforts were basically wasted.

On a personal front, I am not a parent but you are. And parenting has changed so much since the late 90s and early 2000s. The internet that I grew up with versus the internet that you and I are using right now is completely different, mostly because of social media. You and your kids really have to watch out.

There are too many social media platforms out there right now. I don’t know whether some will actually disappear or whether most people will seriously trim their social media accounts, maybe to two or three maximum. But I do think the era of people having 17 different accounts and having so much personal information on all those accounts will go away. And marketers will have to adjust to that world.

Life Experiences With a Disability

Let’s move to a few questions about your life experiences and your advocacy for people with disabilities. What countries are most friendly to people with disabilities, in terms of people’s attitudes and customs?

In my experience, the European people and countries. Europe is old. I don’t expect a building built in the 1700s to be wheelchair accessible. That castle that was built in 1640? There’s no ramp for you to get up? Hello – it was designed to keep people out! For most of history, most people with disabilities like mine didn’t live long. When I was born, I weighed 2 pounds. If I’d been born even 30 years before I was, I wouldn’t have lived long. So for most of history, people and countries and builders didn’t have to take us into account. I get it. I take a realistic approach.

People say Germans are rude. I’m from New York! That doesn’t bother me. But the Germans and other Europeans are always looking out for me, as someone in a wheelchair. Literally every German I encountered – except for one dude at Lufthansa – every random person on the street and everyone in an official capacity at the train station, airport, and hotel, was above and beyond nice to me. In their Human Resources, they constantly ask, “what are we doing in terms of diversity and inclusion for the disabled population?”

Thankfully, I am an outgoing person. If I need help, I ask. Again people in Europe are always nice and helpful. But Europeans have a more open and I’d say fearless attitude toward people with disabilities. And if there’s no one who will help, I go find a policeman – they always help.

Does European law better recognize the rights of disabled people and protect them better than other countries? What’s your experience with different countries’s legal protections for disabled people?

I can speak mostly about Germany and the UK. In those countries, it’s virtually impossible to fire someone with a disability. It’s still performance-based, but companies have to work very hard to find a way to retain someone with a disability. In Germany, they have special contracts with their disabled employees, which makes firing them extremely difficult. The employer really has to exhaust every single available avenue to retain that employee or find a suitable place in the company.

For housing access, Germany has special vouchers for the disabled, even for non-citizens. If you want an apartment, and I have a voucher and want that apartment, and if it’s wheelchair accessible, the landlord has to give me that apartment. In America in that situation, the decision is basically up to the landlord.

Long term, I want to move to Germany. The legal protections are attractive. Beyond that, I am attracted to the overall mindset they have toward me there. My recent trip went terribly, but I still felt wanted by German society and culture. I felt adopted there. As someone with a disability in America, I don’t feel seen as a person. I’m not seen institutionally or legally or culturally. There are physical barriers and invisible barriers here. No matter what I achieve, I am still held down. I don’t want to say I’m oppressed, because that’s very incisive language. But there are things in place that make living here very different for me and you.

There is a big difference between “handicapped accessible” and “livable handicapped accessible.” Those are two totally different things. Here’s an example. A bathroom may have the legal handicapped bars, but for me, they may be too low. Or the seat may be too low. Or the apartment may be “handicapped accessible” but my electric wheelchair may not fit through the front door. So I can’t live there.

Tell me a little bit more about not being seen in America, what that means and how that manifests in your life.

I’ve never been the woe-is-me type. I’ve always felt that “well, these are the cards I’ve been dealt and I’m just going to bulldog some things in life.” That’s always been my mentality. It will always be my mentality.

But we all break. And I wonder, why is this so hard? I just want to go to work, pay my taxes, vote, and complain about it like everybody else. Do you know what I mean? Why is housing so hard for me to find? Why is finding work so hard? Why is keeping work so hard? I understand some things happen in the course of business. I lost my last job because of business – it was nobody’s fault.

But keeping a job is so hard. I worked at one company – they wanted to be able to say they hired a disabled person and one who also happens to be half-black. So, check and check. I understand that’s part of the game and make no mistake, I will use that to my advantage. But they simply weren’t interested in giving the tools to succeed.

The older I get, the more I realize that my margin for error in decisions I make is very small. Where I work, where I travel, people I date – those decisions have to be right or I can get stuck for a long time. My recent experience in Germany – I couldn’t stay because a few things in the unit were too high or too low for me by a few inches. Inches! It took me days to get out of that bad situation and my new situation back in the U.S. is fine, but it’s not the situation I want to be in. It will take me months and may take me much longer to get back into a good situation – one that I want to be in.

Why is this so hard? Why is every step so hard? I just want to find and live in a place where I can be the best version of myself – at work and in the community.

Can you tell us more about small things being hard? In your article, you mention a few things being too high or too low by a few inches, and that caused enormous hardship. You also mentioned the difficulty of traveling with your electric wheelchair.

Those are great examples because I’m a wanderer. I’ve lived in five states. I have friends all over the place. Can’t wait to go to Oregon later this year to see one of my best friends. Can’t wait to go down to Louisville. I get around in spite of my logistical challenges.

Even the room I’m in right now – I’m sleeping in my brother’s old bed and it’s high. My chair can elevate, so I raised the seat so it’s easier to get into bed. But I can’t elevate it too high because I won’t be able to get out of bed.

