Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 44: Duncan Sheik, '90s Rocker Turned Broadway Composer

Episode Date: November 2, 2016

Duncan Sheik first made a name for himself in the mid-90s with the hit song, "Barely Breathing," and has since reinvented himself as a Broadway composer. He won two Tonys and a Grammy Award for music he composed for the smash Broadway hit, "Spring Awakening," and he also composed music for Broadway's "American Psycho." But when Sheik first started out, performing on stage made him very nervous and it wasn't until he was introduced to Nichiren Buddhism, which involves the practice of a form of mantra meditation, that he got over his fears. 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. I am very breathing. I can't find together. I'll be totally honest. I didn't know much about Duncan Sheik.

I'm a pretty big music fan, but he had somehow escaped my notice. I had heard barely breathing, I guess, when his big hit back in the 90s, but I was too busy listening to pavement and other indie rock bands, so that he was, he never really got onto my radar in a big way. But then, somebody recently pointed out to me that he's a meditator in fact He's been doing it for a while and it's been a big part of his creative process so we invited him to come in and and he did and I was super impressed and charmed by the guy and I think you will be too So I give you Duncan cheek

From ABC this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, my wife was psyched when I told her the recovery show. She didn't know until this morning. She's like, what? She got the ship. Tell her I say hi. I will. I will. She's very rarely impressed with me. So this was a win. I'm sure that's not true. No, it's definitely true. So how did you become a Buddhist? Well, I went to Brown University, and my freshman year, I was taking a bunch of classes

about Eastern religions kind of generally. And I was just, I think I had been interested in in high school and kind of lapsed Catholic pretty standard typical story of like when I was 14 or 15 I just basically started to not buy into the dogma. And the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, I went to LA to visit a relative of mine, actually my mother's cousin, and she had been practicing Buddhism since the early 70s. And specifically with the Sokogaka, so she had been. Sokogaka. Sokogaka, which is the sort of the lay Buddhist organization of Neeturin Buddhism, which is the Japanese form of Buddhism that I practice. And basically, you just chant Namiho Renge Kyo.

So that's the essential part of the practice. You just run that, you chant what? Namiho Renge Kyo. And you chant it aloud or internally? You chant it allowed. You have a mandala, which is called a gohonsan, and sort of set up in an altar. So every morning and evening, I'll chant for maybe, sometimes it's 15 minutes, sometimes, hopefully,

it's an hour, sometimes it's even longer. But depending on what's going on in my day and my life, I chant every morning and every evening, and it's been a daily practice of mine since I was 19. How do your neighbors feel about this? They can't hear it. It's quite subtle. It's interesting because when I started practicing I was 19 and I had been playing music for a long time, but I was an incredibly self-conscious performer and singer.

And there was something about chanting where you're just kind of sitting on one note, kind of continually, that really taught me how to sing one note. And I think there's something great about, if you know how to sing one note, then possibly you can learn how to sing two notes and then maybe three and then maybe four. And there was something really great about using my voice in this very calm and specific way that helped me a lot, you know, in terms

of becoming somebody who could actually get on stage and sing. Well, I have a million questions. Let me just start with this. When I was, I say this all the time, when I meet people who started practicing either meditation or Buddhism or both early, because when I was 19, I was in 80 at a jerk. And if somebody had said, yeah, you should start chanting this thing out

of an like, yeah, go pound a sand. Yeah. So what about you allowed that idea to lodge itself in your brain? Well, okay, it's a great question because I also felt the same way. I mean, I was, I wouldn't say I was a total idiot, but I was sort of a snob. I was like an intellectual snob about religion and I just felt like, oh, you know, you can't, I was like, I liked the Cretanamerti idea that there was no particular practice that anyone should be following. You just sort of like perceived stuff, you

know, through the ether. I don't know what I was thinking. But I had this series of arguments with my mother's cousin while I was staying there in LA. And basically she said to me, look, you can study Buddhism all you want, and you can understand the intellectual precepts of it all you want. And that's fine, that's positive. But unless you sit down and practice, it's not going to have any real powerful effect on your life. It's not going to change your karma, it's not going to change your kind of, you know, your mission, your destiny, so to speak. So I sort of took that as a challenge, I guess, and so I sat down and I, and I said, okay, well, I'll chant and I'll see what happens, and I'll, I'll let you know, you know.

