Reverse Podcast #1: Matt Hanna With Interviewer Sara Keary
This episode is a little bit different, what I'm calling a reverse podcast. I had a number of people start asking me about when it’s my turn to be on the podcast and have my story told. So I finally decided to do that. But I didn't want to pick one person to do that. There were a few people that I had sit down and interview me about my story and the podcast's story. So this is the first one of those. There will be a couple more and each of the conversations went in a little bit of a different direction. This first one was with Sara Keary, who's been on the podcast before, back at episode 59. So you can go back and listen to that one to get her story again. But she was one of the people who had been asking to hear about my story, so I had to give her the chance to turn the tables on me. So I hope you enjoy hearing a little bit more about me and where I came from and my thoughts behind the podcast.
Released March 7th, 2026
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
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Share your thoughts or say hello at matt@littlelocalconversations.com
You can listen to other podcasts I currently produce: Arsenal Money Clip Podcast and The Will Brownsberger Podcast
You can hear some of my old recorded music on Bandcamp (and music website)
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Thanks to podcast promotional partners the Watertown Business Coalition and Watertown News.
Thank you Arsenal Financial for sponsoring Little Local Conversations! Listen to my Watertown Trivia episode with Arsenal Financial’s Doug Orifice to have some fun learning about Watertown!
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt 0:07
Hi there. Welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is a little bit different. This one I'm calling a reverse podcast. So I had a number of people start asking me about when's my turn to be on the podcast and have my story told. So I finally decided to do that. But I didn't want to just pick one person to do that. There were a few people that I had sit down and interview me about my story and the podcast's story. So this is the first one of those. There'll be a couple more. Each of the conversations kind of went in a little bit of a different direction. But this first one was with Sara Keary, who's been on the podcast before, back at episode 59. So you can go back and listen to that one to get her story again. But she was one of the people who had been asking to hear about my story, so I had to give her the chance to turn the tables on me. So yeah, I guess I hope you enjoy hearing a little bit more about me and where I came from and my thoughts behind the podcast. We'll get into the introduction and then the conversation between Sara and me, about me.
Matt: 1:14
I'm here today with Sara Keary, who has been a previous guest on the podcast. I'll probably do an intro before this, so you'll probably already know, but I'm doing a series of reverse podcasts, I'm calling them, where people have been asking about my story of myself and the podcast. So I'm having a few people interview me to get my perspective on things. And yeah, it's weird being on this side of things because I'm used to it being like an 80-20. I do like 20% of the talking and 80% listening. So I might have to shift that percentage for this conversation today. So, all right. Sara, do you want to introduce yourself? You've been on the podcast before, but you want to introduce yourself and your perspective on this conversation.
Sara 1:52
Sure. I have been really interested in hearing your side of the story and where you have come from and your evolution to wanting to do a podcast that is so hyperlocal and focusing on community, especially in our current social and political climate. I think one of the things I love about Watertown, I know you love it too, is the richness of our community. And you've highlighted that in your podcast with folks you've interviewed. And so I've been really intrigued and wanting to understand how you came to want to do this and take this risk and ask people if they'd be willing to tell their stories about whether it's their job or a creative endeavor they're doing, politics, social activism, whatever it is, and seeing how you've come to pursue this and have it become what it's become.
Matt 2:46
Yeah. I mean, following curiosity is kind of a big thing for me. Lots of things over the years have, you know, there's never been one big event that led me to that. But as we were just talking before recording, I'm turning 40 next month, so I'm getting those extra little reflective periods. But following curiosity, I think if you follow your curiosity, there's someone out there who has that same interest, and that kind of drives a lot of this. So I had a curiosity about the community and these people and their stories. I actually didn't think it would have this much of a following because it kind of just started as a little side thing, and now I'm like, I don't know, this seems like an alignment of so much of what I want to do. You know, it uses my skills, my interests, and I think it serves an important purpose in today's world. So it's kind of a great alignment of everything. Yeah.
Sara 3:36
So you are turning 40. How old is the podcast for people who aren't familiar?
Matt 3:41
So it will be two years old in March, which is probably when this will be released. So March 2024. The first episode was released on March 5th, I think is the right date, with Doug Orifice as my first guest. I'd met him at some events through volunteering and just, hey, what's your story? I'd like to know a little bit more about you. And I'd had previous podcast experience and I'd wanted to start a podcast up again. And I had wanted to be more involved in the community. So all these things were coalescing into this, try something and see what happens. I try a lot of ideas and not all of them take off. So it's nice when something like this actually does catch people's attention and they want to follow along and be part of it.
Sara 4:20
What was going on in your life, like professionally, personally, in March 2024, or leading up to it?
