Celebrate Valentine’s Day with this story of love, loss and healing through art.

Aga Popęda here with a Valentine's Day special. Starting today, you can listen to Numbered Days, a podcast and poetry project written by Corey Madden, who you might know as executive director of the Monterey Museum of Art. The project might interest you even if you are not in the mood to be all lovey-dovey today, because Madden’s celebration of love is rooted in deep personal grief. 

In 2018, after 13 years of marriage, Madden lost her husband, composer Bruno Louchouarn, to cancer. Poetic memoir Numbered Days is the story of their meeting, love at first sight, their life together and the experience of losing the love of your life. 

“I always felt motivated in all those areas,” Madden says, explaining that writing was always part of her career (Madden has a Bachelor's degree in drama, a Master's in professional writing and a certificate in screenwriting). She points to theater as an example of synthetic art that brings words and visuals together. Before she came to Monterey, Madden worked as the executive director of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and as Director of Artist Programs for the Pasadena Arts Council. She has helped launch countless artistic projects, mostly as a producer, but this is the first time she is releasing her own solo project. “When you grow as an artist, you stop worrying about existing forms and make your own,” Madden explains, commenting on the nature of her poetic memoir, where poetry mixes with what reads and sounds like journal entries. “Shakespeare was going back and forth between poetry and prose,” Madden says.

Following her husband’s diagnosis, Madden began writing short, free-verse poems as a way to give voice to her anguish. “I started writing on my iPhone as a way to cope with the stress and uncertainty, but what I discovered was that focusing only on Bruno’s illness and treatment was robbing us both of the very thing I wanted most to preserve—his life.”

Before she was invited by the L.A.’s Fountain Theater to do a play based on the poems, she posted some of the poetry on social media. Then, on the 1,000th day after her husband’s death, as the grief was beginning to pass, Madden started working on the screenplay. The pandemic turned it into a four-episode podcast. The change of form opened another possibility—in its current form the project includes 50 pieces of music by Louchouarn. 

“So you can hear him in the project, not only me,” Madden says. “It’s a love story, how both of us were artists and how we loved each other through art. Art and love make everyday important. In the last month of his life, Bruno wrote some of the most beautiful music he ever made.” (Louchouarn composed more than 600 original works including orchestral and chamber music, opera, dance, film, television and theater scores, as well as sound and media installations.) 

The Fountain Theater decided Valentine’s Day would be the best release day for this story of love and healing through art. Two-time Emmy-winning actress Anna Gunn (known for her role on Breaking Bad) stars as Madden, and all four episodes of Numbered Days are available for $20 at FountainTheatre.com, or wherever you get your podcasts, beginning today.

“It’s about shaping the chaotic experience of life and changing it into art, grace, beauty,” says Madden, who is celebrating the Valentine’s Day with her friends (and the cast that helped with the production) with champagne at the restaurant where the couple first met—in Café Figaro in LA (now Figaro Bistrot), an exact replica of a Parisian café. 

Go here to download the podcast ($20), get the book ($20) or download a PDF version ($5).

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