In this conversation, Roger Bissell discusses his new book, Things They Didn’t Teach Me in Music School<\/em>, which offers practical advice for musicians and insights into the music industry. He shares his journey of writing the book, memorable experiences with famous musicians, and the importance of diversifying skills and networking in sustaining a music career. Bissell also touches on the relevance of psychological and philosophical lessons in music, the role of AI in music composition, and the changing landscape of the music industry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Takeaways<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\n
1. The book is intended to be practical and self-help oriented.<\/li>\n
2. Writing the book was a culmination of Roger’s experiences over his career.<\/li>\n
3. The first part of the book is technical, while the rest is accessible to general readers.<\/li>\n
4. Networking is crucial for success in the music industry.<\/li>\n
5. Diversifying skills can help musicians create multiple income streams.<\/li>\n
6. Understanding brain skills can enhance musical performance.<\/li>\n
7. Lessons in psychology and ethics remain relevant across generations.<\/li>\n
8. AI can compose music, but human creativity is still essential.<\/li>\n
9. Older musicians have valuable insights that younger generations should consider.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/p>\n

   Sound Bites<\/strong><\/h3>\n

   \n
   1. “It took me all of my adult life”<\/li>\n
   2. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”<\/li>\n
   3. “People are not more sophisticated now”<\/li>\n
   4. “Open your ears”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Introduction to Roger Bissell and His New Book<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay Kolhatkar<\/strong>: Good evening, everyone. We’re back on The Savvy Street Show<\/em>, and today I do have my usual co-host Roger Bissell; but he’s not a co-host today, he’s the guest of honor. So, Roger, musician, philosopher, and editor, welcome back.<\/p>\n

      Roger Bissell<\/strong>: Thanks, Vinay, good to be here.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Introduction to the Book and Its Purpose<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Lovely. Now, you have a new book out there: Things They Didn’t Teach Me in Music School<\/em>. Is that right?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: That’s right, and the subtitle of the book is Practical Pointers for Making Music and Living Life<\/em>. So, it’s intended to be kind of a self-help book. It\u2019s intended to be practical.<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Now, what prompted you to write that book? How long did it take?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Well, in one sense, it took me all of my adult life because I’ve been gathering material for it over a fairly long career as a professional musician. I would say that probably about the year 2000 or 2005, I was still working in California at Disneyland, and as I got older, the musicians I worked with tended to be younger, and they kept running across various problems that I had already encountered in my career, a lot of which I had some good advice on, or I discovered through trial and error how to deal with them. So, I thought, you know, there should be something out there to help us fill in some of the gaps that aren’t supplied at university and in music school. That was what motivated the book, and it took me quite a few years to put it together. Then along came COVID as I was about to publish it in 2020, so that disrupted various things, and finally I got it out just in December.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      The Structure of the Book and Its Audience<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Congratulations! Now, is this a book that would be useful for a general reader who, like me, only listens to music but isn’t a musician?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: The book is in three parts, and the first part is more technical, for musicians in particular. I think the rest of the book might be quite interesting. It discusses issues that affect not just musicians. For instance, if somebody has stage fright or jitters or performance anxiety before they have to do a presentation, like at work, there are techniques that I discuss for dealing with it. Also, the middle part of the book deals with various brain skills that we all have. Most people have a strong suit, while some of the other brain skills they maybe don’t develop as well. The idea that I advocate is to know what they all are and to make sure that you don’t have an Achilles heel, that you develop yourself in a more well-rounded way. So, I think both the middle part and the last part, which amount to seven out of the ten chapters, would be accessible and interesting to a general reader.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Memorable Experiences with Famous Musicians<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: When I was glancing through the book summary, I noticed you had listed about two dozen quite famous people and musicians, about a dozen I know of. One is my country music favorite, Kenny Rogers, and [another is] one of my wife’s favorites, Dolly Parton. I saw both those names, and also Tom Jones, Dean Martin, Henry Mancini, and Johnny Cash. So, you worked with a lot of big celebrities. What was it like, and did any one or two of them leave a memorable imprint for you?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Well, the circumstances of working with these people were very different. Sometimes I’d be playing in the band for an act at a state fair, like, for instance, Tom Jones. He was at the Nebraska State Fair, and I was playing to back him up. Dean Martin, I played for him also. Other people\u2026I’ll just go straight to Dolly Parton because I know your wife would like to know about that.<\/p>\n

