Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Hello revisionist history fans, it's been way too long.
Speaker 1: In case you're curious, we are hard at work cooking
Speaker 1: up all sorts of mischief for you already. I've been
Speaker 1: to Alabama twice. That's how deep we're going this year.
Speaker 1: But while we wait for all those new episodes, I
Speaker 1: wanted to share with you an interview I did with
Speaker 1: my friend and colleague Rick Rubin. If you know your
Speaker 1: Pushkin shows, you'll know that Rick is the driving force
Speaker 1: behind our music podcast Broken Record, in addition, of course,
Speaker 1: to being maybe the most important music producer of his generation.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's worked with Metallica, Adele, Johnny Cash, the
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys, jay Z, the Chili Peppers, Neil Young, on
Speaker 1: and on. I met Rick years ago, and I've been
Speaker 1: out to Shangola many times, which is the famous recording
Speaker 1: studio Rick runs up in Malibu. Rick and I once
Speaker 1: interviewed Bruce Springsteen together, which is an experience I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: If you meet Rick, you'll understand immediately what makes him
Speaker 1: such a brilliant producer, because he's one of the most
Speaker 1: open and generous listeners I've ever met. Anyway, over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, very quietly, Rick's been working on
Speaker 1: a book about creativity called The Creative Act, A Way
Speaker 1: of Being. I read it in one sitting. I loved it.
Speaker 1: I called up Rick and I asked him, can we
Speaker 1: talk about it? And what follows is that interview which
Speaker 1: I wanted to share with all of you. We rend
Speaker 1: it in the Broken Record feed for the music die hards,
Speaker 1: but I thought it made sense to run it again
Speaker 1: here because although it's a book about creativity by a
Speaker 1: music producer, and many of the examples Rick talks about
Speaker 1: or about music, it's not a music book. It's this
Speaker 1: beautiful exploration about how to open up your imagination that
Speaker 1: I believe has useful insights for all of us. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here goes our conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Rick. Hey,
Speaker 1: So I have a million questions and that I thought
Speaker 1: the fun thing to do would be to go through
Speaker 1: and I would just read you things I underlined, because
Speaker 1: there are things that I would love for you to
Speaker 1: talk or that we could talk about, but to you
Speaker 1: in particular. But one of the fantastic things about this
Speaker 1: book is that I've almost rarely read a book where
Speaker 1: if I felt like I was been I was being
Speaker 1: invited to contribute, do you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: every time you made a point, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I have something to add about that or this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've never read a book like that where I'm like,
Speaker 1: half the time I'm talking to myself as I'm reading it.
Speaker 1: So that's what I thought. We would get into that
Speaker 1: as well a little bit. But that's great, that's great.
Speaker 1: I'm so I'm so happy. First of all, I'm happy
Speaker 1: like it, happy you read it, happy you like it,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy that it had that effect on you.
Speaker 1: And there I will tell you there was a version
Speaker 1: of the book, an unsuccessful version of the book, maybe
Speaker 1: four years ago, that talked about a lot of the
Speaker 1: same stuff that the book talks about. The content was similar,
Speaker 1: and the writing was beautiful, but it wouldn't have elicited
Speaker 1: the reaction that you had, and that's why it didn't
Speaker 1: come out then. And from the beginning, the purpose of
Speaker 1: the book was always I want people to make great things.
Speaker 1: I want people, I want as much beautiful art in
Speaker 1: the world as possible. I'm a fan of beautiful things
Speaker 1: and exciting things and new things happening all the time,
Speaker 1: and the book was like a call to arms to
Speaker 1: go out and make something beautiful change the world, you know.
Speaker 1: So I've many questions, but I wanted to start with
Speaker 1: a very general one, which is, because you're in the
Speaker 1: world of music, we're reading a lot of this through
Speaker 1: the lens of music. We're assuming you're talking about musicians,
Speaker 1: and you give examples of musicians from from time and time.
Speaker 1: You will also talk about visual artists. You add that
Speaker 1: into the mix. But I was curious about are we
Speaker 1: really talking about all art here or is there a
Speaker 1: difference in the way that music and visual art are
Speaker 1: done that that you're specifically speaking to. I think it's
Speaker 1: how all creative choices are made. So not only does
Speaker 1: it include the visual arts, it includes starting a new business,
Speaker 1: a new recipe you're making as a chef, architectural choices
Speaker 1: you might make, solving a problem in life where you're
Speaker 1: not getting along with a family member and you want
Speaker 1: to get closer to them and have better communication. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Originally I thought of it as more of a how
Speaker 1: to book about creativity. It became a book about how
Speaker 1: to be, how to be in the world to allow
Speaker 1: creativity to happen, and as it turns out how to
Speaker 1: be in the world that allows creativity to happen solves
Speaker 1: a lot of issues. Yeah, I did feel like about
Speaker 1: halfway through, I began to forget you were in music,
Speaker 1: and I felt like he was starting to talk more
Speaker 1: broadly about everyone. It's hard to escape the assumption that
Speaker 1: this is going to be a book about music at
Speaker 1: the very beginning. But there's so there's a couple I
Speaker 1: want to start reading to you some things and getting
Speaker 1: you to to talk about them a little bit. One
Speaker 1: is without the spiritual components from page from the chapter
Speaker 1: called the Unseen. Without the spiritual component, the artist works
Speaker 1: with a crucial disadvantage. It's a really really interesting idea,
Speaker 1: and one really that I had heard that phrase that
Speaker 1: way before. What is a disadvantage here? And what are
Speaker 1: you meaning by the term spiritual component? The spiritual component
Speaker 1: is belief in something bigger, something different, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: It could be believing in some universal power, believing that
Speaker 1: if you walk under a ladder you'll have bad luck,
Speaker 1: you know, it could it could be anything that takes
Speaker 1: you out of the ordinary to allow you to see
Speaker 1: a wilder potential is good when you're making art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the goal of making art is not to show you
Speaker 1: just what everybody else sees. It's to see what's possible.
Speaker 1: And what's possible is radical. It really is radical. It's
Speaker 1: like we've built very very small world for ourselves with
Speaker 1: our reason. Yeah. Have you ever had a mystical experience
Speaker 1: in your life? Yeah? Okay, do you want to describe
Speaker 1: it at all? Oh? Well, I mean maybe my definition
Speaker 1: of mystical I have had. I'm open, I'm wide open
Speaker 1: however you describe it. I mean I've had moments probably
Speaker 1: around the death of my father would be an example
Speaker 1: of the death of my father, was a lot more
Speaker 1: than just about the death of my father. I guess
Speaker 1: that's the best way. You become aware in that moment
Speaker 1: that oh, he's part of joining going somewhere whatever, much much, much,
Speaker 1: much much larger and older than we would have imagined.
