It takes courage to reach inside and tell the truth. I know this personally, having spent over 30 years writing and sharing music. It doesn’t matter if your truth comes out in the form of a memoir or a business plan or a piece of pottery or a discovery or idea or a dance. The challenges are the same.
We are all afraid to show the whole truth of who we are. We are all terrified of rejection, of being thrown into the woods and abandoned. What if you go all into making something and learn that you’re no good? What if you learn that you have nothing that special to say?
And that’s just in the making of the work! What about sharing what you've created? What happens when you’ve created your masterpiece - your epic poem or breakthrough idea or symphony - and people don’t like it? Or they don’t care about it? What if you fail massively and publicly? Ouch!
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But it takes more than courage to create and share something you love. It takes skill. For starters, there is a required level of skill in the medium in which you work. That means that you have some idea or are willing to learn how to write or play an instrument or dance at a hobbyist, amateur or professional level.
But there is also the overlooked skill of managing your own behaviors and reactions as you create and share something important to you It is a learned skill to know how to deal with all the hard stuff that comes up, such as fear, perfectionism, procrastination, failure, rejection, and criticism. This, rather than a lack of technical skill, is often where the discomfort gets so great that people abandon themselves and their creative dreams.
You can take years and put in the blood, sweat and tears to learn these skills the hard way, like I did, or you can learn everything right now, in one place , start creating immediately in a safe and warm environment and save yourself years of suffering.
What you will learn from me isn’t specific to musicians, artists, or “creative people.” It is not solely for professionals. It is for anyone who has ever felt the inclination to bring something original into the world.
THE COURSE
I teach a six-month, live, one-one-one course called The Creative Life. I developed it in 2017 and since then have taught it to scores of "artists" and "non-artists" alike. The course is divided into two sections:
PART ONE: THE CALLING
In the first half of this course, you learn the tools that save you from suffering when you create. So many people are riddled with fear and doubt that they never create what they desire. They procrastinate and never get it done because the fear of attempting to create something they care so much about and failing is bigger than their desire to create it. In The Calling, you'll be creating from day one in a safe and supportive environment.
In The Calling you will learn:
PART TWO: THE SHARE
In the second half of this course, you will learn the tools that save you from suffering when you present your work. So many people are terrified of being exposed as not good enough and of receiving criticism that they opt not to share their big dream at all. Or, they do share it but do so from a place of ego so that they end up suffering tremendously during the sharing process.
In The Share, you will learn to:
It would be my honor to help you finally create the work of your dreams and release it into the world. It would be my honor to help you become the person who is able to do that and to witness all the growth that spills over into your relationships and into every other area of your life through learning these skills.
Let's talk.
Songwriting found me in the ninth grade.
One day at after-school play practice I heard a friend play three chords on a piano - C major to F major to G major. I asked him what he was playing and he explained the concept of chords to me. Chords, he explained, are what underlie every song.
I went home and began to pound out those chords on the piano, coming back daily with questions: What happens if you change this note? What are other musical options? What about the black keys?
Turns out I was a songwriter. Song structures innately made sense to me. Who knew? Not I. Not my parents. Not my teachers. By then I had both tried and quit flute and piano (twice!). I, nor any of the adults around me, had any inkling that I had any musical talent.
I began to play the piano obsessively. It wasn't long before I was writing songs.
Throughout my teens and 20s, I worked and worked and worked at it. I learned to play the piano but it was too cumbersome to bring to gigs so, when I was 21, I bought a used guitar and taught myself how to play. I begrudgingly started singing because I couldn't find anyone else to sing my songs.
I attended the New England Conservatory after college and received a wonderful musical foundation. Over that first decade, I played gigs and bombed over and over again. I picked myself up and failed and did a great job and then bombed, made some headway, was humiliated again then got back up and tried again. One step forward, many back.
I kept pressing on.
Until my mid-30s, my musical life was in many ways was marked by pain. While my writing process was clean and open, I was filled with fear about every other aspect of the endeavor. I feared that my music wasn't good or original or interesting enough. I was secretly scared that musicians I played with were better then me. I was terrified that every song I wrote would be my last. I thought my audience hated me. I knew they could just tell that I was a bad singer.
At some point in my early 30s those doubts got the best of me and I stopped writing altogther. I didn't want to write unless my music was The Best (whatever that means!) and I thought it wasn't The Best. Thankfully, my desire to write was so strong that after a while I picked it up again.
A few years after that, I played a show in which I felt crippling anxiety before, overwhelming fear during, and burning shame after. I didn't want to get out of bed for days. I decided to stop performing until I could figure out how it could be fun. I knew something big had to change.
I took a few years off from performing and, with the help of teachers and healers, dug deeply into the question of why writing and sharing music caused me so much pain.
During that period I got some good answers, the main one being that I was too focused on myself and not focused enough on my audience. I was filled with ego. I gradually came back to writing and performing, this time with a completely new perspective. By adopting a lens of service, everything in my life shifted, including my relationship with writing and sharing music.
In 2017 I began coaching others on completing their own creative projects. Having moved from pain to joy in my own creative process, I knew I could help others do the same. I had the toolkit that could help people bring their own creative ambitions into the world and share with ease and joy.
I love writing and sharing music and helping people complete and share their own creative projects. I love working with people who have the courage to try and to create. I love providing an easier, gentler way to create and share what you love.
My family and I moved from Denver, Colorado to Israel in 2019. That has been the adventure of our lives. I continue to write and perform music and coach people from around the world. My mission is to strengthen Am Yisrael and to bring music and my particular skillset to serve whomever I can.
Thank you for being here.
