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- [00:08]
Amelia
We have indeed started the thing. I'm torn because I'm still not okay.
- [00:14]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [00:14]
Amelia
But I feel like if we wait until I'm okay, we're never gonna get this done. And I feel like this is a. This is a good idea.
- [00:22]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [00:24]
Amelia
Just the title of the episode helps me.
- [00:28]
Bobby
So. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So you want to talk about where this comes from? Yes.
- [00:35]
Amelia
This comes from the one and only Billy Porter. Honestly, all hell. Who was having feelings and posted those feelings on Instagram in the form of Juanita Kalukengo's performance of a song called Let It Burn from the musical Paradise Square, which opened and closed in 2022 because of production difficulties. But despite that tiny short run, Juanita won the Tony for her performance in that show. And this little snippet of song, it's like a voice has invisible hands that can reach through your skin into your organs. And her voice grabbed me by the heart and by the guts and shook me like it was trying to wake me up from a coma. And what it was saying was, yeah, you're in fucking pain. Life is fucking pain. But this also exists, and this is a reason to get out of bed is because this exists. And tomorrow you might hear something else that is also art. So I thought we should share it.
- [01:57]
Bobby
Yeah. Good call. I also had not heard it when you sent it to me.
- [02:02]
Amelia
Yeah. Because the show opened and closed in.
- [02:04]
Bobby
A matter of months. Right, Right. And I didn't watch the Tonys. I like. I didn't know. So this clip is from an excerpt of the Tony Awards. This is her performance.
- [02:12]
Amelia
This is her performance at the Tonys. Yeah.
- [02:14]
Bobby
What is the second. Second to last song in the show? Not the finale, but the pen finale. Yeah, the one that comes before. So it's a big dramatic, like, here comes the end song. It's the announcement of the end. Do you want to talk about what the story is?
- [02:33]
Amelia
Yeah. Super short version. This is set in 1863 in New York City during the draft riots. This is the first military draft in the history of the United States. It triggered riots in New York City that then spread to become race riots. And the setting is a bar in New York where people of color, and people of Irish descent in particular, come together in a peaceful, joyful way to be who they truly are, taking risks to be with each other. And because it's a Broadway show, the combination of African Americans and new Irish Americans is the origin story of tap dance, which is just, like, core to the Broadway aesthetic. So it's a wonderful Story that doesn't have a real happy ending. Because the reason the song is Let it Burn is they burn down this tavern. And so the owner of the tavern is Joaquina Kalukenko and she's singing Let it Burn and she's singing Let it Burn. And I say let it burn.
- [03:48]
Bobby
Yeah. So for copyright reasons, we can't play the whole thing continuously, but it is perfectly legal for us to play snippets and talk about it.
- [03:57]
Amelia
Yep.
- [03:57]
Bobby
So that's how we're gonna do it. So I'm gonna go here to the video and play some segments and talk about.
- [04:04]
Amelia
And we're gonna talk about a combination of the lyrics and what singing is and does essentially.
- [04:11]
Bobby
Yeah. Because I. I propose that it's perfectly possible that another singer could have sung this and it would not have reached inside you the way that this performance does. And I think that happens for technical reasons to do with Joaquina's virtuosity and also for reasons of interpersonal neurobiology, which we will also talk about. Okay, so thing number one is when she sings Let it Burn. So here is that you can take.
- [04:44]
Joaquina
It in a flash, you can burn it down to ash. The now the ash will grow.
- [04:51]
Bobby
So she says, you can take it in a flash, you can burn it down to ash, and out of ash will grow. And the word grow is the first time she's sung like a long, sustained higher note so far in this clip. Again, this is second to last song in the show. So this is. She's going really hard.
- [05:08]
Amelia
And also this is the Tony performance. So she's just singing the second half of the song. She is walking in at full speed.
- [05:17]
Bobby
Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's going as hard as the show goes. So when she sings the word grow there, her voice cracks, you know, can hear a warble, it. She enters above the pitch. She enters sharp. One of the reasons she does that is because technically this is difficult. It's got a G sound and a R sound, both of which are very difficult as onset sounds for pitches. And it's a very high note in this part of her range when she's staying in chest voice. So the things that singers navigate include those consonants, resonance. So is it going to be ringy, forward in the face, mid to the face? Is it going to be round and dark? Is it going to be bright and tinny? So that's. That's resonance and registration, which is. Is she going to be in chest voice belting or yelling or is she going to be in head voice which is like A standard classical sung tone. And it's also the register in which screaming happens. So, like head voice, scream, chest voice, yell or bellow. Yeah. So when she sings the word grow, it's really high for her to be doing in chest voice, but she does it anyway. And she has this onset with these difficult consonants. And the mass of muscle that has to vibrate to create chest voice is a little unstable because she's pushing a lot of air through with a lot of force, and that means that she ends up with an unstable onset. Can you think of any other circumstances where you might be pushing a lot of air through your vocal folds with a lot of force and energy to make a lot of noise? When would that happen? That's right. When you are full of rage and screaming your lungs out. Does that make sense?
- [07:00]
Amelia
Yeah. The. The very stupid recent life event when I made that noise was. So the cat was. Look, the cat is 18, and most of the time I have a lot of compassion and a sense of play, but sometimes she wakes me up in the middle of the night and she yells at me, this cat is so loud.
- [07:22]
Bobby
This cat is so loud.
