In this conversation with filmmaker and self-described Renaissance Man Stewart Schulman, we discuss his multifaceted career and his collaborations with John Bayless, highlighting projects like One Hand One Heart and the award-winning feature documentary Left Alone Rhapsody: The Musical Memoir of Pianist John Bayless. Schulman shares Bayless' life from childhood illness and genius piano playing at age four to Julliard as Leonard Bernstein's protege; from his Baptist upbringing to conversion to Judaism; and from playing the piano around the world as a Steinway then Yamaha artist with two hands to his re-invented life post-stroke re-learning to play the piano with his non-dominant left hand. Stewart's stories about his life and the filmmaking process are delightfully accented by John's music and one-man show, One Hand One Heart. I hope this episode (and John Bayless episode!) inspires you to see the fabulous film, Left Alone Rhapsody.
I love stories. Watching them. Telling them. They’re journeys that open our minds—our hearts—and show us new ways of thinking.
I aim for my work to be entertaining and socially relevant—challenging perceptions and inspiring ‘change’. It’s how we grow.
People I work with have called me a “Renaissance Man”—because I’ve explored many different creative mediums to broaden my skills as a writer, director and producer. They also tell me I bring an even-keeled temperament to the table, keep my work environments professional and enjoyable, and get the job done right.
Contact me with questions. I look forward to working with you in the future.
https://www.stewartschulman.com/
Left Alone Rhapsody: The Musical Memoir of Pianist John Bayless
John Bayless – One Hand One Heart: My Life & My Music This new ‘one-man-one-hand only’ play—with music by Gershwin, Bernstein, Puccini, Mancini, Rachmaninoff, Rodgers, Legrand and the world-renowned concert pianist, John Bayless, himself—takes audiences on the journey of John’s remarkable life. John talks openly about his highs and lows, and his determination to create a second act for himself as an artist.
The play begins with a 4-year-old John becoming a musical prodigy in his hometown of Borger, Texas, which sets him on a life-long adventure and a 30-year career as a concert pianist, which is suddenly halted by a debilitating stroke. John shares the "hell" he faced, post-stroke, trying desperately to journey back to life to be an artist in a new way. His spiritual awakening led him to his unbelievable comeback, concertizing with his left hand all alone! This inspiring one-man show evokes laughter and tears, showcasing John’s astonishing musicianship, as he shares his amazing life-story.
Music featured in the episode:
[00:00:00] John: Every Good Boy Does Fine. Anybody that's ever studied music knows that that's the acronym for the treble clef. I learned it. I ignored it. I hated it. I didn't care. Because at four, I could play anything I wanted to by ear. That's how I learned music. By hearing music, feeling music. In church, the hymns.
[00:00:38] Carole: Welcome to Wisdom Shared where people on the front lines for the experts and where connection inspires change. I am your host, Carole Blueweiss. That was John Bayless performing live in his one-man, one-hand show called One Hand One Heart. That includes music by Gershwin, Bernstein, Puccini, Mancini, Rachmaninoff, and is directed, written, and produced by his good friend Stewart Schulman, the same man who directed, wrote, and produced the award-winning feature documentary, Left Alone Rhapsody: The Musical Memoir of Pianist John Bayless.
[00:01:12] John had a stroke that forced him to relearn how to play the piano, this time with his non-dominant left hand. In the last episode of Wisdom Shared, we heard from John Bayless. And today, I have as my special guest, Stewart Schulman. Welcome to Wisdom Shared, Stewart.
[00:01:31] Stewart: I'm delighted to be here, Carole. Very much.
[00:01:35] Carole: Who is Stewart Schulman?
[00:01:36] Stewart: Stewart Schulman is a filmmaker and a writer, producer, director. I am, as I define myself on my website, in my second act, which is called Act Two MediaWorks, because I work in the media world, you know, film and theatre, but I'm not a youngin'. I am in that sort of second phase of life where I feel like a lot of what we have to say is less represented in a lot of what is in media.
[00:02:08] So I created this Act Two MediaWorks company that creates work that I think messages to a generation that maybe isn't, you know, in their first half of their life, but in the second half of their life.
