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Once in a blue moon in a charmed lifetime, there will come a creative process that flows from start to finish with almost no hitches. We should never expect this to be the norm. If it happens, it is a divine gift to which the only appropriate response is humility. Unfortunately for my humility practice, my first and only published book to date fell into this category. In a ridiculously serendipitous sequence of events, I conceived of the idea, wrote the proposal, secured a b

One thing I’ve seen consistently throughout my decades of performing and teaching is this: that the quality of the energy you put into the creative process corresponds directly to the quality of the outcome. This is true whether you are starting a business, writing a book, painting a picture, or anything else that demands an idea, skill, and dedication.

In May 2021, my husband saw a Facebook post from an old friend and colleague: “Who wants to start work in the X hotel spa in Austria next Monday?” “Me,” he wrote back playfully from our balcony in Berlin, the city where he was born and where I had lived for over 20 years. Like much of the world, we were not in love with lockdown in a big city and we had nowhere to go to wait it out. His business had collapsed overnight and there were no concerts for me to play.

Listening to music was always my refuge. So supreme was my nerdiness as a kid that I lost myself in Beethoven and Mahler symphonies while my classmates listened to INXS and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I wasn’t immune to pop music, but when there was some major emotion to process, which was every other day as a teenager, I reached for the big guns, the romantics: Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Rachmaninoff. They taught me I wasn’t alone, even if I was separated from my co-sufferers

The women I work with think they have to be extra hard on themselves in order to get ahead because that seems to be the way it’s always worked. They believe that, if they release the whip, it will all go to seed. And the whip has a tendency to show up at 3 AM, 4 AM. It has no respect for circadian rhythms. In my teaching career, I had a lot of students who were convinced they needed another strict exercise regimen or stamp of approval from a great musical guru in order to fe

I had just arrived at a tourist information center in a wild, otherworldly landscape. To the right, there was a narrow body of turquoise-hued water; mountains covered with glaciers and thick caps of snow towered over the other shore. To the left, there were dunes, tropical-looking patches of green, the idea of a beach somewhere beyond; bright light everywhere reflected by snow, sand, water. Without knowing how, I saw my distant destination: a quiet wooden lodge overlooking it

I am in the midst of a career pivot. Pivot! The word sounds so clean, so elegant. I picture a woman, one foot poised on a polished wooden floor in suede-soled dance shoes, about to tango in a different direction. Which reminds me of the milongas at the old Clärchens Ballhaus in Berlin, where I attempted to learn the Argentine tango with my husband years ago. Couples would pivot with sensual ease, going first this way, then that, then hesitating in place to draw out the tensi

A few weeks ago, we celebrated my mother’s life in a small circle of family and friends in New Jersey. Afterwards, some of us drove up to Massachusetts to visit my 99-year-old paternal grandmother, the mother we still have. We sat in the living room of her cottage, where she still lives alone, clinging fiercely to her independence and only lightly to the walls as she ambles, otherwise unaided, between rooms. When I tried to help her put on her jacket, she waved me away.

I was at a point of no return, or so I thought. My personal life was tied up in knots in more ways than I can even describe and my professional life felt like it had taken on a dangerous sort of momentum, like a reckless driver in a fast car without seatbelts. My response was to close my eyes and look neither left nor right. I figured I would see it through to whatever catastrophic end it might take.

On belonging, quitting, and refusing to cheer for nonsensical things The first time I quit something, it was because I was insulted. I had wanted to be a cheerleader despite having no interest in football or football players. I was ten years old at the beginning of seventh grade; I was a year and a half younger than my classmates and desperate to do something to make myself more normal in their eyes. I attended cheerleader training one Sunday in a cavernous gym full of overex