In a hotel in DC once, the bed was way too high. I called down to the staff and they came up and helped put me into bed. And on the toilet – it was a standard toilet but it seemed like a kid’s toilet. In Germany, I used my friends at Wheels of the World to help plan travel. They had no idea about the height of the bed in my room. How could they? The hotel staff tried to raise my bed by placing pillows under the mattress so I could get in and out. It didn’t work. For a couple of days they did put me in bed and put me back in my chair. But I knew it wouldn’t last long, because management then said they had to stop because of liability. That always happens.

So I had to spend six entire days in my chair. It reclines a bit but nothing like a bed. So I got no rest. I was supposed to stay in Germany for another month, but I couldn’t live there like that. So I had to get home. Except I had given up my apartment in Atlanta so I had to find a temporary solution. It’s back to living with my parents. I hope it’s temporary.

Tell us about your wheelchair and traveling with it.

My number one fear when I fly is not what happens to me. If something happens to me it’s just my time. My biggest fear is “what shape will my chair be in when I get off the flight?” In the last eight weeks, I’ve been on 8 planes. That’s a lot of worry and stress.

My wife and I hate checking bags. We carry on. But if we did check a bag and it was totally lost, we’d be out some clothing. It’d be a hassle, and it may dampen that trip a bit. But it wouldn’t change what we could do on the trip or significantly impact our lives. But if an airline messes up your chair, it sounds like that would be life-changing in a major way for you.

Absolutely. There was a recent statistic that airlines damage 25 wheelchairs per day – or more. It’s very traumatic. It may have been damaged before you arrive at your final destination. The airline is responsible for it. They do fix it, but it’s a process. It can take weeks or longer. The airline may not have the parts for the repair on hand. Maybe they have to loan you a wheelchair. You’ve used a loaner car or rental car? It’s not the same as the car you own, right? The angles are a little different, the controls are in a different place, and so on. Same with a loaner chair. It’s not the same as my chair and it may not have all the functionality I really need.

So when I fly, my number one fear is my chair. As I am talking with you, this isn’t a small, simple wheelchair. It’s a $30,000 wheelchair. It’s like I am sitting in a car all day. It’s easy to damage them and can be hard to fix them.

If the wheelchair is damaged, what happens?

The short version is you go to the baggage office, usually near the baggage carousel. Usually, you’re with the person who physically helped you get off the plane. At the baggage office, they open a case. You fill out a whole bunch of forms. Someone from the airline comes out to evaluate the chair. They give you an estimate of when the chair will be repaired. And if you’re not in your final destination yet or you’ll be returning home before that estimated date, you have to figure out logistics – are they keeping the chair now or when will they come to get it to repair it? It can get complicated. Sometimes, while staying respectful, I have to be firm in noting my needs. If they say the repair part won’t arrive until Wednesday, but I need to leave Monday for another part of my trip, I need that wingding here now!

Of course, for part of that time or all that time, I don’t have my chair. So I may not be able to do everything I had planned to do on the trip. If I visit you in Louisville, and we’d planned some day out with your girls, if that involves something in which my chair can accommodate the activity but my loaner chair cannot, I guess I am not doing that activity.

If the chair was damaged along the way, I have to stay with my chair even if it’s not my final destination. In that case, I have to get a hotel – which of course I hadn’t planned for. And the hotel isn’t paying for that hotel – I am.

Yes, when I travel, I worry mostly about my chair. It’s a very big concern.

Let’s say you could wave a magic wand and make something better for disabled people. One thing, one way. What would that be?

I’m a kid of the 80s. Professor X of the X-Men was my childhood hero, for obvious reasons. He was the first person with a disability in a wheelchair who I saw being a badass leader. Wave a magic wand and I’m Professor X!

Seriously – I would come up with a more sustainable method of transportation for disabled people. I’m a member of Atlanta Paratransit. They pick me up at a certain location and they bring me to a certain location. Like Uber, but it’s an offshoot of the bus system. Atlanta has a system, Charlotte has a system, Louisville has a system, and every city has its own system. When you go to a new city, you have to find a doctor and fill out basically the same paperwork certifying you are mentally or physically disabled.

I would make it so there’s a national or, dreaming big, international database. If you are disabled according to DSM-4, which is the standard everyone uses to define physical and mental disabilities, you are disabled. If the city of Atlanta deems you disabled, Charlotte recognizes that status. And if the U.S. recognizes someone as disabled, then Germany does too. Once you’re in, you're in. One ID allows you to access all these different systems easily. This would streamline so much in my life.

Just like anybody else, I deserve to go where the opportunities are. If the opportunities are in Kentucky for jobs or a better overall lifestyle, I deserve the opportunity to go to Kentucky. Just like anybody else.

What’s something that being disabled has taught you about the world or life that people who are not disabled don’t know or appreciate?

I learned from a very early age the importance of advocacy for myself. I give my parents a lot of credit here because I was involved in my medical decisions from a very early age – 13 or 14 years old. Now, obviously, my parents made the final decision because I was a minor. Often times doctors wouldn’t talk to me. They would talk to my parents, usually my Mom because she was most often there. My mom would tell the doctor, “You’re operating on him. He’s in the room too. Talk with him about this procedure.” And my parents asked me, “Geoff, they’re going to operate on you. They’re going to do this. The recovery looks like this. How do you feel about this?”

I joke that I am from New York so I am loud and aggressive. I learned very early that I had to use that loudness to advocate for myself. If you don’t advocate for yourself at work, in life or personally, no one else will do it for you. If that involves ruffling some feathers, you have to be willing to say something. You have to be willing to ask for help.

Like physically getting around places. I have a radar that’s built for elevators. I see angles differently than most people; I see space differently; I see gaps in space differently. Sometimes I have to ask random people on a subway platform for help – “Can you help me jump this gap, because I’m not going to make it otherwise?” It forces me to interact with the world. I can’t pick my bag off the baggage carousel. I have to ask a random stranger for help.

