Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the practical ways music transforms everyday life – health, happiness and beyond. I can’t imagine a more fitting guest for today’s conversation. My guest today does not have a background in music in any way. And yet, at the age of 60, her life was radically changed by a musical experience. She ended up writing a memoir about it called High Hopes. And the book just released today. Author Anne Abel is joining me from New York City. Her book describes how a single Bruce Springsteen concert flipped a switch inside her. And today’s publication date is no accident. Today is Bruce Springsteen’s 76th birthday. And congratulations on the release of your book and welcome to Enhance Life with Music.
Anne Abel: [00:00:54] Thank you. It’s very nice to be here, and it’s very exciting that this day has finally arrived.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:58] Yes, I’m sure I’ve heard that putting a book out into the world is sort of like having a baby, or maybe launching a baby. Once you that child reaches 18 and you take it to college and you’re just like, okay, world, I did the best I could. Here you go. Well, I really enjoyed reading your book. I found it so moving. I was fortunate I was reading it at a time where I was on vacation, and so I was able to just get engrossed in it, and it was really engrossing. It was so moving. It made my heart break and it also made my heart soar. So I’m really looking forward to introducing my audience to your story. Starting out, I just want to set the stage for where you were at the time that this memoir begins. You are very open in your book about struggling with severe depression since you were in your teens. And as the memoir starts here in your late 50s, getting close to 60, I think when the memoir starts out and at that point you had not even heard of Bruce Springsteen. So that goes to show that you were not involved in the music world at all, which on this show, I like to point out how music has the ability to transform our lives, whether we consider ourselves musicians or not. So you’re a perfect story to share today with our audience. Just tell the audience where you were in life at this point, and how you ended up going to a Springsteen concert, and how that flipped a switch and changed the trajectory of your life.
Anne Abel: [00:02:29] That finding Bruce Springsteen changed my life. But let me back up at the age of 59. I had never been to a concert. My parents didn’t approve of music or fun. And as a matter of fact, in 1964, when 73 million people tuned in to The Ed Sullivan Show to watch the Beatles, 12 year old me was not one of them. My mother saw me turning on the television, she said. It’s a waste of time. Go to your room and do something constructive.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:56] Wow. So I knew that you didn’t grow up with music, but I didn’t know it was something that was active. No, my, like, intentional.
Anne Abel: [00:03:04] Everything. I mean, I came, I mean, I look like a very middle class Jewish family. My mother was a guidance counselor, my father a professor. But inside it was a cult. Everything I thought, said or did was scripted. And I just want I mean, it was abusive, but not surprisingly, because with a lot of abuse, children, I just wanted my parents. I wanted to do whatever they wanted me to do. I was never rebellious. I mean, even through my until about 60, I just wanted to do whatever I whatever they told me. I tried to do it because I wanted to be accepted. In any case. Um, Labor Day weekend 2012 I’m 59 years old. My son and daughter in law came to Philadelphia, where we were living to see a Bruce Springsteen concert. I, I really knew nothing about the man. I had no interest in going to see him. But then a few hours before the show, I pushed myself up off the couch to go because I wanted to spend time with my kids. That’s the only reason I went. I mean, it was 7:00. That’s when I go to bed. I was severely, severely depressed. And so we go to this concert. Now the pre this was Labor Day weekend in 2012. That summer I had undergone my third regimen of ECT electroconvulsive therapy, which had to be aborted halfway through because I was losing my memory. As a result, I didn’t remember the July wedding of my son and daughter in law. So as we’re sitting there for two hours waiting for the.
Mindy Peterson: [00:04:38] Therapy that you’re talking about, the ECT, that was for the depression.
Anne Abel: [00:04:41] Yeah, it was the third time. It was it was the first time I ever had such horrible, I mean, and I had other horrible side effects. Anyhow, we’re sitting there for two hours. I don’t wait for anything, for the time was just flying by. They were showing me pictures of the wedding on their phone and suddenly the. As the crowd mysteriously rose in unison, I rose to and up on the screen was the face of a man with the biggest, kindest smile I had ever seen. And for the next three plus hours, that man’s energy, humanity and enthusiasm lifted me. For three plus hours, Bruce Springsteen made me feel like I had a chance. He made me feel alive. The following Saturday, my husband and I went to Chicago to see him at Wrigley Field. And for the rest of the fall, I went to concerts wherever I could drive to. Bruce Springsteen gave me hope. Bruce Springsteen was fun. Then later fall 2013, after having one desk too many thrown at me at the Community College of Philadelphia, where I taught for five years, I just walked out the door and thought, I am never coming back.
