Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 162: Amos Lee, Reaching Out Through Music

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

Musician Amos Lee started meditating in college as a way to cope with his mother's breast cancer diagnosis and his own Generalized Anxiety Disorder. For two years, he was going on retreats and meditating two hours a day. Lee knows what it's like to face personal hardships, so he views his music "as a service," a way to reach out and comfort people who may also be suffering. He talks about how working on his new album, "My New Moon," was therapeutic for him, writing about some very personal experiences. Finally, Lee performs a song he wrote after witnessing his grandmothers passing, in this touching episode. Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail at 646-883-8326. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT I'm Dan Harris. I always think it's so interesting and truly brave and truly useful when really well-known people speak honestly about their struggles with mental health issues. And we have a case in point this week.

Amously, you may have heard of them, very well known singer, songwriter, has struggled with anxiety for a long, long time and turned to and continues to turn to meditation as one of the things that's helped him. He's had plenty of real difficulties in his life and you're going to hear a really revelatory. And I think, as I said before, brave and useful interview coming up on the show also he's the first of our musical guests to actually bring his guitar into the studio and he's going to play us off the air as we say in television although we're not really on the air here he's going to play us off the pod at the end so you want to listen for

that as well so that's coming up first though your voice mails. Here's number one. Hey Dan, my name's Karen and I've been following you quite a bit. I've been doing meditation to help with my anxiety and panic attacks. So that's good. I just wondered how long it took before you recovered from panic or if you still have it. I practice about three times a day and exercise and I see it there at this I don't do drugs. So I admire you coming forward. There's a lot of us out here. So yeah, just do you still have it? Is it gone? Is it not gone? Is it just a little bit? The I mean. So thank you, and thanks for everything.

You're a great guy. Thank you. I really appreciate you saying that. I really admire how aggressively, maybe that's not the right word, but how assiduously, maybe that's the right word, you are pursuing your treatment for this very difficult thing. Panic and anxiety, it can whittle your

life down to nothing if you're basically everything that makes you anxious or gives you a panic attack, you avoid, then you may not be left with much. And so the fact that you're going after it and meditating and seeing a therapist and exercising all the things you need to do according to the experts is awesome. So you asked about my situation. You know, I It in my experience, I don't have a sense that there's a cure for this stuff. I think you can really get at the root causes and make a bunch of life hacks to make it to make your life much easier. But you're, these, to me, they seem like chronic conditions that you can mitigate to a great

extent. But I don't consider myself somebody who's, you know, not at risk to have panic attacks anymore. Absolutely not. So, for me, the most useful things have been, I'm just going off what my doctor told me many years ago after I had my on-air panic attacks, that you know, you have to treat yourself like a thoroughbred horse. You need to really take care of yourself. So I keep my eye on getting enough sleep, pretty careful about

my diet. I'm very aggressive about my exercise, although the part of that's because I'm an on-air narcissist, and meditation and, you know, at medication, my most prominent panic attacks have been on national television. There is a great medication, a class of medication is called beta blockers, which are non-narcotic and you can take them if you're worried about having a panic attack and it won't change the way you're... It's not like taking an anti-exhiety drug where all of a sudden you're a little dopey. It really just blocks, as I understand it, your the physiological symptoms of a panic attack. So your heart rate can't get that high. So I find that incredible.

It's the closest thing to a silver bullet I've ever encountered. And it's used by people who have to perform from surgeons to ballet dancers to public speakers the world over. So that's another thing that I found to be incredibly useful so I think there are lots of ways to get at this and and personally in my life I feel like I'm in a much better place and I was after I had those panic attacks as I'm not doing drugs removing cocaine from the system is a pretty useful but I don't consider myself cured and I'm not sure there is such a thing all right gentlemen, number two.

Hey Dan, my name is Bob Limon the Chicago area. I have been a meditation practitioner for several years now, maybe as much as about four or five years now. I practice twice a day, about 20 minutes a day. And my question is, how do you know when you should up your practice from say 20 minutes to 30 minutes or an hour once or twice a day, and even taking that a step further, you keep on talking about going on retreat. And I want to know how you know not just how to know when you should be ready for a retreat, but even more importantly, how do you pick a retreat

in which to go to and the length of time? Thanks, keep up the great work, and I hope to keep on hearing from you every week as you normally do pop up on my podcast. Thank you, bye-bye. Thanks, man. A lot in that question. So let me see if I can remember it all. So in terms of your daily dosage of meditation, I think that's just such an individual thing.

