Thank you, Michael Tilson Thomas

It with profound sorrow that I join the world in mourning the loss of a once-in-generation musician, Michael Tilson Thomas.

I have many memories, (and some shall always remain privately ‘mine’), but what I can say is that MTT gave me was so much more than “a shot” when he selected me—a total nobody— to sing *his* Maria. He also gave me the gift of contributing to the legacy of West Side Story and to crossover music history, happily preserved for all time on our glorious recording.

But above all, MTT unsentimentally taught me how to believe in myself, and the lesson that sometimes? that is a slow process. The story that captures this:

One day, during our week leading up to ‘West Side Story’ rehearsal he brought me in to his office. I truly believed I was being fired. The imposter syndrome was real. But that is not what happened. “You’re singing sharp when you get nervous,” he said. “I know. That does happen when I get nervous I’ll fix it,” I replied, horrified. “Singing sharp often happens when people try too hard,” MTT continued, “They overshoot the note trying to be more than they are. I don’t need you to be more than you are. You are ‘Ein großer Künstler’ Alexandra. A great artist. Be exactly what you are, fully, don’t shrink, don’t puff, and you’ll be perfection.”

I was staggered. I almost cried. 

     “So I’m not fired?”
     “Absolutely not.”
     “But… I don’t know if I can trust myself like that.”
     “Then trust ME. I’m Michael Tilson Thomas and I know what I’m doing! I chose you. And I don’t regret it. Trust ME until you trust yourself. Sometimes belief can be collaborative. Nothing wrong with that.”

May we all learn from this.

May his memory be a blessing. 

I know it shall always be for me. 

None shall part us now. 

 

 

 

 

Brigadoon: Day 1

 

No words. Because *every last word I could ever have*, is in those pages. 

Day 1. Let’s go. Och aye. 

 

John Steinbeck wrote a letter to his publisher when he submitted East of Eden. The letter was then used as the book's dedication. It captures what I feel: 

 

"Dear Pat,

You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, “Why don’t you make something for me?”
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, “A box.”
“What for?”
“To put things in.”
“What kind of things?”
“Whatever you have,” you said.
Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts- the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full.

John"

 

The Winter I Finally Stopped Bracing or, 'Growth Is Ugly and Does Not Photograph Well'

What I’ve come to understand (slowly, reluctantly, and with the emotional elegance of a rabid possum trapped inside a Panera) is that I fundamentally misunderstood what growth was supposed to look like. I used to believe that growth was a forward motion only. That to become more, you had to do more, achieve more, prove more. More productivity. More striving. More exhaustion disguised as ambition. I thought the evidence of a meaningful life would look like velocity.

 

But this winter taught me something quieter and, I think, more true.

That growth sometimes looks like retreat.
Like stillness.

 

Sometimes it means turning inward and tending to the abandoned rooms inside yourself—the parts that were neglected because survival demanded it. And I should note: this is not glamorous work. It does not photograph well. There are no inspirational montages. No one is posting “deep nervous system repair” content from beneath three blankets while eating stale crackers over the sink and trying not to cry during yet another prescription drug commercial.

But somewhere in the turning of this brutal winter, I realized something had changed.

The cold had finally left my body.

And I don’t mean the weather,  (although I'd like to petition that surviving a New York winter does make you feel eligible for frontier citizenship.) I mean the internal winter I had been carrying for far too long—the emotional frostbite that protected me from pain, yes, but also kept me from joy. The kind of psychic bracing that keeps a person functioning, productive, competent… and quietly absent from their own life.

Then, sometime in March, I noticed something almost imperceptible: I had stopped bracing.

I stopped apologizing for existing.
Stopped treating rest like moral failure.
Stopped experiencing my own life as something to endure.

And once that happened, something else suddenly became possible:

Expansion.

 

 

Of course, because life is not subtle, this period of stillness is now giving way to a season of extraordinary motion.  Spring into summer is arriving like a parade I did not RSVP to but am somehow expected to lead. Projects. Collaborations. Creative opportunities that feel not just exciting, but aligned. As though they were waiting for me to become the person capable of receiving them or, the version of myself capable of receiving them without immediately self-destructing.

