The Inner Critic

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.

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

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