breathing underwater
Listen to my new piano release here and read the story below…
I often speak in my concerts and workshops about “seeing in the dark” - a kind of ability that transcends our childhood fear of monsters under the bed, and our adulthood fears of heartbreak, loss, death.
Last fall, I landed at the Berlin airport. I’d had a rapid layover in Frankfurt, one that had me frantically checking my AirTags to make sure my luggage wasn’t getting left behind. Maybe you know the feeling, when your gut is churning with anxiety and you’re not sure whether it’s your chronic anxiety or the very real intuition that something is wrong.
I arrived at the baggage carousel in Berlin, and sure enough, my luggage nowhere to be seen. And for the next 48 hours, I spun in circles worrying about whether I’d have my outfits for the filming date in Amsterdam next week.
All throughout, I kept thinking… why can’t I face uncertainty, the same way I do it on piano? Why can’t I face the unknown, here in this airport, without falling apart? My brain goes blank. I can’t see, I can’t feel my body, I can’t breathe… kind of like drowning.
What inspires me about the practice of music, particularly of improvisation, is that it’s a practice of facing the unknown. We practice until we can fly, until we can see in the dark, until we can breathe underwater. Imagine the feeling of it. I truly believe if I can do it here, I can do it anywhere, even when my life is falling apart.
My luggage finally arrived, and a week later I was in Amsterdam recording on camera. I had no plan, no setlist. Just a strange comfort of facing the piano with no idea what’s next.
Out came “breathing underwater”, the first release from my upcoming EP. You can listen here.
Big thanks to Andante Piano for facilitating this release. More to come :)