[00:02:23] Carole: So how old are you?
[00:02:25] Stewart: I'm not saying.
[00:02:27] Carole: Really? Okay. Well, I'm 59. So I think I'm in act two as well.
[00:02:30] Stewart: Yeah, no, act two is like over 40.
[00:02:32] Carole: Okay.
[00:02:33] Stewart: Whatever. So, I'm above 40.
[00:02:34] Carole: Okay, all right. Anything else you want to add?
[00:02:37] Stewart: I'm one of those people that I think would define themselves as a Jack of many trades. I have dabbled in every creative medium during the course of my journey here. I have done architecture. I've done painting, drawing, sculpting.
[00:02:50] I was a dancer. I did improv comedy. I've used all the creative mediums. I just, I'm a person that actually loves to be creative and I love to communicate. Whatever method I have, whatever media I have in order to communicate and hopefully inspire and shine a light on things. That's what I've always been drawn to.
[00:03:08] So, undergraduate, I studied architecture. Graduate, I studied film. I've been a dancer in a dance company. I've directed theater. I've written plays. I've written screenplays. I think I'm just a person that cares a great deal about the planet and other people and trying to make a positive change in the world. I guess that would be how I would define myself.
[00:03:29] Carole: Is that something that you feel that you've embodied as something that's a positive or is it uncomfortable to have so many interests and going into so many different things and you hear other people say, make up your mind? I know there's many, many, many ways of looking at things and I'm curious, how do you see that for yourself?
[00:03:48] Stewart: My first immediate gut level response was it's exhausting. I'm exhausted, which, you know, there's some truth to that because when you do so many things, it requires so much effort in so many different directions. However, what I will say on the negative of that is it's frustrating sometimes because I do believe we are a society that really admires and rewards mastery of one thing. And people that are renaissance folks, like I would define myself as a Renaissance person, their opportunities, maybe play second fiddle.
[00:04:22] And that can be frustrating career wise, but I also really feel good about how well-rounded I think I am as a human being. I'm one of those people that is interested in so many things, can engage on a variety of subjects creatively and intellectually. And I really enjoy that about the way I've approached my life journey, because I really am interested in so much in so many different areas.
[00:04:53] Carole: Dance is one of those areas. And yet Stewart could never have predicted that collaborating with dance choreographer Heidi Latzky would open him up to a new perspective that challenged and expanded his understanding of normalcy, ability, and disability. Stewart's work with disabled dancers didn't just enrich his artistic repertoire. It prepared him to tell John's story with depth and empathy.
[00:05:15] Stewart: One of the things that I find really interesting just about my journey is having met Heidi years ago as two able-bodied dancers and being friends in our early 20s. And then after I had a really disabling health issue and I was sort of just trying to recover and get back to it, I ran into her again at the building that I was living in. And she was doing all this incredible work, Heidi Latsky with Heidi Latsky Dance in the documentary, she's the choreographer that worked with disability dancers, all of this incredible work with a mixed ability dance company where there were people with a variety of disabilities and some that were not disabled in the traditional way.
[00:05:55] And I just started working with her and just the where you get familiar with people as people and demystify, I think, prepared me in a way for the six years I've spent working on the documentary with Johnny. You know, he is a person in a wheelchair. You never, I mean, I certainly don't ever want to be insensitive to somebody else's needs, but this is just who he is now.
[00:06:17] It is what it is. And you just figure it out and you go on. And I think that is a benefit of, you know, having the film get out there because we all have different issues that we deal with and some of us carry them on the outside. Some of them like me carry them on the inside. And it's all part of life.
[00:06:36] You know, life is adversity and challenges and good times and bad times and how you navigate that. I had the same surgery that Steve Jobs had for pancreatic cancer. I didn't have pancreatic cancer, but I had a benign tumor in the head of my pancreas. So they literally eight hours on the table, removed a bunch of my innards and created a new digestive tract.