- [07:23]
Amelia
No reason. She's a delight and a treasure, and I'm in a dark place and I lost my temper and I yelled at her, and my voice made that noise.
- [07:33]
Bobby
Yeah, right. And her voice made that noise. Joaquina's voice made that noise on stage.
- [07:39]
Amelia
My word was, what? What do you want? I'm not going to do it in the way that I did it at the cat. I feel bad about it.
- [07:46]
Bobby
Cool. That's great. Because we also. That's also a difficult thing to hear. One of the reasons that's difficult to hear is because of interpersonal neurobiology. Right. The physiology of empathy. Empathy is not an intellectual thing of like, oh, I feel your pain. No, the thing is that our brains don't really know the difference fundamentally between what we experience and what the people around us experience. In the end, we are built to connect to each other so much that, like, infants genuinely don't discern between their own experience and the world's experience. They're not aware that their experience is different from or individual, separated from the experience of the people around them. So if people around them are upset.
- [08:34]
Amelia
They become upset because it becomes upset.
- [08:36]
Bobby
Right? And they learn that because the people around them, when the baby gets upset, the people get upset. When the baby laughs, the people laugh. They. They just get this confirmed over and over again until eventually, around the age of two, they're like, I can say no and Like, I am a separate person and it's like a really fun game to discern that other people are different from you. And you get, you're kind of independent. Okay. So when Joaquina's voice goes crack, push something in your body, especially when you are already there, vulnerable and open and connected to this feeling, that's because your body physically responds with the same, I mean, your body physically responds with the same feeling that she is experiencing. To the extent that we know, we have seen on camera that when a person is listening to another person's voice, the person who is not speaking, their vocal folds vibrate in sympathy with the voice they are listening to. This is a physical thing that happens in your body. And we know that physical action is not a one way street. It's not. I decide to do a thing and then my muscles respond. When your muscles do a thing, you, your nervous system gets a cue that, oh, my muscles are doing a thing. I must have a feeling. Does that make sense?
- [09:57]
Amelia
Yes.
- [09:58]
Bobby
Okay.
- [09:58]
Amelia
Yes. And then your brain starts to be like, there's a feeling, there's a feeling. And it starts to make up a story for why the feeling is happening. And in this case, the true story is somebody around you made a noise that made your body vibrate.
- [10:11]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [10:12]
Amelia
And so here's this feeling, which is.
- [10:14]
Bobby
Great for us, evolutionarily speaking, because if in the middle of the night somebody in our community screams their lungs off, we wake up and we are also panicked. Right. We don't have to think, right. Oh, what was that sound? Someone is scared. I should go check out what that is. No, we hear the sound and we are panicked.
- [10:32]
Amelia
Your body is already in fight or flight.
- [10:34]
Bobby
Yes. Because that's what voices are made to do. So because she has chosen to go to this vocal place that is closer to scream than sing, she is pulling that emotion out of herself and, and welcoming you into that space also.
- [10:54]
Amelia
And I was there, so I'm like, pull up a couch.
- [10:57]
Bobby
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then she sings the word grow four times. And I'm gonna play it until it comes up and I'll point out when it's gonna happen.
- [11:04]
Amelia
She plays the word burn. She sings the word burn.
- [11:06]
Bobby
Well, she sings the word fire.
- [11:09]
Amelia
Hold on, you said she sings godliness.
- [11:11]
Bobby
There's a lot to learn.
- [11:12]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [11:13]
Bobby
She sings the word. I already talked about the word.
- [11:17]
Amelia
You said she sings the word grow four times.
- [11:19]
Bobby
Grow. No, she sings the word grow once.
- [11:21]
Amelia
Right.
- [11:22]
Bobby
But the onset of the word grow is messy. Right. And I thought that was like, we're only 17 seconds into this song and she's already screaming. Yeah.
- [11:32]
Amelia
Right at the edge.
- [11:35]
Bobby
So when she sings the phrase, we're stronger than the fire, but she doesn't sing fire in two notes like that. She makes it fancy. And here's what that sounds like.
- [11:44]
Joaquina
We're stronger than your fire.
- [11:52]
Bobby
And when she sings the word fire, she sings this. It really is just fire, or fire is really what she sings. But there's all this, like, little flicker upwards that happens, which demonstrates her virtuosity. These fast flickers, flickering ornamentations that are text painting of the word fire. And also so on pitch, so perfectly resonated, so well chosen for the registration. I mean, it's. It's beautiful and it's expert. And we know that she can freaking do anything. This is a graduate of Juilliard, right? She is. She's a pro. That thing that she did with the word grow was not a mistake. She shows us on the word fire. First of all, that line. Let's talk about the text for a second. We're stronger than the fire.
- [12:42]
Amelia
So there's two reasons why this is the second episode of the Zombie Apocalypse Edition. One is that the first episode was you wanting to say that your rules for your choir are, one, sing as beautifully as you healthfully can, and two, do as you're told. Rule number one is always more important than rule number two. And here we have a virtuoso singing. Sometimes choosing to sing less than beautifully in order to do something emotionally, which is really important to talk about. The times when you choose to do something not healthy.
- [13:16]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [13:17]
Amelia
For a purpose.
- [13:18]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [13:19]
Amelia
And the second reason is that you and I have a longstanding, fundamental disagreement in the way we think about government broadly, which. So the analogy here is that. Okay, so the.
- [13:31]
Bobby
No, no. We have a longstanding disagreement about how change should be made.