One thing I would say just based on my own experience is maybe don't get too ambitious in a way that makes it unsustainable. So if you're doing 20 minutes a day and you all of a sudden decide to do three hours a day or two hours a day, my one worry is that you could, well, first of all, I worry that it, you know, might be irresponsible in some way. I mean, I don't know the situation in your life, but I don't want you to start neglecting your kids or your spouse or your job. So that's one thing. But second, assuming then of that's going gonna happen, I worry that you

will maybe set yourself up for failure and then your ego will swoop in and tell you a whole story about how you're a failed meditator and then you're really off the wagon. So I would recommend an incremental approach personally. Another way to gauge how much you should be sitting every day is if you have a teacher, if you go to a meditation class once in a while and maybe talk to the teacher afterwards or if you have an individual relationship with the teacher, that can be a very useful thing to just sort of talk it out with somebody. But so I guess my bottom line is if you're interested in hiking it up, the daily dosage,

I think go for it, but just maybe go for an incremental approach so that you don't run off a cliff here. In terms of meditation retreat, look, it's a little bit like the thing people tell you about having a kid. It's never a good time. I mean, there, it's always inconvenient and it's always going to seem, at least, and I'm speaking from only from my experience here, that it, it, it's always a pain to find the time to do it and I always kind of dread doing it. And yet it is the time in my experience when I make the biggest leaps in my practice and I have the most profound experiences. I really come to sort of molecularly understand the things we're

talking about on this podcast and that you read about in great books about meditation or Buddhism. So I highly recommend it at any stage, frankly. I did my first meditation retreat after a year. Now, I often tell people, when my little canned lines from having spent four and a half, nearly five years, speaking publicly about meditation, post publishing my first book, is you don't have to go on a meditation

retreat in order to be a successful meditator. I think if you're doing just a few minutes a day, that's fine. And I went on my first retreat because I was writing a book and I needed some stuff to write about. So that was frankly part of my motivation. I also really did understand that for me meditation was useful practice and that a meditation retreat was a great way to... It was obvious to me it was a great way to up my game and it had been recommended to me by people who I really trusted and admired including Sam Harris who's been on the show before the as a well-known podcaster and author and also Dr. Mark Epstein who's also been on the show before and is a well-known

author both of them had recommended to me and so I was really taking it seriously as a result of that too. The one piece of advice I often give people about and I was texting with the guys from the minimalism podcast who've become friends. They're interested in going on a meditation retreat and I was telling them that they wanted to go on a three day retreat and my advice is actually

go for a seven to 10. I know that sounds super daunting, but in my experience on these retreats, you're really suffering until day four or five when the volume of your mental chatter can go way, way down. And that's when really interesting things can happen. Again, in my experience.

And the guys from minimalism were saying, well, we just don't have the time to do that. And that's fine. I think three days is better than no days, but so I wouldn't tell you, don't do it if you only have two or three days. But take seriously the rather radical notion that seven to 10 days may be the move.

Okay, and the final part of what you asked me is how do I know where a good meditation retreat is? I do not consider myself a comprehensive expert on all the meditation retreats offered in this country, but I do know two of the spots that I really can unreservedly recommend, and those are Spirit Rock, which is North of San Francisco,

and the Insight Meditation Society, which is in Barry, Massachusetts, B-A-R-R-E, Massachusetts. They both have websites, Google them, look at the retreat calendar, find one that works for you and go for it. Those places, I honestly believe you cannot go wrong at those places. They have just a phenomenal lineup of teachers. All right, good luck to you.

Go for it. Let's get to our guest. It's Amos Lee, pretty famous guy, very accomplished musician. And as we've seen from somebody of our guests on the show, people who just make it to the highest echelons of our culture, often they're dealing with pretty heavy stuff in their personal life.

And Amos quite courageously is willing to come out and talk about it at length here And the role that meditation has played and as I said, he sings us a song. So here he is. Amos Lee We'll great to meet you too. Congratulations on the new record. Thank you. Very excited about it Well, we're gonna dive into it in a big way Let's start with the with meditation if you're if you're cool with that sure So you've you've flirted with it. How and why did that come about? I think I actually did more than flirt with meditation. Okay, all right. Yeah. Got on base.

I was on base. I'm not sure which base I was on or how I got there, but I started in college and my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was in South Carolina and that kind of rocked my world. I was also at the same time having pretty major anxiety issues because I have a generalized anxiety disorder and I've had one since I was a kid. I never medicated because as you know, maybe you know some people who have these things. A lot of people with generalizing anxiety disorders don't like taking pills.

