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Posted October 20, 2025
Introduction:
Guest: Phillip Bimstein
A former mayor of Springdale, Utah outside Zion National Park, Bimstein is an Emmy award-winning musician and composer threaded through many genres, including classical, experimental, punk rock, and folk music. His alternative classical compositions have been performed by soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras, at, among other venues, Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln and Kennedy Centers, and the Spoleto and Aspen Festivals, among others. A certified mindfulness teacher, he designs and teaches unique arts and humanities courses at the University of Utah’s Honors College. This past summer, he taught at the U. S. Asia Campus in Korea.
Additional Resources:
Red Rock Rondo: Zion Canyon Song Cycle (Spotify)
Red Rock Rondo: Secret Gift
How to Practice Politics with Music in Mind | Phillip Bimstein | TEDxSaltLakeCity
Transcript:
David Pace
This podcast discusses trauma related to illness, including suicide. If you’re having suicidal thoughts, you can dial or text the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988. That’s 988.
Hi, my name is David Pace and this is Pace Yourself, a University of Utah College of Science podcast, ‘On Wellness’.
My guest today is Philip Bimstein, who is a former mayor, an Emmy award-winning musician and composer, threaded through many genres, including classical, experimental, punk rock, and folk music. His alternative classical compositions have been performed by soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras, at, among other venues, Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln and Kennedy Centers and festivals, from the Spolito to the Aspen Festival. A certified mindfulness teacher, Philip Designs, and teaches unique arts and humanities courses at the University of Utah’s Honors College. This past summer, he taught at the U. S. Asia Campus in Korea.
Welcome,
Philip Bimstein. Thank you.
I’m glad to be here. It’s really a pleasure, you know, we, we were just talking a minute ago that we kind of go quite a way back.
We do.
Both with you and your wife, Charlotte Bell, who will also be on this podcast later today. And most recently I went to a concert at Libby Gardener Hall right across the, President Circle here, titled Sound in Silence. It was with Salt Lake Symphony, so correct.
Yes.
And it was hosted by you and featured Charlotte on the English horn and oboe, is that correct? Did I get that right?
That’s correct.
It was a beautiful concert. And, we’re going to be talking about one of the pieces that you did there that was inspired by Terry Tempest, Williams’ Refuge, Silence. Poem, is that correct?
Phillip Bimstein
Well, she gave me carte blanche, very generously to make my own composition based on her words and voice from the book. And I organized the four movements into four themes, one of which was silence. So, it wasn’t a poem that she wrote. I just selected certain portions of the book from various places that related to silence.
Gotcha.
David Pace
And listening. Since that was the theme of the concert.
Phillip Bimstein
Exactly, yeah.
David Pace
Including John Cage’s, was a 433, what is his favorite?
Phillip Bimstein
433, which is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
David Pace
[laughter]
Which was very, I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole too much, too fast, but it was really something to sit in that big hall with, you know, hundreds of people. Maybe even over a thousand and have it that silent that long. But it was also very illuminating, which is, we’re going to talk about that, you know, about the whole notion of silence. And, also, what you like to call experiential learning in your coursework here at the University of Utah. Do you want to talk a little bit about those courses that you have, I think there’s three or at least three, but maybe four of them.
Phillip Bimstein
And one that was kind of a formative one for me, the one that I started with, composing the community, which is about music, dialogue, and community, and the analogies between them. But I talked that for 12 years, and then I kept designing new ones. And the ones I’m teaching now are, well, as you mentioned, I think that I taught at the Utah Asia Campus in Korea over this summer. I taught kindness.
And in this fall, now, I’m teaching the artfully extended mind for about the fifth year, and in the spring, I teach Radical Quiet for about the seventh or eighth year. All of them, especially the last two I mentioned, are about the arts and the mind. And kindness is not as much, I always get some arts in and I write a song based on a student paper and stuff, kindness, of course, is about, we study academically, kindness through the lenses of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, etc., but we also practice a meditative technique for cultivating goodwill.
David Pace
Which is why it’s called experiential learning.