And so I, I think the first day I sat down I chanted for like two hours, which is a really long time to be doing that the first time. And my aunt was very sweet, she's sort of like, okay, I think that's enough for today. But I do have to say, it was subtle. It wasn't this like a ha moment, but I did feel this kind of sense of

I don't know, hopefulness and also a sense of like creative energy that seemed to be kind of welling up and excitement about possibilities in the future. You know, and this is, you know, as a 19 year old where I didn't know that much about Buddhism, it was just more a feeling. So that's where it started. I have been pretty consistent since then. And do you sit in an interesting way, or can you just sit in a chair? You can sit in a chair, but I kneel.

Like if I'm doing, I try to do some yoga as well. So if my yoga practice is pretty good, I sit kind of like I you know, I try to do some yoga as well So if I'm you know if my yoga practice is pretty good I you know I sit kind of in verosana. I guess is the position you would call it and you know chant for However long I feel I need to and believe me. It's like it's sort of like running or like anything else like in a way like the more You can chant for 10 minutes and it's good it kind of gets your blood pumping so to speak, but if you do it for an hour, it has a much more intense effect. I'm curious about the effect because as a meditator, I know what meditation does for you. I mean, I think the, I do sort of basic mindfulness meditation, which is the beginning practice that I think most people bump up against Buddhism or taught,

which is watch your breath and when you get distracted, start again. Is it Vipassana? Vipassana, yes, or insight meditation. So, I mean, for beginners, the fruit of the practice really is you see A, that your mind's out of control, and you see B, that there's a mechanism for training it to be more focused and less

yanked around by your emotions. Right, not complicated. Yeah. I don't really understand what what chanting does for you and even though I'm no longer 19, I'm 45, I'm still kind of an idiot and a jerk and like my my reflexive response to the idea of chanting is negative. Right. I totally understand that. And I, you know, as somebody who watches endless amounts of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and all the four horsemen of the apocalypse, I do understand that impulse very well about like, oh, this is sort of mystical, magical, mumbo jumbo. I get it. But I will say that, you know, Namioranga Kyo, first, it is a kind of a rhythmic thing. So there

is something that does happen, I think, physiologically, when you're kind of in that rhythm and you're chanting that thing. And it changes how you breathe. I think it changes many things about your, just how your whole body is functioning, how the relationship of your brain to your heart, to your whole circulatory system. So I do think that it has a really positive aspect in that regard. Also, I think of it like Namihaarangadko to me is like

it's kind of like I think of it there are these laws that govern the universe. There's gravity, there's electromagnetism, there's you know the second law of thermodynamics you know nothing has ever created or destroyed. Namiha or Angke Kyo, to Buddhist is sort of like this law that underlies all the kind of the it's like the law of cause and effect. So you're getting in rhythm with that that huge kind of force, so to speak. Is there an element of mindfulness to it? You know, again, I view mindfulness. There are a lot of ways to define it, but I view it as just the mental skill that you can train to see what's happening in your mind without getting carried away by it. And I found that to be remarkably useful, especially in marriage. Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah, I do think there's an element of that. I think for me I use the practice as a way of focusing on, you know, how can I create value

in the world and society? How can I create value for myself, for the people in my environment, and you know, within the culture, you know, as somebody who makes art, for a living, how can I do that in the best way possible? That's what Chanin gives me. I don't know, obviously, I think my questions are demonstrating how little I know about Nietzsche Ren Buddhism. It's Japanese, it's not Zen though. Yeah, Nietzschean was sort of a competitor as the wrong word, but he was a Buddhist reformer. Buddhism in Japan and the Middle Ages was mostly practiced by aristocrats and priests,

kind of quite frankly corrupt priesthood, who was the typical thing of administering expensive funerals and bestowing talismans on aristocrats who would pay them a lot of money. It was sort of a racket. So Nietzsche was this reformer who kind of came in and said, booze amazes for everybody. It's for the common people. It's for women. It was very shocking idea at the time.