And I happen to be a very physically sensitive person. So like if I take something down, I get down. So I wanted something that would try to help and I wasn't drinking or I didn't really have music yet. I was just starting to play music. But I was having panic attacks three or four times a day. Wow. So I decided that I was going to try to do this meditation thing and I was introduced to it through a comparative religious literature course. I took when I was in Massachusetts. I took a semester at UMass Amherst and I had this comparative religious literature class

and we read everything from, I've heard you talk about Buddhism beyond beliefs. We read, yeah, great book, pure heart and lightened mind, which is another really great book about Zen Buddhism. That's his guitar. Yeah, that's my own. We read The Legend of Baal Shem, Cloud of Unknowing. So we got into mystic texts and books from all traditions with the Legend of Zhuangzi. But the professor of the class was an ordained Catholic priest minister and also a Zen priest. So he was this super deep guy who had lost a child and gotten into studying Buddhism. So I went on a retreat with him and we did a Zazen retreat in Western Massachusetts where we did sitting walking, chanting, sitting, walking, chanting, silent retreat for four

days and that was sort of like me going headlong into it. This way beyond flirting. Well, way beyond flirting, yes. And then, yes, I didn't tell you any of this. So, after that, I was pretty devout Buddhist for about two years in college. When everyone else was partying and drinking, I was playing guitar and meditating two hours a day. Wow.

And really focusing heavily on like doing my Mala beads and reading texts. And I got really deep into it. Then came the music. And once I became a musician and started hanging around musicians, I was like, actually, this is what I really want to do. I never really thought about going into a monastic life. I flirted with that in my mind, but I never did it, obviously, because I felt like I didn't want to be sequestered. I wanted to do good in the world, and I'm not saying that monks don't do good in the world. They do great in the world. But I wanted to be active. I wanted to live in the active world.

So what happened from there when you got into music, did you completely abandon Buddhism and meditation? No, I mean philosophically, I still, I mean, I feel like I practice compassion as much as I possibly can. It's funny because I read, I really like Herman Hess, Hessa, however he might have said it, but I- The Dartha. Yeah, and so I read Zadartha a bunch of times. I came to this conclusion that the Buddha wasn't the Buddha until he was the Buddha. And what that means to me is he wasn't really, I guess he was striving to find something, but I don't think I don't. This is my interpretation that he really knew what it was. He was going to find. And then it happened. And he was like, oh, it's this. And that's kind of how I was with music. I didn't really know I was gonna sit under the tree and find it, but I did.

So I sat under the tree and I was like, this is what I've been waiting for. So I didn't abandon Buddhism in my thought process, but I wasn't as interested in going down the long path of becoming like a super devout Buddhist who is just every day practicing practicing practicing meditation, maybe going into a monastery, but pure heart and light in mind is a really great book. Karota, I think her name was, I'm gonna mess it up. She was an Irish woman, I don't

want to say it because I might say someone else's name, Moira O'Hallarine. It's a great book. So basically, it's this woman who I think was living in Boston. And she found herself sitting, Zazen, in all these random corners in her house, completely unprompted by anyone in her life and she moved to Japan and became the first Zen priest or priest since many many years and it was her coming to terms with a lot of hardship and patriarchy and self-doubt and I just really related to her writing and to her experience and how raw and open she was about it. It's a really beautiful book.

Question about you. So you got into meditation initially, it sounds like the initial impulse was because of generalizing anxiety disorder. You did it very seriously for a couple of years and then stopped. Did it help with the anxiety and then when you stopped, did you find the anxiety coming back? Well, anxiety for me is, it's a chronic condition. I'm never not going to have it. And something that I like to talk to my fellow anxiety sufferers about is like, don't think it's going away. Don't try to cure yourself. Just understand that you can manage it. It's manageable. It's going to come back stronger at times. It's going to go away. But it's, and I found that the acceptance of that was a big

mind change for me because at first when I was having panic attacks and major anxiety issues, I just didn't know what was happening. It was sort of the late, or it was like the mid 90s and it hadn't, people would say panic, but it's not like today where so many people are very aware of what a panic attack feels like and My particular brand of panic was very strong and it was even kind of like there might have been a little break in there at times for me because I was really suffering Like psychotic break maybe maybe there was a little bit of a break in there for me I think where I couldn't really tell the difference between things.

But I've always been very engaged in overcoming things. And it wasn't like you can even fight it. I wasn't trying to fight it, but I did this program, which I'm not on here to plug anybody, but I'm just giving you my experience. I did a program called Attacking Anxiety, and it was a 12-step program done by this woman named Lucinda Bassett, and it's very 12-steppy.