Phillip Bimstein
Exactly, that’s one of the reasons, because we do in all of the classes, we do mindfulness meditation in class, and at home, where they get assigned guidance, sometimes by myself, mostly by great meditation teachers. So yes, that’s experiential, the meditation, but also the technique of learning the pedagogy is experiential in that, especially in this current course, the Artfully Extended Mind, where we read a bunch of cognitive philosophers, psychologists, philosophers, political scientists, social scientists, about how we think, not only with the brain, but with the body. The body is an aspect of our thinking space. We utilize space and how we think and cognate. And we utilize relationships with people. So, we read a lot of theory and science and research.
But the experiential part is like, then we want to get that textual learning into our bodies, into space, into our relationships. So, this course has 12 workshops, presentations, a choreographer from the U, Molly Heller.
David Pace
Virginia Catherall, I read was in there. Was that? Yes, for Catherall does fabulous fabric textile art.
Phillip Bimstein
She does, and she leads a workshop at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, last year it was in printmaking and in the past it’s been mask making.
David Pace
Jesse Parent? Did I hear?
Phillip Bimstein
Jesse Parent, yeah, he’s terrific. He’s a slam poet. He is exactly, you are right on top of this, and I know you know poetry. He is a nationally known slam poet and Jesse Parent comes for two workshops because he’s also an improv guy. So, we have a poetry slam workshop and we have an improv acting workshop. So, you know, and six or seven others. I do a songwriting workshop where they don’t really, I just throw them into the lurch and they write a song in half an hour and then as a group.
So, all of this is experiential. All of this is like seeing now you read about how you think with your body, but now you’re actually going to think with your body. You’re going to move, you’re going to think about space. You’re going to think about your relationship to others. So that’s why they are experiential learning process.
David Pace
So, speaking of scientific studies, you indicate in your kindness abstract for the course that scientific studies have shown that such practices, increase life satisfaction and reduce anxiety and depressive symptoms.
They do.
That doesn’t surprise me at all, I’m coming out of the humanities and arts myself. But what’s interesting to me is that you are looking at a fairly rigorous academic program reading the literature as well as then moving into this experiential mode through mindfulness and the other components that you were talking about.
So, since this is a podcast on wellness, what have been some of the… Well, before we actually talk about some of the student’s success stories, if you will, there are some other courses that you teach, composing communities, the one that you were just talking about, kindness, then there’s this other one called radical quiet.
So, this explores and develops vital alternatives according to your abstract here, quiet and slow ways of living, learning, and appreciating our lives and the world around us.
What’s so radical about quiet?
Phillip Bimstein
Well, yes, a lot of people ask that. Why that title?
David Pace:
After all, you are a musician.
Phillip Bimstein
Well, a couple of reasons. First of all, the root meaning of radical is root, radical, radish, et cetera. So, I know that we tend to think of radicals being something extreme; that’s how it’s generally used in terms of politics and stuff. But, radical at root means to get at the root of something, so that’s part of the reason why it’s called radical quiet, we’re getting at the root of quiet. Not just how people think of it, like quiet is just amorphous thing, something to be avoided, but we want to get at the power, then the meaning of quiet.
David Pace
Rather than the phrase, it’s too quiet.
Phillip Bimstein
Exactly, and most people today, especially in the modern world, are uncomfortable with quiet. And this course tries to get us back to understanding the value and sort of the goodness and even the use of quiet.
And we might talk about that a little bit later. But, so we do practice, like you said, quiet and slow ways of living. One of the books we read is called How to Do Nothing by an artist professor at Stanford named Jenny O’Dell. He’s one of Barack Obama’s favorite books several years ago. The subtitle, it’s called How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy. And we all know how, you know where the distraction economy is. Distraction, yes, doom scrolling. But there’s so many ways that we distract ourselves. Even just to put on music all the time. We all love music, and students, especially, love to put on their earbuds and listen to music.
And that’s fine, I don’t tell them not to. But it’s good to, like sometimes, not what you’re doing sometimes is distracting yourself and something that maybe it would be better that you experienced. Because as Carl Jung says, what you resist persists.