And he was persecuted and he was castigated and he demonstrated with the government. He's a really interesting historical figure. But this form of Buddhism that he originated, it wasn't practiced by very many people for 700 years. It wasn't until the kind of 1930s in Japan where a group of educators, this guy, Tsunasparo Makaguchi, he kind of popularized the practice and it really took off in pre-World War II, Japan, and especially after World War II, it really took off because the country was decimated, and people were really looking for something to kind of pull themselves out of that situation. So it has a pretty fascinating history.

You ever think you could write a play about it? Well, it's funny. I mean, I have the thought has crossed my mind, but it's such a big, huge, grand topic that I feel like it's something I should do when I'm like 70 or something, you know, when I'm... Isn't all great theater, big, huge, grand topics? Sometimes, but a lot.

Sometimes, yeah, it can be about some, I don't know, that's another conversation, but theater, I think, can really be about anything. Well, that's true. Yeah, yeah, another area where I know basically, zillage, which will become evident as we start talking about theater eventually. I'm sure. No, no, no, be sure. Yes. But back to your practice. So, I practice, as we said, Vipassana, one of the most interesting things for me is the marriage of the actual meditation practice and the intellectual infrastructure, reading books about it, listening to the talks.

Yes. So how much of that is there in Nietzsche-Renn? There's a fair amount. I mean, there's the Goshi, which are kind of like the collected writings of Nietzsche and Dishonin. And most ofosho, which are kind of like the collected writings of Neetron Dishonin, and most of them are letters that he kind of wrote to his followers. And in those letters, you have all of this kind of amazing, very, frankly, very deep wisdom that, you know, you have to understand it in its cultural

context, of course, but it's really profound stuff. I do feel like it's, I've benefited a lot from spending time with those writings. But there's also, it's a lay Buddhist organization. So once a month, I get together with a group of 20 or 30 fellow Buddhists and we meet in somebody's apartment. In fact, you know, it's somebody who lives on Wall Street, but there's, you know, 30 of us get together and we're from all different parts of New York City and all different walks of life and you know, it's every different ethnicity. It's actually really great because it's the one time

where I'm in a room with like, you people, black people, Hispanic people, white people, all different walks of life and we're all there kind of for the same reason. So it's a really cool thing. And you can't together? Yeah, you can't. You do gong-gay together, you can a bit, and then people, you know, they talk about their experiences, what's going on in their life, and how Buddhism affects their life, and we talk a little bit about doctrine. I sort of wish the conversation would be, I wish sometimes we wish it would get a little more theoretical, but because it tends to stay pretty general, because it's kind of for people who are just starting to practice. But it's great and I always leave, you know, I leave those meetings feeling really positive and really, you know, like I've learned something about these people who I never otherwise would have hung out with.

How loud is the chant? You say it's subtle, but is it? Yeah, I mean, if you're chanting by yourself, it's not very loud at all, obviously. But if you're in a room with 400 people, it's loud-ish, but it's not crazy. So you could do it in the next room and your girlfriend would not be perturbed by it? Yeah, yeah.

And in fact, I really like chanting alone. I mean, I'm only a child, So I like to do a lot of things alone So I really like to just practice on my own and I that tends to be how I practice But when I'm with you know, 20 people or 300 people and we're all chanting it can be that can be a really cool experience as well. Yeah, I think group practice of any sort has a certain Potency to it. Yeah, question. Yeah, but I do understand this thing. It's like, oh, you're chanting these syllables that are kind of some medieval dialect of Japanese from the 13th century.