So, for those of your audience members who might have anxiety disorders and don't want something that's, you know, 12-step them. But what I mean by that is, like, there's a power greater than you, you know, 12-step, but what I mean by that is like, there's a power greater than you, you know, all that. I didn't really, I didn't really get into that part of the program, but it just helped me so much to identify what was happening to me, to know I wasn't alone, because that's such a big thing

for people who suffer from all kinds of stuff. Just know you're not alone. And then it just gave you very practical means to like change your thought process, like replace your negative thoughts. Like you talk a lot about witness, just be a witness. You don't have to be an active demolisher, just be a witness.

So the thought comes up, you should be worried about XYZ right now and forever and then you can recognize, oh no, that's just a bunch of thoughts Yeah, well at least I can say I know that this will pass I Know that this will pass and also I can handle it those were big things for me those those statements like I can handle it It's gonna I'm gonna be okay. I'm not to lose my mind. I'm not like me. Maybe

someday who knows what my diagnosis will be, but in this very moment, I can handle this. And then, yeah. The attacking anxiety course. Did you do that around the same time that you were doing the meditation? Yeah. It was sort of maybe a little later that I did the program, but the meditation was definitely happening. It was all I was gonna attack, like the program says, I was gonna really go headlong into this thing and face it. Did you find that when you took the meditation out of the mix that somehow the anxiety ticked up

in some way that you got worse or the cognitive tools that you learned in attacking anxiety was that enough to kind of corral it? It helped begin the corraling process. Again, I still feel like I still have anxiety issues. I, you know, there are nights in the past where I've been on stage and I don't know how things manifest for anyone else, but mine is this very strange kind of out-of-body experience where I'm like, what if my mouth stops working and I can't get any sound out? Or what if I forget every thought that I've ever had?

Like, really out there stuff, and I'm in the middle of a song, and no one else knows it, because I'm just up there singing. And they're like, oh, this feels cool. And meanwhile, internally, I'm like, what if I forget every word that I've ever learned? Have you ever broken? Oh, no, man, no, I'm cool. I'm cool. I like, again, witnessing it is a big part of it. You know, it's like witness, be a witness, know what will pass. And so another thing that's been really helpful for me is exercise. And these days I meditate walking.

So I don't sit, notice, but I walk. And I observe, and I find that being an observer, unfortunately, I'm not famous, which is good. What do you mean you're not famous? You've been at the top of the Billboard charts. It's a weird thing. I've sort of carved out a place for myself where I can walk around 99% of the world and be unnoticed and also have a

Decent career where I feel very connected to my fans. So yeah, there's a there's a cool little niche that I found that I'm trying to preserve While promoting my music. So you feel like you can walk out in public. This is the meditation you were about to describe. You can walk through the world and turn that into a mindful of this exercise. I do. Yeah, and I use it because it helps me do two things. It helps me stay active and it helps me clear my mind.

And recently when I've gone back into meditation and I was doing a lot over the winter while I was making this new record that I made called My New Moon, there were days where like when you're in a recording process, it's just so much information and it's so much analysis. That meditation can be really helpful in those moments just to be like, I am going to just disappear for a little while into this thought and then meditation does,

it doesn't work like that for me, but it slows my mind down gradually and the more I meditate, the slower I get. So in this case, you're talking about actual seated meditation. Yeah, I got back into some seated meditation, but it's interesting though, the seated meditation that I've done over the past couple years, I've, I'm wary because like the Tom Waits quote that I always stumble back on is if I exercise my devils, my angels may leave too and when they leave,

they're so hard to find, it's a great Tom Waitweight song, but I always think about that. I'm like, I don't want to get too healthy, so I won't be able to write anymore. So I think that's such an interesting question. I'm not creative in the way you are. I mean, I write books, and so there is creativity in there, but I'm not conjuring songs out of thin air, or conjuring fictional stories, although I am actually kind of working on a fictional thing the way you are. But I wonder, I mean I once heard a great meditation teacher, my meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein asked about,

I think it was Beethoven or Mozart, I can't remember, basically saying, this guy, this great composer was miserable. Would he have made such great stuff if he wasn't? And Joseph's answer was maybe he would have made better stuff. And I find that intriguing because this has deeply held belief in creative communities that you need to have at least some misery. And I guess I would add something else to that, which is that I've been, I'm not a meditation master, I've only been doing it for, I mean, coming up on a decade.

I don't think eliminating all the devils is on the table. Right, so. It depends on how many half. So I just feel like what, what, there's a great quote from this Hindu teacher, actually, it's a Jewish guy from Boston, but he, he, he changes his name to Ram Das, very famous in the meditation community. He says, meditation does not annihilate your neuroses, it makes you a kind of surre of your neurosis.