[00:07:02] And it's one of the most complicated surgeries that they do. And I was recovering from that. And it was at a time in my life where I couldn't work yet, but I was just starting to try to get my body in shape again to heal. And I was at a gym and she was there and we just started talking and she needed somebody to work with her company, either as an executive director, which I did not ultimately do, or dramaturgically for her work. And-
[00:07:30] Carole: I've never heard that word before, dramaturgically.
[00:07:33] Stewart: Dramaturgy is D R A M A T U R G Y, which the dramaturge helps hone the story, the script, the play. It helps her with just telling a better story through her dances. And, that put me the proximity of all of these different dancers, some in wheelchairs, some with missing limbs, some hearing impaired, some visually impaired, you know, whatever, they were what they were.
[00:08:00] And she was doing all this amazing stuff. It was one of her dancers that I met on this film that we collaborated on, Jen, who was an aerialist, a beautiful aerialist, who was just born without legs.
[00:08:15] Carole: What made you want to do a feature documentary?
[00:08:18] Stewart: Just to give you a little background on what Left Alone Rhapsody is about, the full title is actually Left Alone Rhapsody. And then the subtitle is The Musical Memoir of Pianist John Bayless. John Bayless and I met when we were in our early 20s. He had just done his Carnegie Hall debut. I had just finished NYU graduate film school, and he had also finished the NYU graduate musical theatre program studying with the likes of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.
[00:08:46] And he was a brilliant pianist who also was starting to compose on his own. And I needed a composer for a thesis film from NYU graduate film school. We met, we collaborated. The film won some awards, and we've been friends for years. So just again, more background. In 2008, John suffered a stroke, which sort of paralyzed his entire right side and it killed his career, but he decided instead of giving up, he would teach himself to play with just his non-dominant left hand, make it sound like two and continue being an artist and a performer.
[00:09:20] And that's sort of what has happened. In the middle of that, when he was making the decision, he was experimenting in New York. So he used to be a Steinway artist and he became a Yamaha artist. He was trying to do a recording of one-handed interpretations of some of his greatest musical hits.
[00:09:40] And he was staying with me and he was telling me about what he was doing, but he also mentioned that Yamaha had a bit of piano technology that might change the game for him. It's called a Disklavier, which is basically an acoustic piano with a computer built in that can record the way a person plays, however they play it, and then play it back like a player piano.
[00:10:01] So the pianist can play along with it, either in a recording or live. And I just heard that. And I thought, John, this is inspirational. This is a documentary. And I was making documentaries on a smaller level at the time. And I said, do you want to explore this? And we got some funding from Yamaha to film the recording session.
[00:10:20] And then the whole idea just sort of snowballed. His career just started coming back and all these events started happening where he was creating again. And we were just capturing all these wonderful opportunities that were coming his way. And then of course, there is the editing and putting the film together, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:10:38] So that's what inspired me. The fact that I thought people who had suffered the adversity of a disability, a disabling stroke, could also have opportunities through technology to be in some way whole again and continue a productive and contributive life. And I thought, let's try. Let's see what happens.
[00:11:03] Carole: I love that story. I remember in the film, this Disklavier, I had never heard of that.
[00:11:08] Stewart: The Disklavier technology has been around for a while, but they have been perfecting it. And Bonnie Barrett, who is the head of Yamaha Artists, and she is a friend of John's, when she knew about the stroke and she knew the difficulty he was having, and had approached him about doing the recording with just the one hand, said, we do have this technology, and I would love to see if it could work for you to start creating music with one hand that sounds like two, that's essentially two-handed recordings, but both played with the same hand, just at different times. So, it was really her desire to see the potential of the Disklavier that has elevated it in the case of somebody like John.
[00:11:56] Carole: When you graduated from NYU graduate film school, what did you imagine for yourself? What kind of filmmaker did you want to be?
[00:12:04] Stewart: Most of the work that I did at NYU was narrative filmmaking, which is what we go to the movies to see, stories that we make up with actors. I did take one documentary course and I just, I thought that was interesting. And it gave me some sort of frame of reference for when I started working on documentaries. I thought I would be living in Hollywood as the next Bob Fosse, Ingmar Bergman, I mean, you know, some of the people that I admired, certainly Coppola.