That’s the biggest takeaway. The number one blessing and curse of being physically disabled is that it has given me a different lens to view the world.

What else would you like me and the readers to know about disabled people or the cause of people with disabilities?

I’ve thought a lot about this one. Succinctly – just ask us. So many people are afraid to offend us. I understand that sensibility because I’m guilty of it as much as others are. Include us in the process – in all processes. When you’re designing a new bus, ask us, “Does this layout work for you?” In my marketing world, ask us, “How do we make it easier for disabled people to find the information they need on this site?” I would rather you ask me a question and you give me the opportunity to say, “Russell, I’m uncomfortable answering that.” At least you gave me a space to say I’m uncomfortable and convince you why I feel uncomfortable.

The worst question is the one that goes unasked.

We need to become better as a society about having difficult conversations and going into really vulnerable spaces because that’s the only way crap is going to change. If you’re renovating a building, let’s talk about what can be done for disabled people within that budget. What can we do within reason? We want to have those conversations. Ask us.

Thoughts on Sports and Athletes

Let’s move on to a different topic. I want to ask a few questions about one of your great passions – sports. Who is your favorite Texas Longhorns football coach of all time and why?

Well, Darrell Royal, because he’s the GOAT. I’m contractually obligated to say that, but he really is, though. I was around Texas during the end of Mack Brown’s tenure and Charlie Strong’s tenure. Coach Strong’s didn’t go very well, to put it mildly. But he was always cool to me. I served in the Texas Athletic Department under, at the time, the winningest coaching college baseball coach, Augie Garrido, who was kind of rough around the edges and a no-nonsense guy to everybody. That really prepares you for life as well. You don’t have to like everybody you’re around, but you respect them and do your job well.

Which team will win the college football playoff this year?

Anybody but TCU because I hate them.

How about the Super Bowl?

I’m going out on a limb here and say the San Francisco 49ers.

Wow. Whoa. That is going out on a limb man.

That offense is nuts.

So wait, who is your team in the NFL?

I’m a Giants fan.

In baseball, it’s the Mets?

Yeah, I’m a Mets fan.

When will my beloved Washington Nationals be relevant in baseball again?

Probably long after we’re both dead.

Is baseball going to be a top professional sport in 50 years?

Sadly, no, not at all.

Really? How come? Why?

Because it’s slowly dying. It’s not going to die tomorrow for sure. But the younger generations are playing baseball in smaller numbers. Baseball doesn’t do a good job of marketing its stars at all. Kids don’t grow up wanting to be the next Mike Trout because they don’t see him plastered on billboards and video games. Baseball does a horrible job of marketing its stars. And there are a ton of super young stars in the game – the Juan Sotos who are young and exciting.

You just had to say that name, for example, didn’t you? You had to put that stake in my heart?

I’m a baseball degenerate. Even in the off-season, I’m online, checking out MLB trade rumors a couple of times a day. Like, I’m reading all the things and I watch probably 140 games a year. But baseball is really hard to watch because it takes three or four hours or more. I like Formula One, too. But Formula One is over in two hours and it’s awesome. We get all the excitement we can handle, and you wrap a bow up, it’s over in two hours. But you get a freaking Yankees and Red Sox game, that’s five hours right there. Baseball has tried to fix it. Like I said I’m a degenerate. You’re into it too. But there’s not enough of us. And going to baseball games is really expensive. So it’s a multi-layered issue for sure.

What is the smartest thing baseball could do to better market its young, hot, kick-ass stars?

Baseball needs to find where the kids are on social media and find ways to engage the younger generation there. Baseball needs to engage all people as fans. Most fans are older, white and male. But most baseball players are not those things. Shocker. More people should be fans, but baseball isn’t attracting them.

Why isn’t soccer more popular in the U.S.? It’s risen in popularity in the last 20 years, but compared to the frenzy in other countries, it’s not nearly as popular here. Why?

As my mom pointed out the other day, we have so many other options. American football is ours. It’s a bedrock culture. Baseball is ours, and it’s a bedrock item of culture. I was watching Germany play soccer yesterday, and I was conversing with my tutor, who is German, but she lives in Florida. She had just talked with her grandparents in Cologne. The whole city had shut down for the game. 8:00 pm and the entire city, except emergency personnel, is watching the game. That’s what soccer in Europe in general is. Find a bar, find a house. That’s what we’re all doing. Any green space that has a TV and thousands of people are watching a gigantic screen.

Who is the most overrated athlete today?

Oh, boy. I’m trying to remove personal bias as a fan. Overrated football player? Zeke Elliott. Baseball player? I can think of about six, but I won’t name any of them because they might see this interview and hate me!

The most overrated athlete is probably Cristiano Ronaldo. Yes, he’s still very good, but he’s my age, and he’s not worth $700,000 a week. Unreal – $700,000 a week. You could still be very, very good and still be overrated.

Who’s the most underrated athlete?

There are so many. There are so many young, up-and-coming baseball players that I think the world of Adley Rutschman. He was the number one overall pick a couple of years ago. He’s already playing with the Baltimore Orioles. He’s a catcher, which is a difficult position. He’s so good. I’ve been a fan of his since he was in college. He was the best player in college when he was at Oregon State. He’s awesome to watch. At the pro level, I would say he’s the most underrated athlete for me right now. He doesn’t get a lot of press because the Orioles are young and he’s in Baltimore. But he is crazy good; if he was in a major market, he’d get a ton of attention. He’s only 24 years old.