      Back in the early 1980s, Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds were in a movie called The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas<\/em>. We were recording some music for the soundtrack here in Nashville, and there she was in the control room, and there I was out there in the studio among all the other musicians playing, and I thought, when everybody else goes on break to go get coffee or whatever, I’m going to walk into the control room and introduce myself. So I did, and I was trying to be very respectful, and I said, \u201cWell, hello there, Miss Parton. I’d like to meet you,\u201d and she said, \u201cWell, hi, I’m Dolly!\u201d and I said, \u201cYes, my name is Roger, and I’m one of the trombone players, and it’s really nice to meet you, and I just wanted to tell you, I really enjoy your work,\u201d and she said, \u201cWell, thank you!\u201d That was really it. I wouldn’t say it made a huge impression on me, but it was very tingly and fun, okay? I would say that was a good experience, just lighthearted, nothing much to it.<\/p>\n

      The other experience I want to tell you about was with a guy who has become rather more famous in later years called Lee Greenwood, and he wrote a song called, \u201cI’m Proud to Be an American,\u201d and Donald Trump has used that for some of his rallies. It’s almost like the national anthem, it’s so well-known and played. I was on a concert here in Nashville about seven years ago, and he and I both had some time where we weren’t needed on stage, so I got to talk one-on-one with him for 20\u201330 minutes, and I found out that he started his career long before he hit it rich as a songwriter and singer. He played saxophone and sang in a band that toured around the Holiday Inn circuit. I’m sure, when musicians start out, they all think, if only I could become famous. Well, actually he did, and it was amazing to talk to somebody who had started in a very humble way, and he just shot right up the ladder. That was inspirational, I would say, in addition to his just being a great guy to talk to.<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Splendid, and when was the Dolly Parton incident? What year or thereabouts do you recall?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Well, if I can be forgiven a little bit of approximation here, about 1982 or \u201983. That was when that movie came out. So, we’re talking about over 40 years ago.<\/p>\n

      Vinay: <\/strong>So, it left an impression since you remember it well, obviously.<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Oh, yes.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      The Journey of a Musician: Challenges and Support<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Now, you’ve been a professional musician for over 50 years, is that right?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Yes, in fact, I started playing for money when I was a freshman in high school. I was 14 years old. That was 62 years ago (in the fall of 1962).<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Wow, incredible. You know, one of the concerns of anyone, any wannabe artist, is: can I make this my living? And over the course of those 60 years, or 50 from adulthood, did you ever have to rely on another side job or a spouse’s income, or was music enough to give you a livelihood?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Well, both actually. When I was in college, my parents were hoping that I was going to follow through and get a degree in math and become a math teacher and stay up in Iowa close to them. I’ve certainly jumped over the fence. When I changed my major to music, they were afraid that I was going to end up in the gutter. You know, unless you’re extremely good, how can a musician make enough money to pay the bills and put food on the table? Well, it’s not that<\/em> hard, but you do have to work at it and not everybody can be successful just as a musician, so I have had side jobs. Right now, I’m doing editing and writing and making indexes for publishers.<\/p>\n

      Years ago when I was in my 20s and I first started out here in Nashville, I worked in the collections office of the student loans department of the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry, and my job was five days a week, 8:30 to 4:30, and I had to get people on the phone for the collections officer to talk to because they were not keeping up with paying their loans, and I was sure glad I paid my loans. I wouldn’t want to have somebody calling me out of the blue and saying, \u201cWhy haven’t you paid your loans?\u201d As far as a spouse helping out, my first wife was extremely helpful and we traded duties. I helped put her through college to get a teaching degree. She helped support us while I was trying to break in as a musician (and before that, while I was finishing my master\u2019s degree in Iowa). So, it really was a cooperative effort.<\/p>\n