So sometimes it’s better to, like, you so yeah, you want to distract yourself from your anxiety or worries. But sometimes it’s better to just allow yourself to experience them.
And also what we do, we go to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, they’re just a wonderful institution. Ashley Farmer sets up, have you read her book, by the way?
Ashley Farmer, no, what’s the name of it? Oh, I’ll tell you afterward.
David Pace
We’ll put it in the resources.
Phillip Bimstein
Oh, you would love it. Anyway, she’s, she allowed, you know, the museum, and I was a whole, but she’s my contact person. Let’s become there about eight times during the spring semester. Five of those times or so, we just do slow-looking at art. Because most of the time, people look at art for like eight seconds, 15 seconds, move to the next one. And half that time I’d be spent reading the placard next to it.
What we do is we…
David Pace
I’m guilty as charged.
Phillip Bimstein
Yes, exactly. We all are. So what we do is we spend time actually looking and experiencing. And I have them look before explaining anything about it. Because I want them, again, the experiential. I want them to experience whatever they experience. It’s not about, it’s not about knowledge. It’s not about being identified in a movement or the time period or what the history of the student professor. I mean, the artist was like we touch upon those things. But the main thing is their personal experience of that artwork.
And we also do workshops with Virginia Cathedral. And we use the Great Hall for like a drum circle, or for Molly Heller as I said to do a movement workshop and things like that.
David Pace
So, when you were talking about the slow watching or looking at art, I’m reminded of the book by Arden Reed called Slow Art in 2017 and he talks about the experience of looking. And that his statistic is that the average American spends 6 to 10 seconds with individual artworks, museums, and galleries. And that’s when he goes into the culture of distraction and talks about the value of slow art because it’s participatory is that aligned with what you’re engaged with it?
Phillip Bimstein
Truly seeing it, you know, not just seeing, you know, I mean, if we can go this far when with the students, it’s not just seeing it as an object, but having an I-Thou as Martin Boober says, relationship with the art and seeing how it affects you.
And it’s not just slow looking at art. The whole course radical quest is about slow living and there’s all kinds of movements, like slow cities, slow food, you know, as supposed to fast food, which is really experiencing it.
And that’s what basically is that root of all my courses is it’s like it’s about living. It’s about being alive, being awake to who you are and what’s going on around you. So, all of these things, the arts and the meditative practices and the reading of the, you know, what I call the crunchy intellectual stuff is all meant to bring you back to yourself and the experience of being alive.
David Pace
Let’s listen to some music. Okay. I was really struck by this Terry Tempest Williams’ piece that you did in May. Yes. And so we’re going to listen to an excerpt from that. And if you could tell me just by way of introduction what it is that you were trying to do as you, I think you mentioned that she gave you a Terry Tempest Williams, by the way, as an author and environmentalist conservationist, in fact, our own Ross Chandler is a graduate of the Environmental Humanities Program that she founded here at the University of Utah. So she’s already a bit of a rock star, although rock is maybe the wrong genre here.
Phillip Bimstein
Right. She’s internationally now, right? You know, New York Times, publisher, rapids, et cetera. Yeah.
So tell us about this piece briefly and then we’ll listen to it. We’re an excerpt from it.
First, it’s performed by the Abramian String Quartet, who are all members of the Utah Symphony at the time. And it’s a String Quartet. The piece is written for two violins, a viola and a cello, and there are four movements. We’re just going to hear the second movement, which is called “Silence,” which I wrote by taking various elements of the book that related to that subject, “Silence, Quiet Listening.”
And the main part of it, like it begins, I’m sure you’ll just play a little bit of it, is that “Silence” is very, very dear to Terry, along with “Birds.” She has a personal story behind you. She has a personal story about her mother was dying from cancer, which ran in Runs and Terry’s family. That’s what the book refuge was part, half a bout, and the other half about the interwoven about the bird’s refuge being threatened. She’s sitting by the bedside of her mother, who’s getting close to passing away, and her mother says to her, “I just want to listen to the silence with you by my side.” And it’s just so precious, so dear. And Terry says that in — it writes that in the book, and because I asked her to read portions of the book to me, I asked her to read that line. So it’s Terry saying it, but she’s quoting her mother.