Speaker 1: That's that was probably the closest I came to that
Speaker 1: that I saw that in the gift of my grief
Speaker 1: was that, yes, was being becoming aware of that. Would
Speaker 1: you say that based on that you have been able
Speaker 1: to live at times in a deeper way, based on
Speaker 1: that experience, that it opened something in you to allow
Speaker 1: you to see more than you saw before. Yes, I
Speaker 1: absolutely I would. I would count that experience is one
Speaker 1: of the most crucial of my life. And in a
Speaker 1: million years, I would never have thought that the death
Speaker 1: of someone I love more than anyone else would open
Speaker 1: me up in that way. That would be an example
Speaker 1: of touching something. I would say spiritual, something, something unseen,
Speaker 1: something from beyond, something that wouldn't have made sense to
Speaker 1: you before it happened. Yeah, if someone would have described
Speaker 1: it to you, you might have thought, that doesn't really
Speaker 1: make sense to me, But then you got to feel it,
Speaker 1: and then you understood. And belief is that way. There's
Speaker 1: a part in the book that talks about what you
Speaker 1: believe in doesn't have to be true, that doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: but belief has a power, and belief allows you to
Speaker 1: go further than you thought you can go. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of tools in the book that
Speaker 1: talk about overcoming voices that tell us we can't do
Speaker 1: things because we've learned. We can't do things. You know,
Speaker 1: we've learned what's possible and what's impossible. And if we
Speaker 1: accept what's possible and what's impossible, we can't go beyond.
Speaker 1: If the right brothers accepted it was impossible for man
Speaker 1: to fly, we still wouldn't be flying. All of the
Speaker 1: great revolutions that have happened have happened because someone believed
Speaker 1: in something that everyone thought wasn't possible. Yeah, this taps
Speaker 1: into a larger theme in your book, which I thought
Speaker 1: was really powerful, which is time and again you come
Speaker 1: back to the idea that the artists, one of the
Speaker 1: artists jobs is our obligations is to look outside of
Speaker 1: him or herself. I mean, you do talk about how
Speaker 1: you need there's a chapter where you talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of paying very close attention to what's going on
Speaker 1: inside your own head and heart. Like here's an example
Speaker 1: not long after that first quote, when looking for a
Speaker 1: solution to a creative problem, pay close attention to what's
Speaker 1: happening around you. And what I love about that is like,
Speaker 1: it's not that you think back over your history, remember
Speaker 1: some important thing you read five years ago written by
Speaker 1: some genius. No, No, you're talking about in the moment
Speaker 1: here and now look around and you can find kind
Speaker 1: of solutions clues. What have you just in the kind
Speaker 1: of most prosaic details of your existence at that moment,
Speaker 1: Like in the room where you are yes. Now, I
Speaker 1: can't say it works one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 1: It's not saying that, it's saying that if you live
Speaker 1: in a way where you're really open and paying attention
Speaker 1: to everything around you, the answers you're looking for are
Speaker 1: knocking on the door all the time. They don't come
Speaker 1: when you're searching for them. They come when you're open
Speaker 1: and allow them to come. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I talk about in the book is if you have
Speaker 1: a problem them to solve, instead of thinking about it,
Speaker 1: hold the question in your awareness and go for a
Speaker 1: walk or swim or do something that takes your mind
Speaker 1: off of what you're trying to solve and engages you
Speaker 1: in something else. Yea. And most often when you're engaged
Speaker 1: in something else, the part of you that's in the
Speaker 1: way of solving the problem loses its control over you,
Speaker 1: and you through whatever it is. You can find a
Speaker 1: way to go for a drive something where you have
Speaker 1: to you have to pay attention enough. If you're driving,
Speaker 1: you can sort of drive on autopilot in you know,
Speaker 1: without really paying attention. But if you're really not paying attention,
Speaker 1: you'll crash. You can you can tune out that much
Speaker 1: so there is some part of you that's occupied when
Speaker 1: you're driving with the work at hand. The reason I
Speaker 1: thought that was interesting was I wondered, I mean that
Speaker 1: one thing that struck me in could be totally wrong.
Speaker 1: But my sense is that increasingly, and a lot of
Speaker 1: creative fields, creativity is defined as something that is internal
Speaker 1: and deliberate. You look within yourself and your own experience
Speaker 1: and you mind them, and you're talking about something that
Speaker 1: is in part external and unconscious. And I have a
Speaker 1: good friend who's a screenwriter, and I think by virtue
Speaker 1: of being my friend and watching, I'm a reporter, a journalist,
Speaker 1: you know, I call people up and interview them and
Speaker 1: record what they say. He's changed the way he writes screenplays.
Speaker 1: Now he does as much reporting as he does as
Speaker 1: much as someone who's writing a nonfiction book. And he's
Speaker 1: doing it not because he's just cutting and pasting what
Speaker 1: he hears in the world and do is but he's
Speaker 1: doing a version of what you're talking about, which is
Speaker 1: he's opening himself up to the if he wants to
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, scientists, he goes and talks to
Speaker 1: lots and lots of scientists, and it opens him up
Speaker 1: to the way they think and feel, and that kind
Speaker 1: of approach to creativity strikes me as being one that
Speaker 1: seems out of vogue in a certain way. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not what they're teaching in writing schools. No, it's
Speaker 1: not what they're teaching. And there was a line, there's
Speaker 1: a line in the book, and I only know it
Speaker 1: because I was working on the audiobook yesterday and I
Speaker 1: read it yesterday, and it's against funny countintuitive line that
Speaker 1: self expression is not about you, and it's just such
Speaker 1: a and when I read it, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: stopped me in my tracks, even though it's an idea
Speaker 1: from several years ago, but it hit me hard again,
Speaker 1: you know, recognizing it. So everything we are comes from
Speaker 1: outside of us. The data that we take in from
Speaker 1: which we make, whatever it is that we make comes
Speaker 1: from outside of us, all of it. None of it
Speaker 1: starts with us. Everything starts outside of us. So we
Speaker 1: have a storehouse of all of the stuff that we've
Speaker 1: experienced over the course of our lives, and then we
Speaker 1: can find connect between those things, and we can find
Speaker 1: connections between those things from the past and these things
Speaker 1: happening now, whatever it may be, and when you're looking
Speaker 1: for it. It's surprising how often the answers are right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is reading another with my favorite lines. Distraction is
Speaker 1: not procrastination. Procrastination consistently undermines our ability to make things.
Speaker 1: Distraction is a strategy in service of the work, which
Speaker 1: is to your point. So a lot of what this
Speaker 1: exposure to the world outside of us is about is
Speaker 1: a kind of productive distraction, right, That's what you're saying
Speaker 1: with that, it's a combination. There's a productive distraction and
Speaker 1: an inspiration. The connection with the outside world also can
Speaker 1: be really inspiring. It can be inspiring if you pick
Speaker 1: places that are inspiring. I try to pick places to
Speaker 1: be where I find inspiration on a daily basis. You
Speaker 1: have a little moment where you're talking about how different
Speaker 1: all of us have different strategies, or that kind of
Speaker 1: inspirational place, and you said Andy Warhol was said to
Speaker 1: create with a television, radio, and record player all on simultaneously.
Speaker 1: For eminem the noise of a single TV set is
Speaker 1: his preferred backdrop. Marself Bruce lined as well as with
Speaker 1: sound of absorbing cork closed the drapes and warrior plugs.
