createdmagic for long minutes. I didn’t know the name of the piece, one woman said, but it sounded like water. Another woman urged me to enter the Seattle International Piano Festival & Competition, of which she was an organizer. “I don’t know what your standards of success are, Sara,” van der Linde told me, “but in my book you succeeded. You played right from the heart.”
Naturally, I was thrilled. But a couple of weeks later, I listened to a recording of myself from that evening and was disturbed. I could hear the tension in my body, the held breath, the panic that communicated its way from my lungs, through my arm muscles, down to my fingers, and into the key bed. At that moment, as I heard that playback, my goal changed. It no longer was about perfection. I could live with a missed note, a botched leap, a second’s hesitation. What I couldn’t live with was that tight little sound that crept into my playing. Fear makes one pull back and close in on oneself. It’s a universal that the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön identifies even in sea anemones, whose soft bodies close in on themselves the instant we touch them with our fingers. “It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown,” she writes. “It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”
The next time I Skyped with Kageyama, I told him about my experiences in Vermont—a ten on the adventure scale. I also confided my unexpected disappointment. He nodded. “It’s more about self-discovery and mastery than anythingelse,” he said. He was reminded of Jiro Dreams of Sushi , a documentary about an eighty-five-year-old sushi chef whose ten-seat, $300-a-plate restaurant was legendary among foodies the world over. While all the other sushi chefs in Tokyo massaged their octopi for a mere ten minutes, Jiro insisted that his be massaged for forty minutes—or he wouldn’t serve them. “It’s about how you have to love to massage the octopus before you serve it,” Kageyama concluded.
I looked at the calendar. It was already September. Another eight months before my final recital. Suddenly, it no longer seemed like a lot of time. But at that moment, I felt that change was afoot: I was massaging the octopus.
Chapter 6
REVENGE OF THE AMYGDALA
Fear: it begins with urgent motor impulses from the brain to the adrenal glands, which respond by dumping adrenaline into the bloodstream and putting the body on alert. The heart beats harder and faster. Breathing grows rapid to increase oxygen levels. Eyes dilate to bring more light to the retina, heightening visual acuity. Blood flow is redirected from hands and feet to the large muscles in the upper torso, arms, and legs. Hands and fingers turn cold and clammy. Sweat glands shift into overdrive. Digestion shuts down, and waves of nausea ripple through the gut. Hair follicles tighten, prompting individual hairs to bristle—an effect that likely made our hirsute Neanderthal ancestors appear larger and more menacing to predators.
It was the philosopher and psychologist William James who, in the 1880s, posed the first serious questions about the origins of fear: Do we run because we are afraid? Or are we afraid because we run? Which comes first? Does a person have time to contemplate whether something is frightening, or does the response to fear precede the thought? James had morethan a passing interest in this chicken-or-egg conundrum. He was an anxiety-ridden insomniac (he regularly used chloroform to put himself to sleep) 1 and social phobic who, like many psychologists then and now, pursued a line of research that is sometimes only half-jokingly referred to as “me search.” His conclusion was that emotion stems from the unconscious mind’s perception of bodily changes—the adrenaline rush, the pounding heartbeat,
Naturally, I was thrilled. But a couple of weeks later, I listened to a recording of myself from that evening and was disturbed. I could hear the tension in my body, the held breath, the panic that communicated its way from my lungs, through my arm muscles, down to my fingers, and into the key bed. At that moment, as I heard that playback, my goal changed. It no longer was about perfection. I could live with a missed note, a botched leap, a second’s hesitation. What I couldn’t live with was that tight little sound that crept into my playing. Fear makes one pull back and close in on oneself. It’s a universal that the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön identifies even in sea anemones, whose soft bodies close in on themselves the instant we touch them with our fingers. “It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown,” she writes. “It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”
The next time I Skyped with Kageyama, I told him about my experiences in Vermont—a ten on the adventure scale. I also confided my unexpected disappointment. He nodded. “It’s more about self-discovery and mastery than anythingelse,” he said. He was reminded of Jiro Dreams of Sushi , a documentary about an eighty-five-year-old sushi chef whose ten-seat, $300-a-plate restaurant was legendary among foodies the world over. While all the other sushi chefs in Tokyo massaged their octopi for a mere ten minutes, Jiro insisted that his be massaged for forty minutes—or he wouldn’t serve them. “It’s about how you have to love to massage the octopus before you serve it,” Kageyama concluded.
I looked at the calendar. It was already September. Another eight months before my final recital. Suddenly, it no longer seemed like a lot of time. But at that moment, I felt that change was afoot: I was massaging the octopus.
Chapter 6
REVENGE OF THE AMYGDALA
Fear: it begins with urgent motor impulses from the brain to the adrenal glands, which respond by dumping adrenaline into the bloodstream and putting the body on alert. The heart beats harder and faster. Breathing grows rapid to increase oxygen levels. Eyes dilate to bring more light to the retina, heightening visual acuity. Blood flow is redirected from hands and feet to the large muscles in the upper torso, arms, and legs. Hands and fingers turn cold and clammy. Sweat glands shift into overdrive. Digestion shuts down, and waves of nausea ripple through the gut. Hair follicles tighten, prompting individual hairs to bristle—an effect that likely made our hirsute Neanderthal ancestors appear larger and more menacing to predators.
It was the philosopher and psychologist William James who, in the 1880s, posed the first serious questions about the origins of fear: Do we run because we are afraid? Or are we afraid because we run? Which comes first? Does a person have time to contemplate whether something is frightening, or does the response to fear precede the thought? James had morethan a passing interest in this chicken-or-egg conundrum. He was an anxiety-ridden insomniac (he regularly used chloroform to put himself to sleep) 1 and social phobic who, like many psychologists then and now, pursued a line of research that is sometimes only half-jokingly referred to as “me search.” His conclusion was that emotion stems from the unconscious mind’s perception of bodily changes—the adrenaline rush, the pounding heartbeat,
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