Geoff, this has been awesome. I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sa.life

I could describe Sherry Shenoda in many ways: poet, pediatrician, immigrant, intellectual, mystic, mother, daughter, granddaughter, aunt, wife, Egyptian, American, Coptic Christian, muse and hearer of the muse. Yet she defies description. In a world of people clawing desperately to stand out, I find her remarkable for her desire and willingness to stand in the long flowing river of beautiful traditions, including of family and faith.

Sherry and I talked two years ago, about her first novel, The Lightkeeper. Sherry kindly agreed to talk again, this time about her book of poetry, Mummy Eaters. The book was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry in 2022, and won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.

Beyond the awards, I found Mummy Eaters a hard, visceral mix of intellect and emotion, of ancient longing and complex relationality. In it, the poems engage in a dialogue “between an imagined ancestor, one of the daughters of the house of Akhenaten, and the author as descendant.” It creates a captivating construct for Sherry’s ruminations on identity and ownership, desecration and courtesy, and place and spirit. All through it, I found a wise soul seeking, if not answers, then a credible way forward.

And much of that path involves breathing to life more poetry in the world.

Thank you, Sherry, for a sublime exchange.

I read this book and I thought, “Wow, this is different from your first book, The Lightkeeper.”

Very different, yes.

But I love that. I've said this to a couple people now, but I'm tired of reading Cal Newport's books. I love his ideas, I love his podcast. But every book is between 220 and 240 pages, he stamps it out, and then two years later, he writes another book of 220 to 240 pages. It's the same formula. I'm bored with it. Some topics deserve 500 pages, some deserve four pages. Go with what the topic deserves.

Yeah. But I'm glad it was a good read for you. I'm glad it spoke to you.

Absolutely. To start, why did you write Mummy Eaters, and who'd you write it for?

I was trying to understand my Coptic heritage, and I wanted to get at the link between Coptic Christians and their ancient Egyptian roots. So, I wanted to understand the context historically, as well as in the light of colonialism. And I wanted to move closer to my grandmothers, neither of whom learned to read, and my great aunt. She did learn how to read, but my two grandmothers didn't. They're all gone now. The ultimate answer to your question, the target audience is probably me. Which I think is probably the target audience for most writers. I write to figure out what I'm thinking, as I'm sure you do. And I'm always endlessly grateful if any of it translates to other people's life experiences.

You explained it a little bit in the beginning of the book, but why did you title it, Mummy Eaters?

Okay, so this refers to a practice, a gruesome practice in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Europeans would eat Egyptian human remains – mummies – for medicinal purposes. There is this conception that Europeans were civilized in a way that the rest of the world wasn't. I just wanted to highlight the maybe uncivil and barbaric ways that native Egyptians – alive and dead – were treated. It's a study on civility. The mummification process that the ancient Egyptians used was very reverent. It was thoughtful, it was deliberate, it was formulaic. But the way that the remains were dug up and used wasn't. And I wanted to lightly sketch this question that perhaps incivility existed because they weren't seen as being human, which I think we're gonna get to later. That was the reason for the title.

You mentioned the mummification process being ritualized. The word that came to mind is “sacred.” Recently, I took a class on the Tale of Sinuhe from 1900 BC or so. Sinuhe leaves Egypt under strange circumstances, but he's very keen to return for the end of his life, and for his mummification and burial. In fact, the Tale is told from the perspective of him already being dead. He's telling the Tale after his death. Sinuhe is a very interesting character – I'm not necessarily sure that what you see is what you get in everything he writes. But to me, it's very clear that he sincerely wants to return to Egypt. The place of Egypt and burial in Egypt is critical for him. I'm interested in your view. In Mummy Eaters, the land of Egypt is hugely important. The mummification process is hugely important. You write about Egypt as sacred soil, about its desecration away from that sacredness. I’d like to hear from you about the importance of Egypt as a place, as a sacred place, for humanity, but also for you.

Egypt is the land of my ancestors. And I was born in Cairo. I've been back multiple times since immigrating to the United States, but it doesn't belong to me in the same way that it would potentially belong to my cousins, who still live there. In some sense, the immigrant experience is very different from living in a place. But it still feels like the place that I came from. There's this curiosity that's born of distance and a desire to understand where my people came from, the land that nurtured my ancestors. In some broader sense, I think ancient Egypt belongs to the world, to humanity. So Mummy Eaters has been my way of starting to understand this incubator of culture, spirituality, human intelligence that was ancient Egypt and carried forth into modern times.

Let me return to your purpose and process in writing the book. How long did it take from your first idea of it to getting the manuscript done?

This was very different for me, Russell. This book took me by surprise. I normally write at a glacial pace, and this is not unrelated to the fact that I have three small boys. But this book was finished in about six months, which is lightning fast for me. This book wanted to be written. There was something urgent about this book. It goes back to what I was saying earlier that I wanted to understand. There was something that I wanted to untangle about where my family came from. It was a very urgent writing process. Very different from my novel, which took five years.

Pull on that thread a little bit more, Sherry. What were you trying to unravel or understand?

At its root, I wanted to get at the sins that we commit against each other. The ways that we commit violence against each other. As somebody who's slightly removed from that violence, what it means to forgive, because nothing was done to me directly, right? I didn't have my tongue cut out for speaking Coptic. My remains were not exhumed and consumed. I did not directly experience colonization or theft, but some of this was me trying to grapple with the question of, what is the statute of limitations on something that happened to your ancestors in the past? How long does generational trauma continue? And is it okay to even call it “generational trauma”?