Speaker 1: And I was curious what's yours. Do you have a
Speaker 1: kind of mode like that, I would say I like
Speaker 1: to be in a quiet place, big beautiful nature, less people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd say natural beauty and less people. It's funny. I'm
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite. I was right at a very productive
Speaker 1: morning in a coffee shop. It was crowded, and I
Speaker 1: was seating it like literally right up against the six
Speaker 1: foot four kid. I think it was like twenty two
Speaker 1: years old, sitting next to his parents, and the kid
Speaker 1: was super interesting, and he was talking about the PLO
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and yas or Arafat, and there
Speaker 1: was something about like I don't know, I can't put
Speaker 1: my finger on what. That kind of triggered. After a while,
Speaker 1: I kind of he became my background noise. But it
Speaker 1: was such a different voice that I was fixing a
Speaker 1: chapter of something I was working on, and I just
Speaker 1: suddenly saw the solution, and I think it was what
Speaker 1: we were talking about. It was some combination of there's
Speaker 1: something about that being surrounded by unusual voices that really
Speaker 1: wakes me up to the range of solutions. Right. I'm reminded, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's like there's this kid who's thinking about something I
Speaker 1: don't think about in a context I'm not in. Who's
Speaker 1: super interesting, Like, wow, so you know there's a solution
Speaker 1: out there. It was that. It was funny because I
Speaker 1: had just read your chapter which talks about that, and
Speaker 1: I was in that situation. Is that a place that
Speaker 1: you go to every day many days? I like, I
Speaker 1: need I need so, I need voices. I need noise
Speaker 1: and voices and activity in order to be able to create.
Speaker 1: During the pandemic, I had one Sturgill Simpson album that
Speaker 1: I played over and over and over again. He was
Speaker 1: my voice? Was it meta? Modern? Met? What is that album?
Speaker 1: Fantastic album? Whatever? So good? It's great, he's great. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's out there. He helped me through many,
Speaker 1: many lean times during the pandemic. But that idea, I
Speaker 1: almost feel like you're describing the things you have learned
Speaker 1: by working with elite practitioners of the art of creativity.
Speaker 1: But I was struck by the gap between what you've
Speaker 1: learned from the top performers and what we're teaching to
Speaker 1: people at the outset, and that it concerned me. I
Speaker 1: almost feel like there's a gap between what we're telling
Speaker 1: people and what the truly creative are doing. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. On the same point on this gap, there's
Speaker 1: a moment when you're talking about it's actually my favorite
Speaker 1: part of the book, when you're talking about strategies for
Speaker 1: unblocking yourself into all the different ways that you think
Speaker 1: about that or approach that. When you're working with people
Speaker 1: and one of them was right right in the voice
Speaker 1: of someone else, that's what we said, and Rick, once again,
Speaker 1: in the world we live in, that is an incendiary thought.
Speaker 1: That's called appropriation. And you have this beautiful I want
Speaker 1: to quote in a similar vein you say there are
Speaker 1: countless examples of imitation turning into legitimate innovation. Having a
Speaker 1: romanticized vision of an artist, genre, or tradition may allow
Speaker 1: you to create something new because you see it from
Speaker 1: a different perspective than those closer to it. So not
Speaker 1: only you saying that it can be really useful to
Speaker 1: inhabit someone else's voice or tradition, you're also saying that
Speaker 1: that can spark a whole new, more beautiful, greater kind
Speaker 1: of innovation because you're approaching it from your own perspective.
Speaker 1: You talk about Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns being a good
Speaker 1: example of that that they transform understanding of what a
Speaker 1: Western is. I thought a lot about the audiobook we
Speaker 1: did with Paul Simon when he's talking about Graceland, which
Speaker 1: is that right, yes? Or talking heads, you know, remain
Speaker 1: in light or fear of music. Those were inspired by
Speaker 1: African rhythms. Yeah, there's a great tradition in doing this.
Speaker 1: I mean if pretty much the best of everything was
Speaker 1: based on something else, always, and then it's the it's
Speaker 1: through the new interpretations. Like the Beatles were doing American
Speaker 1: motown music, but because they were English and because of
Speaker 1: the distance, they weren't trying to do it different. They
Speaker 1: did it different because they were different. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: was the beauty of it. And that's how the Beatles
Speaker 1: became the Beatles, you know. Yeah, they became the Beatles
Speaker 1: because they are the Beatles. But the music they were
Speaker 1: doing was they were trying to do motown or as
Speaker 1: you point out, the Ramones were trying to be the
Speaker 1: base City Rollers, yes, which is a yeah. Johnny Ramone
Speaker 1: told me that himself, so I know that to be true.
Speaker 1: That is so hilary for those of you who don't
Speaker 1: know the basic de rollers. They were just about the
Speaker 1: dumbest bubble bubble gum band of the They were like
Speaker 1: the boy band of the early seventies, and the Ramones
Speaker 1: think that they had that song s A t U
Speaker 1: r d a y n s A t u y
Speaker 1: And then if you listen to the Ramones, they have
Speaker 1: those type of gabba gabby you we accept you know,
Speaker 1: similar types of chance. Yes, that's right, Yeah they take
Speaker 1: it and they twist it in this brilliant, beautiful, revolutionary way.
Speaker 1: But so we look about I sort of harp on this,
Speaker 1: but how do we get away from that notion? So
Speaker 1: it is legitimately the case. And I know this because
Speaker 1: I are examples of people who I know who are
Speaker 1: legitimately terrified of even so much as dipping their toe
Speaker 1: in another traditionary voice for fear of being criticized. It's
Speaker 1: almost like we're terrified of the sources of creativity. We're
Speaker 1: terrified to admit to ourselves what we're doing in the
Speaker 1: name of creativity. The reason someone imitates someone else is
Speaker 1: because they love someone else. That's why it's only flattery
Speaker 1: when someone is inspired by someone else. If you if
Speaker 1: you decided to write because someone else wrote and you
Speaker 1: like their writing, and you decide to become a writer
Speaker 1: that's not against them, that doesn't take anything away from them,
Speaker 1: that's a tribute to them. Yeah, And all of the
Speaker 1: music that gets made based on loving someone else's music
Speaker 1: is attribute to them, whether it be people of the
Speaker 1: same color or different color, doesn't matter that it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with that. That's not what it's about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a current misread of the situation. Yes, you know
Speaker 1: what it is. And it goes to something else. You
Speaker 1: talk a little bit, You talk about the abundance mindset
Speaker 1: in getting to that part of the book. You talk
Speaker 1: about the importance of understanding that number of ideas, essentially
Speaker 1: the number of ideas out there is infinite, not finite. Yes,
Speaker 1: when you understand it's infinite there, then you're not scared
Speaker 1: of imitating someone because you're like, there's a million things
Speaker 1: out there. We don't we don't have to hold tightly
Speaker 1: to what we've done and be react in a hostile
Speaker 1: manner if someone tries to imitate us, because there's a
Speaker 1: million fishing to see, you know, it's fine. I think
Speaker 1: the idea that the number of new ideas is infinite
Speaker 1: has kind of fallen out of favor somehow. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's just odd. It's I mean, people can be wrong
Speaker 1: and it's okay, you know, like that's fine. In some ways,
Speaker 1: the fact that's fallen out of favor means the people
Speaker 1: who embrace the tried and true methods that have worked
Speaker 1: will find greater success and they'll be less stuff in between. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is your understanding of this notion of abundance? Is it
Speaker 1: a product of having worked for I don't know how
Speaker 1: many years you've been in the industry, many decades. Did
Speaker 1: you feel the same way when you were twenty one
Speaker 1: and there was Is it natural for the very for
Speaker 1: the very young to be much more jealous, touch more
Speaker 1: jealously guard their ideas because they haven't had years and
Speaker 1: years of experience in seeing the kind of waterfall of
Speaker 1: ideas that's out there. Is that fair? No, it's fair.
