I sang before I talked. I sang instead of talking, really. I was very expressive as a musical entity. I sang cheerful songs. “Can we stop for ice cream?” was a song. “Where are my shoes?” “I’m tired.” “I need to pee.” These were all songs. I’m sure it was very annoying for everyone in the family, although my mother says it was the only indication I gave that I was happy. Otherwise, I was a serious-looking little girl, glum. People often asked me if I was okay. “Are you sad? Are you sick?” Maybe I had what we’d call “resting bitch face” now.

I think my singing was a way to self-soothe. Existential terror struck me very young. It’s an experience I recall often: I looked at the clock while sitting on the rug during story time in kindergarten; saw the second hand tick, tick, tick; looked around at all the children, then at my aging kindergarten teacher, saw how she licked her finger to turn the page of the picture book; and I became suddenly, devastatingly aware that I would die one dayie. That we all would. It was a powerful, empty, selfless feeling, and at five, there was a gauzy, sad wonderment associated with the flimsiness of reality. I understood then that there must be something beyond this realm of carpeting and ice cream and shoes and clocks and teeth that fell out and grew in; and yellowed, fingers that wrinkled, books to keep us hypnotized until the bell rang. What was that other realm? It was ineffable and miraculous—call it “heaven” or “the imagination.” Call it “God.” Maybe this moment on the carpet was the birth of my artist self, the entity that needed desperately to sing in order to assure itself of its own existence. But I didn’t sing for much longer.

I grew up in the classical music world in Boston. My mother was a violist, and my father was a violinist. They met in a music conservatory in Brussels; they both had the same teacher, a man who, I understood, took my parents on as their spiritual father. When I talk to my mother about how this teacher guided her and empowered her as an artist, the wisdom he relayed, the confidence he imbued in her, I feel like he was my teacher, too. I’m a descendant of those teachings. My mother was the kind of virtuosa maniac that would have done anything for her art. She was assigned to pick six out of twelve pieces to perform at her final evaluation for her diploma. The jury asked her which six she had chosen. She had prepared all of them—an insane task—and said casually, “You pick.” I love that kind of aplomb. I wish I had more of it. I believe that my mother could have had a fabulous solo career as a concert violist, but war, motherhood, a bunch of things got in the way. In 1980,

When my parents moved to America, they became teachers. I grew up with kids squeaking “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in the sunroom, their parents ringing the doorbell to pick them up every half hour. I hid upstairs after school and did my homework, or jumped rope and watched movies in the basement. I had to be quiet when I snuck snacks from the kitchen. In the evenings, once the house was empty of interlopers, I practiced piano.