At the same time, I wanted to work on this parallel storyline. In the beginning of the book, this ancestor of the writer, one of the descendants of this pharaoh, Akhenaten, is being mummified. It also follows her journey into the afterlife. We dug people up, but they were actually people. And we consumed them. What did it mean spiritually for them to bury their human dead, and to preserve them? Why did it matter to have the body in the afterlife? Why did the incarnate, the human person, matter? Why did the physical body matter?

In modern times, we sometimes incinerate our dead. We don't have the same reverence for the body of the dead that they did. I wanted to understand some of that as well. And I think in the seed of understanding their reverence for the dead, is the answer to why resurrection was so important to them. Because the body itself was really important. In the incarnation is the seed of what eventually becomes resurrection for them – the afterlife. That is their version of what we would think of as heaven.

In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs were seen as an incarnation of the gods. The royalty was the incarnate god. They very much saw the things of the world and the key people of the world as the incarnate gods. Is that what you're speaking to in terms of the incarnation of the holy, the sacred, and the resurrection that everyone's bodies play a role in the sacred cycle? And mummification was a very important part of that? It was carrying forth and completing the cycle.

Yes, well said. And you can see that in the story of Osiris. It's very cyclic. His body needed to be recovered to be resurrected – essentially, to be brought back. They were very, very reverent about the human body.

They were reverent about the human body. They were also reverent about the place, the land. The name of Egypt is holy. The love of Egypt, the land, the place, is evident in Mummy Eaters. You and I have talked about Wendell Berry before - his view that people should have reverence for a place. Talk to me about that – not only the holiness and the sacredness of the human body as related to the divine, but also of Egypt as sacred and holy, and in some sense, distinct from other places. You were born there, but you haven't lived there for long. Yet you still feel a powerful connection with it. And I know your family does too. Talk to me about the specialness, the holiness, the sacredness of this place, Egypt.

Is it sacred compared to anywhere else? All the land is sacred. The very first poem of the book is called “Sunflowers of Fukushima.” It's an invocation. There's this back and forth between speaking and silencing throughout the book. In Japan, from my understanding, nothing could grow in the land that was affected by the nuclear fallout. A monk – Monk Koyn Abe – planted a field of sunflower seeds, which basically pulled up the radiation, the toxicity that was in the soil. That was my prayer for the book – to pull up some of the toxicity that had been sown throughout time, whether it was through colonization, desecration of human remains, or the frequent conquest of Egypt. Egypt's been conquered so many times, Russell. So many different times in different ways.

I wanted to pull up the toxicity from my own experience of it, and also from my own generation's experience of it too. We have to process grief in order to grow from it.

All land is sacred. I don't know that Egypt is more sacred than any other place. But some of the sacredness of the land is the way that we treat it. Because Egypt has been defiled so many times, this was my way of processing, and pulling up some of the toxicity that I have come to associate it with the land. Egypt is a very fertile country. The Nile River valley is some of the most fertile land in Africa. In modern times, the Egyptian government would let people build on what used to be farm land. Then they realized it was the place where the Nile flooded, which would bring this intensely rich soil up and allow growth in the middle of the desert. Now they don't do that. We have a dam and we also build on top of that land. They realized that you can't build on what is essentially farm ground.

The way that we treat the land has a lot to do with the sacredness of the land. If you build on farm land, if you don't allow the Nile to flood, if you have people living there, those decisions have consequences. Again, that goes back to the sacredness of the land – the way that we treat it, the way that we dump on it, the way we desecrate it.

You are getting at a theme of the book – love. A lot of the love in the book is love that's gone awry, or love of the wrong things. For instance, the mummy eaters of the 16th and 17th centuries, they loved health and life in a certain way, but in doing so, they also desecrated something. It's a love gone awry. Talk to me a little bit about that, about the theme of love in the book, about how love goes awry, when it's not directed at the right object.

In the Coptic Orthodox tradition, we believe that humans bear the image of God. And if God is love, a lack of love distorts the image, right? Across the spectrum, right? You have verbal internet abuse toward strangers on one end, all the way to genocide, on another end. I think we have to dehumanize people in order to do that violence to them. Love humanizes, a lack of love distorts the true image. Copts believe that God spoke the world into existence in love. So in this series of “Silence” poems, I explored the ways that we silence each other. At its root, when we silence, we deny the other people's humanity. That makes it really easy to commit violence against them, to erase them. Once we've removed their ability to speak, removed love from the equation, whatever nefarious thing that we're going to commit becomes much easier to do.

Let's talk about a love that you carve out as special in the book. You specially emphasize the love between a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter in the book, and as I read it, imbue that love with a special grace. It appears as an unbreakable, incorrigible, incorruptible love. Tell me, why do you single out this love between a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter?

Yeah, There is a sacredness in the love passed down from my grandmothers. This is just my experience, of course. It was broad, it was deep, and it felt unconditional. It didn't ask for anything. It was a very feeding and nurturing, love. A lot of the love that my grandmothers showed was through food, which is a lot of people's experience.

There's nothing you can do in the face of that love, other than to receive it. You just bear it somehow. It's like squinting into the sun.

The love between mothers and daughters is a little bit more complicated. I've been abundantly blessed by my mother, but the love passed down from my grandmothers is just different. My experience has been that it’s just a very different love. It doesn't ask anything.

There’s a lot of truth in the old saying: “the wonderful thing about being with a grandmother is simply being with a grandmother.”

Yes, that's true. Yeah, it's this sense of presence. They're with you in a way that's very different. They don't want anything from you.

Let’s discuss the themes of mummification, and the cycle of incarnation and renewal. You write a lot about the dead recognizing themselves so that they can attain the afterlife. You relate that to a sense of us modern humans not recognizing ourselves. There's something missing in our identity. There's something we are not recognizing in ourselves. What are you saying there? What's missing in how we identify ourselves today?