- [13:36]
Amelia
Yes. Our theory of change has been different.
- [13:38]
Bobby
Yes.
- [13:39]
Amelia
And our theory is that the pipes are broken. There's water in the basement. It's flooding. People could drown. And I'm like, let's fix the pipes. And the people who are in the basement can be part of the process of fixing the pipes and doing all the repairing of a house that is crumbling down. And you a perspective that is closer to, maybe we burn it down. Maybe the house needs. We need to start from scratch, more like. And I've been like, we can't burn it down. People live there. And over the last several days, I mean, you know, for the last couple of weeks, I wake up every morning thinking about who's gonna die and who I can save. And what I realized when I heard this, that line, we're stronger than the fire. What I felt was, oh, our theory of change difference doesn't matter anymore because I smell the smoke now. And if I smell smoke, our only choice is fire. And we're stronger than the fire. Is the first coherent answer I have heard to the question, what do we do now? The answer is, we're stronger than the.
- [15:00]
Bobby
Fire, so let it burn.
- [15:03]
Amelia
So I say let it burn. So our job, I feel, is to help everybody who's listening to this have the tools they need to be stronger than the fire so that as many people as possible can be helping to rescue the people who don't have access to the resources necessary. And we'll talk about some other ways that the fire metaphor has shown up in my life and been important. But, like, I wanted, like, this song, I think, deserves some space and time because this performance is so, so extraordinary and grabbed me so hard and because I feel like it is the foundation of the answer of what the fuck we're going to do on this podcast and.
- [15:45]
Bobby
Right.
- [15:46]
Amelia
For as long as we need to.
- [15:47]
Bobby
Exactly. I'll also point out right now that the history demonstrates to us that we're stronger than the fire. Every time society makes enormous leaping, profound changes in its course toward representation and democracy and social justice, it happens in a fire. Right. Right. The American Revolution. A lot of people died, but it was a war. It's terrible. And we survived and became a democracy. Right. I mean. And nobody wants to think about, like, I'm living in a time of war.
- [16:22]
Amelia
Yeah. The setting for this song is, like, the worst fire that this nation has experienced on its own ground.
- [16:27]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [16:28]
Amelia
And though the civil rights movement happened with much less bloodshed.
- [16:34]
Bobby
There was literal bloodshed.
- [16:36]
Amelia
There was literal bloodshed. And all of history since then has been, like, reaction and an attempt to push back against the reaction to the civil rights movement. Like, we have been pretty fucking stuck for, like, 60 years.
- [16:52]
Bobby
Yeah. So we know for a fact that as humanity, we are stronger than the fire. The question is, as individuals, how do we. How do we live that? And I'm gonna. I think. I think Joaquina shows us. Joaquina shows us. So let's hear her sing. Let Her Burn. You're gonna hear. Sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's rough. And let's just think about and talk about what that sounds like. Here it is.
- [17:24]
Joaquina
And I say let it burn. Let it burn. Let it burn. Let it burn. Let it burn, burn Let it burn. Let it burn, Let it burn, Let it burn.
- [17:59]
Bobby
There's a lot of musical things that happen in terms of how the harmony progresses that contributes to, like, the powerful growth of that entire phrase. But there's a lot that she chooses to do as a singer, and a lot of it has to do with, like, when she pushes harder than she should. If she wants her voice to stay beautiful, and she has chosen, she's decided that that feeling, the rage, is more important than the beauty.
- [18:29]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [18:30]
Bobby
And when her voice warbles or seems to falter, it never does. And.
- [18:40]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [18:40]
Bobby
As a listener, as a technical listener, for me, as a person who's been a voice teacher for almost 30 years, 25 years, fully, I listen. I'm like, joaquin, are you okay? Is that gonna go? And then it does. And I'm like, it did.
- [18:57]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [18:57]
Bobby
She's fine. She's doing this on purpose. But what that sound is doing is putting your body, as someone who is not analyzing her technique, it's putting your body in the physical state of just, like, on the edge of screaming.
- [19:15]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [19:16]
Bobby
Which is what her voice is doing, and it's what it's doing to you. So when she does it over and over again and when she reassures us at the end, every time.
- [19:25]
Amelia
Every time.
- [19:26]
Bobby
Ona. Yes. It's warbly. Yes. It's on the edge. And then I'm gonna close this note and it's gonna sound gorgeous. And you're fine. You're still okay. We. We. We made this.
- [19:37]
Amelia
Beautiful.
- [19:37]
Bobby
This was on purpose.
- [19:39]
Amelia
Yeah. So as a. As a non expert listener.
- [19:42]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [19:43]
Amelia
Hearing each of those, I was like. She is like, this is. This is a. This is Rach. And can she. Can she do that? And at the. Especially on the last one. Yeah.
- [19:54]
Bobby
Where you're like, I'll play that next.
- [19:56]
Amelia
It sounds that way because it's more than she can do. And then she gives you this thing at the end that's like, I could have done so much more.
- [20:05]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [20:06]
Amelia
I can still do so much more.
- [20:09]
Bobby
Yeah. So here's what that sounds like.
- [20:11]
Joaquina
I say.
- [20:14]
Bobby
What I just played at two minutes exactly was her saying, I say. And she sings the word I in chest voice. And then say in head voice. And she, like, does a little flinch, flicks her hands in the air, like, I completely surrender. I give up. And the word say is in head voice, which is that lighter, floatier, gentler part of.