So I would argue that that's kind of increased visibility into the machine and the machinations of the mind would put you in closer touch with your vulnerabilities, sensitivities, and give you maybe a better leg up at advantage in the writing process. Of course, again, I caveat that with the fact that I'm not writing songs, so what do I know? Well, it worked for Stevie Wonder, because he was very into transcendental meditation. In fact, he sings on it. Is it the songs in the key of life record?

Transcendental meditation. Transcendental meditation. Transcendental meditation. Transcendental meditation. Meditation. Meditation. I speak to Vinnie. First of all, first of all, first of all, Transcendental meditation.

Gets you. Gets you. Gets you. Gets you. Yeah, he gets into it. So you can listen to Stevie. He'll tell you, but Stevie is a genius anyway. So I mean, maybe it's just a kind of thing that like if it, if he goes into into his meditation state and he gets clear, he feels better. That's wonderful. I guess for me I'm a little bit more anxious about losing it. So I hear you. One of the things you described yourself in colleges as sort of really being

focused on exercise and not drinking or taking pills because you thought it would make the anxiety worse. But you're in the music business. I would imagine there's no shortage of Patterns and pills right and and potions How do you what's your attitude toward all that now? I don't judge like I don't do you do? No, I why definitely like a martini and I like I like wine, so I definitely indulge there I Just think that today and I know people very close to me, and I've lost people close to me who have done the potions and the powders and the pills.

And it's a scary time out there right now because you don't know what you're taking some of the time. And with the opioid, the epidemic, and fentanyl being cut in everything. You know, again, I don't judge people who use, I don't judge addicts. I think a lot of people are self-medicating. I know people in my life who grew up undiagnosed and were self-medicating until they wound up in prison, and then they got their diagnosis.

And then they're like, I just wasted 15 years of my life because I just didn't know. But yeah, there's lots of that in a lot of jobs though these days. I think music is actually maybe more professional and focused than a lot of other stuff these days. I mean, if you're talking about 1986 in the abundance times where you would roll into wherever, whatever studio, and there's a plate of cocaine there waiting for you,

but like, I don't know if you've heard, but the music industry doesn't really sell any records anymore. So that plate of cocaine is now like, you know, a Metro card. It's like, well, you know, get get get get home safely, work hard, post on your Instagram, and you know, keep producing music. But it's interesting, man, because I know young musicians these days, and they're so focused, so many of them. I know that we heard the tragic stories, you know, we've heard over the past couple weeks, a lot of a few young musicians have lost their lives.

I am McNillar. Yeah, and it's every time I hear it, I'm just like, it devastates me because I hate. My thing is I don't, what's not my thing, it's all of our thing. I don't like when people feel alone, and they're suffering. And if, so a lot of times, I just lost a friend two weeks ago,

and we don't know what happened, but it makes me want to cry for him that he maybe he felt so alone that he wanted to just go away by himself. Now, again, it's his right to do what he chooses with his life, but it breaks my heart. And I want to reach out to people through music and that, that's sort of the mission of this latest record is to reach out to people who are Maybe grieving or feeling some way and let them know that they're not alone through the music and also through the live experience Stay tuned more of our Conversation is on the way after this life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions

What is happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs, and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times.

But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. So, I know there's a bit of a story behind this new record. Can you tell me the story? If I understand correctly, was it a chance meeting backstage?

Yeah, there have been a couple real important influences on this record. The first happened in New York State actually. And it was two parents that came back after a show of mine, and they told me that they had lost their son to cancer and that the music, the music that I was making was a really big part of their healing process, and even in the last days of his life, they would all share the songs together. And up until that point, I never really even considered that reality. I think I was just oblivious to it.

Like, I was just making my music and playing my shows and probably in my own head with my own negative self-talk about whatever it was that I was going through at the time. And that was a real moment of clarity for me where I recognized that I could really be of service to people and I changed my entire opinion of how to approach my job from that moment on and Since then it's and it's helped me actually immensely as a performer too because When I have those demons of doubt crawl onto my shoulders

I I just focus back on those two or I think about someone in the audience It only has to be one person who I can go They're here because they really want to be here And this has been a healing like experience for them and I don't know how hard it was for them to get here. Maybe they had to drive three hours and get a babysitter in parking. I better just do your best. Be of service. Take I take the audience journey very seriously and the way I approach every show. That's really interesting. We've had a lot of entertainanners and specific musicians in that chair. Nobody, I've never really heard anybody, and I love it.