Matt 4:29
There's a lot of stuff leading up to that. So I've had a lot of interest over the years, which works, I think again, is another strength of this podcast is that I'm comfortable talking with a lot of different people because I've had a lot of different experiences. When I was growing up, I always had summer jobs or jobs during school. So I worked, you know, I've worked in fast food restaurants and had that experience. I've worked at camps, I've worked at catering companies, I've done call centers, I've done warehouse work working overnight. So I've started a job at 5 a.m., started a job at 5 p.m. After college, I worked at a music instrument company for many years and accidentally worked my way up into a director of e-commerce job. But so that was not something I really wanted to, I didn't mean to get there. People asked me to increase my role, increase my role. And I had studied music. Music was my whole thing. Music was my obsession for the first 30 years of my life. So I put in my notice at that job. Well, the story behind that one is we were in a conference call with some of the other higher-ups and the owner of the company. And I was just feeling this call for a little more mission for what we were doing there. And I asked, you know, like, what's our purpose? What's our mission that we are trying to go with here? You know, rally the troops a little more and all that. And the owner just said, the purpose is make me money. I was like, all right, I'm out of here. So I put in my notice there. I'm gonna put myself fully into my music. So then I tried to dedicate myself for, it was about a year and a half, two years, because I had been playing in music and bands and stuff on the side a little bit. I started teaching then, performing at some weddings, trying to make it all work together with the music. And that's also when I started my podcast at some point in there, which my first podcast was interviewing creative people from all over the world. It was on Skype.
Sara 6:23
And what year about it?
Matt 6:25
So this was about 2014, is when I left that job. I got married and I left my job within a month of each other. So it's like this is the turning of a page, new era. That was my mindset.
Sara: 6:38
It's a little bit of change in a short period.
Matt: 6:40
Yeah. So, you know, we got married, we went on our honeymoon, and I came back and finished that last week at that job to help train the new person. And then I was out on my own. And that was a very different experience being out on your own. I'd always, my parents owned a print shop when I was young for a few years. So even at 12 years old, I was helping in there. And then all those things I was talking about, like at 14. So I've always been working for somebody else since I was like 12, 14. Hard work was very instilled in me, and working a job was kind of a value instilled early from my parents. So it was strange to be out on my own, but as a creative person, the possibilities were also fun to deal with.
Matt: 7:19
And then we had a son, and everything kind of changed then. So that podcast went to the side, my music playing went to the side, and I had just a few students I was teaching still. Became a stay-at-home dad. Loved my son. He was a very tough baby. It was 18 months of getting two to three hours of sleep, non-consective, like keeping spreadsheets and trying to figure it out. No, how can I get four hours of sleep? So that was a rough 18 months, but I loved being home with my son. And then I, because of pandemic-y things, it wound up being a little longer, so I stayed home with him for six years. So this long way getting to, I felt, again, I really love my time with my son, we have a good connection, but I felt disconnected from the world during that time. So I was feeling this longing for connection again after that period. So I was feeling that for those four years before the pandemic. And then when the pandemic hit, you know, it hit everyone, you know, that isolation. So that was just thrown on top of that, which was, yeah, it was tough as it was for everybody. So when I came out, when he, my son started kindergarten, actually he did preschool half day, so I had like a weird in-between period where I was sort of coming out of it for a year and then kindergarten, so I fully got back into it. I tried to do my music again, and it didn't quite feel right anymore, which was interesting for me. Because music had always defined me of who I was.
Sara 8:46
When you say you tried to do your music again, was that you teaching, you playing, you playing with other people?
Matt 8:54
All of it. All of it trying to do that. Actually, not so much to playing with other people, because that was with a kid now, it was harder to do that. But playing my own music and teaching. Yeah, it's hard to, the passion wasn't there anymore. And like I had been obsessed with music for the first 30 years of my life. And it kind of during that stay-at-home period, it just shifted completely to taking care of my son. And I think it was just not practicing that muscle as much. It was very strange for me, and I had a couple years of dealing with this identity crisis. I'm a musician, that's what I do. I spend all my free time thinking about it, and it was no longer the case anymore. So after a little bit of working through that, started volunteering with some places. And this isn't to say I still enjoy music. It's just not, you know, when I was walking somewhere, I was thinking about how to make a song or something. It was always on my mind, and that's just not the case anymore. Now, when I'm walking around, fast forward to today, it's I'm thinking about the podcast and how to do stuff like that and community organizing and that stuff.