Speaker 1: I've always felt this way because I see it, you know,
Speaker 1: I see all of the ideas I see. I want
Speaker 1: to learn everything. There's no time. There's no time to
Speaker 1: learn all the things I want to learn. I'm endlessly curious,
Speaker 1: and I'm always looking I'm thinking back to It's really
Speaker 1: more about what we were just talking about. But The
Speaker 1: reason I learned about reggae music was because of the Clash.
Speaker 1: If it weren't for the Clash, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I would have ever come in contact with reggae music.
Speaker 1: So is it bad that the Clash did reggae music
Speaker 1: because they turned on a whole generation of people who
Speaker 1: otherwise may not have ever heard about it. Do you know?
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's a crazy idea to think that,
Speaker 1: not to be inspired by the things that are inspiring
Speaker 1: us and to show it and to own it and
Speaker 1: to fly the flag of these great trends or genres
Speaker 1: is nothing more beautiful. Yeah, we're gonna pause for a
Speaker 1: quick break, and then we'll be back with more from
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell. We're back with more from
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell. I remember pretty early in
Speaker 1: my writing career when I was unhappy. I thought I
Speaker 1: was I was limited as a writer. And I remember
Speaker 1: sitting down with I've forgotten which book it was, one
Speaker 1: of Michael Lewis's books and one of Janet Malcolm's books,
Speaker 1: two narrative nonfiction writers who are extraordinarily good at the
Speaker 1: one thing I thought I was weak at which is
Speaker 1: character literally sitting down and studying them like they were
Speaker 1: a talmud, Like, what's he doing here? How much time
Speaker 1: does he spend literally measuring how much time does he
Speaker 1: spend describing someone? I was getting itchy feet. I would
Speaker 1: I didn't induce a character, and I think, oh, you
Speaker 1: must be bored of the characteristic And then I would
Speaker 1: Michael Lewison was like, he is the same character the
Speaker 1: whole book and we're not bored of him. How does
Speaker 1: he do that? Right? Or Jet and Malcolm would like
Speaker 1: peel one layer after another off the onion. You'd be like,
Speaker 1: there can't be any onion left. There was always onion left.
Speaker 1: I was like, how does she do that? To your
Speaker 1: point about you had that lovely thing about the back
Speaker 1: and forth between the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Brian
Speaker 1: Wilson sees White Album and says, is it White Album
Speaker 1: that inspired? It starts with it starts with rubber Soul.
Speaker 1: It starts with rubber Soul. Yeah, And then based on
Speaker 1: Brian Wilson hearing Rubber Soul, he makes pet Sounds based
Speaker 1: on the song God only Knows, Paul has the idea
Speaker 1: for Sergeant Pepper. Yeah, and the point that I make
Speaker 1: there is not They aren't doing that at a competition.
Speaker 1: It was out of love and inspiration, and it was
Speaker 1: an upward spiral between them of inspire reaction, inspirer reaction,
Speaker 1: lifting the level, lifting the level. It was they made
Speaker 1: each other better. They weren't trying to beat each other.
Speaker 1: It was different than that they loved each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: explain to me. It's suit of obvious, but I'd love
Speaker 1: for you to talk about it. Why is it important
Speaker 1: that it comes out of love and not competition. What
Speaker 1: is it about a competitive drive that is more limiting
Speaker 1: than a drive of love. Well, first of all, we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Majority of what we're talking about is art,
Speaker 1: and the way that I see art is it really
Speaker 1: is about our own self expression. So I'll give you
Speaker 1: an example. I just wrote a book. You write a
Speaker 1: lot of books. The idea of Rick's book competing with
Speaker 1: Malcolm's book is an insane idea. You write a Malcolm book,
Speaker 1: I write a Rick book. No one but Malcolm can
Speaker 1: write a Malcolm book. No one but Rick can write
Speaker 1: a Rick book. They're mutually exclusive things. Everything is like that.
Speaker 1: So if you're focused on beating someone else, it makes
Speaker 1: me think you're not actually playing the same game that
Speaker 1: I'm playing. The game that I'm playing is I want
Speaker 1: to make the best thing that I can make for me,
Speaker 1: that's all, and if someone else likes it, it's great.
Speaker 1: There's a chapter in the book about success, which is
Speaker 1: success is when you feel good enough about it, a
Speaker 1: piece of work you've made to share it in the world.
Speaker 1: That's the moment of success. Whatever happens after that's completely
Speaker 1: out of our control. But the moment that you sign off,
Speaker 1: it's like here, okay, here we go, and then move
Speaker 1: on to your next project. That's where success lies. So
Speaker 1: to work on a vibration of competition. It's one thing.
Speaker 1: If it's about running a race, this is not running
Speaker 1: a race. This really is always apples and oranges. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although you know it's funny, I think you're selling your
Speaker 1: idea a little short. I was thinking about this when
Speaker 1: I read that part. I'm a big fan of cars,
Speaker 1: and there's a very particular moment in the early aughts
Speaker 1: when car design goes through a stage that I think
Speaker 1: everyone in the who loves cars thinks was one of
Speaker 1: a kind of extraordinary moment of it was a kind
Speaker 1: of when cars started to look very kind of bowhousing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know cars, But there was a
Speaker 1: very beautiful E Class that Mercedes put out in the
Speaker 1: early adds, which is very very clean lines, round headlights.
Speaker 1: At the same time, Audie put out the first iteration
Speaker 1: of the style they're still in, but it was very
Speaker 1: clean and very They all were doing this a very
Speaker 1: similar aesthetic, which was a rejection of a lot of
Speaker 1: the kind of clutter and complication that had gone on
Speaker 1: in the previous generation of car design. And you could
Speaker 1: see it across all the kind of elite carmakers. And
Speaker 1: you know, normally you would say these are guys who
Speaker 1: really are in competition with each other. They are battling
Speaker 1: over a finite marketplace. They're making the same thing cars
Speaker 1: of people drive. But they weren't all pursuing this bouthhouse
Speaker 1: design strategy. It was out of love. Absolutely. The guy
Speaker 1: at Audie saw that E Class and it's like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's a gorgeous car. I want to do
Speaker 1: my version of it. I mean, there was no it
Speaker 1: wasn't like let's take market share from you know, at
Speaker 1: that level. I mean maybe it was in the marketing group,
Speaker 1: but at the level of the designer. It was clearly
Speaker 1: they all fell in love with this particular So I
Speaker 1: think it goes beyond what we think of as the
Speaker 1: as the art narrowly as the arts. I think you
Speaker 1: see it everywhere that fundamentally, in a million different ways.
Speaker 1: Even people who are locked in competition with each other
Speaker 1: sometimes push that aside and do things out of a
Speaker 1: genuine affection for what they were Just they're just blown
Speaker 1: away by something. They say you they're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: here's an even more metaphysical version of that, where the
Speaker 1: same thing happens, but it's not a reaction. So in
Speaker 1: the example you gave, Mercedes came out with a beautiful
Speaker 1: new design, an Audie, inspired by that design, made something new.
Speaker 1: They're also throughout history examples of two or three similar
Speaker 1: novel approaches entering at the same time. Yeah, not based
Speaker 1: on seeing each other, yeah, just based on it's time
Speaker 1: for this. Yeah. And maybe it's possible that the thing
Speaker 1: that inspired Mercedes to want to do it is the
Speaker 1: thing that inspired Audie to want to do it. But
Speaker 1: that's different than Audie wanting to copy what Mercedes did.