Describing music as a service. Yeah, I mean, it's a heady term. No, but I like it. If you're a judgement in my voice, it's positive judgment. No, I hear judgment in my own voice, which is generally where most of the judgment that I have comes through. Most of us, where most of the judgment that I have comes. Most of us, especially those of us with anxiety for sure. Yeah, but when I say the word service that comes from a lot of places like first of all,

it's an interesting word because it means a lot of different things. It's like it is a thing, it's a service, you can go to a Catholic or a Jewish service, a funeral service, a communion. A communion. You can have service. You can be of service. It's a very wide spread word. So I think of it in that I want to be present with you and value your experience as much as mine, if not more. And I think that's always been where I've come from as a service. Like when I worked in the restaurant industry, I waited tables. You're there to be a server, right? It's fine. It's a fine word to use.

And I really loved the job. I worked at the Olive Garden. I was a server at the Olive Garden. That's nice. That's hard. Yeah, you've got to run back before to get the fill the bread sticks, Basin. Yeah. I got my steps in those days.

That was part of my... Isn't that all you can eat bread sticks and add the deal? It's soup salad and sticks. All right. Dan, yeah. Soup salad and sticks and also unlimited beverages. Okay, so that's a lot of movement. You know, folks come in hungry and it's an interesting business model too because you're sort of feeding them before they

eat. And what I mean is the entree is sort of secondary. It's a weird thing. It's a weird model, but it worked for them, and it worked for me because it was a service job where I was like, I don't feel like getting the third bowl of salad for these people, but I don't know if this is the only night they're going to have out for the next three months, and this is a special time for them. And I want to make sure that at least I'm paying attention. So the roots were sort of spread then, and I was able to sure that at least I'm paying attention. So the roots were sort of spread then and I was able to take those lessons

that I learned at the Olive Garden again, not plugging anything here. And take it that way. And move them into a new arena, which is an artistic emotional place, which is much more meaningful for me than salad. It would be... Yes. What I was going to say before that was what I hear a lot of in the foregoing is a natural capacity in your end for empathy, which I say that was some envy on my end because

I don't know how good I am at that, because I could see myself as if I project myself into the Olive Garden job. Again, with no disrespect for Olive Garden, but just in terms of the running back and forth to serve red sticks or salad or whatever, I think I might be lost in a black hole of self-absorption and self-pity, whereas you got some of that, for sure, but then also, well, maybe this is, they're only nighted. Whereas I don't know that that

a denim post script, whatever, suffix on the thought loop would have come in for me. So I just, I'm just pointing that out, which is cool, I think. Yeah, I mean, for me as a writer, also empathy is hugely important. I get bored of my me as a writer, also, empathy is hugely important. I get bored of my own stories a lot, and something that I have always really enjoyed and wanted to do more of was living in someone else's skin, and I've brought up Quantum Leap a

bunch of times. If you remember that show from the 80s with Scott Bacula. Yeah, does he play a superhero? He's like, he's sort of a superhero. He just, he can, the premise of the show is this dude has somehow found a portal and I don't know all the details, but he found a portal so he can experience things in different points of history as different individuals. Oh, I vaguely remember it.

I think I was confusing with another show with like a regular guy who comes to superhero and he's probably called my secret identity, which was Jerry O'Connell. Look, man, I'm older than you. No, you're not. I'm 47, how old are you? Oh no, I'm 41, but you look 33. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha called. Oh, this is horrible. See, this is why I put my phone away because I would want to Google this right now. Whatever it is. We know what it is. But he didn't have a thing. Well, now your listeners will be experiencing this

yelling at their podcasts on the trains going, it's this show, dummy. Yes, I'm not sure where we went to with that, but now I'm just thinking about that shit. Well, you were talking about quantum leap. Yeah, so, well, as a writer, and I think that that was the whole point, that was the point of that show to me was how to cultivate more empathy in your life. And I, you know, I come from a naturally empathetic mother who has, who raised me on empathy. That was sort of what I was fed every day. Don't judge, you know, like we've had a lot of hardship

in our family. So when you see it firsthand and you see how people deal with hardship, with compassion and love, I think that breeds empathy rather than putting a fence or a wall up and saying that's not my problem. How is she, is she still around? She is around, man. Yes. She had breast cancer twice. She fought it. It did a doozy tour. I mean, you know, all the survivors out there, I'm giving you my love right now because it is tough.