Matt: 9:55
So but then that's around that time where I started to get involved with volunteering with the Public Arts and Culture Committee, the WBC, Watertown Business Coalition, and just meeting a lot of these folks around town who I found interesting and were doing interesting things. And that's when I reached out to Doug for that first podcast episode, because I had missed my podcast. I'd always wanted to get back into that. It felt like it had been picking up some steam before I became a stay-home dad, and I had to cut it off. Think I mentioned it, I was talking to artists all over the world. It was really interesting to get all those different perspectives. But also I had missed, as I was building that, I kind of missed that it wasn't, I wasn't really building a community. I had all these people I had talked to, but then I would never see them again. At the end of my time of doing that podcast, I'd actually inquired about a space across from the library in the building there where there used to be a Verizon and where Bling Boutique used to be. Had the idea of maybe starting like a co-working artist space there, but I didn't have the money for that. You know, so it was just a dream thinking about that.
Matt: 11:00
So the inkling of starting a community had been there. So I wanted to get a lot more community focused. I want to be able to be in person and have real conversations and build real relationships. Because that's one of the nice things about like yesterday I was out around town. I walk a lot. And when I was walking around town, I'll pass by a couple of people that I recognize and I stop and talk to them for a few minutes. If you're building an online community, you're not gonna have those pass-by moments of connection. And I think those are, nothing drastically important happened in those five minutes of chatting with that person, but it is, those small moments mean so much, in today's world especially of everyone feeling lonely and disconnected.
Matt: 11:37
Yeah, I'm kind of disjointed in my answer here, but that is a big purpose of the podcast for me too, is there's multiple angles of why I think this podcast is important, to me and to people who have come up to me and said they enjoyed it. So there's one, it's the one-on-one conversation that I have with the person. A lot of these people say afterwards, like, I haven't had someone ask me these questions. I haven't been able to tell my story before. So just that conversation itself was beneficial for that person. So I like giving that space for that voice to be heard for them. I don't always tell people that one because then they feel like it's pressure for them. I let people go as deep as they want or shallow as they want. It's always about being comfortable.
Matt: 12:16
Then two, satisfy my own curiosity. I'm a curious person. I love hearing different people's stories, different perspectives. One thing I always like to say is that, you know, if you know the Silicon Valley phrase, strong opinions, loosely held. I hate that. My opinion, mine is loose opinions, strongly held. I like to be open to having my mind changed. And it takes only through lots of seeing the same pattern and feeling the same way for a long time that I feel like I come to like this is an important thing. So in order to have loose opinions strongly held, you have to be exposed to lots of different opinions and points of view. So that's my curiosity into the project.
Matt: 12:56
Then there's obviously the sharing with the community. Even that has multiple aspects too. So I used to just say it's discovering the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. And now I've also put in, it's discovering and connecting the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. Because I think there's a discovery part of it where you haven't found out about this place or you haven't heard this story. And for me, a lot of these one-on-one interview episodes are half finding out about the person, half finding out about the work that they do. And I think that's worked really well because people come up afterwards. Like, I've been in a board, I see them every week, and I never knew that. I never knew their backstory. And then there's people who's like, this is my neighbor. I never knew this was their work that they do. So it's nice to have those both sides to give a more complete picture of the people in your community so you can connect with them on a deeper level.
Matt: 13:42
But then also I want people to go out and interact too. So I want these, I'm kind of putting these on the internet for people to hopefully then use this as a way to go out and connect with people in their actual community. If I have a business on, it's nice to hear people say, like, oh, I heard that episode. I went and took a class and it was really great. Thank you for introducing me to that. But now they have a real in-person connection and they can get that source of entertainment and creativity in real life with real people in their community rather than scrolling or whatever online, you know. And I'm not anti-tech. It's just, I think it should be a tool. It shouldn't replace people. So that's how I view this podcast too. It's a tool that hopefully will lead you to connecting more with people.
Sara 14:26
I love this and hearing the evolution of this over time, how you started with Skype. And for those of you who don't know what Skype is, it was like the original FaceTime, with people on a global scale who you probably would never be in their kitchen to now this hyperlocal where you are going to people's homes, you are meeting them where they are and seeing how they've come to be in this community. I know I share this, I don't know, struggle figuring out how to integrate technology and connectedness. Because a balance seems so impossible sometimes, but how to use it to connect in real time where I live with people. And that's what you're, that's what you're doing.
Matt 15:13
That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to play my small part in that. One thing is, you know, a lot of these people that come up to me and say they listen, they’re fans, are of my generation or older. So I don't know how many younger folks are listening. I can't see that through my data. And that's an interesting thing because I do want the younger generation to feel like they can build community too. So that's something I'm thinking about too, is how to get in with younger people as well to make sure they have a, they understand the importance of this. Without, you know, I don't like to sound like the old guy, like, you gotta be like my generation or whatever, but I think community is gonna be important for everyone. And I built online communities or tried to build or be part of online communities before and I think now there's all the science coming out that it is not the same and it doesn't work as well. You know, we'll see.