Speaker 1: And that's a fascinating thing. When there are these movements
Speaker 1: of art where it just springs up all over the
Speaker 1: planet at the same time, not because they saw it
Speaker 1: and want to do it, but because now is the
Speaker 1: time for this new thing, whatever it is. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: at its root, it's the same thing, because they're falling
Speaker 1: in love with the same idea in the world simultaneously.
Speaker 1: You can not have fall in love with what Joe
Speaker 1: across the pond is doing, or me and Joe can
Speaker 1: fall in love with something you know in the world
Speaker 1: of ideas that's really beautiful and novel. But I think
Speaker 1: that the engine is the same, which is it's love. Yes,
Speaker 1: it seems more magical when there isn't when you don't
Speaker 1: see one like it first. Yeah, there's something about it.
Speaker 1: When I don't know if it's ever happened to you,
Speaker 1: it has happened to me where I'll have an idea
Speaker 1: for something and I don't act on that right away,
Speaker 1: and then within six months or a year someone else
Speaker 1: does it. They didn't steal my idea. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: time for that to happen. Let's keep going to so
Speaker 1: much wonderful stuff here I want to give. I want
Speaker 1: to give listeners more of a taste of several moments
Speaker 1: when I was out of surprise and in one case
Speaker 1: really genuinely wanted more of a explanation, and that was
Speaker 1: when the work has five mistakes, it's not yet completed.
Speaker 1: When it has eight mistakes, it might be yes, Rick,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? We get hung up on the
Speaker 1: idea of perfection, and we think perfection is what we're
Speaker 1: looking for, when really what we're looking for is something
Speaker 1: with emotion in it, something with humanity in it, and
Speaker 1: humanity has flaws. So we can use the example of
Speaker 1: the leaning power of pizza. At the time that it
Speaker 1: was made, it was a mistake, and now it's one
Speaker 1: of the most visited buildings in the world, and it's
Speaker 1: visited purely because of the mistake. You know, we collect
Speaker 1: old Persian rugs that were handmade and that have been
Speaker 1: lived in whereas you can buy a new machine made rug.
Speaker 1: Now that's more perfect than that, but it doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same humanity in it. And the reason I use
Speaker 1: the example of five and eight art their random choices.
Speaker 1: Those are not specific are not if you have five,
Speaker 1: you got to get to eight for it to work.
Speaker 1: But it's a way of thinking where we're not looking
Speaker 1: to make it perfect we're looking for the soulful version
Speaker 1: that could either be going further towards perfection or backwards
Speaker 1: away from it, And it might just as well be
Speaker 1: backwards away from it for it to feel good. When
Speaker 1: we're making art, can you think about a project you've
Speaker 1: worked on that you think is beautiful and authentic in
Speaker 1: precisely this imperfect way, that has mistakes that you think
Speaker 1: it benefited from. I can give you an example closet
Speaker 1: to both of our hearts, which is interesting. When we
Speaker 1: had the Broken Record logo designed, it was originally done.
Speaker 1: It was designed on a computer, and it was of
Speaker 1: a very formal design, graphic design, and a friend of
Speaker 1: mine suggested, you would have tried to doing that by hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then we suggested to the design and try it
Speaker 1: by hand, and the one that we ended up picking
Speaker 1: was the one done by hand. It was less perfect
Speaker 1: than the original version, but it had more personality. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's very clarifying because I think it's very easy to
Speaker 1: lose sight of what the audience for a work of
Speaker 1: art wants. They want the creator, they want to it's
Speaker 1: a way of looking into the mind or heart of
Speaker 1: the creator they want, don't want some abstract thing that
Speaker 1: fits every criteria of perfection, right we're looking for, you know,
Speaker 1: to give the example back of when I was went
Speaker 1: through my period where I was obsessively reading Michael Lewis
Speaker 1: and Janet Malcolm. Jenet Malcolm is a good examp of
Speaker 1: this or both. When you read them, you feel like
Speaker 1: you know the two of those writers. When you read
Speaker 1: the writing at the end of a Michael Lewis book,
Speaker 1: you feel like you've been hanging out with him and
Speaker 1: have a window into his world. Jenna Malcolm's books are
Speaker 1: weird and quirky and sometimes disturbing, but you love that
Speaker 1: because you're like, oh, she's such a kind of fascinating character.
Speaker 1: And my worry when I was reading them was that
Speaker 1: people weren't having that. That was not the experience my
Speaker 1: readers were having. That they were getting. They were getting
Speaker 1: something that was too abstract. They were getting information, but
Speaker 1: not that kind of they were really getting me. You know,
Speaker 1: it took a long time. We're talking about that thing
Speaker 1: I'm describing was twenty years into my writing career, and
Speaker 1: what you're talking about is really moving away from classical journalism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because my understanding of journalism is the writer is invisible.
Speaker 1: It's only the story and it's just you know, just facts,
Speaker 1: that's all it is. Yeah. So, in a way, this
Speaker 1: would be a bastardization of journalism. But that's why it's engaging,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's interesting, and that's why it's popular.
Speaker 1: It's not regular journalism. It's it's journalism through your filter,
Speaker 1: the personal filter. There's a there's a documentarian named Nick
Speaker 1: Broomfield who I love, who makes these crazy movies. He
Speaker 1: tends to pick outrageous characters to focus on, but he
Speaker 1: always ends up part of the movie. And usually when
Speaker 1: documentarians make a movie, you just see the subject, but
Speaker 1: he ensconces himself into the finds a way to insinuate
Speaker 1: himself into the story. And it's wild and bizarre, and
Speaker 1: it's unusual for the director of a documentary to become
Speaker 1: a main character in every one of the documentaries he
Speaker 1: makes about different people. It's fascinating. Yeah, so I love it. Yeah. Wait,
Speaker 1: couple of other things I want to I want to
Speaker 1: make sure we um you had this little section that
Speaker 1: I loved. When you're talking about AlphaGo, the AI software
Speaker 1: system that was designed to master the game of the
Speaker 1: Japanese game of Go and how there's this famous showdown
Speaker 1: between the computer and a Go grand master, and the
Speaker 1: computer wins by making a move that had never occurred
Speaker 1: to any Go player. You know, they had you say,
Speaker 1: you say there was most Go players would have considered
Speaker 1: A or B choice, and the computer went to see
Speaker 1: and it blew everyuin's mind. And you said when you
Speaker 1: read about that that you cried. I did, and it
Speaker 1: was it wasn't. I didn't read about it. I watched
Speaker 1: the documentary, but you watched the documentary. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: watching a documentary about it and it made me cry.
Speaker 1: And when I cried, I didn't understand it at first.
Speaker 1: It took it took a while. I thought about it more.
Speaker 1: My reaction forced me to think about it more. It's like,
Speaker 1: why am I crying? I'm not invested. I don't play Go,
Speaker 1: I'm not invested in this story at all. Yet I'm crying.
Speaker 1: And originally my first thought was, am I crying because
Speaker 1: machines are beating humans? No, that's not what it is.
Speaker 1: I'm crying because the way that the computer one wasn't
Speaker 1: by knowing more than the grand master. The computer one
Speaker 1: because it knew less than the grand master. And that's
Speaker 1: what made me cry. It's that the computer didn't have
Speaker 1: all of the baggage and cultural dogma of how you're
Speaker 1: supposed to play Go. It only knew these are the
Speaker 1: rules of the game. I'm playing the rules of the game.