What does that have to do with anything in our contemporary life? I understand that question. And you know, there is an aspect of it that is mysterious. And I can only just say that it, you know, that it has had a really profound effect on my life because when I started practicing, I was 19, like I literally could not get on stage and sing an entire song in front of an audience without collapsing, without melting. And seven years after I started practicing, I had a Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Singer.

It was just completely like it had a very profound effect on my life. You pin that all on the practice? No, I don't pin it all on the practice. Because your innate talent certainly played a role. Well, but I don't think that I would have gotten to that place if I didn't have this, you know, there's kind of the sense of this like never give up spirit that the practice kind of embodies in you. So, and really?

Because I mean, that's interesting because that's not what I would describe as the impact of doing straight up mindfulness. I think Neatron Buddhism is much more, what's the word, it's much more about daily life and about creating value. And I think whereas Zen Buddhism, for example, is more about, oh, I'm gonna erase my ego

and calm down the voices in my head and back away from that. Neatron Buddhism is very engaged in daily life. But not in a sense of proselytizing or anything, but just in a sense of the things that you're doing, are they creating value for the people in your environment? Is it engaged in the world in the sense that people are using and so that they're more successful?

I do think that that has happened quite a bit and it is one of the ways in which Neatron Buddhism has been painted with a little bit of a negative brush at times. So the rap on it is people are chanting this thing in order to make money or whatever. Yeah, that has definitely occurred and I see it it, you know, in a lot of people, and I see, you know, people who are, you know, they're, they're chanting for the wrong reasons, absolutely. And they do have the sense that it's sort of this magical, mystical thing that's going to, you know, it's going to help bring them wealth. It's sort of like the, like, people who think of Christianity, like the prosperity kind

of gospel. Yeah. And I mean, that stuff to me is total nonsense. And it, but I also think that if that's the thing that gets them to start practicing, and then, you know, I think that if they continue to practice, that will, that will change. But let's unpack this for a second because you said that one of the big impacts for you was you started, you were too shy to really get up on stage and then seven years later you had a Grammy nom.

So that does seem to put it within the context of success, but there's another way to think about it which is that it was more about fulfilling your potential. Yeah, absolutely. And fulfilling something that was within me, but that I think was really blocked in many ways. And that's a lifelong struggle, as you know, like you're constantly bumping up against these things inside yourself that can be hard to overcome. And so, Buddhist practice for me has been one consistently effective way of doing that.

But, you know, I wish I was a better practitioner and a more consistent practitioner of it, but I know it's there. Do you think the syllables have some sort of power in and of themselves, or is it just the act of chanting? Could you chanting the ABCs? Yeah, no, I do think there is a distinction. I have asked that question of some people who I consider to be some very wise older men and women many times.

And I do think that if you just sat there and chanted Coca-Cola over and over, there would be a very different effect. Because it is, we are trying to let the law of cause an effect. And, you know, not to go too deeply into the, into the kind of doctrinal aspect. No, go deep man, that you're in a safe place. You can go deep, you want. Yeah, so, you know, Namiahurengay Kyo is the title of the Lotus Sutra. And so when you say Namiho Rengay Kyo, it's kind of devotion to the great and wonderful Lotus Sutra. That's the like literal translation of it. But the Lotus Sutra kind of says two things. It says

two really important things. It says every, human life has a Buddha nature within it. Okay, so everybody, no matter who you are, where you're from, no matter how awful or foolish or wonderful or beautiful or not, everyone has this Buddha nature within you. And it's something that you can manifest. And so I think, and then the second thing it says is that that Buddha nature is sort of infinite in both directions.