Matt: 16:05
But yeah, tech is a, can't avoid it. It's something you have to find your relationship with it, with your project. And so social media is something people often talk to me about. Like, when are you gonna build out your, so I have an Instagram page. I basically put up the episode announcements and the event announcements, and I try not to engage beyond that because I don't want to build out on social media. Again, I want people to meet in the real world. So I don't want to be having these conversations back and forth on social media. It's really like, here's a bit. If you're interested, come here. And I know I'm probably missing out on building a little bit of audience there, but it's more important for me to do this in a way that I feel aligns with my values. We'll see. As things go forward, but that's how I currently feel on that part of the tech.
Sara 16:52
Your engagement with a community is bumping into people that you know at the library or when you're walking rather than exchanging in a comment section on a social media post.
Matt 17:04
Yeah. And you know, like in college, me and my roommate, we had what we call it open door policy. So we always had our dorm room open and it was a room that everyone came in when they were between classes and stuff. Or like when I was at one of those jobs I was at for like six years, I was the one from my building, they would send over the checks to and I'd hand them out in every department because I knew people in every department, even though I'd never worked with them, quote unquote. Because I like popping in and getting to know all those people. So yeah, totally those small in-person things. And that's why I started events for last year. I did 13 live events last year for the podcast, because even if it's just like 10 people in a room, most of these people haven't met each other before, mixing with these ideas, and you can get more diversity of thought between those 10 people than you will from scrolling through a thousand posts.
Sara 17:50
And we're in a time socially and politically that feels very uncertain and very scary for many of us. And a lot of people who may have been in organizing spaces or community spaces may have a sense of how to respond, but many people don't. Many people feel like I don't even know where to start, I don't know where to help, I don't know where to put my energy, my time, my money. And what you're doing is at its core, the most basic way to express support, connect with people, getting to know your neighbors, making sure that people know who you are and you know who they are, that when things come up, there's a network, there's a connection.
Matt 18:34
Yes, exactly. Another thing that I try and keep in mind is small and personal, I try and keep in mind, but also along with that is, I tell myself also, nothing grandiose. I think people try to make these big things, and I really believe in the power of compounding small things and incremental growth of something. I think if you build things in small increments, you can make adjustments along the way to make a strong base as you build rather than trying to go back and fix that base later on. And that goes for building networks in a town too, or a city. I don't think you can know everyone or have a hundred-person network within the city within, you know, three months. But over time, if you show up and, to build an in-person network, it takes a lot more time than building how many followers on social media. But the value of that one person is so much deeper. Yeah. You can get in the comparison of the numbers, you know, a hundred people on social media seems like such a low number or whatever when you compare it to the big people. But in person, if you know a hundred people in your community, that is really impactful.
Sara 19:40
What that yields and what you can give and then what you can receive.
Matt 19:44
Yeah.
Sara 19:44
How you measure that is so different.
Matt 19:46
Yeah.
Sara 19:47
Thinking about technology and how things have changed and what it helps with, what it impedes. You said your parents had a printing company, and you have come of age, I have too, where we were born before the internet and learning how to integrate technology into our lives. Can you tell me a little bit about what art consumption, production was like in your house? Like, how was music played in your house? What music was being played, what types of media were around? And then thinking about what that's like in your house with a young kid who was born post social media, internet, you know, reliance on all kinds of technology and what that's like.
Matt 20:29
Yeah. I mean, there are differences, but there are definitely similarities. So when I was growing up, I listened to the radio a lot, constantly. I drive my sister crazy because I'd fall asleep with the radio on.
Sara 20:39
Was there a certain station that you would always listen to?
Matt 20:42
You know, growing up, it was probably Kiss 108. I was very much a pop kid. My mom listened to a lot of like soft rock radio when I was really young. So I think that influenced me in terms of, you know, she listened to the Delilah and all those. So a lot of Phil Collins, Whitney Houston stuff were in those early years with my mom.
Sara 21:00
But the Delilah had stories and I had people that will call in and there was an exchange and some kind of connection.
Matt 21:07
Yeah. And as a little side note here, as I was reflecting a little bit about where did this desire to talk to a bunch of people come from? I haven't talked about my mom how many years it was, but before like preschool for me, my mom was an Avon lady. So like I would be in the car with her as she went around to different people to sell her, you know, her makeup. So I wonder if that had an early influence too. Like she went around to different people to talk about that stuff.
Sara 21:32
So in people's homes, which is very different than makeup tutorials online.