Mummification was about maintaining the physical integrity of the body so that the dead could recognize themselves in the afterlife. In a sense, they're buying some time to slow down decay long enough for the soul to recognize itself. In a similar sense, being truly alive is also about maintaining integrity – mental integrity, spiritual integrity. Being integral – that word means to me to be truly human, truly among the living. I found the physical integrity in mummification a really beautiful parallel for spiritual integrity.

Regarding the issue of integrity, there is a lot of scholarly speculation about this pharaoh, Akhenaten. He was called a heretic pharaoh for adopting a monotheistic worldview. Some say it was a political power move. Others said he was just plain mad. But I wanted to explore another possibility: maybe he truly believed it. Maybe he thought that there was a single God and he tried to have some integrity about it. Maybe that was the arc of his life.

Of course it's all speculation, but it was an interesting thought experiment for me. What would it look like if you were God on earth – as the pharaoh was – and you had integrity? They probably killed him. We don't know exactly what happened, but what does integrity look like for that ruler? Again the physical integrity of mummification in my mind was a parallel for asking, “what does spiritual integrity look like?” How do we recognize ourselves? How do we sleep at night? How do we live with ourselves?

Interesting. You're Coptic. This brings us very close to Christianity and the story of Jesus, who knew he was God and did something about it.

And was killed for it.

And was killed for it, yes. Interesting. As I read the book, I saw a lot about the religion of ancient Egypt and I saw a lot of parallels in my very shallow understanding of Coptic and Orthodox Christianity. One thing that I didn't notice a lot was Islam. There's one reference to it at the end of the book. Tell us more about that.

It was largely a function of the timeline as well. Coptic Egypt predates Islam, but you can’t have a real conversation about modern Egypt without addressing Coptic–Muslim relationships. My attempt at that was the poem, “How to Silence IV,” toward the end of the book. It's about the things that really matter between two groups of people that have to coexist, but have very different understandings of truth. These are conflicting ideas about what is true. What actually matters when you have that sort of tension? That poem was my way of trying to address that question.

It outlines a moment in time when my mom woke up after surgery. They thought she was going to die. She had a really bad abscess. She was unable to take care of her baby. She almost lost her life. My dad was across the ocean. My mother is a doctor and her Muslim sisters took her call shifts and divvied them up. One of them was sitting by her bedside, chanting from the Quran when she woke. I was hoping that image would convey my understanding of what's important between Copts and Muslims. It goes on a little bit longer, but I think that's the most important portion.

There's so much silencing in the book, dealing with silencing. And it ends with wondering – instead of giving air time to the haters, what if we could chant of God, in whatever tongue is left to us?

Another theme of the book is possession. Who owns what? Who owns the mummies? Who owns Egyptian heritage? You said earlier that in some sense, ancient Egypt belongs to humanity, to the world. You seem to have views on who owns Egyptian land, Egyptian language, the treasures of Egypt. Who does own them and who should own them? I'm coming with the easy questions, Sherry. Just one softball after the other!

So much has been stolen from Egypt, Russell. And from Ghana, from China, from Greece. The list is embarrassingly long, right? There's a British Museum Act that makes it functionally illegal to remove objects unless they're duplicated or damaged or no longer part of the public interest. But sometimes we complicate things. People talk about how displaying things in encyclopedic museums allows “the world” to access them. Not everyone has access though.

They say these objects were acquired legitimately. But it’s really simple: We shouldn't keep things that don't belong to us.

Whether we knew at the time that something was stolen or not, doesn't change the fact that it was stolen. That argument actually would never hold up in a U.S. court, right? “Sorry, officer or judge, I didn't know it was stolen.” No, it was stolen and you had it.

The fact remains that a lot of these items were stolen, whether through ignorance of the person who took them initially or not. But Egyptian artifacts aren't subtle, Russell. You don't look at them and wonder if they were Egyptian. Um, no – they had a brand. They're obviously Egyptian. Maybe the origin is not under question. I understand their arguments for keeping objects in other museums. I don't think all of the treasures of ancient Egypt belong in the Egyptian museum. I think it's fair to share some things. Maybe not an entire place, like the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's like they just picked it up and moved it.

There's a joke that the only reason that the pyramids are still in Egypt is because they were too heavy to move.

I understand: it's a complicated question. The more complicated question is: what do reparations look like? What does restoration look like? That is maybe above my pay grade, but I think when something is stolen, we should at least acknowledge it as being stolen.

I also think displaying human remains may not be necessary. People are interested in what mummies look like. I think it's okay to show images of that, but I don't know that the remains need to be in museums forever. I wonder if there would be a more reverent way to deal with human remains than the way we're doing it now.

Yes, these questions are complicated. But stolen is stolen in some sense.

I want to nerd out with you for a few questions. You've written a real intellectual tour de force. I circled 83 words or people or places that I didn’t know. And I love that. I love stretching and learning and being confronted with things that I don't know and therefore am not comfortable with. And this was a book very much in that vein for me. You confronted me with ideas and words and themes I had not encountered before. Did you simply know all these references off the top of your head? Or did you also have to research and study some things and think more about them and look for connections?

Thank you, Russell. I do a ton of research. The answer to your question is: No, I didn't know all those things. I do a lot of research. Like you, I love to read and I learn and force myself out of my comfort zones when I can. In writing this book, I went to a lot of primary sources.

I read a ton, but also there was a lot of oral history. I sat with my dad quite a bit. My dad is a wonderful oral historian. He's the keeper of a lot of the memories that are still available. There's so much that's lost even in a single generation. Many things my dad knows that I don't.

