Usher, Yo-Yo Ma, Boy Genius, Shaka Khan, Billy Elish, Weird Owl,

one thing all these big stars have in common, they've all played behind NPR's Tiny Desk.

And if you enter NPR's Tiny Desk contest between now and February 10th, you could be next.

Unsigned musicians can find out more and see the official rules at npr.org

slash tiny desk contest. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. When we first book today's

interview weeks ago, we had no idea how timely it would be, and for such a tragic reason.

My guest, Pico Iyer, has written a new memoir about what he's

experienced and learned in the more than 30 years that he's been going on retreats in a

Benedictine monastery to practice silence and for contemplation, to get both out of himself and the

world and deeper in.

But the book begins with fire, and fire is a theme throughout.

The monastery is surrounded by 900 acres of trees and on one side the ocean.

It's in California's Big Sur, one of the most beautiful places in the U.S. On the first page, a monk is describing to Iyer a wildfire that came

close to burning down the monastery. It wasn't the first time, and it wasn't the last time. At one point,

the road was blocked, and there was no way out. A little later in the book, we learned that

Iyer's family home in Santa Barbara, where they had lived for about a quarter century, where he was living at the time with his mother, that burned to the ground.

At the time, that fire was part of the worst fire in California history.

He was at home, alone with his mother's cat, when he was suddenly surrounded by flames

five stories high and had no way out. After three hours of

terror, he was rescued by a good Samaritan traveling around in a water truck with a hose. He and his

mother lost everything, but he survived and the cat survived. His memoir is titled A Flame, Learning

from Silence. A Flame is about the flame of passion and

...