Matt 21:37
And so I don't know how long that, I just know that happened at some point in that early period. I was like, that was probably something. But back to the music, so yeah, it was a lot of radio. And then when I got to like fourth or fifth grade, I was given the option to play, take private piano lessons or do band in school. And I chose the private piano lessons, but it was like fifty fifty. Almost like was a trombone player or something, you know. Which was wildly different from again, small things building up snowballing from there. Because I really took to piano. But I didn't love lessons so after a year, I stopped taking them and I pretty much just taught myself through books. And when I got to, it was probably middle school, speaking of technology, there's this one music program. I don't know how I came across it. I came across this free demo of this music creation program where I could make all digital music in this program, but you couldn't export the song or make a song, you know, listenable on another device until you completed the song. So I could only work at one song at a time. And so I'd keep my computer open for days until I finished that. So that was really interesting, I guess, probably too for being able to focus on one creative project at a time. Eventually, you know, years later I was able to buy the full version and work on different things at a time. But that was always like, mom, don't turn off my computer. I need, I'm gonna lose this hours of work on this song. Yeah so I was very much self-taught musician through just listening to a ton of radio.
Sara 23:02
Would you ever call into any radio station?
Matt 23:04
Oh, no. No no.
Sara: 23:05
You wouldn’t request songs?
Matt: 23:06
I was there with my, close your ears young listeners, with my tape deck. Like, oh my favorite song's coming on let me record it onto this tape. So I was one of those.
Sara: 23:14
Me too.
Matt: 23:15
Until CDs came out.
Sara: 23:16
Do you remember what your first CD was?
Matt: 23:18
What was my first CD? I can't remember what exactly my first one was. Yeah, I just listened to so much that there wasn't one that just drove my life. Yeah. I had too many CDs. Now I don't. That's one of the benefits I guess of the current technology is that you don't have to have so much stuff. But also as I got into college and I went to music school, I got into a lot of non-pop stuff that actually when I go to look on it on streaming service now I can't find it. So that's kind of been a bummer for some of that stuff. Even like this one jazz band I liked, nine out of their ten albums you can find but not this one that has one of my favorite songs on it. But yeah it was interesting going to music school then and getting exposed to all those. I really dove into learning about jazz and folk and classical and even though, again keeping loose opinions, experimental music and stuff like that I really didn't enjoy listening to it, but I enjoyed hearing about people's perspectives behind it. Anyway, any questions in there, I'm kind of rambling.
Sara 24:19
So how do you listen to music now? What's it like in your house? How do you listen to it when you walk? What's it like, how do you consume it now?
Matt 24:26
Yeah, so I consume a lot less now. Like I was saying, the podcast has kind of taken, so I listen to a lot of podcasts and a lot of people talking when I'm walking and doing chores and stuff like that. But I still listen to some music too. I like to go on to the streaming services and listen to like what's popular now just out of curiosity, like what is modern pop music sound like now or modern indie music sound like now? So it's not as much, but it's usually mostly in my ears by myself. And then in the car when it's a family car drive, my wife and son win out on the playlist, so it's whatever they want to listen to. And my wife has some artists that she's super fans of so it's a lot of them and she's indoctrinated my son on that. So it's two against one. That's okay. It's fine.
Sara 25:14
Nobody wants to listen to the podcast you're interested in on long car trips?
Matt 25:18
No no no. So yeah but it's also interesting because my son has this, I don't know if you know, a Yoto player.
Sara: 25:23
Yeah, yeah.
Matt: 25:25
So my son has a Yoto player so he's, that’s why I was saying like there's some similarities. I was always listening to the radio anytime I was at my home when I was a kid, he's at home, he's always got that Yoto player with him. If he's going to get his clothes on he carries his Yoto player. And for people who don't know, Yoto player is kind of like a little audio box. It's almost like the modern boom box but you can put in these cards that play different stories or different music but they're all parent approved for kids. So he's listening to a lot of stories and stuff on that. So that's kind of the similarity that I see there. Instead of music though, he’s listening to a lot of stories on that .
Sara 25:53
And does he listen to it with headphones or can you?
Matt: 25:59
No, out loud. Out loud. But you can do headphones, but no he just listens to it out loud.
Sara 26:04
Well if it's okay if I read a little bit from your website because I'm really interested in this because I think generationally and being a parent and seeing changes, I'm curious about this part of your experience with music and teaching and how you have expressed, I don't know if this is a surprise, but that you really enjoy working with adults. Because I think we live in a great area where there's lots of kids musicians. And I think being at the library we get to see lots of music for kids and I first met you through your kid. And so I like have this very parent identification with you. But I also really have gravitated more towards working with adults, specifically older adults and find that I think maybe I'm intimidated by kids. I don't know what it is or that adults aren't as impressionable as young kids. I feel like the stakes are a little bit lower and I'm able to be more curious than responsible when it comes to kids.