Speaker 1: And it was fascinating to me because it made me
Speaker 1: realize if we can let go of the beliefs of
Speaker 1: what we're we're supposed to do things, anything may be possible.
Speaker 1: It's the tip of the iceberg for the game Go,
Speaker 1: for sure, but maybe it's the tip of the iceberg
Speaker 1: for everything. And if we can get back to that
Speaker 1: beginner's mind of not knowing, of accepting that we don't know,
Speaker 1: we can break through in ways never understood before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: never thought possible before. It's funny because I didn't see
Speaker 1: this documentary, and when I read about your description of
Speaker 1: how much you were moved by that moment, I was
Speaker 1: also moved, but not for the reasons you were. I
Speaker 1: was moved because what that told me was that when
Speaker 1: human beings play Go, they're not playing Go. In other words,
Speaker 1: the computer saw Go in its entirety, in a technical sense,
Speaker 1: so every conceivable move you could make made one that
Speaker 1: would never have occurred to us. When human beings play Go,
Speaker 1: we're playing this very small, parochial version, governed not just
Speaker 1: by the rules and potentials of the board, but by
Speaker 1: our own assumptions, habits, practices, cultural And I actually kind
Speaker 1: of love that about us, In other words, that we've
Speaker 1: colonized and humanized and brought all of our kind of
Speaker 1: heartrending limitations even to something like a board game. That's
Speaker 1: very moving to me that, like the computer has the
Speaker 1: chili impersonal version of Go, and this reminds us we're
Speaker 1: not playing the chili impersonal version. Our Go bears the
Speaker 1: imprint of our own limitations and cultural specificities, and I
Speaker 1: find that really endearing, you know. But it's funny we
Speaker 1: both see the same thing and are moved by it.
Speaker 1: I don't think what I'm seeing what you're saying are incompatible.
Speaker 1: I think they're actually compatible. No, I think they're almost opposites.
Speaker 1: And the fact that they are both something to fall
Speaker 1: in love with about the story is amazing. I love that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is actually something that you, well, what I've
Speaker 1: just described is something you do a lot in this book,
Speaker 1: which is there are a lot of moments where it
Speaker 1: appears that you're making points that contradict each other, but
Speaker 1: you're not. This is the furthest from Black and White.
Speaker 1: This book. There is a lot of this kind of
Speaker 1: yinging and yanging in it. I thought was really very
Speaker 1: very you. It's very like it's not like you do
Speaker 1: it this way, not this way, like the necessity of
Speaker 1: being both inwardly sensitive and outwardly sensitive. It's not one
Speaker 1: or the other. It's like just it's there's a balance
Speaker 1: that you have to kind of observe. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back with the rest of Malthlin Gladwell and Rick Rubin's conversation.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, we're back with more from Rick
Speaker 1: Ruben and Martin Gladwell. There's a passage there that I
Speaker 1: really love what you're talking about. Sometimes there is a
Speaker 1: musician who you'll listen to when they're trying something radically
Speaker 1: new remember this, and you're baffled by it the first
Speaker 1: time you listen, and baffle the second time, and you
Speaker 1: keep listening and keep listening, and then finally become something
Speaker 1: you can't live without. And I was wondering, was there
Speaker 1: someone in mind? Would you several the first my first
Speaker 1: experience of that was a group called Trouble Funk. In
Speaker 1: the early days of hip hop, when I was in
Speaker 1: high school, the only place you could hear hip hop
Speaker 1: was once a week, one hour show on WHBI called
Speaker 1: Mister Magic's Rap Attack, and that was the only and
Speaker 1: I recorded it. I Cassette recorded it every week, as
Speaker 1: did all the other hip hop heads in my high
Speaker 1: school and you know, maybe the six of us, and
Speaker 1: we would record that every week and then that would
Speaker 1: be all we would listen to all week because there
Speaker 1: were at this point in time, there really were no
Speaker 1: hip hop records available to buy. There may have been
Speaker 1: the sugar Hill Gangs Rappers Delight, but that was the
Speaker 1: only one. Yet on this radio show he played all
Speaker 1: these songs. It's like, I don't even know where they
Speaker 1: came from, and they were all like twelve inch you know,
Speaker 1: DJ living where I lived, it didn't exist. So listen
Speaker 1: to that every week and hear whatever was going on
Speaker 1: in rap music. And again it was a very tight
Speaker 1: time because all there was was an hour and with
Speaker 1: you know, plus it had commercials in it for places
Speaker 1: like Brad's Record Den in the Bronx, which is I
Speaker 1: guess where you could have bought some of those other
Speaker 1: songs that I had never gone at that time I
Speaker 1: have gone since. And one week, in the middle of
Speaker 1: these all rap songs, he played a trouble Funk song,
Speaker 1: which is not rap music. It's go go music, and
Speaker 1: it's long. And the song was maybe seven or nine
Speaker 1: minutes long. So a seven or nine on rap song
Speaker 1: took up seven to nine minutes of my sixty minutes
Speaker 1: plus commercials removed my little bit of rap music for
Speaker 1: the week, and I was so angry, and I would
Speaker 1: every time I would listen to the cassette, I would
Speaker 1: forward through the trouble Funk song to get to the
Speaker 1: rap music. And I did this, and then one time
Speaker 1: I listened to the trouble Funk song. And then it
Speaker 1: took time, but eventually, within a couple of weeks, the
Speaker 1: only thing I was listening to on that tape was
Speaker 1: the trouble Funk song. Yeah, so that's that's one example,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there are many more. When the first
Speaker 1: first I remember the first time I heard nine inch Nails.
Speaker 1: I didn't like any of the industrial music I had
Speaker 1: heard up until the point of nine inch Nails, and
Speaker 1: when I heard nine inch Nails, my initial reaction to
Speaker 1: it was this is that kind of music I don't like.
Speaker 1: I don't like the production, I don't like those sounds.
Speaker 1: And then eventually took probably a year, Nine Inch Nails
Speaker 1: became my favorite group. But the things that I didn't
Speaker 1: like about it weren't the things that were good about
Speaker 1: it in the case of Nine Inch Nails. In Nine
Speaker 1: Nail's case, Trent's songwriting was so far superior to anyone
Speaker 1: else making that kind of music that once I could
Speaker 1: hear his songs, it didn't matter whether or not I
Speaker 1: liked the style. Yeah, And then when I liked the songs,
Speaker 1: eventually I grew to even like the style because his
Speaker 1: songs made me like the style. Oh, I see. It's
Speaker 1: this interesting thing about for different kinds of experience and
Speaker 1: creative experiences, there are different thresholds. The familiar has a
Speaker 1: very low threshold. The unfamiliar has a much longer threshold.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting with that story, and it's very particular
Speaker 1: to you, is that you had the patience to wait
Speaker 1: long enough so you could reach the threshold of understanding
Speaker 1: what was what trouble Funk was doing or what Trent
Speaker 1: Resin was doing. That's unusual. So a lot of what
Speaker 1: you're talking about in this book really does seem to
Speaker 1: be things that can be taught and understood and shift
Speaker 1: your This what you're describing now is something very not
Speaker 1: impossible to teach, but very hard to teach. To persist
Speaker 1: with something you didn't like, the trouble Funk, and yet
Speaker 1: somehow you kept coming back in one way, you didn't
Speaker 1: dismiss it. You disliked it without dismissing it. That's I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm trying to say. That people when they
Speaker 1: disliked they dismiss, but you didn't. I want to understand
Speaker 1: why didn't you. I may have back then, I may
Speaker 1: have dismissed it, but for whatever reason, because it was
Speaker 1: on a cassette, and because I had to keep coming
Speaker 1: back and forward when it would come on and I
Speaker 1: might be doing something else in my room, it was
Speaker 1: able to get through to me. And this again we
Speaker 1: get to the metaphysical aspect of it. The universe wanted
Speaker 1: me to hear trouble Funk. That's why I was able
Speaker 1: to hear it. If it wouldn't have presented itself over
Speaker 1: and over to me, I wouldn't have. So yes, I
Speaker 1: allowed it in. But it wasn't all me. I'll give
Speaker 1: you another example. It's not uncommon when I'm out and
Speaker 1: about to have someone recommend something that they think I'll like,
Speaker 1: and when they recommend it to me, I listen and
Speaker 1: it sounds like a terrible something that I don't like,
Speaker 1: the kind of thing I don't like. Whatever it is.