That's wonderful. I love many things about this book. It forced me to look up and learn so many things I didn't know before. And that brought into view many themes I hadn't really thought about before. That was wonderful.

May I go back, Russell, to something you had asked me earlier?

Of course.

You had asked about self-recognition. We had talked earlier about this series of “How to Silence” poems and that we have to dehumanize the other in order to be violent towards them. I wanted to add a bit to that.

There's a spectrum of silencing in the book. But I wanted to especially highlight the casual silencing, the thoughtless, the ways we don't intend to silence, but we simply didn't care enough to understand and harm is done that way. I'm a pediatrician. In pediatrics, the most common form of child abuse is neglect. It's not providing what's necessary. And mistranslation is the beginning, I think, of silencing in many ways. Denying people language, mispronouncing their names – it seems really innocuous, right? In the book, I am trying to give a glimpse of how catastrophic a mistranslation could be. So my Great Aunt Marie, for instance. It's mentioned very briefly, but she had a pacemaker placed in her chest without her consent. She speaks Arabic, but was sent a Spanish speaking interpreter.

Actually, the title of the book also points to the mistranslation of the word “mummy.” In the Persian, they referred to medicinal bitumen, which is a viscous material, a healing plant. And mumia – medicinal bitumen – was mistranslated. You could argue that mummy eating would never have occurred if not for that mistranslation. In the same vein, if we don't neglect one another with respect to the spoken word, we wouldn't end up with these figurative consumptions. So we figuratively consume each other, simply being neglectful.

Then there's the rest of the spectrum, – of deliberate kinds of silencing, like the obvious ones, like violence. But I wanted to just highlight the seemingly innocuous ways of silencing too.

Sometimes I wonder if the innocuous things come about not from bad faith or malfeasance, but simply a confrontation with another that you just don't know what to do with. There is that language barrier. There is the inability to actually communicate and you're left in a place where you have to act and you just don't know what to do. As a total armchair general, I’ve studied war for 25 years. I never understood why people actually went to war until I went to South Korea – and I didn't understand a single word. For some reason, being immersed in that environment, I appreciated misunderstanding in a way I hadn't before. Of course, that leads to a very slippery slope: it becomes very easy to dehumanize what you can't understand.

Yes. Sometimes, I think of a simple example. When someone is hurting, like after a death in the family, for instance, sometimes that person is suffering because they're lonely, but people just don't know what to say. It's a type of mistranslation, it's a miscommunication. Really, they want presence, they want someone to show up or be there physically. Maybe not even say anything at all. But there's almost a language barrier in a sense – and it can cause harm because that person is then isolated and is grieving alone. That’s an everyday example. Then of course there's the actual language barrier, like you were dealing with a totally different culture, in a place where you couldn't actually speak the language.

I also wonder if we're isolating ourselves more and more. I am not the first observer of this. I was traveling this week and I went to breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Every single person was on their phone. They're at a meal – by definition, a communal event. And they are disengaged. They are isolating themselves. They are not with or attempting to create community or even confrontation with the other. It was strange to be the solo person, and yet the least isolated person, in that environment.

We could talk for another hour about that. There's definitive data now that depression and anxiety worsen – especially in children – when we’re on phones and social media. I recently read The Anxious Generation. The charts in it are really damning. It's terrifying what's coming if we can't get a hold of this, because we already have an epidemic of loneliness. It's going to worsen.

The more we isolate ourselves, the less we can communicate with each other. We're coming up on an election. And some of the issues that we have are just massive miscommunications. We can't sit with somebody who doesn't believe the same thing we do. We think of differences in opinion as being violence. But they're not necessarily violence. They're differences in opinion that can be potentially sorted if we could sit down and communicate properly.

Communication is a bit of a lost art right now, and I think it has a lot to do with what you're saying. People are in their own little worlds. We don't look up from our screens, and we don't read. I feel like if we read more novels, maybe we would be in a better place, or talk to each other more.

Totally agree.

Before we started recording this interview, we were talking about A Month in the Country, which is a wonderful book. There's so much truth conveyed in, what, 140 pages? It's incredible. You can be a more tolerant person, potentially, after reading it.

I think you’re right. I'm reading James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, which I read 20 or more years ago. I interviewed a gentleman named Henry Oliver recently. He and I were nerding out on that book. I took a class on Samuel Johnson in college, and I’d forgotten how much I loved it. Anyway, what's striking me about the book right now is how wrong Samuel Johnson was about so many things. But I see him in a more human light than I did in my first reading 20 years ago. That's been a curious revelation for me 400 pages in, a little less than halfway through the book. He seems really wrong, but more human.

Yes. And you've experienced grief in those 20 years. You've experienced life and grief, and I feel like it makes us more able to bear other people's imperfections.

Suffering is learning. This is a point of the Eastern philosophies and religions, and of Sophocles and so many others. Suffering is learning.

Yes.

While we're on the subject of emotions, you've written an intellectual tour de force. This is also an emotional tour de force. Like you, Sherry, it is understated and polite and courteous, and you note that courtesy at the end of the book. Whatever has happened, we owe each other courtesy. But I found this very emotional nonetheless. This book has an edge that your first book, The Lightkeeper, doesn't have. It's very different. It shows disappointment and maybe even a touch of anger. In my margin notes in the book I wrote, “This exudes an ache, a hurt of generations, of centuries.” Talk to me about your emotions in writing this book.

Russell, I think writing anything that hurts, which is usually the stuff that matters, requires that we process it. This isn't to say that raw, unfiltered grief can't be written. It can – there's a way to do that.

