Michael Jerome Kagan and Ryan Travis Woods ahead of the Jacob Collier performance at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.
Circa 2009, I sat in on a lecture about brain aging by Professor Mark Moss, Emeritus Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine.
He had a surgical wit and returned to the same set of principles again and again.
They were not trendy. They were foundational.
Foundational principles, repeated
Learn an instrument from the ground up.
Learn a new language from syntax to pragmatics.
Use your non-dominant limb in dominant tasks.
Move your body.
Stay social, meaning, stay in community.
“These,” he said more than once, “are foundational to long-term cognitive health.”
Years passed.
I carried a quiet interest in learning guitar. Earlier in life, the motivation was thin. Conceptually, it would have helped with neuroplasticity. And, if I’m honest, it might have made me look cool.
But the drive wasn’t there, even though Brian, one of my closest friends, played at a conservatory level and would have helped me without hesitation.
Then, in 2023, Brian died.
Unexpectedly.
Shatteringly.
He wasn’t a casual friend. He was an apex pillar of my Health401k®, someone I leaned on emotionally, someone who understood me without translation.
The year that followed was restless and fractured.
What did emerge was a deeper connection with Michael Jerome, a fellow musician and someone Brian had long held close. Michael and I already had a relationship. After Brian’s passing, it deepened. Walking. Talking. Sitting with the absence.
In January of 2024, with Michael Jerome’s support, I committed to learning guitar, deliberately, from the ground up.
Not to perform.
Not to produce.
But to stay connected.
And to invest in something I believe in deeply: protecting my brain.
The first six months were brutal
Scales.
Sight reading.
Finger dexterity drills.
Interleaving.
Spaced repetition.
Active recall.
Nothing I produced was impressive. It was punishing.
And I loved it.
I loved spending time with Michael.
I loved feeling connected to something Brian loved.
There were no expectations, just practice, routine, and presence.
Something else began to happen.
Because I was invested, I started hearing things differently. Concepts Brian and Michael had likely shared dozens of times suddenly landed. I would go home and research. Explore. Sit with music for hours.
What had once been background noise became shared language.
Through pure curiosity, I found Jacob Collier, a multi-Grammy-winning English musician and producer.
On a whim, Adria and I bought tickets to see him at Radio City Music Hall. Calling it a spiritual experience barely does it justice. Jacob turned the audience into a choir. He wove genres like a living organism.
That experience led us to a group outing in the Berkshires to see Jon Batiste, another profoundly gifted musician. His energy, his presence, otherworldly.
Our world widened.
New people.
New conversations.
A richer lens through which to experience life together.
The bond between Michael and me deepened into something brotherly and enduring.
And quietly, something else unfolded.
Michael began taking strength training seriously. We found ourselves in a mutual barter, each investing in the other’s health portfolio. He taught me guitar. I supported his health goals.
Learning guitar did far more than I anticipated.
- It kept me connected, in spirit, to someone I loved.
- It forged a deeper relationship that matters deeply.
- It improved my dexterity, coordination, and processing.
- It gave me a new language.
- It opened social doors I never could have planned.
That shared language changed how future experiences landed. When Michael and I saw Jacob Collier again at the Jorgensen Center, we were no longer just attending the same performance. We were hearing it through overlapping frameworks, able to point, question, and wonder together in real time.
The interest keeps compounding.
Not because I optimized it.
But because it aligned with what I value.
How the Returns Showed Up
In hindsight, I have a deeper appreciation for the principles Mark Moss emphasized so consistently. Learning an instrument was never just cognitive training. It became a multi-dimensional investment that unfolded across time, relationships, and identity.
In the parlance of my peers in finance, this would be considered a long-horizon investment in our Health401k®.
Emotional: Grief found a place to move instead of stagnate. The process reintroduced patience, humility, and a quiet sense of continuity during a period that otherwise felt fractured.
Environmental: New rooms entered my life. Practice spaces. Music venues. Familiar environments widened.
Intellectual: Music became a new operating language. Theory, structure, rhythm, tension, and release reframed how I think about learning itself. Principled concepts of learning (interleaving, spaced repetition, active recall) began crossing domains. Curiosity sharpened.
Physical: Fine motor control improved. Bilateral coordination was challenged. Processing speed and sensory integration were taxed in unfamiliar ways. This was not exercise in the traditional sense, but it was unmistakably embodied work that demanded presence and precision.
Social: Relationships deepened and new ones formed. Time with Michael became an anchor. Shared curiosity replaced small talk. Music opened doors to people, conversations, and experiences that would never have appeared on a calendar I tried to plan intentionally.
Spiritual: There is something reverent about apprenticeship, about learning slowly. Music reintroduced awe. Flow. It created new memories for Adria and me that will travel with us.
This is a reflection on how certain investments quietly compound across dimensions we rarely measure.
Ryan Travis Woods