Speaker 1: An example would be it's not a real example, I'm hypothetical.
Speaker 1: Example is, oh, you love this new horror movie. I
Speaker 1: don't like horror movies. There's no chance I'm going to
Speaker 1: watch a horror movie. That wouldn't work. If three different
Speaker 1: people who don't know each other all suggest to me
Speaker 1: to watch that horror movie, I will watch that horror movie,
Speaker 1: even though I know it's something I don't like. And
Speaker 1: the reason is the universe really wants me to be
Speaker 1: aware of this. People are telling me. Why are people
Speaker 1: telling me this is not for me? So that's an
Speaker 1: example of and paying attention to the signs around you.
Speaker 1: If several of your friends tell you the same thing
Speaker 1: that you initially discounted, it might be worth a look.
Speaker 1: This is funny because this goes into one of my
Speaker 1: similar to one of my little I have a rule.
Speaker 1: I have these implicit rules I carry around in my head,
Speaker 1: and one of my rules is never say somethings that
Speaker 1: you consume or see or whatever is bad, Only say
Speaker 1: I think it's bad right now. Yes? Great? And if,
Speaker 1: by the way, the whole world social media particularly would
Speaker 1: be so greatly improved by that rule. Right, I don't
Speaker 1: like what you I don't like what you said right now. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's very different from saying what you said is wrong
Speaker 1: right it'bsolutely the whole or opposite. And but adopting that
Speaker 1: with art, I wonder about how many I'm talking about
Speaker 1: some of the critical community, how much criticism, how much
Speaker 1: it would change our understanding of art if critics universally
Speaker 1: followed that rule, and it was if they always acknowledged
Speaker 1: that they may be in a situation that you were
Speaker 1: in with trouble Funk, that the universe wasn't there yet.
Speaker 1: You weren't there yet. And also that story about trouble
Speaker 1: Funk is that you weren't looking for trouble Funk. You
Speaker 1: were looking for hip hop. So like it was an
Speaker 1: intrusion in the beginning, It wasn't a treasure. It was
Speaker 1: something that didn't belong and it was something that didn't
Speaker 1: belong was taking up valuable time, valuable cassette tech space. Yes,
Speaker 1: because it was only sixty minutes. Did you have the
Speaker 1: nineties back then or just the sixties? We had sixties
Speaker 1: and nineties and eventually one twenties. I remember that when
Speaker 1: twys are huge. But that idea of building into our
Speaker 1: critical assessments some notion about probability, that my judgment is
Speaker 1: conditioned on two things. It do seem credic to me,
Speaker 1: and it is at this moment, and both of those
Speaker 1: things may not be true in some future date. I
Speaker 1: just that is so insanely liberating to me, Like, and
Speaker 1: I don't understand. Can we pass this law? It says
Speaker 1: you're only allowed you must always use I think and
Speaker 1: right now in any creative judgment. Yeah. It's also related
Speaker 1: to another thing mentioned in the book, the idea of
Speaker 1: I can't do that. Yes, we never say I can't
Speaker 1: do that. You can say I haven't done that yet. Yes. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is the same That functions the same way. The
Speaker 1: reason I think a book like this is so important
Speaker 1: is this is a little bit of a tangent. But
Speaker 1: I went to give a talk at a university two
Speaker 1: weeks ago and I was to the psychology department and
Speaker 1: I was talking to these psychologists and they were talking
Speaker 1: about mental health, and they were talking about it's a
Speaker 1: lot of really lovely research right now about how the
Speaker 1: language that you use to describe your feelings and emotion
Speaker 1: and traumas and things is enormously important. You know, to
Speaker 1: describe something this way or that way is not a
Speaker 1: difference in style. It is actually a difference in the
Speaker 1: way that you are processing, understanding, recovering all those kinds
Speaker 1: of things. And one of the things this book did
Speaker 1: to me was, I think this one way of understanding
Speaker 1: to create your book is it is in that spirit
Speaker 1: the categories that we use and the language that we
Speaker 1: bring to our understanding of creativity really really matters. Like
Speaker 1: in that section I love this that I love so
Speaker 1: much about when you're talking about all the ways you
Speaker 1: can jog someone out of being stuck. When you're stuck,
Speaker 1: you don't think you don't think you can be jogged
Speaker 1: out by some change in your setting or but in
Speaker 1: truth you can. You remain acutely sensitive to the influences
Speaker 1: of your environment. And it's so hard for us to
Speaker 1: understand that those kinds the influence and impact of those
Speaker 1: kinds of framing devices and settings. Language or framing devices, right,
Speaker 1: that is often what causes us to suffer unnecessarily. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: There's a teacher named Marshall Rosenberg who wrote a book
Speaker 1: which is not a great book, called Non Violent Communication.
Speaker 1: And he's a great teacher, but he's not a great writer,
Speaker 1: and he passed recently unfortunately. But I would suggest people
Speaker 1: if they're interested in Marshall Rosenberg, there is an audio
Speaker 1: called speaking Piece that is better than the book, and
Speaker 1: then watch videos of him on YouTube. Just because the book.
Speaker 1: I found the book hard to understand, but it's basically
Speaker 1: all about this. The language of our culture is violent,
Speaker 1: and it's not just violent towards each other, it's violent
Speaker 1: towards ourselves. Every time we say I should have done that,
Speaker 1: When you say I should, it's called a make wrong.
Speaker 1: So by saying I should have done it mean I
Speaker 1: was wrong. This is the right way to do it
Speaker 1: when at the time you were doing the best you could.
Speaker 1: So so when when at the time you're doing the
Speaker 1: best you can, to make yourself wrong isn't helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's a whole list of trigger words and ways
Speaker 1: of sharing a vocabulary of feeling that helps us better communicate,
Speaker 1: and when we communicate better, we tend to get along better.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, beautiful teaching. Yeah, a couple other smaller things.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of moments in this book where I
Speaker 1: scribbled in the in the margins who is Rick talking about?
Speaker 1: But it was one that I wanted you to if you,
Speaker 1: if you, if you don't mind. You talked about how
Speaker 1: you were working with an artist on a song which
Speaker 1: was a love song, and you were trying to solve
Speaker 1: the problem, and you finally solve the problem by telling
Speaker 1: the artists don't think of a romantic partner, think of
Speaker 1: it as a devotional to God. Who is the song?