Sara: 27:04
But you've said that, you've enjoyed working with adults not because children aren't fun, but because I enjoyed digging into the history of adults story, why they had chosen to learn music, most kids aren't making that choice, their prior struggles, the parallels of this musical endeavor with other challenges in their life. Relating on those levels I always felt elevated the lessons for the students who opened up with the rest of their life. Can you tell me a little bit about that and when you started to realize like oh this is where I want to teach or this is where I want to put my energy?
Matt 27:40
Yeah, so when I was first teaching, it was a friend who had reached out to me about wanting guitar lessons. So it was already, my first experience was with.
Sara: 27:47
A peer.
Matt: 27:48
Yeah, exactly. But then when I did try kids I didn't feel like, kind of how you were saying, this pressure to set this impression on them or anything like that. It was more, honestly for me personally, like I didn't feel like there's as much richness to that teaching and for some people unteaching with adults. So as I went on and taught more and more adults it was mostly guitar is what I did. Which was interesting because piano was my main instrument for many years and I added on guitar and then in teaching it was, had a couple piano students, but it was mostly guitar. I think that also kind of worked because I was closer to them in terms of being a self-taught beginner. I mean I played in bands playing guitar and stuff and all that. So I knew how to do it but I had much more extensive training in piano. So I feel like I could, sometimes if you're an expert in something it's harder to imagine the beginner mindset. So I think that helped me a little bit with the guitar.
Matt: 28:41
But yeah, I mean all this stuff is going to come back to I like the layers of things, right. So I like with an adult that you have possibly a background history of having tried and then their teacher wasn't a good match for some reason or they're forced to do it by their parents or something. And so setting that new environment for them, we can make this however you want. That was always something for me too. I never came in with a, here's the book, we're gonna go through it. Also something that was struggling to do with kids is because a lot of people teach kids with just going through a method book and even teach adults that way too. But adults have had decades of listening to music. They know what they like and so why not use what they like to help teach them. And that takes obviously some adjusting of the songs and stuff, but I found that much more successful than going through a book with someone. It’s like, I love this song. Even if I'm just kind of playing it along with them, this is so much more fun and engages them more. Even if I'm playing a simplified version of it along with the recording, it's so much more engaging and motivating for them. Especially as an adult, you know, if you're playing one of your favorite pop songs versus twinkle twinkle, it's a little demoralizing.
Matt: 29:51
So I found that worked better with my own personal experience of teaching myself the instrument and just how, most adults, that's how they would prefer to learn because they have this experience with music over decades now. Yeah, and then they have history with the actual song that they're learning. You know this was my favorite song when I was a kid and there's just so much more layers to it and you can also work on skills like bringing out the emotion in a song. Again a kid doesn't have that emotional maturity yet to be able to understand, beyond play this happy or sad, like they don't understand nostalgia or anything like that yet. So there's all these, it's just a richer experience and with so many of the projects I've done I think it's about unlocking these richer stories within yourself for the average person. So yeah.
Sara 30:41
Well I think that connects perfectly just this overall theme that I have pulled out with reading your website, listening to your music, is this idea of just this like baseline foundational curiosity that you have about people's stories. And then added on this reflection. I would even go so far like reminiscence, nostalgia, but also really connected to, and I don't know if you've thought about this or can articulate this a bit about like a hope, a hope for the future, hope for our kids generation, hope for ourselves as we get older. Because what I hear a lot in, I think it's a stereotype, like older people can't learn new things. And what we do know is that learning new skills, learning new things, making new brain pathways actually is very protective and helps preserve our cognitive function and our engagement in our lives as we get older. But learning a new skill, to also live in that reminiscence and nostalgia like that combination is so rich, I think for people. And so I don't know if you've thought about that. How those all connect like the curiosity, reflection, reminiscence, and then hope.
Matt 31:57
A word that again can mean so many things to different people but for me that I think a lot about, is lightness. Which can have lots of different connotations and meanings which is why I kind of like it. Because you can think of lightness as hope or you can think of lightness as not being so heavy or you can think of lightness as not carrying as many things around with you. And again there's better words for different people but for my configuration in my mind this word helps me a lot. And it's like why I want to put people at ease. You know that's something I get a lot after interviews is people saying, that was so easy, that felt so comfortable. And that's an important thing for me too. Again with that whole nothing grandiose point of view is not everything we do has to be so serious, has to be so big. I think lightness can be kind of pooh-poohed sometimes because it's not this big life defining moment or, but also it doesn't have to be frivolous too. There can be something actually up depth within lightness too.