- [20:34]
Amelia
And I want to say out loud, she is not surrendering to the fire. She is surrendering to her own rage. Yeah.
- [20:41]
Bobby
She's saying, let's go. So in that light, say, is followed by an extremely rageful, Let it burn. Here's what that sounds like.
- [20:49]
Joaquina
Let it burn.
- [20:52]
Bobby
Fully chest voice. And the first one is just chest voice that releases from a straight tone into vibrato. Vibrato can only be produced when you're in a balanced state between air support, which is the balance of, you know, of how firmly you exhale with how the inhalation muscles stay kind of suspended and resist that exhalation and resonance, where the placement is creating acoustical work that. That replaces the need for pushing the vocal cords so much. And here's the second one.
- [21:31]
Joaquina
Let it burn.
- [21:36]
Bobby
And it's completely straight and has fry in it. Vocal fry happens in a lot of different ways. People think that it's just the, you know, when women speak too low and they push their voice lower than it comfortably can be pushed. But fry happens when the muscles of your vocal apparatus are kept thick and cannot vibrate in an organized way because there's too much mass of muscle being asked to vibrate. When that mass of muscle vibrates, it's disorganized and a mess. So you don't get one clean fundamental pitch. What you get is a bunch of different pitches all at once. So it sounds like white noise, like shh or grr. Like that creaky sound. But it also happens when you scream. And there's like a. In the sound that is vocal Fry. So what she just did was sing with Fry, which I would never ask a singer to go that hard. I can't think of any circumstance when I'd be like, even Joaquina. If I were musical director of this show, and I've musical directed lots of shows, and I would never say to Joaquina, hey, can you sort of scream a little bit while you sing this? I would never do that because feels disrespectful to ask someone to do that to their instrument. Do that to their instrument, because this is not good for you. There's a lot of, like, talk about vocal fry. And, you know, people who aren't misogynist hate it because they think women do it. And a lot of people, like linguists and stuff, talk about, no, no. Vocal Fry is a perfectly normal, natural thing. Your voice is, in fact, built to do it.
- [23:20]
Amelia
Something I learned is that there are some language where fry is one of the sounds of the language.
- [23:25]
Bobby
Exactly. So it's like a normal, natural thing that people are built to do. But that does not mean that it's really good for you. When you were asking me about this, I explained that bodies are also built to run, but if you do it all the time, you're gonna hurt yourself. Right, Right. So this is not a thing you should be doing all of the time. Absolutely. You have access to it. Use it for expressive purposes. Mwah. Have at it. However, don't do it all the time, and don't let it be the default sound you make with your voice, because your voice. Yes. Is intended to make that sound. It's designed to have access to that, but it's not designed to do it all the time because it does create this massive muscle vibrating in a disorganized way. Does create tension, and, like, your vocal folds are literally slapping against each other, so it creates irritation and long term, will harm your voice. So I don't want to be. I don't want anybody. Like she said, Vocal Fry is bad. That's wrong. But, like, Vocal Fry is not inherently bad, but it's also not inherently safe to use all the time. Does that make sense?
- [24:34]
Amelia
Yes. She made a choice to do a thing that people who use their voice professionally on purpose do not choose, because doing it all the time has the potential to cause harm to their voice.
- [24:46]
Bobby
Yes.
- [24:46]
Amelia
But she chose to use it on this in. In this instance.
- [24:50]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [24:50]
Amelia
Because it communicates something. It, in fact, does something like, my throat hurts a little bit when I hear her do it.
- [24:56]
Bobby
Yes, exactly. And I think. I think that is why people hate Vocal Fry is because their empathic response, their vocal folds unconsciously recreate what they're hearing. We know for a fact, we've watched vocal folds do this. So when you hear someone speak in Vocal Fry, your muscles respond by recreating the sound or forming the muscular process that would recreate that sound. And what you've done is now empathically put their voice in the Fry position, which is not where they're supposed to be, not where they're really designed to stay. And I think people get upset about Vocal Fry because what it does is put them in a physiological uncomfortable position. And it's like, you know, it's like me when I have a pebble in my shoe. I don't know I have a pebble in my shoe. I just know I'm in a bad mood, right? Until I figure out, oh, there's a pebble in my shoe.
- [25:49]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [25:50]
Bobby
So I think it puts people in.
- [25:51]
Amelia
A bad mood because again, people tell a story. They're in a physiological state, and their brain's like, why?
- [25:57]
Bobby
Why?
- [25:57]
Amelia
Why is this happening? And eventually you're like, there's a pebble in my shoe. Or in this case, it's, I heard Fry, and that put my larynx in a position that hurts.
- [26:06]
Bobby
Right. And I think that's why people don't like vocal Fry. But anyway, I think in this case, you don't respond with, oh, I'm uncomfortable. You respond with me too, girl. Like, I also deeply.
- [26:17]
Amelia
Yes.
- [26:18]
Bobby
Yeah. So that was the same.
- [26:19]
Amelia
I, too, am so profoundly enraged that my voice is doing things that if I did it, it would hurt.
- [26:24]
Bobby
Yes.
- [26:25]
Amelia
I have, like, broken my voice temporarily by screaming with rage. Yep.
- [26:32]
Bobby
Yeah. Mm. That's the thing that happens. Okay, so that was two burns. Here's the third burn.