Anne Abel: [00:05:53] I deserve better than this. But as soon as I was in my car making a U-turn headed home, I was panicking. I was terrified that without the structure and focus of the classroom and with my son’s grown living on opposite coasts, my husband traveling, I would fall back into the abyss of depression. I was not. I was 60 years old now. I wasn’t doing more ect. The last regimen had been disastrous. I wasn’t going inpatient again. I tried. I was on my. I needed to figure something out on my own. I was done with mental health people and as I’m driving home, I remembered how hopeful and alive Bruce Springsteen made me feel his concerts and that somewhere, while I’d been doing all these lesson plans, I had seen that this was October, that he was going to be touring in Australia in February in 24 months, 2014. So I needed a lifeline and I needed it to fast. And so I went home but. And booked the trip.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:57] Yeah. So I’m going to pause there because I there’s a few things I don’t want to just gloss over. One of them is you mentioned a few things just casually, but in your book you went into a little bit more detail. These were things that really impressed me as I was reading your book. You have a strong drive to survive, and you mentioned in your book that the day that you quit teaching at the community college because of just not it wasn’t a safe environment anymore. Your instinct to survive just ramped up into full force, because you knew how that structure of of the job had really helped you manage and cope with your depression, and just the triumphs that your students experienced really invigorated you. And so it was kind of like this instinct to survive. So that was something that really made an impact on me. And throughout the book, whether it’s this or the exercise regimen that you put yourself on, because that was one of the only things that helped you. I was just blown away by the level of self-discipline that you had, and just the dedication to doing anything at all in your power to make this life livable and doable, in spite of the severe depression that you were dealing with.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:18] And one thing that kept coming to my mind as I read your book, you do a really excellent job and efficient job of conveying to the reader what it’s like to live with chronic, severe depression and just what it takes to make it through the day. And it reminded me of an episode that I saw of Modern Love several years ago. Anne Hathaway in this episode plays a woman with bipolar. And I remember watching this episode and thinking, oh my word, I feel like I get it now, what it’s like on some level to experience bipolar. And I felt that way about severe chronic depression when I read your book, because it is a really effective way of conveying that to readers. So I really appreciated it, and that some of that is what I was referring to when it broke my heart, in a way. But then it also made my heart soar just reading about the successes that you experience. But anyways, I just wanted to kind of go a little bit into depth on those. Anything else that you want to say about any of that before we jump into? Yeah.
Anne Abel: [00:09:26] The only non negative word either parent ever used to describe me was persevering. And and actually I’m writing a third memoir called She tried and she tried and she tried because and I used to tell my kids that’s what I wanted them to write on my tombstone because I just try. I mean, I that’s what I do, and I’m and I try to be proactive, as hopeless as I feel, at least an exercise. Exercising is a really good example and I actually do exercising in a very mentally healthy way. I wish I could pull it over, but you know, I get on there and I just do it one minute at a time and now I’m much better now. I mean that going to Australia was the beginning of a transformation that’s continuing today. But back in those days, I’d work out for an hour and you get my heart rate up to almost 150. And I sometimes I’d get ten minutes of relief, sometimes it would be an hour or three hours. And while I was on there exercising, I would try to figure out as the as my mind lifted a little what I was going to do as soon as I got off, you know, so I could get just be as efficient as I could.
Anne Abel: [00:10:33] Um, but I, I just suffered so terribly now, my parents died five years ago, and this trip set me on a set of baby steps that have landed me here. I mean, if you people say, what would your younger self say if they saw you today? My, I’m 72. My 71 year old self wouldn’t have believed what the life I’m living today. I mean, so much has changed. But it all started with this trip and I think it’s important to say about this trip. I booked it eight concerts, five cities, 26 cities. But I hate to travel and I hate to be alone. And remember, I hadn’t known who this guy was a year ago. I mean, totally, I it was out of the box, you know, I needed something. I didn’t know what it was, and that was all I could think of. So that’s what I did, and I.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:25] Was.
Anne Abel: [00:11:26] Terrified. I mean, for three months I was able to just.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:30] Yeah. Well, let’s just clarify quick for listeners because I want to make sure they’re tracking here with us, is you experience this first Bruce Springsteen concert and for three hours, you felt something you hadn’t in years. You said, pure joy. And this is.