Matt: 33:03
To get to you know a little bit of your work of working with people towards end of life, one of the things that I really enjoyed reading one time that's kind of got to this is, I don't know if you know the writer, Italo Calvino. He was kind of an interesting thinker and he wrote lots of fantastical stories, but he had a book of essays and one of his short essays was on lightness. And one thing he talked about was like a scene in something that he liked in a historical scene was this kind of jokester character that's talking with someone in a graveyard and he exits the scene by putting his hand on the grave and just deftly going over it. And that's like the lightness you can bring to life. How you deal with these heavy situations. I don't know, I kind of like that visualization of that. Yeah, that lightness can be something that you can use to deal with heavy things and actually bring you out of situations. Yeah.
Sara 33:52
That's really beautiful and to think about the different meanings of lightness. I'm thinking both figuratively and literally and I'm picturing you in somebody's living room teaching them guitar and they're gripping, right? They're gripping and trying really, really hard.
Matt 34:09
Yeah, in any situation whether it's learning music or working on your business or trying to deal with a family situation, if you're stressed out and feeling tightness about something, you're never going to be able to work through it. You have to get to a place of ease to be able to deal with the heaviness of certain things. Or even if it's not something super heavy, just something annoying or, I feel like that strength and lightness is a good combination to be able to live a good life.
Sara 34:39
I was not expecting that thread to connect and it's really, I'm really curious of checking out this essay too.
Matt 34:47
Yeah, it's not super long and it's in a, what is it, like it's in a collection, small collection called six notes on the next millennium or new millennium. Because he wrote it, you know, he was around in like the 40s, 50s, 60s, I feel like. He was kind of in that, Borges might be the one who's more known in the kind of writing that he did. But yeah, not for everyone but I went through a stage of really getting into those types of authors.
Sara 35:10
No, I'm curious and I have always been really drawn, I don't play any instruments. My kids both play instruments. I was never inclined but I love to sing. That's not a secret to you. Not necessarily good at it but it is so fulfilling to me and to sing with people and to be in community in that way. And again my orientation toward aging, gerontology, I'm much more familiar with like Oliver Sacks’ work on music and our brains and.
Matt: 35:40
He's got some crazy stories.
Sara: 35:41
He's got some crazy stories. And thinking about, I don't know if you're familiar with the young at heart chorus and their work. It's all people in their 70s and 80s singing all kinds of songs in community together. And then a documentary called Alive Inside, I don't know if you've seen that. It's a really fascinating documentary that follows people who have dementia and severe neurocognitive disorder who are mostly living in long-term care nursing homes that uses music as a non-pharmacologic intervention. Where family members of people who have very profound cognitive impairment are asked well what music did this person like? What did they used to love to, even if they weren't musicians, like what was playing in the radio? What were they listening to all the time? What were they singing all the time? And this is back when iPods were a thing and you could just put music on and they would load the iPods up with, these researchers did this out of George Mason University outside of DC. And they would put headphones on people who had been pretty much nonverbal, really withdrawn, looked quite apathetic from the outside. They would hear the music and they would light up. They would retrieve the words and the tone and all of the music and just start singing. And we've seen this with people who can play instruments who've lost the capacity to be able to feed and bathe and dress themselves, be able to sit down in front of a piano and play.
Matt 37:08
And even if it's not something they, so a number of years ago, I went to the Brigham House here in Watertown and there's one guy there who he used to be a musician and played music a lot. And he was at a point now where he could converse fine but he, like he was there mentally, but he had tons of tremors and, you know, couldn't hold a glass of water. But I went to play guitar for him a few times and playing just my music, so not something he was familiar with. And when I would play, his body would just relax, the tremors would stop. So like it doesn't even have to be something that you recognize it's just the music and the guitar playing for him was healing.
Sara 37:46
Yeah, and maybe even feeling, I don't know how close he was sitting to you, but feeling vibrations having it kind of wash over him.
Matt: 37:53
Yeah, so.
Sara: 37:54
I feel like I could do a part two of this and go way down the road of, because I feel like we've talked a lot about, you know, breaking out of silos, connecting, you connecting with people and then that like being a vehicle for people in the community to connect with each other. I think it's a really very simple but almost radical.
Matt 38:17
So another moment that I recall, this was way back in college. In college there was a tragedy where a couple of students had fallen out of a window so like this terrible thing. The next couple days, you know, everywhere you go is just like silent people in the dining hall. You just hear people eating, no one talking. And it seems kind of silly to say but like at one point there's a piece of cake in the middle of the table and I just grabbed it and smashed it into my face and everyone started laughing and cracking up and it just kind of relieved the tension. And then people started talking after that. I don't know, I think about that sometimes as like a, how to do that in more situations in a not so silly way. But again bring that lightness to that heaviness which then allows people to work their way out of it. And obviously there was a lot more to work, that didn't solve everything by any means. But I like to think that that helped give people a nudge.
