Reflections on La Rochelle

It's midnight. I sit in the beautiful lobby of Hotel St. Nicolas in the heart of La Rochelle. Next to me is a new friend, D'Arcy, a warmhearted and sharp-witted Canadian expatriate, who I met between sets at a May 6th concert. This trip has been a story of chance encounters, new friends. It has been characterized by adventures both exhilarating and exhausting but also by the warmth and tranquility of home-cooked meals.

I normally find it easy to write about recent experiences, but I find myself struggling to process the last two weeks, and to contextualize it in the wild adventure that has consumed the last three years of my life.

Three years ago I graduated from Columbia University. Looming over me was the greatest problem a person could ever have. I needed to decide whether to pursue a career in music or to leap headfirst into academia. Two years ago, I bounced around hospitals in search of relief from a debilitating autoimmune encephalopathy. And yesterday I finished a two week tour of France that included performances in concert halls, appearances in French newspapers, and forging friendships that I hope, with all my desire, will last a lifetime.

In music, dynamics - modulations of volume - have great power to convey intensity, not because absolute loudness, but because of their wide range. The contrast between soft passages and raucous eruptions of sound imbue the music of Count Basie, Ahmad Jamal, Stravinsky, Mahler, Brahms, with with power to take someone on an emotional roller-coaster. Lulling the audience into a trance before pummeling them with a barrage of horns, flurries of notes, the music has the ability to transport. We appreciate sunny days only because we weather the rainy ones.

Similarly, my life has seemingly come full circle. But the experience of highs now is so different than before I knew the bowels of life. To be alive and playing music with people I loved used to be a fact of life. Now it is a marvel that I can't but gawk at with the awe of a teenager falling in love for the first time.

This trip has cemented so many things for me, both abstract and personal - that art is about more than successful execution, that despite all I have experienced, and all the punishment my body has taken, I have come far enough to be able to travel the world and play music, and through it meet, learn from, and perhaps influence beautiful people both young and old.

I have learned the power of human connections - the profound change in my life sparked by an email forwarded by a close family friend informing me of the competition; the meaningful relationships sprung from chance encounters with fellow passengers on an airplane, attendee's of concerts, fellow musicians, sound engineers, concert organizers.

And, from across the ocean, I have learned, more powerfully than ever, the power of new technology to connect me both with the people I love and those I do not yet know. I have learned that the media for my art, and more generally, my connection with the world has changed, and not to a static state, that it is in a state of perpetual change, a tidal wave to ride, a force of nature that others can afford to ignore or avoid, but that I have no choice but to embrace.

If nothing else, I know that something has changed. My life is different, my possibilities are different. I feel both out of control and in control. What hasn't killed me has, one way or another, made me stronger. And, so long as my body continues to recover, whatever I have lost can be salvaged as well.