[00:12:31] But, you know, it didn't happen. I had a screenplay that I had written that got a lot of attention right out of the gate in my early 20s when I was living in LA. But, you know, my journey took me elsewhere. I started working in theatre in New York and I really enjoyed that. I even got a couple of years where I was just sort of doing business to make money.
[00:12:51] So it's been an interesting journey. I've never left being an artist. I've always done something artistic and I've always written and directed all throughout all of the different things that I was doing. But I would have imagined myself being a narrative feature film maker, director, writer, producer. That was the dream and it still exists.
[00:13:14] Carole: How was it when you were doing this film with John, Left Alone Rhapsody, in terms of how much you already knew you wanted to do and how much of it just evolved?
[00:13:24] Stewart: It was a combination of the two of them. And I knew that John's story would have to be allowed to evolve in its own way. And I was going to have to deal with whatever the events were that took place as the story progressed. What I did do was spend a lot of time interviewing John. And getting the backstory, the story up until the stroke and maybe the couple of years afterwards until I picked up my camera and started telling the story.
[00:13:53] I got that interview done and I knew what the timeline was and I knew what questions to ask the different players that he had me interview to get the talking heads to tell me their take on John's story and him, et cetera. And I even had to interview myself because I ended up being a character in there.
[00:14:10] And then as we started doing this, I thought, well, what would be most interesting for John's career? And I thought, because I'm a writer and he has me for free, why don't we write him a one-man show that would be a thing that would be different than just a concert with one hand, and maybe easier on him, so he doesn't have to play with one hand for an hour and a half. He could tell his story and play the music that he played during the course of his life to augment the moments. So that's how we came up with writing John Bayless - One Hand One Heart: My Life and My Music. And then given that, that was something that nobody else would have.
[00:14:48] So, I thought maybe that's something that could be like the thing that we could book John with throughout the course of his life. And we immediately started getting bookings once we wrote that. But once I did that, I thought now I'm a character in this because I'm collaborating with him. And I thought I bet it would be interesting for audiences to learn about John's creative process.
[00:15:07] I had a little bit of that from his two handed stuff from previous interviews that he had done, TV specials, but now I could talk to him about what it was like. What it is like to work as a musician with just one hand, how do you create that sound? What would people find interesting?
[00:15:27] John: Or on records when my mother introduced me to the music of Rachmaninoff and I fell in love. Music drove me crazy and when it did I had to recreate it instantaneously at the keyboard by ear. And when I did that, I got applause, which drove my mother crazy. She was my first piano teacher. All she ever said was, Johnny Bailiff. She called me Johnny Bailiff. You have to read those notes. Read the notes. Come on. Read the notes. You'll never play any better than you play right now if you don't read the notes. Ugh. I'd hear something I liked and I'd have to recreate it. Or create it anew. That's always been my way.
[00:17:00] Stewart: This is how I let the story progress. Let's film a conversation where we're talking about this aspect of the music that's going to relate to your life and that's how that evolved. Then, once we got as much of the footage as possible and we were starting to do a show, I was like hoping that he would have a successful show. You don't know. So I was gearing my wishlist towards that. Then once we actually had that, it was like, how best to tell this story.
[00:17:28] John: I got to meet Audrey Hepburn. I did. Years after hearing Moon River at the drive-in movie theater, I was on the set of a TV series she was doing, and my partner Bruce was directing. And we were at this fabulous chateau in France. And there was a piano there, of course. And every day, around the same time, Audrey would say, Darlings, it's soup time. It took me a while to figure out what soup was. And I'd play Moon River for her every day and the crew, while we all drank our cocktails.
[00:18:22] Ugh. I've been drinking soup ever since.
[00:18:28] Stewart: And then how to put it together was a real puzzle and solving that puzzle was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done, ultimately rewarding. And when I came up with a couple of things, which was that his life really did have three acts and that most people, If you think about a longer life, it's three acts.