So it's something that's always existed and will always exist kind of through time. And so not to get into again, this is like a huge philosophical Buddhist concept of kind of the infinity of time and space and the kind of vastness of time and space and how this kind of connects to your own Buddha nature. When you, I think through your practice, you do, you are able to connect to this understanding of the universe as this truly huge thing with all this great potential power. So that's just awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's not something that's like, it doesn't happen every day, but I think it's something that you do experience at times and it's, it's quite profound. Yeah, if you're getting that out of it,

it seems like it's an air, it's a valuable thing to do. Yeah, it's great. It's great. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Koto Paxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from

the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this Wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app

How have Buddhist themes shown up in your songwriting? Yes, and you know and sometimes more explicitly than I wish they had. Like I'm slightly not embarrassed, but there's some things that are on my first couple records that I just feel like are so, they're so kind of obvious in a way. And I never, like, again, like when I think about people, any music that's preachy in any way, shape or form,

I really don't like it at all. And so I've tried to, I really don't like it at all. And so I've tried to avoid that. But there are certainly songs that have a lot of Buddhist themes and some kind of Buddhist imagery within them. And again, I feel a little bit embarrassed about it, but it's what I did when I was in my 20s. I mean, I think you can get a pass.

You were in your 20s. You were dealing with a big, big wave of early success. Yeah. And so I would imagine it just throws one up against a lot of these themes of desire. And I would imagine primarily desire. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's funny because also I mean in Neetra and Buddhism there's this idea that earthly desires equal enlightenment and I know that that sounds

crazy probably to many people, but there is this sense that if you didn't have desire then you wouldn't there you'd have no motivation to kind of do anything. So it's, you know, I think there is this process in your practice where you're a desire, not that your desires become purified, because that sounds very puritanical, and Buddhism is not that at all. But your desires become kind of clearer, and the things that are going to make you truly happy, those things become clearer. So yeah, of course, you know, in my 20s and, you know, the things that I was excited about, you know, were really obvious things, you know, like hanging out with models and, you know, making money and having nice cars and nice

apartments and recording studios and all that. And, you know, those, you know, I wasn't immune to that by any stretch, but I do think at a certain point, the things that make you truly happy become clearer. And certainly like, you know, as I, when I sit down to chant now, you know, it's really about like, can I write a piece of music that's going to affect somebody's heart, you know, is it going to, is it going to take them to some mysterious unexpected place when they hear this music that they, that they didn't, they didn't know they had it in them. And if I can do that, you know, that's like, that's the thing that really means the most to me.

So the theme of desire, there's a, I don't know if I can speak about this with any co-gencies, but Dr. Mark Epstein, who's a friend of mine and a previous guest of... A friend of mine as well. Okay, you know, okay, so you're okay. Okay, so Epstein wrote a book called Open to Desire, in which he tries to sort of invert the denigration of desire that is very common in mainstream Buddhism, which is desires like

the enemy. But actually, and again, I don't know if I can restate this accurately, and I'm not getting an angry phone call from Mark here, but he says that basically, you know, desire is important. It is what gets you out of bed, and it can be something also to watch with mindfulness and investigation to see how nothing, there's a poignancy in the fact that even when your desires are fulfilled, we're not fully satisfied. And so to watch that is actually a source of potential wisdom. So there seems to be a very rich field that you've just touched on. Yeah. I mean, not to go into too great detail, but I've had many long conversations with Mark

about this and about my own desire for drinking and drugs and sex and money and all these things that we do get wrapped up in this New York City world that we live in. What was great about Mark was that he was just so calm and so kind and so compassionate and so non-judgmental. Exactly, non-judgmental. That. And just saying, like you just said, just kind of look at it and try and understand where it's coming from and let it pass.

So I know a little bit about desire for drugs. And I read and I could be wrong about this, you correct me. Did you go to rehab for a little bit about desire for drugs. And I read and I could be wrong with this view, correct me? Did you go to rehab for a little bit? I did. And so this was back in 2011? Yes. So the practice of Buddhism, it's not going to solve all of your problems and this would be an interesting case study.

Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it was a, it was a very intense time for me. It was kind of a couple of years after, after the success of Spring Awakening. And I think, you know, myself and my collaborators all kind of thought that, you know, that after that show, everything was going to be easy street after that. Like all the opportunities were going to come and the show was going to run for 10 years. But a lot of things happened where that just wasn't the case. And I found myself, you know, for all the sudden, kind of, you know, living the life I always wanted to live.