But it opened up a door into understanding how hard that journey is for people. And now I work with two organizations, one of which is called Musicians on Call. And they, what we do is we go bedside for people who aren't well enough to leave, and we play for them. And the other organization is Melotic Carrying Project, and they stream shows live concerts to mostly children who are quarantined. So they're so sick, they can't have visitors. And I did a show with them where I met this little girl named Maya Gladheart who is getting back to the record. She inspired a song on the record called Little Light because she was really sick and her family welcomed me into their home as a stranger coming into their suffering which people can be very protective of and they offered me a look in and a light in and I just started

sending her songs and playing her face time tunes and we became super tight buddies and time tunes and we became super tight buddies. And you know, getting back to the empathy place, having those experiences with my mom and also going through a lot as a kid and being raised on this ideology of empathy and compassion, just it hurts sometimes because you're with her and she's suffering so much and you just want to make her better. But her grace and her strength inspired me so much that it also helps perspective. So I'd be on stage some nights, maybe when my service mechanism isn't working in my brain and I think about her. And I think about wow, she, I mean she she's probably nauseous as hell she has no hair she hasn't been to school in six months she doesn't know what her diagnosis is gonna be I can get up here and do this tonight and I am amazed at the kids the some of these kids that I meet how

strong they are and how wise they are. This little girl is so wise. So how's she doing now? She is in remission. Hi, six months. Yeah, so I'm wearing this little beaded bracelet she made me and this weird stinky rope that she sent. And it wasn't stinky before I put it on, but wearing it for the last year straight,

it's got its moments. But I'm going to wear this until she's a year in remission, but she seems good, all of her scans keep coming back clean. So yeah, she's doing great. So is this kind of a fourth-right look at suffering the theme of the new record? It's part of it. It's a definitely, I mean, it's a big part of it.

It's not only theirs, it's my own, because I lost my grandmother two years ago and I was there with her when she was So the story is that she was in the hospital. We didn't know that how sick she was So she was having I don't know if this is part of but you told me not to edit myself So I want to do so. Yeah, so she was having this bad stomach issues. Like what we thought was reflux and she was a diabetic and something that I learned through this process is

if you know someone who is a diabetic and a female, especially, and they're experiencing a lot of stomach stuff, it could be their heart. And it was her heart. So her pain was so bad she had to sleep upright at night we had no idea we just didn't know that it was her heart we thought because we all have our we all have reflux all of us in my family so we thought oh it's her reflux she was eating tums and

everything so much I remember talking to her it's like a gram I got you know I got my reflux too I tried this other medicine it's like a gram. I got you know, I got my reflex too I I tried this other medicine. She's like, oh, I'll try that because my grandmother was the sweetest human being on the On the planet earth that ate kids by the time she was 31. She raised them all with the utmost love and care Um, and so she was admitted to the hospital and the doctor came in and said she's 96% blocked across the board like if she can make it to the morning we're going to Do a surgery on her we think we think we can get some openings in there for her and so Initially we were completely devastated and then when we got this news just make it to morning

We were all like super pumped. We're like yes. news, just make it to morning, we were all like super pumped. We were like, yes, she's going to make it to the morning. And so she got stable, she got into her bed. We were there with her. And so the family was now trickling out because it was getting to be like nine or 10, it was getting late, past visitor hours. So they would only allow a few of us to stay. And my mom is not a person who leaves. So, and she's the oldest girl, and her mom was her person. So we stayed. And around 1130, she got a fib, and it got very bad. Like her vitals were all over the place, and it was just really me, my mom and my aunt, but my mom and my aunt were just, it was such an excruciating experience to watch her suffer so much because she was basically having a massive heart attack. She was having heart failure.

Was she conscious for this? She was conscious for it, but she was in and out because her vital, like her blood pressure was like very low, her heart rate was racing and then falling. And like the whole time I'm staring at her, you know, her vitals and I'm like, just make it to morning. Please just make it to morning. And then about four, I realized like I was just sitting

in there with her and I was like, I've been around people actively dying before. She's not making it. I hear the, I've been around people actively dying before. She's not making it. I hear the like there's a certain kind of breathing that starts to happen where I'm like she's not making it. And I called my mom in and she you know she came in and she was like lost it. And it was a hard moment. So it's not just other people's stuff, it's our stuff on this record too. And so I wrote a song for her called, I wrote a couple songs for her. One's called Hang On Hang On and it's about the experience of just, I don't know, you know, being there with her and saying, please stay. but she wasn't, she couldn't.

But I wanted her to. So it's not just this record is a partially about being empathetic and some friends of mine who have passed away. It's also about our own suffering and my mom and mine and my whole families. And I think, I think some of the songs on this record are hard for her to hear and listen to because they're it's raw like it that's what was happening and hang on hang on is for me probably the most emotional experience on the record there's another song on the record called all you got is a song which came out a lot funkier and funner

than I thought it would. And I was kind of open to it because I don't want it to be, you know, complete emotional devastation here. I want some fun because it's music. But the basis of that song was when she was in these moments where I knew, first of all, my grandma was like the Dalai Lama to me. She was like, that's the Buddha. She got it.