[00:18:50] Act one is finding out who you are. Act two is like that middle age. And act three is taking it home when it's the three act structure of stories, you know, where there's who you were, a turning point takes your life, puts it in another direction. You're almost going to die, but you know, if you don't solve this problem, you will die. If you do, you'll live.
[00:19:12] And then how you confront that and address that and overcome that is act three. And so I thought that's perfect for John because that's really what happened for him. So that gave me the structure. Then coming up with the short names, Act One Rise, Act Two Fall, Act Three Reinvent, which is really what John does, is he reinvents himself because for so many years he was this two-handed musician, and that's all he had to do was be brilliant.
[00:19:46] And then when I finally realized, because there weren't many titles for the documentary, Left Alone Rhapsody. We had had Left Alone. We had Left All Alone, but it was like, it was good, it was evocative, but it was sad. And people were like, that's so sad. And we didn't want them to be sad. And so it was like, well, how can I modify that so it's not sad? And it took me three weeks to come up with the Rhapsody, but it was so in front of my face, you know, just the way One Hand, One Heart was in front of our face for the show because of his connection with Leonard Bernstein. And I didn't want to use that for the documentary.
[00:20:23] But for, the thing is, you know, he debuted Carnegie Hall playing Rhapsody in Blue with two hands. And during the course of his reinvention, he started rewriting, orchestrating Rhapsody in Blue for six hands. And then we discussed as we were creating the show, do you think you would be able to play Rhapsody in Blue with one hand as your finale? And he said, sure, you know, whatever. And of course, you know, easier said than done. You go, you go play Rhapsody in Blue with two hands after you've studied for 20 years and see if that's possible. Now play it with one hand, but he did. And that gave me the Left Alone Rhapsody.
[00:21:13] Carole: Watching the film was just like reading a book. There were a lot of chapters you chose a very challenging way in that you told many stories within the story. And I know a lot of advice I get is just keep it simple. And you did not keep it simple. Well, John's not a simple person and you're not a simple person, but you managed to show the complexity of someone and then show in a way your complexity and your relationship with him, which was so revealing for the audience, whether they are people who maybe have disabilities or people that enjoy documentary films or just people that enjoy stories.
[00:21:48] It really satisfies all of them at the same time. That story within the story of you helping him, I found that for me, the most fascinating part is being able to watch his creative process and then even your creative process with him, because that's not so easy to collaborate with a with a genius or with a musician or with a very creative person who is, I'm sure very frustrated and not a hundred percent knowing what's really going to happen here himself. So it was like you really made both of you very vulnerable.
[00:22:19] Stewart: And I do think people respond to that. Personally, I think in terms of what you said before, like life is incredibly complex. And so oversimplification sometimes is less engaging to me. I understand that sometimes it's really powerful, the keep it simple. But John's story was so fascinatingly complicated, and it was so interesting to me that once he let go of his attachment to who he was, and surrendered to this destiny that befell him, and embraced it, all of these incredibly powerful and unusual and surprising opportunities started coming his way.
[00:23:01] He didn't just say, well, I can't do that anymore. I'm taking myself and I'm just going to go sit, you know, in a corner. He just said, okay, so what can I do? What are my possibilities? Where is potential here? And then just collaborations started. And that became really rewarding for him, almost in some ways, more rewarding, than just the accolades as this genius pianist. And he has genius as a pianist then and still now, but, you know, certainly some of the stuff that he did with two hands would just blow the minds of brilliant pianists. It's like, how does he do that?
[00:24:05] But he let that go. He stopped the attachment and said, I am where I am. How do I put a foot forward? And then another foot forward. And it was difficult for him because he couldn't walk, and create a new chapter in my life that is good for me and good for others. And I really admire that.
[00:24:22] Carole: Well, he could walk, right?
[00:24:23] Stewart: It's interesting. He can, but he walked eventually better post stroke than he walks now. And that has to do with loss and fear. When he had Bruce, his late husband, Bruce was a real sort of rock for him and a figure of security, like just knowing that there's somebody there who's going to catch you, god forbid if you fall.