And, you know, I had all this money in the bank and I was really like happy and all of a sudden it was, you know, three years later it was gone. You know, and why? A combination of factors, but, you know, I had, I, I sold some real estate. I bought some real estate. I spent a lot of money building a recording studio. You know, I kind of I wasn't being careful with you know my lifestyle in general and the show didn't run as long ago And yeah, and you know There were a lot of things that were supposed to kind of happen that that didn't happen

and I found myself just kind of you know, I was like really depressed and You know, I'm the next show that I wrote called Whisper House, which I show that I'm really proud of. And it's actually going to be staged in London this spring. But, you know, we did it at the Old Globe in San Diego and it didn't transfer to Broadway. And, you know, like all these records I was making, I was like having to make these records and make them kind of on my own dime. And I wasn't making that much money from touring and it was just sort of like,

where it's just sort of evaporated over the course of a few years. And I was doing work that I was proud of, but I was just sort of like what's going on. So I think, I think I was, you know, I was definitely drinking way too much to just compensate for that or to dull that whatever it was, guilt or shame or self-criticism.

But again, when I went to rehab, weirdly, it kind of made me just feel like, I just need to practice more intensely. Like, you know, AA as much as I admire and respect those folks, it's not what I believe in at all. And so it kind of brought me back to my practice again, which so I'm very grateful for that. Just to fill in some of the details that some listeners may not be familiar with, and I'll try to, I'll start this and then you can finish it because I will unquestionably run a foul of facts. So you transitioned at one point from being kind of like a 90s and 2000s era emo troubadour to writing for the stage. Yes.

And spring awakening was a huge hit. And it was a remake of a German. Yeah. So it was based on a play that was written in 1891 by Frank Vatakend. And it was kind of thought of as the first German expressionist play. And it's a very racy piece about teenagers who are trying to understand the birds and the bees

and the parents and the teachers and the clergy in their very strict Lutheran environment, kind of bourgeois environment. They don't give them the necessary information and then, you know, kind of all hell breaks loose in various ways. And so we did a version of the show where the scenes are set in 1891, but when the kids sing, they kind of become contemporary kids and the music is you know alternative rock for for indie rock for lack of a better term and at the time It was a very you know

You know, I don't know very groundbreaking thing because they're you know there Everyone said oh this is this show will never ever work. It certainly will never go to Broadway You know you might be able to do it off Broadway and do it on this kind of, you know, go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival or something. But it did turn into this really interesting cultural moment and it was great. It was a lot of fun. And you've kept going with this. Yeah, so, you know, again, it's hard to give you the list of all the things that are kind of in development,

but recently I just did American Psycho, which was also on Broadway. Big Buddhist names in that, right? Well, it's funny. I mean, American Psycho is a, I don't know that most people understood this, but it's a real critique of a lot of the values that kind of happen in the period of late capitalism. So I do think of it as actually very Buddhist in the sense that it's a critique of those things. I rescind my snarky remark.

I rarely do that. It's also meant to be, and it's supposed to be an entertainment. And so I think one of the problems with American Psycho is that it was kind of trying to be many, many different things. And tonally, it might have felt a bit uneven because of that, where it's supposed to be funny and kind of outrageous and insane, but also moralizing in some level about You know about what happens when the only thing you care about are material things There are there are legit Buddhist themes and explicit Buddhist themes as I understand it in spring awakening

Which I apologize I've never seen but I've read you talking about it a little bit. Can you talk about it here? Yeah, well, so in Buddhism, there's this idea that in any given moment, you're kind of shifting through these 10 different life states. So hell, hunger, animality, anger, tranquility, rapture, learning, realization, Bodhisattva, which is like compassion and enlightenment.