Speaker 1: And was the artist? Can you tell me? That was
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash And the song was the first time ever
Speaker 1: I saw your face. Oh my goodness. Oh that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I know that version so well. That's totally blowing my
Speaker 1: mind because that's what it listens like, Yeah, oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's genius, Rick, that is genius. And it was also
Speaker 1: Oh and I interviewed Roger mcgwinne the other day and
Speaker 1: he talked about the first Bird single was mister Tambourine
Speaker 1: Man and out of the blue. He said, Yeah, when
Speaker 1: I sang it in the studio, no one knows this,
Speaker 1: but I sang it as a devotional to God. I said,
Speaker 1: but the lyrics aren't about that. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, but that's how I was able to sing
Speaker 1: it and feel it. And it blew my mind. Oh
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. This is why a miss liner notes
Speaker 1: so much. I feel like this is the functional But
Speaker 1: rat those two facts about first time I saw your
Speaker 1: face and mister Tamborine man, those both changed the radically
Speaker 1: change the way you hear those songs. Yes, the Cash
Speaker 1: song makes way more sense. I've alwayst not understood why
Speaker 1: I found that song so powerful. Yes, it really in
Speaker 1: the context of all those ones, it's one of the
Speaker 1: ones that it pops in this kind of strange way,
Speaker 1: and it's haunting in a way you don't And now
Speaker 1: I understand why he's singing it with a completely different
Speaker 1: intention than I imagined. Yeah, it's and if you listen
Speaker 1: to the original song, it's unbelievable. Or when I say
Speaker 1: the original, the popular version, because the popular version is
Speaker 1: not the original either. You know it was written by
Speaker 1: Ewan McCall and it's an Irish folk song, and if
Speaker 1: you've ever heard the Irish folk song version of it,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a yodel, you know, it's very unlike Yeah,
Speaker 1: all all the versions that we're familiar with. I realized
Speaker 1: when I read that as well, that I have a
Speaker 1: version of that, which is years and years ago. I
Speaker 1: sat down on an airplane next to a guy who
Speaker 1: happened to be reading one of my books, and I
Speaker 1: had this very very long conversation with him, and he
Speaker 1: was I still remember what he did. He opened. His
Speaker 1: job was to go around the country opening Trader Joe's.
Speaker 1: He was coming from New York. They were opening a
Speaker 1: store like in Brooklyn or something. And he'd just been
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn for a month, lived in Atlanta, had two kids.
Speaker 1: It was like thirty eight years old, business school degree.
Speaker 1: I think maybe not. Anyway, I had a lovely chat
Speaker 1: with him, and I realized, oh, that's my reader. And
Speaker 1: every time I'm stuck I think about him. Beautiful, it's
Speaker 1: for him. He was beautiful and he said because he
Speaker 1: only read. He told me. He said, I'm very very busy.
Speaker 1: I teach Sunday school. I'm a coach in my kids
Speaker 1: little league. Going to have this job, which is very demanding.
Speaker 1: I have time to read three books a year. And
Speaker 1: I realized, oh, and he's chosen one of mine. I'm
Speaker 1: one of his three, which is like phenomenally flattering thing.
Speaker 1: And I realized, Oh, if I can keep being one
Speaker 1: of his three books year, then I I will succeed.
Speaker 1: Beautiful and the beauty think about him all the time.
Speaker 1: He was like, a yeah, really really, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's insanely liberating to know that's what it's for, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: the fact that you randomly got assigned that seat he
Speaker 1: happened to be reading your book on that particular flight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be it's all a coincidence. Yet it's what
Speaker 1: you needed to hear to be able to keep doing
Speaker 1: what you've been doing for all these years since then
Speaker 1: maybe it's accidental. Who knows. That's that's that's the points,
Speaker 1: Like these things happen all the time. Yeah, maybe they're
Speaker 1: all accidents. It's fine, it doesn't matter if they are
Speaker 1: or not. But if they happen, and if you can
Speaker 1: use that information like you do, we all win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all all to the better. All right, one last thing,
Speaker 1: the last, as the guy underlined in your book, page
Speaker 1: three sixty five, and I was like, wait, I didn't
Speaker 1: expect this. Rich was hold on, let's let me just
Speaker 1: go there. What is it? And also, I don't know
Speaker 1: why in retrospect I found it so surprising, but you say,
Speaker 1: when I work with artists, we make an agreement, we
Speaker 1: continue the process until reaching the point where we are
Speaker 1: all happy with the work. All in talisized in that,
Speaker 1: And I was like, I realized, and maybe this is
Speaker 1: because how badly I needed your book. It never occurred
Speaker 1: to me that there would be art on the level
Speaker 1: that you have been a part of creating without dissent.
Speaker 1: I just I was just shocked. I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: you've done all this for so many years, with so
Speaker 1: many different people under an explicit promise of unanimity. That
Speaker 1: blew my mind. They'll be descent along the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that just means we haven't called are enough. It
Speaker 1: just means if you like it and I don't, it's
Speaker 1: not good enough. And if I like it and you don't,
Speaker 1: it's not good enough. And if we can get to
Speaker 1: the point where we both love it, it's probably better
Speaker 1: than the one that one of us loved and the
Speaker 1: other didn't. And if there are five people in a band,
Speaker 1: and if three of them like it and two of
Speaker 1: them don't, and you get to the point where all
Speaker 1: five of them like it, chances are it's better. And
Speaker 1: that's just that you're done. Yes, yeah, No, it was
Speaker 1: just like such a kind of I just thought of that.
Speaker 1: That idea that what you're building in the end is
Speaker 1: a kind of harmony among all the all of the voices,
Speaker 1: is a beautiful way to end a very very beautiful book.
Speaker 1: There's a part in the book where we talk about cooperation,
Speaker 1: which is exactly this working with other people. Historically, I'll
Speaker 1: say most times that people work together, there's a rivalry
Speaker 1: of ideas. Each person is arguing to win the debate
Speaker 1: to have their idea be the one that's chosen. And
Speaker 1: I'm saying that's not productive, and the best way to
Speaker 1: do it is for everyone to demonstrate their ideas. It's
Speaker 1: even better if they're demonstrated in a blind way where
Speaker 1: we don't even know whose ideas what. We just hear
Speaker 1: the ideas and then everybody picks and usually it's pretty obvious,
Speaker 1: and it really does happen naturally, and it's only through
Speaker 1: the ego of wanting it to be my way that
Speaker 1: they are these conflicts. But if everyone is working together
Speaker 1: for it to be the best that it can be,
Speaker 1: and if we respect each other enough to know, if
Speaker 1: I think it's the best it can be and you
Speaker 1: think it can be better, I'll go on that ride
Speaker 1: and same the other way. YEA. Ultimately we get to
Speaker 1: a beautiful place that is lovely. And thank you for
Speaker 1: writing such a beautiful book. May any many many people
Speaker 1: enjoy it as much as I have. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your eating it. It's fantastic. It makes
Speaker 1: me happy. I want to thank Rick on the Record
Speaker 1: for taking the time to put his philosophies around creativity
Speaker 1: in a book. The Creative Act, A Way of Being
Speaker 1: is out now. Be sure to check it out. You
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
Speaker 1: slash broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our
Speaker 1: new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ventaladay,
Speaker 1: and Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record
Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this
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Speaker 1: Henny Beats. I'm justin Richmond, H