Chicago recap, Everything Everywhere, and studying abroad

I would like someone to please clap for me for writing this newsletter, because I have overcome a great deal of hardship (feeling glum because it is still raining in LA, my tea being cold, an overwhelming urge to procrastinate in any way possible) to sit down and coax words out of my brain. As we all know, writing out one’s thoughts to a willing audience (I presume) is one of the greatest individual challenges any member of our species has ever faced, and I should be lauded.

I returned this week from Chicago, where Turn the Spotlight hosted its first (and hopefully not last—ahem, ahem) meetup of this year’s fellows. Here I am, second from the left, doing the sorority squat:

It’s always incredibly futile trying to describe a great meetup or social interaction—any deep conversation inevitably comes off as inane or cheesy the moment you try to summarize it for someone else—so I’ll just say that this is such a great group of people and I remain mildly flabbergasted that I get to be one of their number. It felt so special to meet and talk with so many people doing really cool, trailblazing work in the arts, and to discover how much we have in common. One of the Spotlight mentors who interviewed me said “The world of classical music is small, but it’s also very lonely” (absolutely correct!) and finding connection with so many other driven, passionate people encountering the same issues does a lot to mitigate that loneliness.