And at any given moment, you're in one of these inhabiting, one of these states, and we all know what they are. Like, you know, when you're in hell, you know you're in hell. When you're in hunger, you're in the state of desire, when you're, you know, just chilling in your house, you might be in a state of tranquility. I'm mostly an animality. Animalities, you know, yeah, it's a lot of people I'm eating food out of a bowl. No, man. Yeah, it's really, animality is more the state of being sort of like a sick a fan, where you're kissing up to people above you

and kind of pissing on people below you. But anyway, so there are these 10 life states. And I think that really great pieces of art, whether it's a really fantastic movie or a really great play or a musical, I think that they are able to kind of show the human condition in all of those different life states. And certainly in spring, awakening you do have all of those different life states.

And certainly in spring, wake, and you do have all of those life states represented in terms of what happens to these kids and their reaction to it. So you look at something like laym is, for example. You have all of these really profound human emotions, and they're all represented there. So. But C.B. A teenager is such an interesting time.

I would imagine it as an artist to play with, because you just like raw-aid on so many levels. Yeah, absolutely. And that's when, obviously, I care deeply about music. But that was when music affected me in the most kind of intense way you know when you're 15 and 16 and I have my you know headphones on and I'm listening to you know some talk talk record or to Pesh mode record whatever it was like that was the most you know that was when it was like oh this song really changed my whole being yes yeah so yes. It feels like I didn't plan to go here.

I didn't mean what you're talking about is actually striking a chord. Because music mattered so much to me. Not only as a teenager, but even in my early 20s when I was starting out in TV news and I was living in Bangor, Maine, and listening to guided by voices records and pavement records.

It felt to me like, transmissions from a more sophisticated world and a connection to something bigger. And it really did, I don't know, I have meaning to that, I have trouble articulating. What's interesting though, as I'm now in my mid 40s, is I feel like it has a lot less meaning to me now.

I know. I know. And I hesitate to say that's because there's not as much good music being produced now because there are some really great records and really great bands out there. But you have to really look in the nooks and crannies to find them. But you don't think it's an age thing where, you know, maybe other things have taken, you know, either kid now, his tastes just terrible, but his favorite song. Does he listen to Kid's Pop?

He listens to, you've got to move, I like to move it, what's that song? I like to move it, move it, that song. That's his big, that's, it's not even a kid's song. It's a terrible like techno song. Yeah. No offense to the Madagascar 5, who put that record out, I happen to know.

But I just, I still listen a lot of music, especially when I'm working out and I still like pitchfork, it's still the first thing I look at in the morning because I want to know what's coming out. But I feel like it doesn't have the meaning that it did to me, even in my late 30s. And I don't know that maybe that's an idiosyncratic thing or maybe it happens as you get older and that's just kind of sad. No, I think it's true. I, you know, look, I think pop music has certain limits, certain limitations.

And if I, you know, now as a 46-year-old, if I'm looking for something that's really, really going to affect me in a deep way, I've got to be listening to Arvo Pert, or Steve Wright, or some, you know, John Adams Adams or some 20th century kind of classical composer that it's a little more musically nutritional for lack of a better word. And I don't really necessarily find that in pop music because I've just grown out of it on some level. I mean, I still really love pop music

and there are certain things that can be fantastic. And, you know, I love Kendrick Lamar and I love, you know, some of the weekend and I love the Kanye stuff. Me too. But notwithstanding some of his stranger public pronouncements, he's a great musician. Yeah, so I mean, it's not like I'm I've divorced myself from it, but it's, you know, it's sort of a very different function in a way. And I love a lot of electronic music, but usually it's more avant-garde stuff and things like Richie Houghton and stuff like that. I find that it's playing like a utilitarian purpose,

which is to get me through three miles on the treadmill. Right, right, and I understand that it's playing like a utilitarian purpose, which is to like get me through three miles on the treadmill. Right, right, and I understand that too, but that to me gets tiresome. But then again, you know, the last radio head record, it's gorgeous. I mean, it's really a piece of beauty. So people are still making great records. It's just they're not that,

they're not in the wider culture as much as they should be. What else now that we've explored the depths of your mind, soul, and chanting ability? What are you working on that we can go check out? Well, so the main things, theater-wise, I'm working on, it's a stage adaptation of Secret Life of Bees, which is a hugely popular book by Sue Monk Kid. And we should be hopefully workshopping that, in 2017, we have an amazing director, Sam Gold,

