{"id":15884,"date":"2024-03-18T15:37:32","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T19:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/?p=15884"},"modified":"2025-03-19T15:39:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T19:39:44","slug":"being-human-is-better-than-being-perfect-a-cellists-journey-with-long-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/being-human-is-better-than-being-perfect-a-cellists-journey-with-long-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"Being human is better than being perfect:\u2019 A cellist\u2019s journey with long COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"

From WOSU Classical<\/a><\/p>\n

By Jennifer Hambrick<\/p>\n

In January 2021 cellist and composer Joshua Roman tested positive for COVID-19. More than three years later, and after being diagnosed with a COVID-related neurological condition, Roman is still living with those and other symptoms, in what has now been diagnosed as long COVID.<\/p>\n

The nature and severity of Roman\u2019s long COVID symptoms might have ended his career as a performer. Instead, Roman\u2019s COVID journey has taught him important life lessons \u2013 to let go of perfectionism and embrace fully his humanity. Roman\u2019s health crisis has also led him to embark on some cutting-edge collaborations that illustrate classical music as a key ingredient of well-being.<\/p>\n

Roman\u2019s case of COVID charted its own course from the beginning. There were none of the typical flu-like symptoms, but instead, a little difficulty breathing, loss of smell and taste, brain fog and a feeling of heavy fatigue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just never got better,\u201d Roman said. \u201cI had issues processing what was happening around me sometimes, speaking or reading. And as time wore on and those (symptoms) set in, I realized I wasn\u2019t going back to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roman\u2019s \u201cnormal\u201d might look quite different from what \u201cnormal\u201d looks like for everyone else. A world-class cellist, Roman is an elite athlete who, in a normal workday, uses his whole body \u2013 muscles large and small \u2013 and his mind and soul to create musical wonders. He\u2019s accustomed to a schedule of practicing for hours each day, sculpting melodies to perfection, shaping every nuance of tone and timing, refining finger agility and bow technique to breathtaking virtuosity.<\/p>\n

As the fatigue and cognitive issues from COVID lingered on, it looked like the symptoms might end Roman\u2019s performance career. He took about a month off from practicing during and just after his bout with COVID. When he picked up his instrument to begin practicing for a performance of Saint-Sa\u00ebns\u2019 Cello Concerto No. 1, it was all he could do to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first I could only play for a maximum of five minutes, absolute maximum,\u201d Roman said. \u201cWhen I stopped, I couldn\u2019t lift my arms. I would have to have help putting the cello down, unscrewing the bow. The debilitating fatigue was heavy, it was intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the next few weeks, Roman developed enough stamina to be able to play the entire concerto straight through from beginning to end. But he needed to practice the piece \u2013 to stop and refine details, not just run through the notes. The cognitive energy Roman needed to make those subtle but important improvements in his playing brought a whole new set of challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of making it (through) 20 minutes of practicing, I made it less than two minutes, and the same thing happened \u2013 I was completely shut down, had to have help putting the cello away,\u201d Roman said. \u201cI learned an important lesson that had never really been apparent to me as lived experience, which is that cognitive energy is still energy, and that, at times, could be equal to the amount of drain that physical energy would take.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roman got through the Saint-Sa\u00ebns concert and pushed himself to prepare and get through a performance with bassist Edgar Meyer and violinist Tessa Lark. Afterwards, with his live concert schedule decimated by the pandemic and symptoms from long COVID persisting, Roman fell into what he calls a depression. He didn\u2019t touch his cello for nearly three months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt literally collected dust,\u201d Roman said.<\/p>\n

During that fallow period, Roman seriously considered not returning to performing. He had promised a friend he would play the cello at a party, so Roman again picked up his instrument. The first thing he played was the famous Prelude to Bach\u2019s Suite No. 1 for solo cello. As he played, tears came to his eyes. He realized that in all the years of perfecting every detail of his playing, Roman had lost sight of an important ingredient \u2013 his own joy in making music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was feeling something that I hadn\u2019t felt in so long, which was this need to play, to make music, to feel music,\u201d Roman said. \u201cMaybe a lot of musicians have this: we\u2019re so good at picking weeds, that sometimes we forget to water the flowers in the garden. Practicing can turn into a lot of nitpicking and finding mistakes and trying to play perfectly in tune and respecting the composer\u2019s wishes. But that process can turn into something that cuts you as a musician out. I have to be moved myself in order to feel what it takes to move other people, to truly reach people. So for me it was a lesson in the power of vulnerability and letting go of perfectionism and focusing on being human.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full article.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From WOSU Classical By Jennifer Hambrick In January 2021 cellist and composer Joshua Roman tested positive for COVID-19. More than three years later, and after being diagnosed with a COVID-related neurological condition, Roman is still living with those and other symptoms, in what has now been diagnosed as long COVID. The nature and severity of … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7401,7403,7402,4010],"class_list":["post-15884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cellist","tag-covid","tag-immunity","tag-joshua-roman"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15885,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15884\/revisions\/15885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/11882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}