      I’ll pass over my second marriage and go to my third. My third, lovely wife, Becky, is also a musician and she and I share a lot of the same values, so this has been a really good relationship. She has worked very hard, first as a waitress, and then she decided to get a teaching certificate to teach upper elementary, so I helped put her through that with my employment. She became a teacher and brought money into the household, and she was also teaching piano. So, I just have to say that if you have a partner that you can pool your efforts with, it takes an awful lot of the stress out. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a walk in the park necessarily, but if you have cooperation and partnership, that’s a really good thing.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      The Importance of Diversifying Skills<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: That’s great, because in the book you do talk about musicians becoming employable or self-employed, and I’m sure a lot of 18-year-olds or 16-year-olds have stars in their eyes and they want to end up as Ed Sheeran (English singer-songwriter) or Taylor Swift or Beyonce or someone like that. But there’s a whole lot of other jobs, aren’t there? From cruise ships to teaching at school, or private tutoring, and all that sort of thing. How does that all relate to becoming employable or even slightly better, I’d say, self-employed and making a living?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Some people have such brilliant talent, and the opportunities hit just right so that they can, for instance, if they’re a really good singer, and they can also play guitar and piano and drums and so on, but they have this one really strong talent, everything else is off to the side, and they can do that one big thing. But like my father used to say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. He would plant several different crops, and he also had livestock. So, if you diversify, then if something goes wrong, if one of the opportunities isn\u2019t there in one of the areas that you’re doing, you have other sources, what they now call multiple income streams. But some young people are very headstrong and they think, well, I’m a really good saxophone player and I don’t need to learn clarinet or flute, and they have really hampered (or limited) their careers by not diversifying. So, that would be an important point.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Understanding Brain Skills and Their Application<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: In the middle of your book, you talk about brain skills. You’ve mentioned Walter Lowen, whose brain or mental skills model categorizes skills into four sets. Each skill has a left brain and a right brain version, so that’s eight sets. Can you simplify the model and say how you’ve used it?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Right. The left\/right brain thing is definitely part of the model, but I will simplify. Walter Lowen was into systems theory, but he also liked developmental psychology and how human beings start out by first developing their limbs and then gradually learning to manipulate things with their fingers. Then they learn to speak and learn words and concepts, and then eventually they learn to think. So, there are the gross motor, fine motor, verbal, and intellectual skills. Those are the labels that Lowen uses. If you understand those ideas, you can apply them to sports (or to music). For instance, some sports people are very precise in what they can do. Others are very expressive, like a figure skater. Some of them can really stick a landing, but others are just graceful and flowing, and you don’t really look for the quadruple somersaults, but they just look like they’re a fairy princess or a ballerina.<\/p>\n

      So, these different skills are used in sports, and they’re used in music, even if you’re a composer or a writer. For instance, as a fiction writer, you may show large motions, or somebody working at their desk, and they’re thinking, but they’re also making diagrams and things, so there’s hand-eye coordination (fine motor). So, this part of the book is mainly trying to get musicians to realize that you have all these different possible skill sets, and you may be really good at one or two of them, but you should learn about them and put some more effort into making yourself as well-rounded as you can and accept that these are all part of you.<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Excellent. Well, I would say my worksmanship skills are poor. I don’t need to use them in writing fiction. I do play a bit of sport, and as you said, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, you need them both, you move around [well] or you have sort of a little deft touch on something.<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: As a novelist, say, you might be writing a book about a circus, and there’s a trapeze act, and if you, in your writing, can convey the feel and the sensation of the physical movement and strength and agility that’s needed for that, that is something that can really turn the readers on. Some writers are very good at describing nature or physical motion, like what an airplane or a train’s motion might be like. All of these things can draw on these skill sets, not just being intellectual ideas or expressive, persuasive, eloquent speech, which is also very important.<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Yes, the articulation [is critical]. I mean, I can’t fly a plane, but you can describe how it feels to be in a plane. I can’t do a trapeze [act], but I can research that\u2026[for a novel whose story starts in a traveling circus].<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: I think you can observe.<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: And observe. Observation is critical, as is research.<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Yes.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      The Role of Mentorship and Guidance<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: You have had a very long career. Would your career trajectory have been different, if you knew all this then that you know now?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: For some of the ideas in the book, I think that I got good enough guidance when I was in grade school, elementary, and also high school that I was encouraged to be well-rounded without really having the philosophy explained to me. It was just, \u201cI want you to learn how to do this.\u201d So, even though I was a nerdy kid who loved math and science fiction, I also very early on learned lots of songs, and I learned how to play them expressively, not just note perfectly with good technique, but also in an emotionally expressive way. I wouldn’t expect a nerdy, more intellectually leaning person to be good at that unless they had some good modeling, and this is why modeling and observation are so important. If you can mentor somebody, or your teacher can say, \u201cI want you to notice what this person is doing, okay? Did you hear what he did to that phrase when he spoke?\u201d It might be a speaker, it might be a musician, but if you notice they put a little extra spin on a word or on a musical note, those are the small details that can really help make something have more meaning and more power than if the person were just spitting out a string of words without any much inflection\u2014or a musical song, a tune, without any personal expression. So, to answer your question, some of that I was fortunate enough to have good guidance on, so that it was kind of natural rather than studied.<\/p>\n