Anne Abel: [00:11:45] Why he made me feel alive and with hope. Not to mention the first. It was the first time I had done the three letter F word was when I went to a Springsteen concert. I mean, he gives it all to you.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:00] Yeah. So you say in your book, I don’t do the f word as in fun until until you were, until you encountered Bruce Springsteen concerts. So just to clarify all of that, you know, you went to this concert, you experienced three hours of pure joy, which you hadn’t really experienced in spite of being very compliant with all of these doctors therapies and treatments that they had prescribed for you down for years and decades of these decades. The transcranial magnetic stimulation. You know, there are all these therapies and treatments that you had tried and just hadn’t really given you any relief from your depression. Then you experience this concert. Fast forward, you end up in a situation at the community college. That’s not sustainable. It’s not safe. You quit and you try to start thinking, what am I going to use to replace this in terms of bringing?
Anne Abel: [00:12:57] I knew I couldn’t go home and sit on my family room couch and contemplate, because that would have just I’m a I need to be moving. And I knew just instinctively that I couldn’t just go home and think about it and sit on the couch. I needed to do something right away.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:12] So this transformation that you experienced at the first concert and you went to some, some others that summer, I think you said, didn’t just end with that one concert experience. It led to a later in life rewriting of your story. You recalled seeing that Bruce Springsteen was going to be doing a tour in Australia, so you ended up booking this tour? Not about it wasn’t a motivated by wanderlust, but.
Anne Abel: [00:13:41] The thing I think people don’t understand is I wasn’t expecting it to be. I wasn’t thinking about fun. I was dreading it, I was terrified. Depressed people don’t expect to have fun. So it wasn’t like I was going there thinking I was going to have fun. No, it was not. I don’t do fun and I couldn’t even imagine fun. I was just going because I didn’t know what else to do. And when I first booked the trip in October, I was able to put it out of my mind. I mean, the voice in my head. Because that’s how I kept saying, you’re pathetic. You’re pathetic. You are pathetic. You have nothing better to do with your life than chase an aging rock star across the world. But I couldn’t shut that voice down. But I didn’t let it stop me. But then come January 1st, I thought, oh my God. In exactly 28 days, I will be on a 16 hour flight alone to the other side of the world. And by then I couldn’t even remember what I liked about Bruce Springsteen. So I sat down and googled him and up came the Super Bowl 2009 halftime show.
Anne Abel: [00:14:47] He did and oh my God, I played that that night. I probably it was like midnight. I probably played it ten times. And then for the rest of the 28 days, I played it multiple times a day that they’re on a half time stage surrounded by a football field of cheering. Clapping. Fans who Springsteen took the mic, leaned into the camera and said, is there anybody alive out there? And oh my God, you know, um, that did it. And so that was why, when I needed coming back from school that day, I quit my job. I remembered instinctively how he had made me feel, and that’s why I went on this trip. I needed that, I needed someone who could make, I hoped, could make me feel alive. I needed structure and focus. And that’s why I went and I was terrified. I was just looking forward to going so I could start counting the days. I’m really good at counting backwards. I do that when I work out, so I just couldn’t wait to start. So I only have 25 days. 24 days.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:50] It’s so fascinating reading about all of your experiences in this book, and even just the the kindness of strangers that you experience on this trip was so moving to read about, and it really gave you a new empathy for yourself. So it’s really touching to read about that. Tell us what came of this.
Anne Abel: [00:16:12] I’d like to say something about that. Because I didn’t go on this trip to change. I went for structure and focus, but I came home a different person. Um, for the first time in my life, I had a positive ball of energy and a story about me that I was proud of, a story I wanted to tell, and the the kindness of strangers had a big impact on me. At home. People rolled their eyes that I was doing this. They didn’t care, appreciate, or understand that I was fighting for my life in Australia. People call me courageous. Young people told me they couldn’t get their mothers to get off the couch, to go to a movie, or volunteer at a church bazaar, things they had done before they retired. And and it was Bruce Springsteen who also changed me. I, I believe we see art through the specific prism of our own eyes, through our own experiences. And so I saw him on stage and, you know, this was 2014 before his memoir came out. And I remember I didn’t know anything about him, really. I didn’t know he suffers with depression. And I’m not saying I went from one depressed song to another in the concerts, but, you know, when he would speak about things like this or when he would had songs that spoke to that, it really it really moved me. And among other things like I would think like before one concert, he got up and he was going back and forth saying, how do you get through the day? How do you get through the day and stay alive inside? And when I heard that, I thought, wow, if he can say this to an arena full of fans, I must not be the only one feeling like this. It’s okay to struggle. It’s okay to struggle and to try and try again. It was validating to hear him say that. You know.
