From fear to fortitude a journey through life and the forest

[Music]

[Applause]

there is emotion

that lives very deep inside me

that emotion is fear

do you remember the last time when you

were afraid

maybe that time when your airplane hit a

really bad turbulence

or how about sitting in a dentist chair

when he said there is nothing to worry

about

and reached for the drill or how about

performing a speech in front of a large

audience

since my passion is music and i work as

a full-time composer

i would like to share my experience

about how

fear has helped me to create some of my

most interesting

and unexpected work so let me take you

several years back

when composing music was only a distant

and seemingly

unreachable dream of mine my parents are

doctors

this is my mom and as a child

i spent most of my time after school in

hospital hallways

operating rooms and nurse offices

hearing the stories about people

crashing in road accidents

and bloated bodies that have been

fetched out of rivers

i grew up being afraid of almost

everything

i didn’t swim until the age of 26.

when i finally decided to take up

swimming lessons with children’s group

they all shouted at me with disapproval

thinking that

tasks were too easy for me and i made an

unfair competition for them

little did they know i was afraid of

darkness

afraid of heights afraid to upset my

parents who loved me dearly

and wished for me the best possible

future

therefore i followed their advice

graduated from a law school

and began to work as a secretary for the

president of the national railway

company

but dealing with the endless paperwork

quickly made me realize that it was not

the life i wanted

under my desk i kept a small electronic

keyboard

that i would secretly play when no one

else was around

while looking at the passing trains

behind the window

a silent voice of fear whispered in my

ear

what if that was it what if studying

composition

remains only unfulfilled dream

that fear motivated me to show some of

my early compositions to a professor

from latvian academy of music and it

became a turning point in my life

he encouraged me to take the entry exams

already the next year

and obviously i felt an enormous fear

it meant that i would compete with

people who were studying music for years

and were much better prepared was i good

enough

was it even possible should i better

give up

before it’s too late and i fail

miserably in front of the board of

examiners the fear that i felt

didn’t stop me it motivated me to work

twice as hard

and 12 months later i enrolled as a

student

of the composition department fear had

become not only my

enemy but also an ally

but that was only the beginning of our

beautiful friendship

living in a state of constant alarm and

anxiety

that was completely normal for me those

days

i discovered that a great source of

peace and tranquility for me

was nature and specifically forest

however having grown up in the city

i never had a chance to spend much time

in it

everything was great in the daylight and

when i was together with other people

but when i was alone

it turned into different story what

would be a nice and relaxed

role in the forest for most would

quickly become a vivid theater

of horror for me surely

the woods are full of wild animals who

are only waiting for the opportunity to

jump out from their hideout and turn me

into pieces

not to mention all the ghosts and cheeky

spirits that appear in the dark

but confronting the object of my fear

had proved to work in my advantage

before

could the same happen again what if i

wrote a piece of music

about forest what if trees and plants

were imagined to be alive and given a

voice

that idea became the first tree opera

at the beginning it was a short piece

for three singers

who sang from the tops of the trees and

three percussionists

playing on the ground but soon after the

performance

i was approached by finnish producers

who offered to stage another

tree opera in finland in an ancient

old growth forest my journey interfere

was going to be continued to find the

right location

our creative team set out on a research

trip

straight upon the arrival at the finnish

forest the local guide

pointed across the road and said that

the territory

was populated by bears

what bears real big

black and blood thirsty bears i looked

around to the rest of the group

no one else seemed to have realized the

inevitable death

that we were all facing

they began to walk along the path as if

nothing had happened

cracking jokes and enjoying the crisp

nordic air

i didn’t say anything because i was

afraid that they will only laugh at me

and tell me to chill on our way back

we found a bear’s poo on the path

as if that wasn’t enough in the evening

they decided to watch vernet hatchok’s

grizzly man

a film where the main character and his

girlfriend

are eaten by a bear

on our first trip to finland i never

went into the forest on my own

but when we came back the second time i

had decided to deal with it

armed with a wooden stick i entered the

woods

on my own i used the stick to hit the

trees

and sang out loud some latvian folk

songs in order to scare

off the beasts jesus

nothing happened no one showed up i was

fine

the third time i was already jogging to

the location of the event

with my headphones on listening to

prodigy smack my up

and suddenly i realized that my fear

wasn’t a disadvantage it was actually my

strength

that helped me in composition process

since i was still writing the score i

used that fear to spark my

imagination i could imagine all kinds of

creatures

lurking from behind the trees and the

black holes

between their roots i could easily see

the way those creatures move and hear

the different sounds they make

three oprah winthros in finland was a

project

that involved a crew of more than 50

people

eight singers eight musicians a team of

architects and

artists who did an amazing job by

building the stage using only

biodegradable materials

the wonderful organizers of mustard in

the artist residency

and others some of the singers now had

to confront their own fear

having to sing from the platforms that

were placed 13 meters above the ground

to get them up there we had to use the

help of professional climbers

but four different companies refused

saying that it was not possible

luckily there was the fifth one fear

that had initially been

only an obstacle now had turned into a

creative force

i learned that it is a very powerful

emotion

that can be transformed into other kinds

of energy

and lead to a constructive action

the process of overcoming fear began to

give me a sense of thrill

and excitement it forced me to leave my

comfort zone

and venture into territories that would

often surprise me

for example on the surface it might look

that tree opera is simply my attempt

at becoming more sensitive to the forest

as a special and unique environment that

frightens

but on the second thought i’m now able

to discover

how deeply forest influences our daily

lives

being a city girl i had never before

realized that

artificial light heat and fuel that

moves the city life

is the way we still depend on the forest

whose fossils are burning throughout our

cities

with the air we breathe we inhale what

forests

exhale what we exhale trees

inhale in whatever way the human

civilization has tried to eliminate

forests we are tightly interconnected

without forests we would not be alive

none of these discoveries would have

become apparent to me

if i would not have dared to overcome my

fear

we all know that fear can easily become

a destructive energy

preventing us from reaching our full

potential

but the opposite can also be true

i believe that we can use our fear as a

source of inspiration

and discovery fear can become a creative

force

i invite you now to listen to the intro

part of the tree opera

called radicas which in translation from

latin means

roots

[Music]

hmm

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

hello

[Music]

hmm

[Music]

foreign

[Music]

foreign

[Music]

[Laughter]

[Music]

get down

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

you