      But there were things, the brick walls I call them, that I ran up against as a young professional, and I really wish that I had had someone to explain them to me when I was younger. Some things my trombone teacher didn’t know (how to explain to me) in early school, and the ones in college didn’t know, but I’ve been blessed to find a lot of people along the way who said, \u201cRead this,\u201d or \u201cHey, look, try this.\u201d So, part of it again is cooperative, in this instance, not your spouse or your mate, but your colleagues or your friends. If they happen to know something, keep your ears open and keep your mind open, because for a problem you’re grappling with, they may have just the solution. I tried to pack as many of those ideas in the book as I could, not just with technical, acoustic, or physiological problems, but also things to do with professional ethics or performance psychology, or how should you scout out possible places to go live for your career, and so on.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Networking in the Music Industry<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: That’s interesting. I think you ended up in Nashville at the age of 22. Is that something you recommend to budding musicians, to make sure that they can give themselves the best chance to in the right place by networking? And is that a way also to avoid stress?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Oh, networking is absolutely a key. Again, when I was in Iowa where I grew up and was finishing college, the guy who was my teacher in earlier years had moved to Nashville from Iowa to start a second career. So, I had an older brother, so to speak, already there who could introduce me to people and give me some opportunities. To quite an extent, it really does matter not just who you know who is powerful, but do you know any people so that you’re not just a stranger in a strange town and you don’t even know where to start. It’s good to go out places and make a trip, make a visit to see what’s going on. If you like jazz, well, you go to the jazz clubs, you go to the union hall where they might be having a band rehearsal, and you meet people. You can’t just show up and say, \u201cWell, here I am. I’m a great player. Where do I sit? Where’s my check?\u201d You have to pay your dues. You have to work into it. So, networking is highly important. Beyond that, you have to show that you’re serious and responsible and reliable. For people who are careless and leave loose ends in communication, that can be a problem.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Philosophical Themes in Music and Life<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Okay, sort of a sidebar question, but I noticed that the first three chapters, \u201cThe Care and Feeding of Chops,\u201d were technical and specialized. It wasn’t exactly beef chops or lamb chops or pork chops, kind of different ones (chops as a musician\u2019s technical skills). Would it have been better to have them as the last three chapters, because otherwise the lay reader is getting into the complex bits early and potentially letting the book go.<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Well, maybe for the second edition I’ll rearrange the parts of the book. But yes, to answer your question, I thought about this over and over. I thought about combining the first two parts together, but then that would have made the first part really overly long. But yes, if the general reader starts reading from the front and they get into the middle of chapter one or two and say, \u201cI’m bored,\u201d they wouldn’t have gotten to what I consider to be the really interesting philosophical and psychological stuff.<\/p>\n

      I was out walking today, matter of coincidence, with Becky, my wife, and I got to thinking, when you ask me these questions, you might wonder, is there an overall theme other than just wanting to help people with your accumulated tips and wisdom and so on? And I thought, well, yes, there is. The second part where it’s talking about brain skills and the third part where it’s talking about performance psychology, those both have to do with understanding yourself and understanding your situation and accepting it and working toward mastery and staying focused in the present moment. And I thought, there’s some Zen philosophy there, which showed up in Tim Gallwey’s, The Inner Game of Tennis<\/em>, and there’s some Carl Jung stuff or Nathaniel Branden stuff. Branden wrote a book called The Disowned Self<\/em>, and he talked about how you might have a part of yourself that you’re alienated from or might feel that that part of yourself is not as important. The idea is to not do that, but instead to accept all of yourself, to be a well-rounded, internally, mentally, psychologically connected person, so that you have all of your resources available, so that your subconscious is there to help you when you need to be creative or when you need to think outside the box to come up with new solutions. Sometimes the imagery that helps prompt a good idea is down there, and if you’re stuffing down the other part of yourself and just letting your top conscious part run everything, then you’re not going to have as much success in solving your problems.<\/p>\n

