Landing On Your Feet

If you've been keeping up with our blog posts, you know by now that we're in Prague. If you haven't been keeping up with our blog posts, then I'll tell you: we're in Prague!!! This city is breathtakingly beautiful no matter what street you walk down. As gorgeous as it is, however, I don't know if I have ever felt so uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to be here, but I have never been in a situation where I do not have a clue what anyone says or what anything means.

Something that I have been thinking about quite frequently upon arriving in this foreign land is privilege. The fact is that I honestly don't have to feel uncomfortable because wherever I go there is almost always at least one person who knows a bit of English. It almost gives me a knot in my stomach to think that I am the one who traveled into another country, yet the people there are the ones catering to my lack of understanding.

Certainty is another privilege that I have been thinking about quite a bit. Lately I have been experiencing more discomfort and uncertainty than I have experienced in quite some time. I just graduated from college, and then took off to tour the world with a show that had never stopped being in process, and I have no idea what I'm going to do when I come home. When I agreed to write some music for this little workshop about Nikola Tesla, I never imagined that it would become my life for the next 12 months. I had really never composed music before, and I still have no idea what I'm doing. There have been times during this process where I have completely freaked out and I have been absolutely frustrated with myself and the other people that I'm working with for not knowing what we're all doing, but I finally had a realization that the only two ways to deal with uncertainty are to fight against it and demand to know what you are getting into and demand to know the end product - in which you miss the beauty of discovery and possibility - or you can embrace the unknown. The magic of forging through the unknown with openness and a "yes, and..." mentality is that I have always landed on my feet in the end, and it has always lead me to a place that is better than I could have imagined.

I never planned on being a composer, and I never planned on traveling to Europe with this group of artists. But here we are!