[00:24:49] And when Bruce passed away, he did fall. And it just made him afraid to get out of his wheelchair. It was like the depression of that. And then also the fear, like, I need somebody to support me. I mean, the thing about John that I find really interesting is he had a difficult childhood in terms of a childhood disability or a childhood physical issue that, you know, didn't allow him to have a normal childhood.
[00:25:15] He couldn't run and roughhouse and play with other kids. So much of his eight hour day as a child was spent staring out the window when he wasn't practicing the piano to become this John Bayless that he became. But a lot of the problem with him is that he had this incredible gift and he could play anything at four years old by ear and get applause and get attention.
[00:25:38] His mother was the one who had to sit on him and say, John, you will never be better than you are today as a pianist if you don't learn to read music, which he didn't want to do because he didn't have to, to get acknowledgement. But he did. Because his mother sat on him and then Adele Marcus, his teacher at Juilliard, sat on him and made him better and Leonard Bernstein and others.
[00:25:57] But without Bruce, it's like there was nobody there that was sort of, that little push that we get from people in our lives that love us, that want us to do better. What I learned about him is that's something that, you know, we all need, and it's sort of a balance of like, you don't want to become somebody's mother or, you know, enabler, but you do want to be their encourager without the negative aspect of it.
[00:26:24] And so it's a difficult dance, but because he didn't have Bruce there, and he does have a physical therapist, he's just less motivated to walk. So he can, but it's gotten harder. And the more you don't walk, the more atrophy happens in the body and the more problematic it becomes. And he manages really well.
[00:26:44] I mean, he manages really well as you see in the film. He does walk out on the stage at the end of the film. It's at McCallum theater when he's doing the one man show there and that was post stroke and it was a lot of work and he did it. You know, but it's just harder. It's harder to be self motivated and especially when you're afraid.
[00:27:03] His PT was great for the longest time. She took the wheelchair away and you can have the walker and that's it. And he did walk more, but hopefully he's starting to do more walking and he'll walk more. That's my dream.
[00:27:15] Carole: I thought that was really great. The two physical therapists that spoke about how they manage working with him. This is just my two cents is that for people who are stroke survivors, it's not their fault, the motivation. I think A, it's part of the injury and B, it's human nature that if we don't have people supporting us, it's really hard to motivate. What I know from science is that the learning continues, but you have to put in the effort.
[00:27:42] Then you can get a change, but at some point, even though there's potential for change in your brain and your body, if you're only practicing once or twice a week, which is usually what physical therapy is paid for, it's not enough. It's a tease because you see what you can't do. The reality is, and it's been shown, it's just that our system isn't set up that way in this country, is that at any stage of having a stroke, you can learn and be strong, but you need to be around people. You can't do it by yourself. You need to have the safety net. You have to have people challenging you so that you could potentially fall, but they won't let you fall. But that's the only way to get better is if you take risks with safety.
[00:28:21] Stewart: What's interesting to me now is the technology that is being involved in neurobrain science to help people find ways to work around the diminishments that they've suffered. The physical therapy that they can do post that initial period over the course of years where traditionally the thought is that you won't get any more function back.
[00:28:43] That is really amazing. And that was why I thought, you know, this film can have a broader appeal or a broader sense of helpfulness. If I put information in there by interviewing neurologists and the physical therapists, so the audience can be witness to that process. And what really pleases me is that out of that has come a collaboration that we just started with the University in Pittsburgh Brain Institute to create the John Bayless Fund for Brain Research. I mean, they're one of the top universities in the country that are doing cutting edge research to create new opportunities for people suffering brain trauma, stroke, whatever, to find technologies that will help them improve their daily lives.
[00:29:32] We just saw in our launch event, this stimulator that they put on the arm that I think is connected to either the brain or the spine, where this woman has stimulators all on her arm, and if it's turned off, she could not lift the arm to put a piece of food in her mouth. If they turned the stimulator on, she just picked her hand up and it went right to her mouth and she was able to eat.
[00:29:53] That amazes me personally, but I think other people are really excited to be informed about this, the possibilities of this, the hope and the help that people can get, which is why we're trying to help raise money. If the film can do that, I'm really excited to raise money for brain science.