an amazing writer, Lynn Nottage, and Susan Birkinhead doing the lyrics. It's a really great team. I'm doing an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland with Stephen Seder, which is called Alice by Heart. I have a show called Noir that hopefully will be staged in 2017. And, you know, I'm actually trying next year to take a little time off, because this past year has been so, so busy. Where I put out a record last October, and I toured in November with Suzanne Vega,

and I had two shows on Broadway, and it was just like way too. So this year, you're trying to maintain a relationship and do all that good stuff. But I'm trying to, I have some commitments this year coming up, but I'm trying to kind of take most of the year off, so to speak, but that really to write the next Dunkin' Sheik record and not have these things that are sort of like homework,

but just be involved in creative pursuits that are more pure, I guess you could say. What a pleasure to sit and talk to you, man. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I know, no, the thanks goes from me to you for coming in and really appreciate this. It's just totally interesting. Is there anything before I let you go that I should have asked, but didn't ask any other points you want to make anything else we should know about?

No, I mean, the only thing I was going to say was interesting, because I'll admit, I did a little research on you before I came in and I watched the piece where you kind of talked about your anxiety attack. And it's funny, like, one of the reasons I started, I recognized that immediately as something that plagued me. And it happened to me actually fairly recently.

I was teaching, I was artist and resident at NYU at the Clive Davis School of Music. And it happened to me during a class where I had 30 kids there and I just sort of like froze up. And I, you know, it's that thing where your throat clenches up and you're, and it's like, it's this crazy thing. And actually that was one of the other things that got me to start practicing because I was really kind of freaked out by the fact that that could happen to me. Your body can rebel. Yeah, so anyway, so I feel like you're a real kindred spirit in that way. That we had this experience and it's like, whoa. There are a lot of us out there.

It is not, you know, panic attacks are a lot of us out there. It is not, you know panic attacks are a real thing. Yeah Let me ask you just on your recent panic attack had you had enough sleep the night before? Probably not probably not that can really do it. Yeah, there was a My shrink the guy who I went to after I had I actually had two panic attacks the second one was much more mild Yeah, and I've had plenty of panic attacks But these were the two televised. And after the second one, I went to this shrink at NYU, as an expert in panic.

And he really, first of all, he helped me point out that one major exacerbating factor was a little thing known as cocaine. So quitting that actually stopped the panic attacks or really nipped them in a bud in the bud in a big way. But the problem is once you learn how to panic, you get very good at it. Yeah. And what he pointed out is that the really the best way to deal with them is preventive,

it's just preventive self-care. Yeah. And he used an animal analogy that I had, I sort of didn't remember it correctly. So a couple of years later, I went back to him and I was like, remember that time you said I should treat myself like a stallion. He said, no, later, I went back to him and I was like, remember that time you said, I should treat myself like a stallion. He said, no, no, no, no, no, I meant thoroughbred. And because I, of course, like a kitten looking

in the mirror and seeing a lion, I, of course, thought he meant stallion. But the point is, if you take good care of yourself, don't drink too much coffee, get enough sleep, exercise, all the annoying. Yeah. Yeah, you're the likelihood of a panic attack. I found vastly all the annoying, yeah. Yeah, your deli-quity of a panic attack, I found vastly diminished.

Right, right. Totally, I agree 100%. But I'm sorry to happen to you recently. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I think it's, you know, it's something that, you know, we have it inside us and it's like a lifelong thing to kind of, you know, to escape from that karma perhaps.

Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. Dr. Cheek, thank you very much. All right, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Cheers. Cheers. All right, there's another edition

of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you like it, I'm going to hit you up for a favor. Please subscribe to it, review it, and rate it. I want to also thank the people who produced this podcast. Josh Cohan, Lauren Efron, Sarah Amos, and the head of ABC News Digital, Dan Silver. And hit me up at Twitter, Dan B. Harris. See you next time. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.