What I learned with the Losing Music Project was how much it helps to feel as though you have to write a book.

It felt as though this was the way I claw myself back to the world. This is what's

happening. This is who I was and this is who I've become.

Welcome back to working. I'm your host, June Thomas. And I'm your other host, Isaac, it is so

nice to see you again. But tell me, whose voice did we hear at the top of the show?

We heard the dulcet tones of writer and teacher John Cotter, whose wonderful new memoir, Losing

Music, is out now from Milkweed.

And why did you want to speak with him?

Well, I mean, on a simple level, I just think losing music is a really good book,

and it's about a fascinating subject.

The story of the book is that John becomes chronically ill and disabled in middle age

due to mysterious circumstances.

And that in turn changes his life and what his expectation of his life is going to be

and even whether or not he wants to keep living in. I mean, those are some of the questions that

it's really, you know, chewing through. And John is a really thoughtful and sensitive writer and

human being. He's really used the writing of this book to make sense of the changing circumstances

of his life and that gives the book a really uniquely alive feeling. And I just wanted to find out

how he did that. Wow. Well, I'm sure this is going to come up in the interview, but I have to ask,

did he figure out the solution to the medical mystery of the chronic illness that

beset him? Did he get a diagnosis, a cure? I'm guessing I'm also wondering to what extent that

really was the subject of the boot? Well, yes and no. John has many errors disease. And as he

explains at length in the book and mentions very briefly in

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