Sara 39:20
Just to kind of start to wrap up here are you taking new clients for music lessons, instrument lessons?
Matt 39:27
So I think the shift has completed and I now am a podcast producer.
Sara 39:32
Okay.
Matt 39:32
So I produced the Little Local Conversations podcast, I produce a couple other podcasts for other people as well. And that's kind of the fun creative puzzle I'm working on now is how to make that a sustainable long-term thing. Making some money but I need to make more to make it a sustainable long-term thing. But I don't want to disrupt the character of the podcast so I'm going through creative solutions on that. But again incremental, doesn't have to be a big leap all at once. I still have one guitar student who I've had for like over a decade now. I'm not taking on new ones right now, no.
Sara: 40:06
And because I have learned from you how to kind of wrap things up, if people wanted to find out more about not just Little Local Conversations but your work as a podcast producer, how would they find you?
Matt 40:19
Yeah, LittleLocalConversations.com, obviously if you’re listening to this you probably already know that, is my Watertown focused podcast. My other two podcasts, I do one for a financial planning business in town called Arsenal Financial, which is owned by Doug Orifice, who's a sponsor of this podcast, but also just a great involved community member, does lots of things in the city.
Sara 40:37
And also a very big music person too.
Matt 40:39
Yeah, so maybe sneak peek. I'm planning on doing an event highlight episode for Porchfest this year and Doug might be my co-disc jockey on that one.
Sara 40:48
That's gonna be really fun to listen to.
Matt 40:50
Yeah, because he is a big music fan. And then I also do a podcast for Senator Will Brownsberger which is just called the Will Brownsberger podcast. And that financial planning podcast is called the Arsenal Money Clip Podcast. So you can check those out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you find those. And yeah, reach out to me, Matt at LittleLocalConversations.com. I love finding out about people in the city and making connections. So yeah.
Sara: 41:16
Thank you so much.
Matt: 41:17
Thank you for turning the tables.
Sara 41:19
Yeah thank you for your willingness to do this. It's really fun being on this side.
Matt: 41:25
It is more fun following your curiosity and asking the questions. Yeah, it is nice. But it's nice to be able to talk about yourself sometimes too.
Sara: 41:32
Yeah, I'm excited to see the subsequent interviews and from different angles. I think people who listen to the podcast regularly are going to be really excited about this.
Matt: 41:40
We’ll see.
Sara: 41:41
Yeah, who knows how this will shift, you know, who comes on because I think it's very vulnerable to be the creator of something and then to say, all right I'm asking people to do this all the time. Sure. Okay.
Matt 41:54
Yeah, and for me it's not even so much, I'm perfectly happy to sit down and be vulnerable about, I'm an open conversation person. I mean I think that's part of being able to sit down and have conversations is that you have to give a little too. But this whole project is sharing other people's stories so that's why I was hesitant at first but enough people asked. So yeah.
Sara 42:11
Thank you. Yeah this was really fun.
Matt: 42:14
Thanks.
Matt 42:15
So that's it for my conversation with Sara. Again there'll be a couple more of these that'll get out eventually as well. You can send me a message at Matt at LittleLocalConversations.com. Always love hearing from you. If you see me walking around town, say hello. I've done over 115 episodes now so it's been great to get to learn so much about the people and what's going on in the city. If you want to help support the podcast there's a button on the website LittleLocalConversations.com, there’s a button in the menu that says support local conversation. There you can become a little local friend and help support the podcast. It's kind of like Patreon but just right on my website. I'm also opening up sponsorship and partner opportunities without disrupting the nature of the podcast. So if you have a business or an organization that would like to sponsor one of the series or types of episodes that I do, reach out to me. I'm currently going through that. Or if you're just an individual who would like to help support one of the series or the podcast in general at more than the little local friend level, reach out to me about that. Send me a message at Matt at LittleLocalConversations.com.
Matt: 43:15
Alright and head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com to find all the episodes I do with other people and all the different events. You can sign up for my weekly newsletter, all that good stuff. And I want to give a few shout outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor Arsenal Financial which is a financial planning business that is owned by Doug Orifice, very committed community member here in Watertown, and his business helps busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. So if you need some financial help, you can reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast so I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncil.org at massculturalcouncil.org. And a couple more shout-outs to promotional partners. First, the Watertown Business Coalition. Their motto is Community is Our Business. You can find out more about them at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Find that at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
