Tori Amos Still Wrestles With Her Muses Tori Amos in New York in October. "When you're not on the cover of the magazines anymore, then you realize that the work has to be great," she said in a recent interview. Over the past two decades, Tori Amos has sold more than 12 million albums and influenced a generation of singer-songwriters with pop songs that fuse the brashness of rock, the poetry of mysticism and the politics of gender and survival. A late baby boomer who is now 49, Ms. Amos this fall released "Gold Dust," a career retrospective recorded with the Netherlands" Metropole Orchestra. She called recently from a Paris hotel to talk about art and aging. The following interview has been condensed and edited. Do the muses visit you with the same frequency and intensity they did 20 years ago? They can be quite ruthless, so I'm not going to say to you that it's an easy collaboration, because it isn't. It's not as if I snap my fingers and greatness comes. A lot of my interpretation of what I'm hearing, sometimes I'm throwing 60, 70 percent of it away, because the magic isn't there. It's about having endurance. That's important. There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine. Take a different route to the coffee shop to see what you can see and hear. When we get in a routine we can become zombie-like and shut down. It's about discipline. You have to push yourself. Speaking of which, you've been working on a musical and I gather it's been arduous, personally and professionally. Nick Hytner, who runs the British National Theater and has been the mentor for "The Light Princess," told me years ago that writing a musical is a glorious nightmare, and it's come to be true. It has been arduous, but that's O.K. What I will say to you is I've had to really learn what being part of a creative team is about. Everybody has had to really put their heart and soul into it, look at our own relationships with our own parents, and it's affected all of us. You're the parent of a daughter, a preteen. What kind of impact do mothering and making art have on each other? Tash [Natashya, Amos's child with her husband and sound engineer, Mark Hawley] is now 12, and she's in boarding school. It was her choice. She wanted to go to Hogwart's and ended up at Sylvia Young Performing Arts School in London. Tash is an only child so we have a different relationship than if she had siblings, and my mom has been influential in that over the years. She's always said to me, "Look, the musician who's so critical needs to take herself off." And that's what I've been doing over the years. I travel a lot and write. And that way when I'm with Tash, stepping into the mother role, I don't need to bring that overly critical songwriter into everything I do. As my mom said to me, "Nurture. Be supportive. You don't have to agree with everything but you don't need to be the harsh critic with those that you love. I can see how the young girls really get hurt when their moms are critical, or vice versa when they're overly critical of their moms. It can be so painful. Tash has quite a sense of humor and she'll say to me, "What do you think you're walking out of this hotel in?" And I'll say, "It's comfortable." And she'll say, "No soccer mom is walking out of this hotel room. You'll be called Tori Anus. It's kind of funny that I have a daughter who understands. Yeah, the fact is we live in an ageist society, particularly in regards to women, and the field you work in is especially brutal. How has our cultural obsession with youth affected you personally? How do you deal with it? I'm glad you brought it up, because it's reality. It's so obvious to me but sometimes I find that the masses don't want to look at it. The question is what comes first, the culture being open or the women that strive forward through that jungle with their machete to create the work that inspires? If you and I are waiting for the culture to change, we might die before that happens. Therefore it's about refusing to have that projection put at my feet, and pushing through, and creating. You know, you have to. There's this line in "Job's Coffin" about how you must out-create that destructive tendency, and so it's about out-creating destruction, even destructive thoughts. You're luckier than most, with a devoted fan base and vitality and a record contract. But getting older in the music business has got to be psychologically or spiritually trying. Correct me if I'm wrong. Video by ToriAmosVEVO Tori Amos - Flavor Yes, yes, yes, of course it is, but you have to discipline the mind, discipline the will. You have to be a warrior. You have to fight the belief system. It's the only way or I become president of Victims Anonymous. And so we're back to the work. The energy has to be put into making the work vital, and not settling for something that is just good, because there's no room, don't you see? When you're in your 20s, there's maybe a little room for you to not be at the top of your artistic game, if you look good on a magazine cover. When you're not on the cover of the magazines anymore, then you realize that the work has to be great. And in order for that to happen we're back to traveling, being open to stories, being open to creating whatever you need to create in order to stand back and say, "I respect the work with all my heart and soul." You've said that songs take on new identities over time because the audience collectively imbues them with fresh meaning. Joan Anderman, a former music critic for The Boston Globe, writes a blog, middlemojo.com, that explores, among other things, how artists change and adapt as they age. 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