So when I make a refrain out of it, and when I work with people’s voices, which I do with a lot of pieces, I repeat certain things, just like a phrase, a musical phrase, a melody, or an rhythm. So that’s what I do. And when I write the piece, I listen to the meaning of her words, of course, but I also listen to the tone and the feeling, the texture, and the pitch, and whether it goes up or down, and then I write music that either does the same thing or previews it, or echoes it, or supports it in some way. And so she speaks throughout this movement. I know we’ll just hear a little bit about the intimate role of silence in her life, in all of our lives. But I just want to say one quote that she says in it. I don’t know if we’ll get this far. This just captures it in a nutshell. She says, “Silence is the strength of our interior life. If we will fill our lives with silence, then we will live in hope.”
David Pace:
Lovely. Let’s listen to it.
[Music excerpt #1]
David Pace
I was struck by a quote that I also read in preparation for this podcast by Her, which is, “In silence, the noise is outside cease, so the dialogue inside can begin.”
And I think that that’s what I gathered from that as well, sitting there. Yes. And it was very experiential, by the way.
Phillip Bimstein
Very experiential and very much connected to the theme of this podcast, wellness, wellbeing, so that you can hear and know your inner dialogue, because a lot of times we have an inner dialogue, and we won’t, we hide from it. We don’t want to recognize it. It’s better that we know it. On the other hand, and this is where I get into my meditation teaching, because I am a certified mindfulness teacher as well, that we don’t want to get caught up in those thoughts. We want to be aware of them, but not necessarily to always be within them and writing them. We just want to be aware that they’re there, and to feel them, and acknowledge them, and recognize them. And then we can, you know, have a little space and balance within them.
David Pace
Yeah, this reminds me of when I was working with your wife, Charlotte, in the alternative press here in Salt Lake City, and I was the theater critic for 10 years. And I just remember thinking about how awful it was that I was theater critic. I mean, I got into it because I wanted to see more theater for foray, quite frankly. But the problem became, is that I was so busy watching my reaction to the play that I never actually watched the damn thing, or experienced it fully, like perhaps I certainly do now, now that I’m not tasked with doing a formal essay or critique of it.
And I think that’s what maybe she’s getting at a little bit here, and maybe you are too, which is how quickly we step away from experience and pull up our phone and take a picture of it instead, right?
Phillip Bimstein
Exactly.
And that’s what I was doing as a theater critic for 10 years, so it kind of damaged me. I’m very traumatized by all of that.
Phillip Bimstein
I’m sure you’re not damaged, but I understand exactly what you’re talking about. Sometimes as a composer and somebody who studied music in the conservatory, I have to catch myself like, let’s not get to, when I’m listening to music, let’s not get too analytical. Okay, I can go do a set theme and how it came back, but let’s just listen to the texture, just listen to the emotion, et cetera.
David Pace
So, she also talks about, I don’t want to go into too much of this, but teaching a song dog. Tell us about the song dog, because I think this speaks very much to what you’re doing in classes here.
Phillip Bimstein
Absolutely, it is. It’s kind of, ever since Terry told that story, like when I moved to Utah in 1988, well then a year or two, Terry Williams wasn’t quite the rock star that he is now. But she came and spoke at the Bit and spear which is a Mexican swim, down in the spring del, where we sometimes had events. Which is where you were also mayor. Where are you talking about it? Where we will talk about it. In one of her books, one of her very first books, I think is maybe her first or second book, she talked about the song dog story, which she heard from the Navajo Indian. Okay. And, it was very influential to me. And what it is, is that the creation,
One of the creation stories of the Navajo, is that on the planet earth, before there was anything on it, out of a hole in the earth, came a coyote and he looked around and he saw nothing there. And he just, he sang, sang the world, or he or she, sang the world into existence. And so that’s why it’s by the Navajo, whatever word they used, it’s the equivalent of a song dog.
