Deep Dive - The Creative Act: A Way of Being
In an age of AI, creativity will be more important than ever
I set out to write a book on how to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.
Nothing in this book is known to be true. It’s a reflection on what I’ve noticed— not facts so much as thoughts. Some ideas may resonate. Others may not. A few may awaken an inner knowing you forgot you had. Use what’s helpful. Let go of the rest.
My first bulleted deep-dive into Arthur C. Brooks’ Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier is available to you today, for free.
And my more recent deep dives into the books Zero to One by Peter Thiel, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz, and The Anthology of Balaji, by Eric Jorgenson, are available to paid my subscribers, though you can check out the free previews by clicking these links.
If enough people care about this and subscribe, I will invest those revenues to hire more researchers to help me publish more content. I will also look to our subscribers to influence what we research and read out to everyone.
As a complement to this post, check out Tim Ferris’ interview with Rick Rubin → here.
So without further ado, here is a preview of my deep dive into The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin.
Favorite Quotes
When it comes to art, the object isn’t to make it. It’s to cultivate that wonderful state that makes art inevitable.
Art allows us to see what we are unable to see, and yet, already know.
When you create, the art comes first, you come next, the audience and third parties come last.
There is an integrity to the art. An idea is something pure and our job is to transmute and transmit the idea in its purest form.
Diluting the idea to appeal to an audience, a cultural trend, to use it as a mouthpiece for a political agenda, or to maximize its commercial potential is to abuse the child the universe has entrusted you to nurture.
Creativity is connecting with what makes us human. Art is connecting with what makes us divine.
Art is far more powerful than our plans for it. Art can’t be responsible or irresponsible. Art is above and beyond judgment.
It can’t be censored or deemed “offensive”. It either speaks to you, or it doesn’t. It either is for you, or it isn’t. An artist's only responsibility is to the art itself.
If there were anything you might stand for, it would be to defend this creative autonomy. Not just from outside censors, but from the voices in your head that have internalized what is considered acceptable.
The world is only as free as it allows its artists to be. And you are only as free as you allow yourself to be in allowing yourself to be authentic and vulnerable.
There’s a reason we are drawn to gazing at the ocean. It is said the ocean provides a closer reflection of who we are than any mirror.
The person who makes something today isn’t the same person who returns to the work tomorrow.
Work hinting at greatness contains a charge we can feel, like static before a lighting storm. The energy of creation feels similar to another force in the universe. Love. A kinetic draw beyond rational comprehension. An excitement.
When you find an idea or a person that draws your interest, that makes your needle jump.
Something indicates its worthy of your attention, and perhaps your devotion. It holds the potential to sustain your interest and make the effort worthwhile. That is love. And that is the creative act.
Art is a circulation of energetic ideas. What makes them appear new is they’re combining differently each time they come back. No two clouds are the same.
Turning something from an idea into a reality can make it seem smaller. It changes the unearthly into the earthly. The imagination has no limits. The physical world does. The work exists in both.
If we’re trying to solve a problem, the trying can get in the way. Splashing a pond stirs up clouds of mud.
Inspiration cannot be wrestled into existence, only welcomed with an open state of mind.
If something strikes you as interesting or beautiful, first, try to live that experience.
Only afterwards should you try to understand it.
Machines will soon be able to analyze things 10x better than we can. But they may never be able to live an experience that is sublime, interesting or beautiful.
No matter what tools you use to create, the true instrument is you. And through you, the universe that surrounds us all comes into focus.
The ego yells, intuition whispers.
It’s not unusual for science to catch up to art. Nor it is unusual for art to catch up to the spiritual.
Think about the science fiction books and movies of the past. Works of art and literature. And yet, we have created and surpassed many of the wildest expectations of the past at one point considered fiction.
Science eventually catches up to art, and art slowly catches up to the divine.
Art is the expression of truth which is not yet explicable to the conscious mind, and yet, is something we all know to be true through our connection with it.
Patience is developed much like awareness. Through acceptance of what is. Impatience is an argument with reality.
To vary your inspiration, vary your inputs.
Turn off the sound when watching a favorite film, or play music instead while muting the dialogue.
Read only the first word of each sentence of a short story aloud.
Arrange stones by size and color.
Learn to lucid dream.
Break habits.
Look for differences.
Notice connections between unlike things.
All ideas are bad ideas. It's in the execution you discover if they will work in the reality or not.
Fear of criticism, attachment to commercial success, competition with past work. An aspiration of wanting to change the world, any narrative that differs from:
“I want to make this work the best that it can be. I want to actualize the potential of this idea” undermines the potential of an idea in the pursuit of greatness.
How shall we measure success? It isn’t popularity, money, or critical esteem. Success occurs in the privacy of the soul. It comes in the moment you decide to release the work.
The work is the reward. Feel free to have an ice cream sundae afterward. It will pale in comparison.
—Jerry Seinfeld
Authenticity
The system is not here for our benefit. It holds us back as individuals to support its own continued existence. This is particularly undermining to independent thinking and free expression.
As artists and human beings, our mission is not to fit in, nor to conform. Our purpose is to value and develop our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and cultivate respect for the authenticity of others.
Legacy
Ultimately, the act of self expression is not about you, just as love is not about you. We feel compelled to engage, as if by primal instinct. We must follow this instinct. To deny it is dispiriting, as if we are in violation of nature.
As Henry David Thoreau said, “If a flower cannot live according to its nature, it dies. So to a man.”
We share our prism, our way of seeing, in order to spark an echo in others. Art is the reverberation of the impermanence of life.
As human beings, we come and go quickly and we get to make works that stand as monuments of our time here. Enduring affirmations of existence.
From Michelangelo's David, to graffiti in a bathroom stall, from the first cave paintings, to a child’s finger painted landscapes, they all echo the same cry: I was here.
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