- [26:38]
Joaquina
Let it burn.
- [26:44]
Bobby
The third one is also completely straight. It never releases into vibrato. It also has fry in it. It has disorganization of the muscles in it. And it sounds a mess.
- [26:55]
Amelia
Yeah. The first time I heard it, this is the point at which I was like, is she okay?
- [26:59]
Bobby
Yeah. Yeah. And what I see is her doing this singer gesture where she's got her hands flat toward her chest, and she's lifting them up. And that, to me, feels like a gesture that represents what happens internally when you sing in chest voice A little bit higher than your voice wants to carry. Chest voice. And, like, the place where the resonance has to go is so far forward in your face. This feels like. This looks like what the feeling is of the sensation of pushing chest voice up that high and to sing the vowel that she's using here. So she has made a vocal choice. She is doing this on purpose.
- [27:37]
Amelia
It reminded me of seeing Mandy Patinkin sing in a sound booth.
- [27:42]
Bobby
Yes.
- [27:42]
Amelia
He, like, makes all kinds of wacky gestures that are like, this is how I'm gonna, like, help my body to create the sound. But when he's performing on stage, you wouldn't necessarily do that. But sometimes you make a choice that needs all the help it can get.
- [27:56]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [27:56]
Amelia
And it makes sense for the character to make that gesture. And yeah, also, she's holding her body in a way that cause the larynx. The part where the voice is made is this little, tiny, tiny, tiny part of the body. And, yeah, when I talk about vocal.
- [28:14]
Bobby
Muscles, I'm talking about muscles the size of your pinky fingernail.
- [28:17]
Amelia
Pinky finger nail.
- [28:19]
Bobby
Pinky finger nail.
- [28:20]
Amelia
And the choice she is making requires help from every muscle in her entire body to make the pinky fingernail sized muscles perform.
- [28:31]
Bobby
Yeah. Because in the end, what's happening is she's not making choices about, like, exactly where to put an individual Muscle. The way your body makes vocal noises is you get yourself in an emotional state and you allow your body to make the noise appropriate to that state. And you spend literal decades training your body to be able to access any position of muscular function, like yoga, you know?
- [29:01]
Amelia
Yep.
- [29:02]
Bobby
Some people who are beginners. Let's say you're. You know, you've only studied singing for 15 years, right.
- [29:08]
Amelia
Only.
- [29:08]
Bobby
You're only a. 15 years. Then that's the stage where you're at the level of yoga, where you can sit on the ground and put one head. A foot behind your head. Right.
- [29:18]
Amelia
Mm.
- [29:18]
Bobby
What she's doing here is standing on one leg with the other foot behind her head. It's extremely difficult, and she is doing it with expertise. And it does require your whole body to do.
- [29:30]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [29:31]
Bobby
And your whole mind.
- [29:33]
Amelia
And for the record, while the show was running, she was doing this eight shows a week.
- [29:38]
Bobby
Cause she's. Cause she's.
- [29:40]
Amelia
Cause she's a virtuoso and can do it in a way that.
- [29:43]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [29:44]
Amelia
She can still do it again after the matinee.
- [29:47]
Bobby
Yeah. And here's the very last. Let it burn. It's. It's 18 seconds long. Here it is.
- [29:55]
Joaquina
Let it burn.
- [30:13]
Bobby
And the appropriate standing ovation.
- [30:16]
Amelia
Yeah. So let me say that because I am not an expert listener, I experienced the emotion of this thing, and I was like, something just happened to me. Was that on purpose? Surely that was on purpose. And the way I knew it was on purpose, because I am not an expert, was by seeing Cynthia Erivo's reaction where she's just like. Like she's staring up at a God.
- [30:42]
Bobby
Yeah. She doesn't applaud immediately.
- [30:44]
Amelia
She stares at her.
- [30:45]
Bobby
She just stands there and goes.
- [30:47]
Amelia
Yes.
- [30:48]
Bobby
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
- [30:52]
Amelia
She doesn't even applaud.
- [30:54]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [30:55]
Amelia
She just shouts.
- [30:57]
Bobby
Exactly.
- [30:59]
Amelia
And like. And I was like. So the thing that I experienced experts, which is part of why I sent it to you, because I wanted you to be like. Like, as an expert, this is a thing. Like, a thing happened. Like, this is people watched something miraculous happen.
- [31:19]
Bobby
Right.
- [31:20]
Amelia
And also. Is this what you mean when you say burn it down?
- [31:24]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [31:25]
Amelia
Artistically.
- [31:27]
Bobby
And just in that one note. It's this microcosm of probably the whole show and probably all of history and society, where it starts out as just a rush, and then it gets scary. Warbly edgy. Yeah.
- [31:43]
Amelia
Screaming, for the record, I cannot even exhale with no voice for that long.
- [31:49]
Bobby
Yeah. And as she's sustaining this pitch on this. I mean, just right on the edge and line between sung tone and Screamed tone. Yeah. She doesn't have to hold it this long. The orchestra just stops.
- [32:03]
Amelia
Yeah. She keeps going, and she just chooses.
- [32:06]
Bobby
How long she wants to go, and she just keeps going.
- [32:09]
Amelia
I'm guessing that's how it's written in the score is. Because I know there's a mark you.