And I love that story because it speaks to the capability our innate capacity, all of us have, to sing our world into existence. And as I stress when, as being mayor, could to collaboratively do that. Not always just individually, but in conjunction with others. We sing our worlds into existence. So it’s, it calls attention, yes, this does, is at the foundation of all my teaching. And perhaps why I teach, is to, is to remind people and bring out that capacity, that we—and by the way, might as well squeeze us in while I think of it. The root word of education is educe, e-d-u-c-e, I always ask my students if they’ve heard of that word and, nobody ever has, educe, the first four words, the first letters, educe, are the first four letters of education. And so, I think it’s interesting that the word educe means to draw forth from within. So yes, education is about learning about the chemical, you know, periodic tables and how chemicals interact and all kinds of facts and historical facts. But at root education, traditionally going back thousands of years, to wherever that word was originated, is about pulling out from within. So yes, we learn things, but the ultimate purpose is to pull out from ourselves. And so, I think this also relates to well-being and wellness that when we do that, then we become more truly ourselves and we have a richer experience of life.
David Pace
So, there’s, that’s fascinating but there’s also kind of a social and political aspect of this. And I think you get to this in your TED Talk, which, by the way, is one of the best TED Talks I’ve ever watched. And the reason why is because you bring on your keyboard and you play music and illustrate how the work that you did in Springdale has a mayor. So, I will definitely recommend that.
But at the end of that TED Talk, you say that you referenced the song dog, I believe, singing the world into existence. And you have a call to action at the end of that TED Talk that is great: “Find your voice and sing, compose your own song. We can sing a politics of possibility and create a brighter future. And we’re not only citizens of this world. We’re composers of it Thank you so much.”
Phillip Bimstein
Well, thank you for remembering that and also about voice because one thing I have in mind when I say, find your voice, it’s not only singing and speaking but it’s your voice in writing, your voice in expression. So, I’m thinking of voice in a larger frame than only literally voice.
David Pace
Right, right. So it’s time to listen to another excerpt really quickly and you’re, you’ve been the composer and a participant in the ensemble Red Rock Rondo. And you’ve done some really fascinating work with taking stories and oral histories, as well as from books, stories that you then elaborate on and illuminate through really beautiful music in my view. And so there’s this piece called My Little Town. It was part of your Zion Canyon song cycle that you did. And I think it grew out of your, well, obviously, you grew out of your experience there as mayor in Springdale. But tell us a little bit about that before we listen to an excerpt of it. It’s an ode, you call it, to a little town. It’s a little sentimental, which is fine.
Everybody needs some sentiment in their life. So, tell us a little bit about this piece and then we’ll listen to an excerpt from it.
Phillip Bimstein
Yeah, well, so as you mentioned, the songs are based on oral histories and some stories that you get from books. All of the songs in the cycle except for one are based on other people’s stories. Some historical people from 100 years ago, some current residents of Springdale.
David Pace
And Springdale, by the way, is the entry to Zion National Park, one of the busiest national parks in the country.
Phillip Bimstein
And that’s true. And many of the songs and the stories that people told me relate to their experience in the natural environment or the park and its development, etc. So then I thought, well, I don’t know that I did this intentionally, but it just came up one day that when I was writing songs, like I started writing about my own impressions of the town. And I’m from the big city. I’m from Chicago. And it was a big change moving there. And I really love the sweetness of the town, the sweetness of the people. Getting to know your neighbors and seeing them out in their front lawn and driving, you see them drive down the street to go get groceries and stuff. And going to the Lions Club, picnic or pancakes on Fourth of July, and stuff like that. So I just got in touch with my own feelings about my little town. I even have a part where I sort of missed it ’cause at that point that I wrote it, I’d actually been gone for a few years. And about how, like even when you go, when you have that experience, and we all have that in our lives, something that touches your heart, that it’s never completely gone. And it’s wonderful when you can get back in touch with it. So that’s what I tried to express with that song.
David Pace
Well, let’s listen to it. Okay, thank you.
[Music Excerpt #2]
David Pace
So this is one of my favorite albums. I’m sorry I’m being very confessional here. I love that album. And my sorrow is that more people in the state of Utah don’t know about it. They need to, because I think it really speaks. It elevates all of the tensions as well as some of the glory of—and some of the sadness really—of what it’s like to be a Utahn and to live in the desert.
And, related to your time in Springdale, as mayor, I think it was Parade magazine that called you “the man who brought civility back to town.” And that story, you’re gonna have to listen to in your TED talk. We don’t have time to really unpack that. But there was some interesting tensions going on down there in Springdale related to, oh, —surprise, surprise—development, and other things in a really beautiful picturesque down, it’s largely based off of tourism and conservation of the desert.
Phillip Bimstein
Yes, yes, and there were, when I moved there, it was, well, you said it’s polarized because of development issues, but also, I have to say, which kind of relates to current situation in this country. The person who is mayor at the time was very dysfunctional. And whenever there was any issue between people, instead of trying to resolve it, would stir things up and make things worse. And so, I had no intention of becoming mayor, I moved there just to, like I didn’t want to be a theater critic of the town, I wanted to enjoy the environment.
But I became president of the local arts council, and somebody came to me one day and said, you know, you ought to run for mayor, and I said, why me, you’re in the planning commission, you know this stuff, I don’t know this, they said because the arts council is doing some of the only positive things in town.
So, I thought about it, and I did it. And, yeah, the town was very divided, people threw a dead chicken into the lawn of the previous mayor. They had to bring a mayor to the town council meetings to keep order.
David Pace
A mayor or the sheriff?
Phillip Bimstein
Did I say, oh, did I say the mayor, you know, they had to bring the sheriff? Yeah, the sheriff is going to say, the mayor is the problem, Phillip.
They had to bring a sheriff to the town council meetings to keep fistfights and breaking up. And, so I ran for mayor and it was like I was entering the mosh pit, you know, which is so I could bring forth my punk rock background, right? Which is where you started. Yeah, right. I knew how to be, well, I had folk music and classical music before that. Okay. But anyway, I knew how to be in an engaged mosh pit. Anyway, it’s not just me, they say that the man who brought civility back to town, but it’s really the council that brought back because I had some great members of the council. We all worked at it. And as, you know, I’ve written and I teach in my composing community course, sometimes musical analogies for the ways in which we listen to each other and collaborate were, were useful.
David Pace
Yeah, definitely. So, really quickly getting back to the mosh pit, it’s very interesting metaphor for you’re talking about in terms of, um, composing life, composing society, composing a conversation, composing relationships, really, um, both on a social level as well as interpersonally. So, um, tell us a little bit, well, actually I can tell you what I think you’re talking about when you say a mosh pit. Um, it’s very present for one thing, it’s by invitation, self-invitation, you bring yourself in it. So, hopefully not too violent, sometimes it can be, but it’s about being present in the moment. So, talk a little bit about how that informs your teaching of students here at the University of Utah.
Phillip Bimstein
Well, you nailed it. It’s first about being very present, and being aware of where you are because in a little mosh pit, you have to be careful, watch out for an elbow, you know, or yourself and being somebody. Obviously, in the educational setting, we don’t move— while we do in Molly Heller’s movement workshop. But, um, it’s more of an analogy in the sense that I want people to be present and engaged.
In a mosh pit, you have a whole arena going on, but right there in front of the stage you have a very focused place. So, yes, that’s part of it, uh, there’s very focused and engaged.
You interact with your fellow, uh, moshers, and I want my students to interact with each other. So, I even, in the way, I have them seated at the very first day of class. They walk into class, and they start to put their sit down in a chair somewhere, and I go, “No, no, no. Put your stuff there, sit down in a circle on the floor of the classroom,” and we sit in a circle, and we do a meditation right to start before we even explain to course. And then I, um, and I say, “Now I want you to meditate. I want you to think of something you love, and and, and, and, and, and, and call it to mind image of it, uh, what you would love.” It was something simple, you know, whether it’s your parent, your, your cat, the sunset, uh, and then we go around and we introduce ourselves, instead of by saying, you know, I study chemistry and I’m in a junior and I’m from San Diego, they say, “I love my dog.” You know, “I love the ocean.” You know. And that’s how we introduce each other. So right from the beginning, I like to us to engage on a level of feeling and a level of a different kind of communication.