She just understood everything. And I was with her in the moments where she would just look up at me like weak eyeed into the side and tried to smile, but she wasn't even strong enough to smile, but she was trying. And she couldn't talk anymore because they had intubated her because they were trying to just keep her lungs working. So all I did was grab her hand and sing to her. And I sang her. My grandfather's favorite song, which if you knew him, he was a wild man. His favorite song was Born to Lose, which is where I get it from. And my grandma's favorite stuff was like,

what a wonderful world. And somewhere over the rainbow. So I was just, I just sang to her, because there were no words for me. There were no words for me to say to her, you're going to be OK. I mean, I'm not going to say that to her. Here with you, she knows that.

So I just sang her some songs and did what I could with her. And so music has played a huge part not only in my own suffering, but my friends. And I'm always the guy people call on when there's a funeral. So I'm like a funeral singer guy. So a lot of people who pass I go and do some songs for them. And I'm just very grateful to have music to be that bridge for me not only into other people's Healing and pain but also just into their hearts in the shows and make them feel better You know in those moments where they're not grieving

Music as a service. Yeah, you've got your guitar with you. I'll play something. I would love to I want to I'll make sure I don't Overwhelm your system here. You said before you're more comfortable playing music than talking, although you did a damn good job on the talking, I have to say. Thank you. Let's see if this thing is in tune. I think it is. So I'll play hang on hang on for you. Perfect. We left you that day, we never left you, hurt you in so much pain. But you didn't want to be here anyway So hang on, hang on Hang on, hang on Hang on, hang on You already come so far

We never failed you Even though we might have felt that way, we never left you. I had to see you in so much pain. And I would have stayed there forever But it didn't work out that way So hang on hang on Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Hello Say you love us pray, I love us pray It's all we've known Say you love us pray while we stand in there In the shadow stone

Say you love us pray, I love us pray It's all we've known Say your love is prayer Yeah Hang on, hang on Hang on, hang on Hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, no, no, hey, no, no, hey, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, hey, no, no, no, hey, hey, no, no, hey, no, hey, hey, no, Morning comes you won't be alone Morning comes you won't be alone That was beautiful. Thanks. Thank you.

I really appreciate it. I mean, I think fourth rightly, I use that word twice now, but confronting mortality, I just getting people to think about that because it's so important. We talk about a lot on this podcast. I think that even of itself is a big service.

Yeah, I remember reading the art of happiness and I, something to the tune of, I think the Dalai Lama said something about, imagine yourself in a casket every day when you wake up. And you know that, hey, how about a morbid thought for the start of the day, but you do appreciate stuff. Like, I don't know about afterlife. I don't really think about it very much, but I do definitely think about how we affect

each other in this one. And I wish more people could do that. People of faith especially, it's like, can you, can you not focus on that? Let's focus on this one. This is important. Let's not sell a thing we don't know about. Let's sell what we know about. We have abundance.

We can share it. We can make each other's lives better. But I don't know. I understand why some people like an escape. I definitely understand that. You know, I think about people who were born into slavery and were like, the next life is for me. Like, Jesus is going to take me there. And I understand that. And I don't short that. And I hope that it happened. But in modern times, with us in our culture, where people are preaching about abundance and then hereafter, I want the abundance to be saved for the here and now.

Yeah, I mean, I for sure for me, setting aside any metaphysical questions about the here and now versus the hereafter, I definitely think being in touch with your mortality is not morbid in the majority of its syn-living, it's what makes you not take stuff or granted. Definitely. Yeah. Before we go, give us the name of the record again and also like, where can we find you in social media, everything. Sure. Well, the name of the record is my new moon. It was a song written. The title track is a song called Whiskey on Ice, which was written for a friend of mine who passed and is written for his mom and his mom's confronting her grief.

So my new moon, the title of the record is sort of based around the cycle of renewal and also the ending. Do we know which is which? Do we know how to deal with other darkness and this other darkness or renewal for ourselves? And maybe that is the case. So it's called my new moon, social media. I get I've never done this before at Amos Lee, I think. I don't really know. I think I'm starting to post. I'm very slowly dipping my toes into the social media world. Instagram is AM0SLEE. Facebook I think it's just aimlessly something fan page or

whatever, but yeah reach out. I appreciate you having me on here. I think it's really great that you have a voice and that you're sharing it with people to try to make their lives 10% happier. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming on and I know you've got your kick off to your tour coming up so we'll be love with that. Thanks.

Okay that does it for another edition of the 10% happier podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan V Harris. Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Cohan, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

at Wondery.com slash Survey.