Anne Abel: [00:17:56] These were like transcendent moments, like. And, you know, there were several of them on this trip, and I’m just standing there and he would say something or sing something, and music is I don’t, you know, it’s such an amazing thing. It goes right in you sometimes and just moves you in ways that you would never think of. Yeah, that was a big impact on me.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:17] Yeah, well, just realizing that he did suffer from depression does suffer from depression. I think it’s an ongoing thing to some extent. And that he was transparent about it. He was unselfconscious about explaining that to the world. It’s here. This is who I am.
Anne Abel: [00:18:33] You know, I remember another time in 10th Avenue Freeze-out he plays it all the time. And, you know, I didn’t know any of the words to any of the songs when I got there. But then I heard him say, it’s all right to have a good time. And I remember where I was. I heard that and I was like, oh my God. Like, it’s okay. It’s okay to have fun. It’s 100% okay. Finally, after 60 years, it was okay for me to have fun. You know, it was like that. It gave me like, yes, it’s okay for me to be doing this.
Anne Abel: [00:19:05] I mean, it’s silly, but if you’ve been taught, you know, from the time you’re born, like, no, no, no, it’s a struggle to be able to do things. And that’s the other thing that was amazing is that like this magic that he created for me on stage, that my mind that always puts pins in happy balloons, you know, that somehow I most I mean, not all the time, but most of the time I was able to sustain like I didn’t squash that magic. Most of the time I allowed it, allowed it to happen to me, which is which is a big step for someone who’s depressed and used to putting themselves down and saying negative things to to not say. And I mean, I did do it a little. You read the book, say, oh, he’s a you know, he’s just trying to make money. But but pretty much I was able to ride the, you know, to go with his magic.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:58] Yeah. I’m just going to read a quote from your book that you wrote. I think this was in chapter two. So this was after the, I think, the first concert of his that you went to. You said finally, after two encores, the stage went dark. I just stood there, butterflies fluttering inside me, staring down at the microphone in the middle of the stage. I could feel myself smiling. I could feel myself shaking my head in disbelief, disbelief that it was possible to feel so good, so happy, so energetic, so alive, so very much the opposite of anything I had ever felt before. And that just gives me goosebumps just reading about it. And then after your trip, after another concert, you you wrote, never in my life had I felt this happy on my own. I had been able to take what the boss and his band had given me and lift myself up. I felt strong, I felt in control, I felt empowered. And then I think a little bit later, you said the world seemed smaller and more familiar and more relevant to me now than it ever had. And it was not only the external world to which I felt more connected. I also felt more in touch with my inner world, myself. Anything else that you want to say about this transformation that it brought about in your life? You’ve been back. Let’s see, that trip ended in what year?
Anne Abel: [00:21:24] 2014. So it’s been, um, 11 years. So when I came back, you know, I just am brimming with excitement and and really, nobody wanted to see this. Me. They just wanted to see me as a depressed person. Everyone, even my husband and I have been married 35 years. And, you know, I came back with this energy and we were started fighting for two years. I thought, I mean, we just hit 47 last week, but you know, that we might get divorced. Meanwhile, I really did get rid of every single one of my friends. I mean, they just they didn’t want to hear about anything. Anything. And they just wanted they just wanted to hear about me being depressed and that. And then meanwhile, my husband, who teaches at the Wharton School, had been feeling unappreciated for a couple of years, and I had my own issues. And he’s a big boy. But I came home and I saw this and I said, you’ve got to get out of, you know, you’ve got to go visit somewhere and within no time because everyone loves him. He got this visiting scholar position at the University of Chicago, January 2016, and we move out there. It’s eight degrees. I had no idea what I was going to.