So, so it’s not always a mosh pit in the sense of violence or extreme movement. It’s a mosh pit in a gentle way as well, but, but in the sense that we truly engage with each other.
David Pace
Right, and I think the term is quiet empathy that comes out of a lot of this listening, which I wanted to, in closing here, we’re kind of running out of time, talk about some of your students, yes. One of which is a chemistry student that we won’t name of course, but in his or her paper, they reported on, and I’m quoting now, “I think I understood quiet a long time ago, but just did not realize that quiet is love. It’s peace. It’s the space between what you think and what you say in the shape of your breath as it leaves your body.”
Tell us a little bit more about that particular student or there’s another student that we would like to talk about as well, who is a communications major, but a very special experience with a close friend.
Phillip Bimstein
Yes, well, the one that you just mentioned she was a chemist who major and I love it. You know, a lot of my students are science majors or pre-med, etc. And, you know, I love what they bring to the table. And sometimes just last week, as we’re reading about the mind and the arts, a woman brought forth stuff from her anatomy class that related to what we were doing.
Yes, but then the other student that you’re referring to was a communications major. And I think that’s important. And one of his papers, he wrote, “one incredibly sobering situation stands out to me as the focus point of what I’ve learned in this regard in relation to the course. He said a little over two weeks ago, one of my closest friends almost committed suicide. He had been struggling with depression for months and an angry conversation with a loved one pushed him over the edge.
“I happened to call him at just the right time, breaking a nearly fatal silence. We were soon in each other’s arms, crying, the pain was so real. So, at first, I did what I’ve trained myself to do as a communications major. I talked, I told him how much he was loved and appreciated, how it was OK, how I was there for him.
“These words were pebbles thrown at a mountain. The pain that he felt was far greater than what can be described. I could feel it too. So instead of trying to talk to it, to make it go away, I invited silence in.
“We sat together quietly in the bedroom floor with the suffering. The time to speak and console would come later. For that moment, I let the quiet communicate my love and compassion, it was more powerful.”
He goes on to say that the parents of the student flew in, they moved him into his apartment and he was doing well and actually a year or so later, he took my course. I figured it out. They never specifically identified, but I figured it out. That’s why I teach.
David Pace
Exactly. That’s the payday.
Phillip Bimstein
That is the payday, I don’t need to do this for the payday. It’s nice, it’s great, the house insurance, but I do it, you know, well… and there’s a cost to me, to be honest, I’m not composing as much music. I am writing songs, and we didn’t talk about that. I do write a lot of songs based on student papers. They write a paper.
David Pace
You mentioned that. I’ve never had a professor write a song about one of my papers.
Phillip Bimstein
I don’t know if I’m doing it, it’s come to class, and it’s like a student, well, I asked their permission. I read their paper and I go, and I send them a comment like, “Oh, I love this part it’s so poetic. I turn that into a song. Do you mind?” They always say yes, and then I come and sing it, but yeah, I learned so much from them, you know, and I tell them that in the first day. I tell them they are the text. I show them all the texts we’re going to read. I said, “But the main text isn’t there.” I say, “Put your hand on your chest, on your tummy. You are the main text. You’re going to learn from each other, and I’m going to learn from you, and that’s why I do this.”
David Pace
It must be very validating, but it didn’t fill up. It does, you’re doing amazing work. It was validating. You’re going to make me cry.
Phillip Bimstein
Well, that’ll be validating for me to see you cry. No, but it’s validating for me, but it’s also validating for most of the students, because they learn things about themselves. They learn how to deal with their own anxieties. They’re under a lot of stress, and so it’s validating for them too.