      So, I got to thinking, ah, this calls for a whole new book. If I do write it, I’ll just leave out the first three chapters, and I’ll talk about those philosophical and psychological things and really make it something for a general readership.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      The Impact of AI on Music Composition<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: That would be excellent. Speaking of general readership, we have the baby boomers and the young people, and things are changing fast. I’m not worried so much about myself because perhaps AI could write novels [in the future], but can AI compose music [today]?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Oh, yes, definitely. It can compose music just as well or easily as it can compose essays. The programmer teaches it the canons of form and structure and inference, like, if this is true, then this is true; and it can do compare and contrast and so on, and similarly for composing music. One fellow on his website usually talks about nutrition issues and political issues, but he’s gotten into AI, and he’s invested quite a bit of his fortune in setting up a database for health and nutrition, and also he’s used it to compose music. He likes to write, not exactly spoofs, but edgy [and humorous], freedom-oriented songs where he criticizes the government or so on, and he thought, what if I use AI, if I tell it the lyrics I want, and then I want it to be for a male singer and to use this voice that’s in the voice recognition database, then I say, okay, make a song about this? And it does it. He even made a theme song for his website, and it’s not that bad. I mean, it works. You know, we could have a theme song for The Savvy Street Show<\/em>, if we put our heads together and came up with a poem, and then we told AI to write a theme song for the Savvy Street<\/em>, there we go, we\u2019d have a theme song. So, maybe that should be one of our next projects.<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: But what is the quality of that AI output? I mean, is it matching the average musician or is it below that? Or is it scary in that it’s going to come to a Mozart or Beethoven level in five years or so?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: [Laughs.] Well, I’m sorry to laugh, but I don’t know. AI is very impressive, and I’m not at all frightened of it, but it really impresses me. They always give you disclaimers. They say, be sure to review this, double check this because the answers may be misleading or incorrect. That’s true. For instance, I went through my book and I tried to do little 150-word summaries of each chapter, and I found that I had to do it a certain way with a PDF. I couldn\u2019t use the Microsoft Word AI version (CoPilot) because it kept skipping around back and forth between the sections, and I said, \u201cI just need something from chapter two, not the whole book!\u201d But the Adobe artificial intelligence (for PDFs) really did what I wanted it to do. So, we’re all in a learning environment right now. Just do your own work, but make it work for you.<\/p>\n

      I remember when they came out with the computer. I was a good typist. I loved the typewriter. I liked correction tape and correction fluid, but I thought, \u201cWouldn’t it be neat if we had a smart typewriter that would automatically undo the mistakes, and then you could redo it?\u201d Well, along came computer software. AI is to Google and other search engines like what the computer (word processer program) was to the typewriter. It’s just a huge leap forward, and like every tool, it can be used for good or evil. It can be used for mediocrity or excellence. So, I wouldn’t worry about the misuses of it. Just go ahead and explore.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      The Evolution of Music Education<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Which brings me to the last question of the day. We have learned lessons in our professions from the 1960s, 70s, 80s\u2026whatever, depending on your age, till now, and some of those lessons have become very old and may not be that relevant because even before AI, different professions have been changing quite fast. Would someone in their 20s say, \u201cWell, I don’t want to know what this old geezer thinks about the [music] world, that was a different world?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Well, in regard to the technical things, I think that gradually the schools of music have gotten better. For instance, they have studio engineering classes now that they didn’t have 30, 40, 50 years ago. Also, more and more people have home studios they can run with their own computer and speakers and so on. Now people can learn by themselves or they can learn at college and so on, so that’s not so much an issue. But the issues like psychology and ethics, the philosophical and psychological issues, are things that are much more on the human experience and human life level, and people haven’t changed. People are not more sophisticated now than they were 50 years ago. Some people are arrogant. Some people don’t know how to handle boredom or anxiety. Some people neglect the idea of being diversified and well-rounded because they think that this one really good skill they have should be enough to get them through life. People have to learn these lessons one way or another, and this is one way to learn.<\/p>\n

      There’s a rule of thumb, a rule of three, and I’ve heard more than one person say, \u201cYou know, somebody tried to tell me that years ago, and another person tried to tell me, and now I’m hearing it for the third time, and I finally get it.\u201d Sometimes people learn it immediately. Sometimes they have to be beaten over their head with it. So, maybe I’m one of those people that they’ll read or hear me saying it, and I’ll be the third person or I’ll be the second or the first person that they’ve seen or heard say it. But it’ll be just part of the pipeline for a person going through life to say, \u201cYou know, that guy Roger made sense.\u201d So not everybody’s going to immediately respond. Some people say, \u201cYeah, I wish I had known that way back then, and maybe it’s too late now.\u201d Young people are headstrong, and they’re not as likely to listen to older people because they think older people are just old fogies. But we wouldn’t have made it as far as we did without picking up some knowledge and some wisdom, and it might be helpful if you\u2019ll open your ears.<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Okay, thank you. And they\u2019ll find this book on Amazon?<\/p>\n

      Roger<\/strong>: Amazon dot com, and just look for my name, Roger Bissell, or look for Things They Didn’t Teach Me in Music School<\/em>. It’s available both in print and as a Kindle.<\/p>\n

      Vinay<\/strong>: Thank you very much for being here today, and I’m sure non-musicians also found this very useful. As we sometimes say on the show, tune in to become more savvy, and good night and good luck.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      There were brick walls that I ran up against as a young professional,, and I really wish that I had had someone to explain them to me when I was younger. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":10850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[792,116,735,107],"class_list":["post-10852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-art-of-living","tag-career","tag-ethics","tag-music","tag-psychology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10852"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10854,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions\/10854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}