A confession: I have never been particularly fond of that rather overused saying about how one door has to close in order for another to open. The image of two different doors just never felt quite right to me. I always preferred the image of one solitary door, a door that with each opening and closing reveals a view vastly different from what we saw before. I like to think that we are always standing in the exact same spot, simply and curiously looking through the doorframe at a vista that changes and shifts each time the door swings open.

I have been quiet on this blog for these past several months because I have been doing a lot of thinking about beginnings and endings. It has been an emotionally tumultuous year for me. First, there was the joy and fulfillment of getting married this past summer. It was a very private and quiet ceremony and it filled both my husband and I with the kind of hope and happiness that can only come at the start of a new journey. After this new beginning, however, came about a succession of endings. First, the very sudden death of my extraordinary teacher in New York, a person who was dearly important to me and one of the greatest influences in my artistic life. This was followed by the passing of our family’s beautiful dog in Hawaii, who finally lost his long and brave battle with cancer. A few weeks later, my uncle passed away in Japan, leaving behind a grieving family including his younger sister, my mother.

As anyone who has lost someone knows, it is difficult to grapple with the feelings of grief. I was here in Madrid and felt as though important parts of my life were disappearing all over the world and I was powerless to do anything about it. All of the memories intertwined with these people, with their words and actions, as well as the emotions tied with those memories, surged back to the surface and I needed to work through my feelings privately.

When I was a student, my teacher, Alexander, used to talk with me about what might happen after he was gone. We always had extended conversations about the meaning behind artistry, about what it meant to be an artist. Our lessons were not simple and dry one hour sessions. I would head from Manhattan to his home in New Jersey, and spend all day (between 8 to 10 hours) there. He would work with me, cook meals for us, and we also spent many hours discussing paintings, literature, and philosophy. Some of my most affectionate memories are where I would be playing a Chopin ballade and I could hear his voice, marvelously thick with his Russian accent, coming from the kitchen. “Gracie, Gracie, please - your 4th finger legato!” he would roar as he continued to chop onions for the soup we would have that evening. It was wonderful, eccentric, inspiring, and special. He used to muse aloud that music is a performance art, one that is meant to be experienced live and one that defines the very spirit and soul of the artist who creates it. Therefore, when an artist dies it would be almost as though he had never existed at all. The sounds of his music and of his art would disappear along with him, and in the end, all that would be left would be his photo on the wall. After his passing, I could not get that particular conversation I had with him out of my head.

Besides performing, I have dedicated the past few months to extended humanitarian and charity work, and have used classical music to reach out to teach students in my hometown of Hawaii and also impoverished and needy children in India and Nepal. I threw myself into intensive work with both government and local organizations abroad to contribute in any way. Music and the arts are such powerful means of empowering children to express their own creative individuality and to communicate and understand ideas and emotions that perhaps cannot be put into words. Of course, I ended up learning so much more from these children than I could ever have taught them.

As I taught, as I gave myself over to the refreshing purity, honesty, and freshness of children, I came to terms with my own grief and the aching feeling of loss. I remembered Alexander’s face as he talked about how an artist would disappear after he dies - and as I taught Nepali children about music and aesthetic principles that I had learned from him, I thought about how his photo should be up on the broken wall in that crumbling school in Kathmandu.

In the weeks following my uncle’s death, my mother spent most of her time sharing with me the wonderful Japanese folk songs he taught her when they were children. My uncle did not study music but he loved to sing and had a beautiful lyrical voice. In the end, the strongest memories that stayed with his little sister were not complex, overwhelming moments, but something much more bare and infinitely more priceless, an essence that I call my uncle’s “internal” music - a personal music that every individual, regardless of whether they studied music or not, possesses. What remains of my uncle are the sounds of his voice, of his laughter, of his pure unadulterated joy in singing, and the excitement and life on his face as he taught his little sister a new song.

I have been thinking not only about Alexander, my uncle, my unconditionally loving dog, but also about the many other fragile strands of souls spread out all over the world who helped to form the very fabric of who I am. I grieved because with each death I felt that these strands were slipping away, disappearing from me, and evaporating into the air. But I have started to realize that the ends of those strands have not vanished - they are, in fact, connected and linked right into the very heart of me, inextricably intertwined to who I am, to my music, and to my future that continues to open in front of me. I just couldn’t see it before - and now, as that one door once again opens for me, I am standing and looking at a wondrously transformed view.