But in order for it to not be like a diary entry, I think it has to be lived with and processed in some sense. This was my attempt to be as clear-eyed as I could. And some of the anger still seeps through. To be as clear-eyed as I could about colonization, its legacy, which in many ways is erasure.

One example off the top of my head: Copts at one point would have their tongues cut off for speaking Coptic. Those things might not have happened to me directly, but they did happen to my ancestors. And they do have repercussions today. The result now is that Coptic is a liturgical language. It's not spoken.

In one of the poems, I address this issue of seeing a hurt and naming it. There's power at least in naming the hurt so that we can acknowledge it, try to forgive and grow – and maybe grow past it, grow from it, and thrive. There's no point in talking about generational trauma if we don't talk about mitigation and thriving. Nobody wants to just exist here and wallow in the past. We all want to live a good, full, healthy life. Forgiveness is a really big part of that. Whether there's anything to forgive or not, whether people think I have anything to forgive, in some sense, these sins were committed against my ancestors. But I think that even their repercussions have to be forgiven.

The fact that we don't speak the language of my ancestors or any of the other things, the fact that I can't walk into the museum in Cairo and see something because it was stolen, these are things that we have to process. Naming them helps. Forgiveness helps. Then we can hopefully thrive in the aftermath because we've pulled up the toxicity from the soil.

Like you were talking about earlier at Fukushima.

Yeah.

I love that. This is a weighty book, a serious book. But I also have to tell you, in a few instances, I found it uproariously funny. You write this about mummification: “Like plastic / surgery but the highest stakes / nose job of all time.” I'm reading it while sitting in a pool chair and I crack up at that line. It was hilarious.

You're totally right. So, no, absolutely. Thank you for finding my humor funny. Humor is one of the ways that I process work. In some parts of it, it's sometimes easier to approach something really serious with humor. Not to lessen the gravity of the thing, but to make it processable, for lack of a better way of phrasing. I'm glad that parts of it made you laugh.

I thought it was hilarious. I thought it was brilliant. It was so funny. Let me ask you a couple last questions. You end the book with a poem titled “Letters for My Grandmothers.” You write about the special love between grandmothers and granddaughters. You give two different views of femininity in that poem. You talk about an ancient view, and you talk about a modern view.

The poem that you're talking about, “Letters to My Grandmothers,” starts with a giantess stirring onions into the 16,425th meal, which is about halfway through a life. But she knows no more of letters than the slanted slash of a signature. Both my grandmothers were illiterate in that sense. But neither of them was any less worthy than I of language, of learning the letters. In the Coptic tradition, when someone dies, we say, “May we live and remember.” At the beginning of the book, I put that in the Dedication to my grandmothers.

Being forgotten is another death, is another form of death. And I wanted their memory to carry on. Mummification, as we were saying earlier, is about buying the dead a little bit more time to recognize themselves in the afterlife. This book is dedicated to my grandmothers for their really unflinching love, to perhaps buy them a little bit more time in remembrance.

I love that. Well, let me end with this question, Sherry: What's next? What are you working on now?

I'm about 70% through writing a novel. When I talk about it out loud, the target audience is really me. It's about a perfumer in the 1920s in Paris. He loses his sense of smell, and with it, his memories, because his memories are so tied up in his sense of who he is.

It's about his journey back to himself through scent. I've been thinking a lot about memory and scent. Actually, I see the pile of books that I've been researching on perfume sitting at the top of my desk. That's just the perfumery section. We were talking earlier about research.

That's what I'm working on right now. And it's been a wild ride. But it's been fun.

I think that's brilliant. I can't wait to read that!

Thank you.

Smell is the sense that is least well-written- and -thought-about. Over the years, I've read a lot about World War I. The thing that I can't appreciate or understand or comprehend is the smell of those trenches.

It’s so interesting that you say that. Because this man, this perfumer, lives through World War I. There's a whole section where he's remembering the scent of war. There's a perfume forum called Fragrantica. There's one author on it who does an entire post just on the scents of World War I.

Wow.

It was such an interesting read.

Yeah. The scent of war and death and burning and rotting in the sun.

It was also in some of the primary sources that this post writer looked into. It was also the scent of stuff that's wet and it didn't dry properly. Things like sandbags – they didn't dry properly. Dead animals, horses in particular. And then there were the biological weapons, some used for the first time, things that smelled, like bleach.

The character in my novel has a flashback in the story. His wife is cleaning something. And he has an intense reaction. He lives through World War I and he’s processing that because the trauma remains. I think even if you don't have the exact memories, I think sometimes trauma is just written in the body in a way that is still there. It'll be interesting to get your feedback about it since you're interested in World War I.

Can I take that statement as an indication you might be willing to join me for a third interview after this novel comes out?

I would love to. That would be so much fun.

That'd be awesome.

Thank you so much, Russell. You are so kind and generous in your engagement. Honestly, it's such a delight to speak with you. It's like every author's dream that someone engages on this level with a work. It's so special and so generous. Thank you.

Thank you. I love your writing. And I love our conversations. I learned so much. You give me so much to reflect on and to ponder. And it's always wonderful to see you and to get a chance to talk, Sherry.

Thank you so much, Russell. Likewise. And I would love to hear your thoughts when you read A Month in the Country.

Okay, fine. I've got to read one book right now that I'm doing a review for. But after that, I will read A Month in the Country.

Okay. Awesome.

Thank you so much for your time, Sherry. This was awesome. I'm so excited.

My pleasure. Thank you so much, Russell, for your time. I really enjoyed this.

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