- [32:12]
Bobby
Can put in a Fermata or a Shuzura. Yeah. That says orchestra. Just. Just wait for Joaquina. She'll tell you when to go. And just as you're like, oh, my God, is she okay? Does she have it? She totally has it. Because she goes up another step, smoothly transitions from head voice to more of a. From chest voice to more of a head blend, and it opens immediately into vibrato. And she's got it. So this is another, like, does she have it? Is she okay? Oh, oh, yeah, she's fine. Yeah.
- [32:45]
Amelia
And this is the part where it's.
- [32:47]
Bobby
Like, she chose this.
- [32:48]
Amelia
She was not done.
- [32:50]
Bobby
And it's fine.
- [32:51]
Amelia
She's not done. This is not the end.
- [32:53]
Bobby
Yeah. Yeah.
- [32:55]
Amelia
You thought she couldn't do it. Not only could she do it, she could have done more.
- [33:00]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [33:01]
Amelia
And it. Oh, and I know that it's the thing that people do, but the fact that, like, it's the Tonys. She could have broken character and received her applause because she's at the Tonys and the show hasn't been up since the summer. So she could have just been like. Yeah, that's right. Lin Manuel Miranda. That's right. Bernadette Peters. That's right. But instead she stays there and she fucking glares at the audience.
- [33:37]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [33:37]
Amelia
And I feel comfortable saying this because she has also talked about this, that she is honoring the real people who lived this story, that she is honoring the ancestors. And I'm like, the ancestors gave her 18 seconds of that. That didn't come just from her, that came from other places.
- [33:59]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [33:59]
Amelia
And that is why it, like, is more than most music experiences.
- [34:09]
Bobby
Yeah, that's definitely more than most music experiences, for sure.
- [34:15]
Amelia
And the first rule is to sing as beautifully as you can. And the second one is to do as you're told. And the first rule is most important. But sometimes you summon the ancestors and they help you choose silence, to choose.
- [34:27]
Bobby
Something that's not quite safe for you. And, like, let's talk about this as a model for people. It's not a model for people. No, I. I've wanted to emphasize how expert she is, how thoroughly trained she is. And the fact that she did eight shows a week means that she spent the other two hours of the show and the other 22 hours of her day being careful with her voice.
- [34:50]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [34:51]
Bobby
Making only beautiful, healthful sounds so that for those two minutes, she could let it burn so she could get up and do it again the next day or the evening show.
- [35:01]
Amelia
So there is. I mean, there's another song where her husband dies, and. Yeah. The show asks a lot of this character.
- [35:12]
Bobby
Yeah. So my point is, what she, as an actress, has chosen to do with her voice, to push harder than she healthfully should really is not a thing that we should all be aspiring to.
- [35:26]
Amelia
No. Because our goal is to sing as beautifully as we healthfully can and also be able to sing that just as beautifully tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. Because although it is, I am firmly of the opinion that it's neither a marathon nor a sprint. It's a relay.
- [35:45]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [35:46]
Amelia
And we pass the baton when we need rest. We need to pass the baton before something breaks.
- [35:54]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [35:55]
Amelia
So that we can heal soon enough to be able to pick up the baton from the next person, who also needs to stop before something breaks so they can heal soon enough to pick the baton from the next person so that nobody is paying with their health and certainly not with their life if we can help it.
- [36:15]
Bobby
Exactly. But also vocally, she does demonstrate that we're stronger than the fire because she puts her voice in the fry. She literal as fire as a vocal fry technique place can get. And then she shows us. Nope, look, we're okay. We're safe. Big step up. Big open vibrato. Healthy.
- [36:33]
Amelia
Big open vibrato. That only happens when healthy singing is happening.
- [36:37]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [36:38]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [36:39]
Bobby
So time after time, Let it burn. Let it burn. We're stronger than the fire. She says the words. She also demonstrates it through her vocal technical choices. And she intellectually shows you that as you worry about, oh, my God, is she okay? And then, ooh, that's a beautiful tone. But also viscerally, through the, you know, interpersonal neurobiology, she shows your voice. It's hard. It's hard. We're okay. It's hard. It's hard. We're okay. And not just your vocal muscles, because they communicate to your voice, brain, and emotional state. I think we've repeated it the process enough times to make the point that we're trying to make.
- [37:12]
Amelia
Yeah. So the fire analogy is one that shows up in the way we talk about our theories of change, political change. This performance woke me up to the reality that I smell smoke and two things. Should I do the silly one or the feelsy one first.
- [37:35]
Bobby
You're the storyteller. You figure it out.
- [37:38]
Amelia
Yeah. The silly thing comes first. Okay. So you know that this is Fine Dog. Casey Green's this is Fine dog.
- [37:44]
Bobby
Yeah. Who's sitting in a burning room.
- [37:47]
Amelia
This is fine. And like, frame after frame, the fire gets bigger and closer until in the last frame, and people usually don't post this part in their Instagram feed, the dog's skin is melting off its bones like it's the conclusion of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- [38:04]
Bobby
Yeah. And it's an illustration of why optimism is not a good idea.
- [38:08]
Amelia
Why optimism bad.
- [38:10]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [38:11]
Amelia
So this is clearly really silly, but I want us to imagine a story I want us to embrace. Okay. One of the things that's true about pessimists is that they do have worse health outcomes because they spend more time in a stress response. However, they also are more likely to have an accurate assessment of what's happening. And you and I are two of the most pessimistic people we know. And we've done the. The actual assessment, I think.
