It Doesn't Take Much
Notes on high-fiving Phil Cook, creative connections, and saying thanks
Welcome to From the Ethics Desk! Use these links to share this post, support this publication, or learn more about me - Adam Hollowell. I’m glad you’re here!
It doesn’t take much to share a moment of gratitude and make a connection—between the one who creates something and the one who’s moved by it.
A few mornings ago, I was driving in a hurry. It was nearly 10 a.m.—that midmorning scramble between school drop-off and the first in-person appointment of the day. I’d walked the kids to school, answered too many emails, and looked up to realize that I was running late.
At the top of the hill as I was leaving my neighborhood, I saw a tall, bearded man walking his dog to my left. He looked familiar, then it hit me: Phil Cook, the Durham-based musician whose albums I’ve listened to for years.
Without thinking, I stopped the car and rolled down my window: “Good morning—are you Phil Cook?”
He smiled. “I am.”
“Aw, man, your music brings me so much joy. Thank you so much for making it and sharing it with all of us.”
He grinned, walked over, and gave me a high-five.
“I’m a writer,” I said, “and I listen to Appalachia Borealis on repeat while I write. It’s such a beautiful record.”
“That’s fantastic,” he said. “We’re playing at the Carolina Theatre in November—come see us!”
And that was it. A thirty-second exchange. I didn’t want to take up his time or interrupt his walk, I just had an involuntary response of appreciation and excitement. We both continued on our ways.
I’ve admired Phil Cook’s music for years. Rachel and I have seen him play in Durham several times, and I love the positivity of his sound—the way it feels like joy made audible. (Hear the energy on “1922”, for example.)
Appalachia Borealis is his most recent album and, at first glance, the instrumental piano “meditations” are quieter than Cook’s usual exuberance. He created the music after a year of solitude in the North Carolina woods, where he began each day listening to birds through an open window. Cook began recording their songs, then eventually wrote his own songs in response.
Appalachia Borealis is tentative and meditative, yet energizing. The music reminds me to rise and meet the day the best I can. To hear the songs of others, then write my own in return.
Jeff Tweedy, the lead singer of Wilco, writes in How to Write One Song:
“Connection is the loftiest of all aspirations. … At the core of any creative act is an impulse to make manifest our powerful desire to connect—with others, with ourselves, with the sacred, with God?”
That’s what my midmorning high-five with Phil Cook felt like—a brief, joyful connection. For a moment, the loop of creativity and gratitude was complete.
A few weeks prior, I’d had the same feeling from the other side.
In August I wrote a post called “How Steep is that Hill?” about the positive impact friendship has on our perceptions of challenging tasks. Climbing a hill just seems easier when there’s someone beside you, it seems.
About a month after I published that post, a friend and former student, Cameron, sent me a text message. She went on a weekend trip with three close friends from childhood and they decided to go hiking together. When they reached the bottom of a hill, she laughed at the coincidence and recounted my essay to her friends. “I told them about your Substack!” Cameron texted me later, along with a photo of the crew once they reached the top.
A huge grin spread across my face when I read Cameron’s message. Four friends, at the bottom a hill, joking about something I wrote. Sharing gratitude for one another and then taking the time to share it with me—what an unexpected and lovely thing to receive.
I’m sure Spotify could tell Phil Cook how many people have streamed his album, if he checks. Substack tells me 344 people read “How Steep is that Hill?,” but I only looked so that I could write this sentence. Who cares about the numbers, anyway?
Here’s what matters to me: Rolling down my window to say to someone, “Hey, your work means a lot to me.” A friend texting, “We had a good laugh while thinking of what you wrote.”
Nothing beats the feeling of that loop of creativity and gratitude being, for a moment, complete.
Yesterday, my phone buzzed. It was Rachel: “I’m buying us Phil Cook tickets in November unless you already did it.
“I didn’t,” I replied.
“And thank you.”
Phil Cook performs at the Carolina Theater in Durham on November 13, 2025. For tickets and information visit https://philcookmusic.com/concerts.