[00:30:13] Carole: Let's rewind a little bit. You have this film, it's a film that creates many emotions for people. One of them being that life is not over when you might think it's over. You can't even predict what's going to happen and in this case, it was a lot of beautiful things. How did the film then end up being a advocacy piece? How did the University of Pittsburgh find you or how did you find them?
[00:30:37] Stewart: I do say in the film at some point, I feel like something is guiding the project because It's just like, things just have kept manifesting all along the six year course of working on this. It's like, you know, you need something that happens. So John has a friend in Pittsburgh who had a father who was a congregant at the Tree of Life Synagogue.
[00:31:03] Fortunately, he wasn't there the day of the tragic, insane shooting. But she thought, oh my God, because John has always known that he was Jewish, even though he had a very fundamentalist Baptist upbringing and did the conversion, you know, in his journey, which is part of the film. And only had time to actually pursue a passion of being Jewish once he didn't have a crazy performing schedule and had time, nothing but time to do what he wanted to do.
[00:31:34] And he used that time to explore this spiritual side of himself that he'd always known about, but never dealt with. And because of that, she thought, oh my God, let's do some sort of fundraiser for the Tree of Life synagogue. But in doing that, she connected the film to a friend of hers who works for the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh, but also is the chairman of the University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute.
[00:31:56] And they saw it and said, I think we have a bigger opportunity here. I would love to do something with the film to raise money for brain research. Let's get neurologists together. Let's get John in the room. They can ask him questions about what works for you. What didn't work for you? What would you like? What wouldn't you like? How can we improve? You know, and then use that and discussions to improve the science and also screenings of the film or pieces of the film to raise money for what we ultimately decided should be called the John Bayless Fund for Brain Research.
[00:32:34] Carole: Just like the research fund was unexpected and led to something new and great, John's medical challenges in childhood and adulthood guided him to a new greatness. Both turned challenges into opportunities, showing how random events can create positive change.
[00:32:50] Stewart: It is the irony of the journey. I mean, you start out one way and it turns into something else and that little can become a lot and vice versa. And John's example was if John had not had an anomaly, if he would have practiced and become John Bayless, but because he didn't have options, that was where his life guided him. And it created scars because there were like eight surgeries by the time he was a teenager to fix it and it did get fixed, but there's that thing where he found out that he could be good and okay and loved and accepted by not playing sports, but by playing music. And that became his passion and his bliss. And he followed that to superstardom in his arena.
[00:33:44] Carole: Getting to stardom, it's not all about talent. It's also about who's with you on that journey. A solid support system, like having a good friend, really changes the game. And it's not just about the help they offer. It's about the push you feel when you know someone's got your back.
[00:34:00] Stewart: When we spend a lot of time together, I sit on him. I mean, I do make him work and he appreciates it, ultimately. He fights me tooth and nail and then always appreciates it tremendously because I see the potential. I see what his story does to me. And then when I see what it does to audiences, I know that the pushing is worth it. But since the stroke and since losing Bruce, the pushers are gone. I became the surrogate parent pusher with this project because I see his genius and I love him as a friend.
[00:34:32] Carole: I know my audience is going to love this.
[00:34:34] Stewart: This was a lovely interview and thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
[00:34:39] Carole: There's more to come. So stay tuned.
[00:34:47] Left Alone Rhapsody is an amazing documentary that not only tells a story about a brilliant musician who once played the piano with two hands and now has relearned to play the same music with only his left hand. It's also the story of how someone's passion can help them through difficult times.
[00:35:07] And if you see this documentary because you love music, that's reason enough. Because the music is abundant. There are many opportunities coming up where you can watch the documentary, Left Alone Rhapsody, in different cities. And opportunities to listen to John perform after the screening. If you can't make any of these live events, the film will be available for streaming for a limited time.
[00:35:36] So be sure to check out the show notes, where you will also find out more information about John's one-man, one-hand show called One Hand One Heart and information about fundraisers for brain research.
[00:35:50] Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all the other episodes. Go to caroleblueweiss.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you're hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review, and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month. Thanks for listening.