- [38:36]
Bobby
Yeah, we took the actual assessment and measured it. And I think my higher pessimism than yours is one of the reasons why I have been saying, let it burn for longer than I have 25 years.
- [38:51]
Amelia
Right. So imagine that's. Let's say that's optimist dog. This is fine. Pessimist dog comes in and is like, do you not smell that smoke? Do you not feel that heat? There's a fire. And the dog is like, this is fine. And pessimist dog is like, well, I'm gonna. We need to get the fuck out of here. And Optimus dog is like, no, this is fine. Now imagine that pessimist dog drags Optimus dog out of the burning building, and Optimus dog gets out safe. And optimist dog, because Optimus dog believes that things work out for the best, says, see? Everything was always fine. So I want to recognize and honor all the pessimists who drag optimists out of the burning building, because we're never going to get credit ever, ever. Because the optimists will believe. And I want to tell you a dark story. Hold on.
- [39:49]
Bobby
Before the dark story, I want to reimagine this cartoon another way.
- [39:52]
Amelia
Oh, okay.
- [39:53]
Bobby
Which is that pessimist dog says, don't you smell that smoke? We have to leave. And optimist dog says, no, no, if we leave, the fire will get worse. Let's stay here and try to put out the fire. And pessimist dog says, no, no, it's burning already. We need to get out. And Optimist dog says, oh, no, if we leave, it's just going to get worse. And that happens over and over again for 40 years. And now the building's on fire and both Optimus dog and Pessimist dog are sitting in it.
- [40:31]
Amelia
So the silly story about the fire is that this is Fine dog. And like, what we're going to be is the optimist dog who drags this is Fine dog out of the burning building.
- [40:47]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [40:48]
Amelia
And although not.
- [40:49]
Bobby
Not all the listeners are this is Fine dog.
- [40:51]
Amelia
No, no, no.
- [40:52]
Bobby
A lot of listeners are probably also.
- [40:54]
Amelia
Like, our audience is Pessimism dog.
- [40:57]
Bobby
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [40:59]
Amelia
Pessimism dog. Largely.
- [41:01]
Bobby
And we're gonna, we're gonna teach Pessimism Dog how to stay safe in the fire.
- [41:04]
Amelia
How to stay safe in the fire. Because just because Optimism dog is being absurd doesn't mean Optimism dog doesn't deserve to be saved from the fire. If we can save them.
- [41:16]
Bobby
Yeah, if we safely can.
- [41:18]
Amelia
If we safely can. As beautifully as we safely can.
- [41:22]
Bobby
Yes.
- [41:23]
Amelia
But a less silly example of the way that the fire metaphor shows up in my life is like, more than 10 years ago when I was writing Come as you are, I was having to learn how to tell stories because it turns out people don't actually learn by just hearing directly about like scientific methodology and statistics. That is not how people learn. People learn from metaphors and storytelling. So while I was work, I had to learn by reading books about how stories are told, how to tell stories. And while I was doing that research, I read as a, you know, middle class white Lady in the 21st century America, obviously I relate really hard to the medieval Sufi poet Rumi. Of course, the popular translation of his work is by Coleman. And one of the poems says that a story is like water that you heat for your bath. It takes the messages between the fire and your skin. It lets them meet and it cleans you. Very few can sit down in the middle of the fire itself like a salamander or Abraham. We need intermediaries. Stories are the intermediary between us and the fire. And I am not a Bible girly, so I didn't know what the story of Abraham was. I had to, I had to go look it up.
- [42:54]
Bobby
I knew because I've been a professional church musician for 15 years. But yeah.
- [42:59]
Amelia
So Abraham, super short version, gets tied up and the king sets him on fire. And Abraham sits in the fire for three days and he has an angel that protects him. He's tied up in these ropes, angel on his shoulder. Three days in the fire, and you know what happens? The fire burns away the ropes. The fire burns away the ropes.
- [43:30]
Bobby
Set them free.
- [43:32]
Amelia
We are stronger than the fire.
- [43:34]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [43:35]
Amelia
The ropes are not. So when I say we're stronger than the fire, what I'm saying is that if a time comes when we have to be in it, history does not, like the Bible, does not tell us what it was like for Abraham to sit in the fire for three days. We don't know how hurt he was. We don't know if he came close to losing hope or losing faith or feeling despair. We don't know. And I want to normalize that. If you find yourself in the emotional fire of all the things that are coming, the smoke that we can smell, it may feel hopeless and despairing, but you are not alone, because everyone who listens to this is the kind of person who may wind up in the fire. And. And it's not just that we're stronger than the fire. And we are, like Amelia said, history relates. We are stronger than the fire. And the ropes aren't. The fire will burn away the ropes.
- [44:40]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [44:41]
Amelia
The fire is how we get free from where we've been.
- [44:46]
Bobby
Yeah. What Rumi does not explicitly say is that the story is the water that protects the listener from the fire.
- [44:57]
Amelia
He literally says a story is like water.
- [44:59]
Bobby
Yeah. And the water has to be held in something, and that's the tub, and it's the storytellers who are the tub, who sit between the fire and the water. And, yes. You, as a storyteller, sit in the fire, like, all day, every day.
- [45:18]
Amelia
That's while I'm working. Yeah. Yeah. Remember, I had to write a whole book about what it took for me to recover from the extreme stress of writing. Come as you are.