David Pace
One of the concerts that I remember being closely affiliated with Philip was when I worked for the Utah Humanities, and for the book festival we brought in Ted Gup, this book The Gift.
Phillip Bimstein:
It’s A Secret Gift.
David Pace
A secret gift. You then picked up with Red Rock Rondo, correct? And wrote an entire song cycle out of it. Tell us briefly about what the book is about itself, and what you’re interested in. And it was, and then we’ll play an excerpt.
Phillip Bimstein
Well, I first read the op-ed he wrote before the book came out in the New York Times, about how he had discovered a trove of letters written to his grandfather in Canton, Ohio, in the 1930s during the Great Depression, all asking for the $10 that he was offering.
David Pace
And so he was offering anybody who wrote him a letter, right?
Phillip Bimstein
Anyone who wrote a letter said of their need. You know, they needed to buy new shoes for their sister, or they wanted to buy Christmas dinner. This was at Christmas time for their family, and it was a known historical fact that this had happened, but it wasn’t known who wrote, who did that, who the benefactor was. And so he discovered it was his grandfather, and Ted Gop is the author, and as soon as any’s a journalist, and as soon as I read that, I wrote, I sent him a track and done, I wrote him, said, “Whoa, I write songs based on stories like this. I just hear all kinds of songs coming out of, just as Op Ed,” I said, “Could I do that?” And he said, “Yes, but the book hasn’t been published yet.” So a year later, the book was published, and he gave me permission to do it. And so I wrote all these songs based on various stories in his book. But then again, like in my little town, I wrote a personal story, sort of, or at least my own expression, called “Give,” I wrote a song called “Give.” And that was about the whole idea of responding to the needs of a stranger, responding to the needs of somebody, having empathy, of being willing to give, to offer yourself. And so I wrote this, and by the way, it was so wonderful that after I wrote this song cycle, the Salt Lake Symphony invited me, Rob Baldwin, the director of this symphony, invited me to orchestrate some of the songs for the orchestra, and so we performed it. That’s probably, you know, we went to, maybe you went to that concert. I did? Yeah, and so we performed six or seven of the songs with the orchestra, and the recording that you’re going to play “Give” is from that concert.
David Pace:
Fantastic. Let’s listen to it.
[Music Excerpt #3]
I think that’s a good place for us to close. I think that one of the things that I’ve, I think I’ve come to understand in this conversation and in preparation for this is that the student, as you say, is very central to what you’re doing, the kind of work that you’re doing. And I think it gives them permission to find multiple potential pathways through what you call the heart of the course, and you list three of those. It could be the path of the mind, reading course texts, it could be the path of the arts, experiencing and being the art.
We could talk about the dancer, who can tell the dancer from the dance, and the path of practice, which is the mindful meditation movement awareness, presence, and joy. So I think these all relate profoundly to wellness because it’s integrated and it’s serendipitous, which is pretty much like life, right? Serendipitous.
Phillip Bimstein
Absolutely. I love it. You say that. That’s the truth.
David Pace
Actually, I quoted you right out of your own stuff. Did you forget you wrote that?
Phillip Bimstein
I don’t remember, but I love the words that I should have owned that. And spontaneity. That’s what I’m actually finding more and more than I enjoy about teaching, is that the spontaneity of myself and others, and this conversation with you. So I’m just very grateful, talking about value, and you’re validating my working and helping me to understand that there’s meaning to it. So, thank you so much.
David Pace
Absolutely. Afterward, we’re going to have a group hug.
So, our guest today has been Phillip Bimstein, Emmy Award-winning musician, composer. And also a professor here in the Honors College at the University of Utah.
And, thank you so much for joining us. And I can’t wait for your next concert.
Phillip Bimstein
Thank you very much, David, we’re really honored to be here.
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Goldenberg's career coincided with an explosion in structural biology. As Blair notes, "When he was three years old, the first protein structure was solved" — myoglobin, determined by X-ray crystallography and worthy of a Nobel Prize. "When he came here, there were 150 protein structures known. And now, after his 40-year career, there are more than 200,000 protein structures known experimentally."