[Music] three years ago my life was pretty great I had two successful albums and an international performing career and I was married to Jeff Jeff was my best friend and my soul mate ever since our first date at Burning Man 16 years before we had a perfect son and we lived in a cute house in the woods but Jeff wasn't feeling well he had a cough that wouldn't go away and he hurt all over it was the day after our son's fourth birthday when he was so out of breath that he couldn't walk across a
room that day in the ER a doctor told us that my healthy handsome vegetarian husband who had never smoked a day in his life had advanced lung cancer he had a softball sized tumor in one lung a walnut sized tumor in the other the cancer had cracked his ribs and broken his femur all the way across he had more than 40 brain tumors the doctor said to us I asked mate you have six to eight weeks to live I'm sorry and then he left the room caring for Jeff and our son became my new full-time
job our cute house in the woods was miles from the local Cancer Center and even farther from the specialists we spent hours in the car and I learned firsthand how fractured our healthcare system can be none of the hospitals could share data with each other I digitized all of Jeff's records but no provider could ever use them one day I drove 200 miles with my son in the car just to deliver an imaging disc and then there was the insurance company right off the bat they denied coverage for Jeff's treatment and they seemed to deny
everything as a matter of course unless I called them so I spent hours on the phone as for Jeff he just decided he was going to get better while I drove into research I learned everything I could about lung cancer in clinical trials and he asked me please to not share that information with him under no circumstances were statistics to be believed or was the word terminal ever to be used Jeff said that if he had any doubt and particularly if he had any doubt from me he didn't think he'd have the strength to get
better I had a blog I was known for my blog where I told my audience everything about my life and it started to diverge from the truth because I knew Jeff was reading it and he did pretty well in treatment after three months his CT scans no longer lit up that big tumor in his lungs was small and the brain tumors were no longer visible in an MRI but the oncologist said you've done really well but when the cancer comes back it's a win not an if the next day I heard Jeff say on the
phone to a family member the doctor says I've done well I'm gonna beat this I was so scared about what was coming but when I tried to tell anyone no one believed me because of course we all wanted to believe in Jeff of course the doctor was right that winter the brain tumor started to grow back and by the time he realized it it was fast one day at home he had a seizure and he died in my arms and we never had a chance to say goodbye so after the flurry of the memorial I
was back in the forest with my son somehow I got him to preschool every morning and picked him up in the afternoon but in the hours in-between horrible scenes of those last weeks just waited for me in every corner the number of people in my life got smaller and smaller it's like I was living behind a wall of glass but I had to make a living I took on a high-pressure job writing music for a Hollywood TV series I liked the work and it gave me something to do at night when frankly I hadn't slept
for months my music is made of many many loops of cello that I organize into a larger hole and while I could write music for television my own music had stopped I was stuck it's like I was playing the same loop over and over and over again I couldn't make it into a bigger hole if music is sound organized through time for me time had stopped I had no narrative eventually I had to give a concert that's what I do give concerts I warn the audience that I might dissolve into a puddle of tears we
love you Zoe and then everybody started to say we love you and I got a standing ovation before I even played a single note I was so surprised I don't remember any of that concert but I think it was good I just poured everything into it all of my heart and my isolation and my anger and I felt so accepted and connected and for the first time in ages I felt kind of okay so that was more than a year ago and since then I've played a lot more concerts I moved out of the forest
I'm not so isolated anymore and I've been making my own music music for me has always been a way to communicate like sometimes I feel it's just more direct it's more direct than words but what I hadn't realized before is how the listeners are such an important part of the process that the sharing of the music is as important as the making of it and when I play music and when somebody tells me that they experienced something even if it's different than what I intended I feel so understood and I feel connected it's like the
loops get bigger and bigger and bigger so I'm just gonna play a new song I wrote it in conjunction with this TED talk and it's not finished yet because I'm not finished it's working title is I think possible [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