 

This is new.

 

Before, work often felt like something I had to chase, or worse, survive.

 

Now, for the first time in a very long time, it feels like something I might actually be able to meet.

 

 

 

Becoming Warm Again

There is cold, and then there is New-York-waiting-for-the-above-ground-N-train-in-deepest-February cold.

 

Ah yes! Welcome back you vicious breeze! You have discovered the one gap in my coat! I hear your raspy whisper threaten: “You will never be warm again...” Y'all? I weathered the Polar Vortex of 2018 in Chicago (where it was -53ºF and colder in Chicago than on the surface of Mars), and I've been to Siberia, and this New York winter kicked my ass. So I would like to formally submit a complaint: 'hear ye hear ye, no human being is meant to stand on an open-air platform while the wind weaponizes itself against your femurs.' 

 

I don’t care how cold it is in the Arctic Circle, Vladivostok or Fargo—are those people waiting for the bus? 

 

Because that’s what this winter felt like.

Not just meteorologically. Spiritually. 

Good ol' 2026. Making itself known. It's not enough that the world is at war, everything is unaffordable and the spine of America has been crushed beneath an orphaned mack truck no one can afford to drive because gas is $5 a gallon. 
No. We also had to have when-will-it-end winter whilst stuck on the 6 train. 

 

This was a winter of sub-zero temperatures, multiple snowstorms, and me, once again trying-and-failing to quit show business like a woman calmly exiting a casino before she sets her own wallet on fire. I called it a “dramatical sabbatical,” which sounds elegant and intentional, like I was sipping oolong and reading Strinberg, but in reality? I was horizontal a lot. I finally did (and remain "doing"), the trauma work. And not the chic, go-to-the-woods-for-a-retreat kind. I mean the kind where you sit inside things you have spent decades outrunning. The kind where your body (which has been quietly holding receipts since childhood) decides it’s time to present the bill. Dad, his parents, disordered eating, ulcerative colitis. All all all. All of it, apparently, has been living in my proverbial basement like emotionally charged raccoons, waiting for me to finally turn on the light. There was a lot of sitting and remembering. A lot of realizing that I had built an entire life around highly functioning.

 

And also—and I want to be clear about this—there were still, like, errands. Getting your shit together does not cancel your CVS obligations. You can be mid-epiphany about your childhood and still have to pick up a prescription and stand behind a man arguing about coupons. 

 

But something began to shift. Very slowly, like thawing. At first, it was physical. I realized one morning that I was not clenching my jaw. Then I noticed I could sit still without immediately reaching for an activity to "accomplish." Then—and this felt revolutionary—I took a full breath without it catching halfway through like a Windows 95 error. 

 

All to say: 

Warmth, I am learning, is not just temperature. 

It might just be your nervous system lowering its weapons, and the body deciding, at last, that it is not under siege.

I did not know, until this winter, how deeply unrested I have been for most of my life. How much of my productivity was powered not by inspiration, but by fear. Fear of stopping. Fear of feeling. Fear of what might catch up to me if I ever stood still long enough to let it.

And now, having stood still—truly still—I can say this:

Nothing caught up to me.

I caught up to myself.

Because when you emerge—and you do emerge—you are not the same person who went in.

You are warmer.

You are rested.

And perhaps most importantly, you are no longer estranged from yourself.

 

This is a kind of abundance that has nothing to do with money or accolades or even opportunity. 

It is the abundance of being present in your own life.

Of feeling your breath fully.
Of trusting your body again.
Of knowing that whatever comes next, you will meet it as yourself — not as a performance of yourself.

 

So here I am.

Standing on the edge of a season that feels, for the first time in a long time, not like something to survive—but something to live. 

If winter was the pulling back of the bow, then this moment is the breath just before release.

 

Not frantic.
Not forced.

Ready.

 

© hula seventy