The hollowing-out of my life - by Andrew Wu

On May 14th, 2025, I performed four piano pieces in my friend Holden Mui’s composition recital. I consider playing Holden’s music to be the most important project of my life (so far.) For more information, refer to this essay and my blog post on our Emergent Ventures grant, or my program notes: Moon River, Serenade & Toccata, Poetry. Parts II and III to come. Expect additional words and links to Spotify & YouTube recordings. I quit my job. I’m unhappy. I dislike my work. It’s a customer-facing role in healthcare software, so it matters, and it can’t be automated, but a decent LLM could do much of the daily drudgery. I tell my coworkers I’m planning to pursue a “personal project”—Holden and I received a grant to perform and record his piano compositions. I don’t tell them that I think some of Holden’s music compares to the masterworks of the greats. I don’t tell them that playing his music makes me feel like my two decades of classical piano training was worth it. I don’t tell them abou

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• Sidhant Chaliha