- [45:29]
Bobby
And I have many times described writing burnout as typing while crying, typing while crying. And as a musician, what it takes for me to be a conductor who works with an ensemble and then to get on stage in front of an audience, both of those parts of my job are. Are standing between the emotion of the music, the intention, and the expression itself and communicating that to the ensemble and then to the audience. So, like, the work of an artist is to stand in the fire and be the vessel to make the fire safe, comfortable for. And comfortable for the audience.
- [46:11]
Amelia
Comfortable just enough, because sometimes when you're a truly profound virtuoso, sometimes you can make the water almost too hot.
- [46:22]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [46:23]
Amelia
And I am inspired. I do not take that as a model for how to do my work most of the time. But I want to be as good at what I do as Joaquina is at what she does.
- [46:42]
Bobby
Oh, yeah.
- [46:43]
Amelia
That is. It is inspiring me in that way.
- [46:47]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [46:48]
Amelia
And people, I asked explicitly at the end of the first zombie apocalypse episode, like, I don't know if any of the things I have said here have been helpful. And you were like, yes, can confirm. And I was like, I cannot feel that because I am in a dark place. But people, a couple of people have written and said, genuinely nice and supportive, I am glad you are back. It is definitely helpful that you are back in this dark time. And I did. I could feel.
- [47:16]
Bobby
Oh, good.
- [47:17]
Amelia
Yeah. And I hope you do too. People are glad we do a very specific thing.
- [47:25]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [47:26]
Amelia
Our way of doing. Like there are more optimists than there are pessimists.
- [47:31]
Bobby
Yes. Which is good for the world because it's good for individual health.
- [47:35]
Amelia
Yes. And it is in particular weird for someone in what I'm gonna go ahead and call the wellness. Yeah.
- [47:42]
Bobby
To we're in the wellness space.
- [47:46]
Amelia
Have an episode that we're gonna call we are Stronger Than the Fire.
- [47:52]
Bobby
See, I wanna call it Let It Burn, but that's. Cause I'm more of a pessimist than you.
- [47:57]
Amelia
Yeah.
- [48:00]
Bobby
Yeah, you're right, though. That is the correct.
- [48:04]
Amelia
The center of our story here. The protagonist is not the fire. The protagonist is us.
- [48:11]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [48:12]
Amelia
And the other people who smell the smoke and are afraid.
- [48:17]
Bobby
Yeah, I'm afraid. Yeah. I am in less of a dark place than you are. Not because I perceive less of a threat, but because I have kind of come to terms and really feel like it's true that I and my immediate family and the people I'm responsible for, I have the resources to keep them safe. And that's all I can do. When and if I can do more, I will. But the little bit that I can do for people who aren't directly related to me is. Is the work that I already do, which is talking about how to. How to deal with the stress inside your body, even when the things that cause your stress are ongoing, constant.
- [49:11]
Amelia
Right.
- [49:11]
Bobby
Overwhelming even.
- [49:13]
Amelia
And I spent 2020 researching what I would do as a sex educator if I were living in an autocracy. And what I learned was that the kist. Vie. Keystone of every modern autocracy for the last hundred years, the keystone is a cishetero. Patriarchal misogyny. Is policing a gender binary.
- [49:38]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [49:39]
Amelia
Rigid gender binary. And so my work is absolutely essential. I know that. And maybe the chaos of what I'm feeling in the interregnum comes from not being certain how I'm going to perform my task, given that we don't know how early they're going to begin targeting what I do. Because there's explicit language in Project 2025 that says that sex education is pornography. Anything that includes LGBTQIA 2 + people is pornography. And pornography should be a felon, and people who purvey it should have to register as sex offenders. So, like, I'm imagining situations where I have to knock on my neighbor's door and introduce myself as a sex offender. I don't think it's going to happen. I think it is not even close to their top priority. But I think some other things, like sex education in schools is we're not going to make it to next fall's school year without that being directly targeted. And I don't yet know what my role is in responding to that. Fortunately, I have connections with people who do this work, and they can tell me we can collaborate and figure out a way that I can be as helpful as possible. But part of why I feel chaos.
- [51:12]
Bobby
So the moral of the story is, rule number one, always sing your best. Sing as beautifully as you healthfully can. And rule number two is do as you are told. But rule number one is more important than rule number two. And one of the things we can do in the face of the fire is to. One of the tools we can use is art. We can find a story that soothes us or that inspires us or that sits with us in the fire and says, me too. I'm also burning with you, and I will show you what that feels like. It's one of the most powerful things music can do, is say you're hurting or you can't quite feel what you need to feel. I will grab you and drag you into the place where you need to be. It's an invitation and a guide to feel the feelings that maybe aren't accessible on the surface. And the other thing art can do is give us a demonstration of a way forward. Does that make sense?
- [52:12]
Amelia
Yes. And our role as health educators is to talk about the explicit things that we can do, the issues we can address, the tactics and strategies we can employ in order to be physiologically and literally prepared to face the rhetorical, metaphorical fire. Oh, yeah.
- [52:41]
Bobby
I should have let you say that first, because art is one of those tools. And another one of those tools is connection with other human beings, which is what we're doing right here, right now. And what we. We hope also helps other people to do, when they listen to us, to feel like, yep, we're there with you.
- [52:58]
Amelia
And we'll be back with you next week, and we hope you'll join us. And the first rule is to sing as beautifully as you can, and then the second one is to do as you're told. And the first rule is most important. But sometimes you summon the ancestors and they help you choose silence.