Anne Abel: [00:22:35] You know, my dog walker comes in and I say, what do you do the first day when you’re not walking dogs? And she said, I host a storytelling open mic. There’s a string of them across the city, and I tell stories at The Moth. Now, I had never heard of storytelling. I had never heard of The Moth, but I knew I had one story to tell, and that was this trip to Australia. I had never stood in front of a mic, I had never stood on a stage, and I was terrified, but I forced myself to go to open mics. I start telling these story about Australia and then a friend says, insist I go with him to the moth. Then when we get there, he insists that I put my name in the hat to tell a story. I was terrified, but I did it. I got called as the 10th and last storyteller. I stumbled up the stairs, up to the stage and the lights were so bright I couldn’t see the audience. But as I spoke, I could hear them laughing and gasping. And I told a five minute story about Australia and I won that night story slam. Now, growing up, I had been told I had nothing interesting to say. Now the people, people at, you know. And in Chicago, people are asking me to come tell stories at their curated shows. But people seem so interested in this Australia story that and I also suffer with severe writer’s block that it inspired me to really fight once again, really fight through this writer’s block and write this memoir, High Hopes. And I started writing it, but I just. And then what’s happened? And then last year, when Maddie, Milo and me came out, my first memoir, the, um, the editor, the publisher said I should go on social media to promote this. And 15 years earlier, someone had put me on Facebook. And that was social media. Of course, I didn’t want to do it, but of course I don’t. But you’re not going to believe this. My dog walker. A different dog walker. This one in Chicago comes in and I say, do you know anyone who does social media. And she gives me the name of Arseny, a 19 year old computer science major at Cuny. You know, City University. I now call our city maestro or Spielberg. He’s the boss. Since November, we’ve had like 24 viral videos. I have over 700,000 followers.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:53] And I think that resulted in you being featured in Newsweek, too, because of how viral the videos..
Anne Abel: [00:24:59] One of the things I worked, really, I tried to talk about discipline was finding a husband. Beginning when I was 11, my mother said, if you don’t marry someone Jewish, I’m going to disown you, which I didn’t know what disown meant, but I knew it anyhow. And then my father said I had to be a chemical engineer. I can’t add three numbers. So I went to college to major in finding a husband and minor in chemical engineering. Anyhow, I was like, I can’t tell you what I did, what I did to find a husband. I mean, but But I found someone that really worked. I let them make me major in what they wanted, and my mother tried to push someone on me. But somehow I knew instinctively that a husband had to be for me. I mean, I could make it also for her, but it had to be so sure. Um, yeah. So then. So I told the story of how I. How I met Andy and then knew and it had like, tick tock, I don’t remember how many million. And then Newsweek found it and they got excited.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:56] Well, that was just part of this transformation and this new trajectory that resulted from, well, starting with the initial Bruce Springsteen concert. But then as a result of your travels to Australia, it resulted in new friendships and…
Anne Abel: [00:26:11] I moved to New York because – All part of it was just and it was two things. It was all baby steps, like I didn’t, you know, I just did it one step at a time. And thinking back, which is also important, I’m realizing something about me is that I’m open to new to new situations. When I got this dog, Maddie, I didn’t want a dog, but that didn’t stop me from falling in love with her. I didn’t want to walk a dog, never mind train one. But that didn’t stop me. When I got with Milo, I didn’t want to go inpatient to a psychiatric hospital, but that didn’t stop me when I got there from appreciating the camaraderie and loving the food, you know? So it’s not just persevering, it’s not just trying. I’m realizing. And it’s not just looking for a husband or whatever it is you’re doing, but being open to like, take or going. I didn’t want to go to my first Bruce Springsteen concert, but standing there, seeing his effervescent smile on the big screen, I just let it fill me up. I wasn’t like, oh, I don’t want to be here. I waited two hours. I, you know, like I just was in the moment and all these situations.
Mindy Peterson: [00:27:20] Well, we’ll definitely have links to all both of your books in the show notes and also your socials so people can go on and see all that you’re doing there. I just find your story so inspiring and hopeful because clearly we’re never too old to to change or to have hope. Whether it’s related to depression, whether it’s related to family dysfunction, because you’re also very honest and vulnerable about some of the family situations you are dealing with, whether it was your family of origin or family relationships further on in your life. So I find that so hopeful, and I know that a lot of listeners will get a lot of hope and inspiration from that as well. Well, before we run out of time here, as you know, and I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending, a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Do you have a song or story that you can share with us today?
Anne Abel: [00:28:20] I have a few, but I’ll give you one. Um, my favorite song sung by Bruce Springsteen is Dream baby dream. And growing up I never dreamed. I never even thought about dreaming. I wasn’t allowed to dream. I was so busy trying to do everything my parents wanted me to do, hoping that each achievement would have them accepting me. That I never thought about what I might want to do or be. As a matter of fact, I was once at a John Oliver show in the front row and he pointed at me, spotlighted all, and asked me what I had dreamt about as a kid, and I didn’t want to ruin his show. I just shook my head and moved on. But in Sydney, Bruce Springsteen did a solo encore of Dream Baby Dream, and standing there watching him, I felt as if he were imploring himself to dream, and the music just filled me and lifted me, and I floated out of the arena that night, feeling as if I could dream. And it didn’t happen right away. But I believe that once you feel something, it’s easier to recreate it.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai