Speaker 1: We all love the perfect conditions, but if you wait
Speaker 1: for them, you will wait and wait and wait, and
Speaker 1: pretty soon it will be over. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Austin Cleon, a writer, artist, and speaker.
Speaker 1: Austin also speaks about creativity for organizations such as Pixar, Google,
Speaker 1: south By Southwest, and many more. He is the author
Speaker 1: of the well known book Steal Like an Artist and
Speaker 1: newspaper Blackout, amongst others, including the one we discuss here
Speaker 1: keep Going Ten Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times
Speaker 1: and Bad. Hi Austin, Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. It's a real pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 1: I've admired your work for a long time. But your
Speaker 1: latest book is called Keep Going, Ten Ways to Stay
Speaker 1: Creative in Good Times and Bad And we'll get to
Speaker 1: that in just a second, but we'll start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. In the parable, there is
Speaker 1: a grandfather talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside out of us that are
Speaker 1: always at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather
Speaker 1: and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very dualistic, which I like, and you know,
Speaker 1: we have b Camra minds, so it's kind of impossible
Speaker 1: not to think in dualities. But for me, I think
Speaker 1: the wolves both have their place for me. Well, what
Speaker 1: I try to do is I don't know that star
Speaker 1: of the dark wolf so much as I sort of
Speaker 1: follow where I'm trying to take the metaphor um. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know any wolves in my life,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think about the parable. I'm like,
Speaker 1: where does the wolf go at night? Where does he feed?
Speaker 1: Because well, that's kind of a funny parable because you
Speaker 1: don't really feed wolves. They're wild dogs before all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's interesting. So if we switch it to dogs,
Speaker 1: it's like dark dogs. You know, dogs track things and
Speaker 1: they run around. And one of the things I feel
Speaker 1: like I try to do is I try to feed
Speaker 1: my light wolf with things from the dark wolf, or
Speaker 1: I try to you know, I try to pay a
Speaker 1: lot of attention to the dark wolf because I think
Speaker 1: the dark wolf gives me information. So I'll put it
Speaker 1: another if you want to use another metaphor. I think
Speaker 1: a lot about poison and nourishment. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of poisonous things that I find in my life, you know,
Speaker 1: like something like jealousy. Let's just take jealousy jealousy is
Speaker 1: a very poisoning thing, but jealousy is a fewing is
Speaker 1: also just information. So if you can kind of like
Speaker 1: hold your jealousy and kind of like look at it
Speaker 1: like an object and kind of spin around figure out
Speaker 1: where it's coming from. Sometimes jealousy shows you something that
Speaker 1: you want or something that you're lacking, so then you
Speaker 1: can kind of think, Okay, well, here's the poison, what's
Speaker 1: the nourishment. I'm someone who's driven a lot by disgust
Speaker 1: and anger. I get angry about the world and I
Speaker 1: get disgusted by things I see. But then I take
Speaker 1: that information I think, well, what would be the opposite?
Speaker 1: So what's the antidote to this poison or what's the nourishment?
Speaker 1: And then that's what I try to put my work.
Speaker 1: And so when people say, you know, your books are
Speaker 1: so helpful or they're so upbeat, or that's what I'm
Speaker 1: going for. But I don't think people understand how dark
Speaker 1: the books begin, Like how how all the books come
Speaker 1: from that dark wolf? Right? How all the books come
Speaker 1: from the dark wolf? And then the other wolf is
Speaker 1: the one I send into the world to greet, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So it's I think that it's
Speaker 1: about really looking at the wolf, really listening to its growl,
Speaker 1: seeing where it goes when no one's looking, and then
Speaker 1: figuring out how to spin it so that that's where Like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's taken me years to figure this out,
Speaker 1: But a lot of my really good work has to
Speaker 1: come from a deep place of agitation. Like I like
Speaker 1: to think of my work as being fairly positive and
Speaker 1: nourishing for people, but it usually has its origins in
Speaker 1: something very kind of dark or ugly or painful. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you say it early on in this book that you
Speaker 1: know you wrote this book because you needed to hear it.
Speaker 1: And my experience is that the people often who have
Speaker 1: the greatest wisdom to offer are the people who have
Speaker 1: earned that wisdom the hard way, usually because it's something
Speaker 1: that we've had to work through. I was talking with
Speaker 1: a coaching client about this earlier, and she was like,
Speaker 1: I just don't feel prepared to teach people about mindfulness
Speaker 1: because I'm not totally at peace, And I was like,
Speaker 1: the fact that you are applying it to the situations
Speaker 1: this difficult is what's going to make you someday a
Speaker 1: great teacher, because you're really practicing in real life with
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yes. And I would also say that the
Speaker 1: best teachers, and I'm plagiarizing a writer when I say this,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the best teachers are the ones
Speaker 1: that need to learn the lesson. All of my books
Speaker 1: are really the result of me not knowing about something.
Speaker 1: You know that. That's the other thing about my books
Speaker 1: that I think of people sort of misunderstand is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the books come from me trying to figure
Speaker 1: something out, and then the books are the product of
Speaker 1: that process of trying to learn something. And then the
Speaker 1: books are really just me saying, hey, here's what I've learned.
Speaker 1: But then the other thing I think is really interesting
Speaker 1: is what you said. My mom used to be a
Speaker 1: guidance counselor, and she told me that every counselor she
Speaker 1: ever met really needed counseling. And so, you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're drawn to things in our lives that, you know,
Speaker 1: what we need, we seek out and then we become
Speaker 1: the kind of peddlers, or not peddlers, but you know,
Speaker 1: we dish out what we found or what we've looked for.
Speaker 1: You know, the dualism that you're talking about. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons I love this idea about the one you
Speaker 1: feed is we're in a time of a culture right
Speaker 1: now where you have to pick one side where it's like,
Speaker 1: it's very like we're not really good as a culture
Speaker 1: right now with ambiguity. We're not very good with people
Speaker 1: who have one foot in and one foot out. So,
Speaker 1: for example, it's very hard for people to process the
Speaker 1: idea that an artist might able to make beautiful or
Speaker 1: useful things and not be very beautiful or useful in
Speaker 1: their everyday life, you know. And so we're having like
Speaker 1: this cultural moment where if we get information about the
Speaker 1: artists that contradicts the art, all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 1: just it's supposed to destroy the art. Whereas I've always
Speaker 1: been someone who, you know, the people I really looked
Speaker 1: up to when I was younger had came from really
Speaker 1: dark places, and you know, they were not perfect people
Speaker 1: in their everyday lives, and they did cause a lot
Speaker 1: of suffering maybe or chaos in their everyday life. The
Speaker 1: good thing about the culture now is that we don't
Speaker 1: celebrate that. We were getting away from that narrative that
Speaker 1: you have to be destructive in your personal life in
Speaker 1: order to be creative in your work. But I also
Speaker 1: think there's a way that that can go too far,
Speaker 1: where we start dismissing the work of people that aren't
Speaker 1: perfect in their everyday lives. And so I think it's
Speaker 1: very tricky and it's a balance right now. And again,
Speaker 1: the reason I love the one you feed is that
Speaker 1: if you think about the culture and you think about
Speaker 1: you know, human civilization throughout time, it's usually just balancing
Speaker 1: back and forth between the forces. You know, It's just
Speaker 1: like things get caught out of whack and things swing
Speaker 1: back and forth, and it's really just the pendulum that's right.
Speaker 1: If you want to think of it the other way,
Speaker 1: it's like the big wheel that turns. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: what you said there. I mean I think almost certainly,
Speaker 1: anytime we correct something, we almost always overcorrect. You know.
Speaker 1: It's almost inevitable that we swing way over to one side,
Speaker 1: we swing too far back over to the other, and
Speaker 1: then maybe there's a little bit of a balancing over time. Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like when you're driving. You know, they tell you
Speaker 1: when you're driving not to swerve too fast because in
Speaker 1: the swerve it you get the whip lash and you
Speaker 1: go too far over, you know. So It's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not advocating for any kind of like mushy, you know,
Speaker 1: wishy washy path, but it is interesting to watch these
Speaker 1: forces come and play. And the nice thing about staying alive,
Speaker 1: which I know you and I are both interested in
Speaker 1: very much. The nice thing about staying live is you
Speaker 1: get to see those swings, and that's where the wisdom
Speaker 1: comes from. You know, you start seeing all the swings
Speaker 1: and you even in your lifetime, and you can see
Speaker 1: a way through it. It's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: I most wish I could live to be, like, you know,
Speaker 1: ten thousand years old, is just to see how it
Speaker 1: all goes. You know. When people ask that question of like,
Speaker 1: if you could sit down with anybody in history, who
Speaker 1: would it be, I'm always like, can I flip that
Speaker 1: and sit down with somebody ten thousand years from now
Speaker 1: to tell me what has happened the last ten thousand years,
Speaker 1: because I really want to know. I'm curious. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I always loved I think it's Seneca, one of
Speaker 1: those old, you know, thousand year old writers who said,
Speaker 1: you know, when you read old books, you get to
Speaker 1: annex their lifetimes. So that to me is always the
Speaker 1: value of reading is that if you can go back
Speaker 1: far enough or read enough people, you sort of accumulate
Speaker 1: the ten thousand years. It's just on the other side
Speaker 1: of history. As much progress as we make, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm always shocked at how much life stays the same,
Speaker 1: you know, especially when you're reading about you know, people
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand years ago. It's always amazing to
Speaker 1: me how it's still a lot of the same stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: underline all of it, there is still the very basic
Speaker 1: human tendency to want to be happy and want to
Speaker 1: avoid what makes us unhappy, and to want to care
Speaker 1: for the things that we love and avoid the things
Speaker 1: that we don't love. And in some ways that core
Speaker 1: never really changes. Love and death, it stayed true, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why whenever I look into the future,
Speaker 1: I think a lot about the pandemic, and how the pandemic,
Speaker 1: rather than changing life, has felt to me a lot
Speaker 1: like it's turned everything up to eleven, you know, like
Speaker 1: they say, and spiraled out. It's just like everything gets
Speaker 1: turned up, you know, everything's just cranked up and amplified.
Speaker 1: And so some of the really good things are even
Speaker 1: better now, and then the bad or annoying things are
Speaker 1: even worse. I feel like the future to me looks
Speaker 1: a lot like the past. Just you know, I think
Speaker 1: that maybe just amplified. I don't I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: a long term pessimist, short term optimist. I really feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, in the end, we're all doomed. But I'm
Speaker 1: very optimistic about the day. I'm very very optimistic about
Speaker 1: what you can give with the time that's in front
Speaker 1: of you, that you can sort of manipulate. I might
Speaker 1: be a medium term something, but I don't know what. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's move on to the book. There's a part early
Speaker 1: in it that you say everything got better for me
Speaker 1: when I made peace with the fact that it might
Speaker 1: not ever get easier. You were talking about creating art
Speaker 1: in that sense, but I think we can apply it
Speaker 1: to living. Why is it helpful? Why is it good
Speaker 1: when we make peace with that, when we stop waiting
Speaker 1: for things to get easier? You know. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of this came from being a parent, because when
Speaker 1: my kids were younger, I thought, God, if I could
Speaker 1: just get him out of diapers, you know, or then
Speaker 1: if I could just get him walking what, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: And suddenly I realized like, oh, it doesn't get better,
Speaker 1: it just changes. Everything changes, you know. And the minute
Speaker 1: I stopped worrying about when it was gonna get better,
Speaker 1: I just like sort of enjoyed the now most of
Speaker 1: the great philosophical texts or of the you know, spiritual
Speaker 1: text tell that be here now, you know. But I
Speaker 1: think for art and creativity in particular, it just you
Speaker 1: just harness whatever skills you have, whatever materials. And it's
Speaker 1: very punk rock for me. It's very much like what's
Speaker 1: in front of you, what abilities you have, what techniques
Speaker 1: you have, what tools you have, use them right now,
Speaker 1: in here and now. And I will say that I've
Speaker 1: been extremely influenced recently by this book that I read
Speaker 1: that's not very well known and it's out of print,
Speaker 1: by this guy named Joseph Meeker, and you Wade this
Speaker 1: book called The Comedy of Survival. And Meeker studied two things.
Speaker 1: He studied literature and he studied ecology. And what Meeker
Speaker 1: sort of did is he talked about how much ecology
Speaker 1: mimics comedy, that if you think about animals and the
Speaker 1: natural world and plants and stuff, they're so much adaptation
Speaker 1: going on. There's so much improvisation that's going on that
Speaker 1: you know, nature almost resembles a comedy more than your tragedy.
Speaker 1: And what Meeker said is that Western civilization runs on tragedy,
Speaker 1: this idea that there's a great person, you know, like
Speaker 1: our dominant narratives are the person, and they have a vision,
Speaker 1: and they mold the world into their vision, you know,
Speaker 1: and they change things. And of course, in a tragedy,
Speaker 1: it all ends in blood, you know. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: always there's always some tragic flaw, something that brings the
Speaker 1: person down in the end. And you know, in a comedy,
Speaker 1: it's usually about normal people that sort of they struggle,
Speaker 1: but they adapt and they stay flexible in their improvisational
Speaker 1: and at the end there's a wedding or there's a celebration.
Speaker 1: You know, there's strength. And Meeker's point was just that
Speaker 1: if we're to survive as a culture, it's going to
Speaker 1: take a comedic perspective. It's going to take a kind
Speaker 1: of flexible, improvisational approach to life. It's funny because I
Speaker 1: read that book after I finished Keep Going. We'll Keep Going,
Speaker 1: of course, starts with another modern parable, which is Groundhog Day,
Speaker 1: the movie Bill Murray's in where he wakes up every
Speaker 1: day and relives the same day. And I thought it
Speaker 1: was really funny, how here's this book that's super influential
Speaker 1: on me, like two years after I read this other book,
Speaker 1: or a year or whenever. But I was already influenced
Speaker 1: by comedy. I just didn't have somebody, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of showing it to me. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, it's just more about seeing myself as a
Speaker 1: comic character, as more of a not a Buster Keaton,
Speaker 1: but Charlie Chaplin, but you know, more just like a
Speaker 1: guy who's doing what he can with what's in front
Speaker 1: of him, you know, and and being flexible and not
Speaker 1: having too lofty you know, just being flexible and adaptive
Speaker 1: and learning um. To me, that's just been like ter
Speaker 1: efectly powerful. And that's when you don't expect things to change.
Speaker 1: And that was Meeker's great point. It's like, if you
Speaker 1: don't expect the world to change, then you work with
Speaker 1: what's there. And it doesn't mean that you're complacent. It
Speaker 1: just means that you work with what's in front of
Speaker 1: you and you try to make something out of that.
Speaker 1: You don't wait for the right conditions. This is what
Speaker 1: you've got. And I think that what I just said
Speaker 1: has really been I think the real message of my
Speaker 1: work I hope for readers is that, you know, we
Speaker 1: all love the perfect conditions, but if you wait for them,
Speaker 1: you will wait and wait and wait, and pretty soon
Speaker 1: it will be over. There are no perfect conditions. And
Speaker 1: you know, my son just last year graduated college, so
Speaker 1: I've been through on the whole other side. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but I related with everything you said, and I got
Speaker 1: better like you. It's going like, let me just try
Speaker 1: and enjoy this scenario and try not to worry too
Speaker 1: much about the next milestone. And looking back now, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: the worry never totally goes away, or the care maybe
Speaker 1: that's the better word. You know, the care is obviously
Speaker 1: always there. I'm not I'm not too much of a
Speaker 1: warrior in general. We had Rain Wilson on the show
Speaker 1: The Guy from Office, and he talked about something that, um,
Speaker 1: I don't think he created this, but I love it.
Speaker 1: It's this if then thinking if this then, but in
Speaker 1: the negative sense, if I just had this, then I
Speaker 1: would do this. And you kind of talk about this
Speaker 1: at one point in the book. You know, we think
Speaker 1: if we had the perfect art studio and we ran
Speaker 1: around with the right crowd of people and we had
Speaker 1: all these things, then we'd be able to be creative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like a a computer programmer type logic on steroids
Speaker 1: type thing, if than statements. Yeah, that's literally how computers
Speaker 1: are on It's like if this condition should do this,
Speaker 1: and life just doesn't really like that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not that linear. It's not programmed that way. You know.
Speaker 1: My wife says something beautiful that I love, and there's
Speaker 1: several pieces of fiction that kind of play with this idea,
Speaker 1: But she said, you know, just once in a while,
Speaker 1: I'd like to live my life out of order. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to live a day where they were babies,
Speaker 1: and then I'd like to live a day when they
Speaker 1: were in their thirties. You know. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole meaning of life would deteriorate if you got
Speaker 1: to do that, you know, I mean, it's really the
Speaker 1: fact that you have to live it in order that provides.
Speaker 1: There's a great book about this. Actually, there's a book
Speaker 1: called Some by David Eagleman, and its Tales of the Afterlife.
Speaker 1: He imagines all these different afterlife and one of them
Speaker 1: is that you have to live your life in a
Speaker 1: different order. But it's like, Okay, here's nine years of
Speaker 1: you brushing your teeth. There's two years and you're brushing
Speaker 1: your teeth, and then here's thirty days of you're making love.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just like, what's beautiful about the story
Speaker 1: is it shows you. And this is the thing about parables,
Speaker 1: as you know, as it chose you the meaning in
Speaker 1: your everyday life. You're right, if I did live it
Speaker 1: that way, it wouldn't have the same meaning. There's such
Speaker 1: a common genre of writing, which is, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of letters to your younger self what I wish I
Speaker 1: could tell my younger self, because that's exactly it. It's
Speaker 1: the sense of like, well, I just sure wish at
Speaker 1: that age I could have the wisdom that I had then,
Speaker 1: but it simply doesn't work that way. You know. I
Speaker 1: do think there are ways to help people as we're younger,
Speaker 1: to be wiser, but a certain amount of it is
Speaker 1: you've got to figure out your own and it's gonna
Speaker 1: have its own twists and turns, and that's part of
Speaker 1: the game. Yeah. So I went through this weird thing
Speaker 1: recently where my book Steal Like an Artist came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand and twelve, so it has its tenth
Speaker 1: anniversary next year, and so we've been working on the
Speaker 1: tenth anniversary edition. It's gonna be like a hardcover, and
Speaker 1: I wrote a new afterward for it, and you know,
Speaker 1: I had to really reflect on, you know, the thing
Speaker 1: I wrote and afterward is more time has passed in
Speaker 1: between the me now and the me who wrote that
Speaker 1: book than the me who wrote that book and the
Speaker 1: person he was writing it for, because I was writing
Speaker 1: it for my nineteen year old self, Like, Oh, what
Speaker 1: I wish I had known when I was the young
Speaker 1: age of nineteen, when I was like twenty seven or
Speaker 1: whatever it was when I wrote that book. But then
Speaker 1: there was this really interesting thing that happened. When I
Speaker 1: was rereading the book. I thought I couldn't write this now.
Speaker 1: And this is another thing people have a hard time
Speaker 1: believing if you're a writer, is that if you say that,
Speaker 1: you say I couldn't write this now, They said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? You were you when you wrote this?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, but not that guy anymore. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not this person, and I love his energy. I
Speaker 1: don't know where he's getting it from he didn't have kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like his certainty. You know. I read the book
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, this sounds great. You let me
Speaker 1: do this, but it's not me, like I couldn't do
Speaker 1: it again. You Know, something I always try to tell
Speaker 1: the young writers in particular, is, you know, they want wisdom,
Speaker 1: and I'm always like, you know, sometimes it's really the
Speaker 1: idiot or the fool, or the amateur or the beginner
Speaker 1: that really makes the leaps. You know, when you're younger,
Speaker 1: you should use your raw, nascent, gooey state to really
Speaker 1: play and figure things out, because you know, the amateur
Speaker 1: has just so many advantages over the professional really and
Speaker 1: the expert. You know, a lot of my work as
Speaker 1: a creative person is trying to get back to that
Speaker 1: fool state eat you know, especially in the self help genre,
Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh, mastery, you have to achieve mastery, like
Speaker 1: that's what you need to go after and everything. And
Speaker 1: as a creative person, you know, of course I'm trying
Speaker 1: to attempt mastery and like I'm trying to put a
Speaker 1: sentence together, I'm trying to get really good at the
Speaker 1: craft and things like that, but it's really being able
Speaker 1: to go back to that full state, that beginner's mind
Speaker 1: where I don't know anything. That's where the really good
Speaker 1: ideas come from. And again this is very influenced by
Speaker 1: being a parent. I have this idea of the curious
Speaker 1: elder because I'm approaching forty and I'm starting to think about,
Speaker 1: you know, middle age and and how I'm going to
Speaker 1: do this and the relationship I'm gonna have with my kids.
Speaker 1: And instead of thinking myself as like the wise elder,
Speaker 1: I think of myself as the curious elder. I'm very
Speaker 1: much like you show me what you're into. You know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get the model of how I live from
Speaker 1: just seeing me and what I do and everything. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to be more interested in you then the
Speaker 1: beautiful you know, I'm going to be the curious elder
Speaker 1: and you're going to show me things you're gonna teach me.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of been my m O, you know,
Speaker 1: for a few years now with my kids, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to like continue, I'm like what you just said.
Speaker 1: But what I love is that you know, you can
Speaker 1: read all the books in the world you can. I
Speaker 1: love you know reading. That's what I've like staked my
Speaker 1: life on, you know, like books and reading and wisdom
Speaker 1: and stuff. At the end of the day, you've got
Speaker 1: to live your life. The experience is really what's gonna
Speaker 1: drill it into I love it, but for me it's
Speaker 1: like professionally, the thing to do in my position is
Speaker 1: to be like, I know these things. I'm the expert,
Speaker 1: and today I'm going to teach you about creativity or
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna sell you my whatever. And I
Speaker 1: really try to be honest with my audience that you know,
Speaker 1: I can. I can tell you what I know, which
Speaker 1: is I feel like a decent amount. But I would
Speaker 1: tell you that the things that are the most valuable
Speaker 1: to me of the things you have available to you
Speaker 1: right now, you know, like the things that are the
Speaker 1: most raw, impure and available you could get tomorrow, you know.
Speaker 1: And so that's part of the wisdom too, I suppose, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, so much of what you were saying and
Speaker 1: there reminded me of why I have been so drawn
Speaker 1: to Zen practice for big parts of my life. You know,
Speaker 1: that idea of beginner's mind and the sense that not knowing,
Speaker 1: you know, as a phrase from Zen, not knowing is
Speaker 1: is most intimate. It's the best state to have. And
Speaker 1: that same thing that you said there at the end two,
Speaker 1: which is that every bit of our life is the path.
Speaker 1: There's a thing I repeat. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: Whether it's the four body stop for vows, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: but I say it, and it's Darma gates are countless.
Speaker 1: I've out awake to them. It basically means everything is
Speaker 1: a Darma gate, meaning a path to freedom, a path
Speaker 1: to insight, a path to awakening, every little thing, you know.
Speaker 1: One translation of it says I've owed to experience them,
Speaker 1: which is a beautiful idea that you know, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: whether it's creativity or growing wise or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: we do have what we need here. That I say
Speaker 1: in the book, it's like ordinary life plus extra attention,
Speaker 1: and that's how you get the extraordinary. Yeah, everything that
Speaker 1: feels ordinary, if you can just pay the right attention
Speaker 1: to it, it becomes extraordinary. And that's what all the
Speaker 1: great texts teach us, is that there's a different level
Speaker 1: of attention. Yeah, there are different vibrations or different visions
Speaker 1: that we can have just kind of have to poke
Speaker 1: beyond the surface of what's presented to you. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: loved that chapter of the book very much. It's called
Speaker 1: the ordinary plus extra attention equals the extraordinary, and I
Speaker 1: just think that's so great and it's so in line
Speaker 1: with in the Spiritual Habits program I do. We have
Speaker 1: a module it's called no ordinary Moments. That's the basic idea, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, the way you make a moment non ordinary
Speaker 1: is you pay closer and closer attention to it. And
Speaker 1: you and I both quote John I don't know if
Speaker 1: you say it Arrant, I think it is you say
Speaker 1: attention is the most basic form of love that he wrote.
Speaker 1: And I've got another quote of his that I use,
Speaker 1: which is to learn to attend is a beginning. To
Speaker 1: learn to attend more and more deeply is the path itself.
Speaker 1: I love that, you know, attention is one of those
Speaker 1: things that they're greats kind of get around to read
Speaker 1: a really great biography of William James, who of course
Speaker 1: said the famous you know, my experience is what I
Speaker 1: choose to attend to. I just feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: the reason to read old books too is that, you know,
Speaker 1: people think that there's some sort of like truth or
Speaker 1: progress that's like set in stone, and I'm always like
Speaker 1: fascinated when I realized just how much deep wisdom there
Speaker 1: is in ancient stuff, like for example, you know, in
Speaker 1: the old days, people thought that your eyes actually shot
Speaker 1: beams out, that the way that you saw things was
Speaker 1: that your eyes actually projected. It wasn't that light came
Speaker 1: and hit your eyes. Is that your eyes actually shone
Speaker 1: out into the universe and like a spotlight. And you know,
Speaker 1: you think, oh ha ha, how funny. But I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in useful fictions, very interested in things that, like,
Speaker 1: I guess this is kind of a pragmatic thing, but
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, what would be the behavioral result of
Speaker 1: that belief? And the result would be, well, you would
Speaker 1: feel that you had control over where you put your eyeballs,
Speaker 1: your I beams, where you shoot your eye beams is
Speaker 1: in your control, right. You know. If you think about
Speaker 1: light just hitting your eyes and that's how you see,
Speaker 1: that's a very passive idea, it's scientifically true. But if
Speaker 1: you think about your eyeballs is something that shoot out
Speaker 1: beams and you know, you look around, then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden makes you active, you know. So I'm very
Speaker 1: interested and when it comes to ideas. And this is
Speaker 1: why metaphor is so beautiful and history so beautiful. Gives
Speaker 1: us these examples of images can keep in our mind
Speaker 1: or stories we can keep in our minds that influence
Speaker 1: our behavior and how we're supposed to act. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that. What are some of your favorite ways for
Speaker 1: deepening attention like that? You know, I'm a writer and
Speaker 1: an artist and a musician, so a lot of the
Speaker 1: ways that I pay deeper attention are about just practicing
Speaker 1: my craft. So, for example, drawing. There's nothing easier in
Speaker 1: an artist tool belt than drawing. It's cheap, it's something
Speaker 1: you can practice with almost anything, and it's something you
Speaker 1: can do your whole life. And the minute you sort
Speaker 1: of really look at something to draw it, then you
Speaker 1: really see it because you know, you think you know
Speaker 1: what a lamp looks like, but then really, when you're
Speaker 1: trying to trace it with your eyeballs, you know those
Speaker 1: eye beams again, You're like, wait a minute, this is
Speaker 1: much ranger and even more beautiful than I thought it was.
Speaker 1: You know, my friend Wendy McNaughton just gave a really
Speaker 1: good TED talk about drawing, and specifically she practices a
Speaker 1: kind of drawing. That's um blind contour portraits where you
Speaker 1: draw without looking down at your paper, and she practices
Speaker 1: that a lot, and that's something that I do a
Speaker 1: lot to. It really becomes a looking activity. So there's that,
Speaker 1: and then like it depends on what I want to
Speaker 1: pay deeper attention to. If there's a piece of writing
Speaker 1: that I really want to pick apart, I will copy
Speaker 1: it by hand or I'll type it out and then
Speaker 1: I'll go line by line and circle it and look upwards.
Speaker 1: You know, poems, I was gonna mention before. The poets
Speaker 1: are the people who are really good at taking ordinary
Speaker 1: life and making extraordinaries. Like so if you don't read
Speaker 1: a lot of poetry, I recommend it, you know, just
Speaker 1: start like reading. Go to like poets dot org or
Speaker 1: some online poetry website. They all have like daily poems
Speaker 1: or like daily poem newsletters and stuff. People who don't
Speaker 1: read poetry, just you know, start reading poetry every day.
Speaker 1: Just take five minutes. And that's a different kind of
Speaker 1: attention that if you're just you know, if you're just
Speaker 1: going to work or doing your community, so you're not
Speaker 1: paying that kind of attention that the poets do. So
Speaker 1: that's something close reading copying. I do that a lot.
Speaker 1: And if you think about drawing as a form of
Speaker 1: trying to copy, you know what's in front of you
Speaker 1: that's copying too. Most recently, I've been putting my piano
Speaker 1: back here. I have been blown away lately by how
Speaker 1: I can take a song I've heard for twenty years
Speaker 1: that I've listened to over and over again, and if
Speaker 1: I sit down and learn to play it on the piano,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's a new song, Like I
Speaker 1: know how it works in a way that I never
Speaker 1: knew before. Some more practical things, taking a walk, taking
Speaker 1: a daily walk, there's a way of paying attention to
Speaker 1: your neighborhood. Like if you drive somewhere all the time
Speaker 1: and then you walk it on foot, that is a revelation.
Speaker 1: If you walk away that you normally drive, and if
Speaker 1: you drive away you normally walk, you realize how much
Speaker 1: you're missing or not missing. And so I love taking
Speaker 1: a daily walk. Yeah, I'd say walking, drawing, writing, that's
Speaker 1: pretty much my ways of paying attention. I practiced meditation
Speaker 1: for a little bit, and I like the way I feel,
Speaker 1: but drawing and walking are very meditative for me. As
Speaker 1: is copying. I think the most important part of my
Speaker 1: practice is every morning, I keep a diary that's sort
Speaker 1: of like half sketch book half writing notebook, and I
Speaker 1: just feel like three pages, you know, like the Julia
Speaker 1: Cameron morning pages. I just do three pages in the morning.
Speaker 1: And I find that keeping a daily diary, if I
Speaker 1: do it right, And what I mean by right is
Speaker 1: if you just hold a pen and kind of start
Speaker 1: moving it and let things come out. You aren't just like,
Speaker 1: oh what I do yesterday, Oh I did this. One
Speaker 1: of my biggest teachers is a woman named Linda Berry,
Speaker 1: and she believes really powerfully and this idea that you
Speaker 1: just kind of start making letters and things come. And
Speaker 1: she's taught me a lot about, you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of channel what you're trying to do with those morning
Speaker 1: pages or with your diaries. You're not trying to recount
Speaker 1: life as much as you're trying to like figure out
Speaker 1: what's actually going on, you know, not what went on,
Speaker 1: but what's actually going on, you know. And I find
Speaker 1: that that morning practice helps me pay attention to my
Speaker 1: own life. It helps me pay attention to what I've
Speaker 1: paid attention to too, which is I think it's really important.
Speaker 1: I'm an abysmal drawer. I mean it's hard to like
Speaker 1: really look too closely at life when you're like, well,
Speaker 1: like I've got to stick figure, But no, I sometimes
Speaker 1: try and look like an artist would look like where
Speaker 1: are the shadows? Where the lines? Where are the shapes?
Speaker 1: Because it all of a sudden gets your mind to
Speaker 1: go from as you said earlier, sort of passively taking
Speaker 1: in to sort of shine in your light beams, you know,
Speaker 1: on something all of a sudden. I'm like, oh, because
Speaker 1: I think that's what artists are so good at doing,
Speaker 1: is saying, all right, off autopilot, study this thing. Another
Speaker 1: that is good is taking pictures. There's a great book
Speaker 1: out there called Zen Camera by this guy, and it's
Speaker 1: all about you know, photography is a contemplative practice, and
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. And when I'm sort of doing
Speaker 1: the practices in that book, it's like, as I'm out
Speaker 1: and about, my brain is engaging in a different way.
Speaker 1: I am paying closer attention. So I think art is
Speaker 1: so good for that. Well, you mentioned like how you
Speaker 1: try to look at the world like an artist might,
Speaker 1: like seeing the shadows, and and that's such a great point.
Speaker 1: Is that. You know, my friend Rob Walker has a
Speaker 1: book called the Art of Noticing, and one of the
Speaker 1: exercises Rob suggests people practices take a photo walk without
Speaker 1: a camera. So like, you walk around and you look
Speaker 1: for good shots without actually having the camera there, and
Speaker 1: then what happens, Well, of course you see a million
Speaker 1: things that you'd love to take a picture of that
Speaker 1: only you had your camera. You know, it's funny when
Speaker 1: I carry a pocket notebook, I have more ideas. And
Speaker 1: I don't think it's because I have more ideas than
Speaker 1: I do when I'm not carrying the pocket notebook. It's
Speaker 1: just that, well, now that's not true. I think actually
Speaker 1: having this in my pocket sort of rubbing against my
Speaker 1: leg all day, the same way your phone you get
Speaker 1: that phantom weird thing from your phone being in your pocket.
Speaker 1: I think having this in my pocket all day just
Speaker 1: to invites things. You know. Thurreaux said that you know,
Speaker 1: your diary was like a nest egg, and we think
Speaker 1: of nest eggs now it's like like saving up for
Speaker 1: the future. No, there's like a thing called a nest egg,
Speaker 1: which is it is a fake egg that you put
Speaker 1: in a nest to get a bird to lay another
Speaker 1: egg next to him, so he thought thoughts were nest eggs.
Speaker 1: If you write one thought down in a notebook, it'll
Speaker 1: invite other thoughts to come down. It's interesting how much
Speaker 1: when you read, because I love reading old books so much,
Speaker 1: you have to really understand what they're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: because nest eggs, like who has a farmer a chicken coop?
Speaker 1: I mean, more people than they're used to some ways,
Speaker 1: but like what's a nest egg? You know? You know,
Speaker 1: So it's like stuff like that, And it's funny like
Speaker 1: some of my friends because I have a lot of
Speaker 1: artist friends and people who are drawers, and they talk
Speaker 1: all the time about how drawing is a different kind
Speaker 1: of attention than taking pictures. And I think it is
Speaker 1: a different kind of attention, but I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a better kind. I mean it might be a slower
Speaker 1: or or whatever, but I think there's something about taking
Speaker 1: pictures because I love to take a lot of pictures too.
Speaker 1: I think what's fun is to just have like an arsenal,
Speaker 1: just a tool belt, just all these different ways of
Speaker 1: paying attention. And if you can ask yourself, what am
Speaker 1: I not getting? You know, Like what am I deficient
Speaker 1: in right now or like it's kind of like when
Speaker 1: you're hungry, if you think about what sounds really good,
Speaker 1: it's usually that's what you need in your diet. You know.
Speaker 1: If you really kind of think about you're like, oh, salad,
Speaker 1: I should really like you know, like if you ask yourself,
Speaker 1: like spiritually or mentally, like what am I kind of
Speaker 1: missing here? And then you can kind of look at
Speaker 1: your tool belt and say, well, maybe I should do
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I should take a walk or something.
Speaker 1: What's all that said is like so much of this
Speaker 1: stuff is subconscious. You know, You've got to kind of
Speaker 1: train yourself and then you do a lot of it
Speaker 1: on autopilot. It's not like I sit around in my
Speaker 1: office like, oh I think I think it's walk time.
Speaker 1: It's like that doesn't really happen. Somewhere in the book
Speaker 1: And remember which chapter, but you quote Kurt Vonna Gut saying,
Speaker 1: you know, just write a poem and tear it up,
Speaker 1: you know, as something in what you just said reminded
Speaker 1: me of that line. Yeah, And Vonna Guet's daughter was
Speaker 1: really funny. She was kind of like, yeah, you first, dad,
Speaker 1: you go first, you know, because she was kind of
Speaker 1: goofing on his ideas, and I use it because I
Speaker 1: do think it's true. If you could write a poem
Speaker 1: knowing that you were going to tear it up, that'd
Speaker 1: be great, except Vonnegut would have torn up his poem,
Speaker 1: and that was what his daughter was joking about, which
Speaker 1: I love. But I do feel like if you can
Speaker 1: do things for the doing, it's so hard now because
Speaker 1: it's so easy to share things. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the problems that young writers and artists and
Speaker 1: creative people in general have is that they haven't really known.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're under a certain age, you don't
Speaker 1: really know a world in which making and sharing were separate,
Speaker 1: you know, because now it's like if you make something,
Speaker 1: you take a picture of it on your Instagram immediately,
Speaker 1: and so you know, there's a kind of merging of
Speaker 1: making and sharing where it can get very heavy. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to make while thinking about sharing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's something about you need to be in the making
Speaker 1: state and not thinking about the sharing state. Well, we've
Speaker 1: all been under surveillance so much and self impost surveillance.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all have, like so many people have
Speaker 1: Instagram accounts and I wrote a book show called Show
Speaker 1: Your Work, So it's not like I'm you know, I've
Speaker 1: contributed to this, this idea that if you want people
Speaker 1: to know about your work, you have to show it
Speaker 1: to them. You have to share with them and in
Speaker 1: a regular frequency and in a certain way. But you
Speaker 1: can't really do a lot of really good, raw, new, scary,
Speaker 1: interesting creative work if you feel like you're under surveillance.
Speaker 1: And I think part of the problem with having an
Speaker 1: Instagram or a Twitter, blog or newsletter, all these things
Speaker 1: that we have, there're such wonderful tools to build audience
Speaker 1: and connect with audience and get our stuff out there
Speaker 1: and run our lives. You know, you kind of have
Speaker 1: to forget all that stuff or be able to tune
Speaker 1: that out in order to get to that raw kind
Speaker 1: of creative state. You know. I am a completely amateur
Speaker 1: piano player. I have tried to do Instagram lives before
Speaker 1: as like just fun, just like I jump on Instagram
Speaker 1: Live and play some debuc just just this is like
Speaker 1: a fun thing. And every time I do it, I
Speaker 1: can't believe how much worse I am because I'm so like,
Speaker 1: you know, even though there's like forty people on there,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my got you know,
Speaker 1: because I'm not a performer, and performance is a whole
Speaker 1: different thing than like writing in the studio or composing.
Speaker 1: You know, performance is a whole different thing, and so
Speaker 1: I think about that all the time. How it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you think all the time about if
Speaker 1: I'm drawing, I'm like, what's this gonna look like on Stagram?
Speaker 1: You know, that's very eliminating. But it's so easy to
Speaker 1: to have happened to you, you know, so to try
Speaker 1: to like get away from the surveillance mindset, to try
Speaker 1: to get away, to disconnect from the world so you
Speaker 1: can connect with your work. That's something that every creative person,
Speaker 1: and I would argue any human living today really needs
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, how can you disconnect so
Speaker 1: you can connect with yourself? Agreed? I think that is
Speaker 1: so true. And I feel really fortunate that I don't
Speaker 1: know how long it's been now a decade maybe maybe
Speaker 1: not quite that long ago that I sort of with
Speaker 1: music went, you know what, like, nothing's going to happen
Speaker 1: with this. This isn't going anywhere, and I'm just not
Speaker 1: going to care about it going anywhere, And it's easy
Speaker 1: to say that sounds like I just did it and
Speaker 1: it was over right. I'm talking about a process here,
Speaker 1: But when I re emerged on the other side of it,
Speaker 1: and I just played the guitar, and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't even anymore, very often even record like a good
Speaker 1: ide Dia I have. You've got a chapter called forget
Speaker 1: to now do the verb right. It's forgetting about being
Speaker 1: a guitar player and just playing the guitar. But it's
Speaker 1: turned that into a true source of solace and joy
Speaker 1: in my life because I really have no agenda on
Speaker 1: it except that, like, it's very satisfying. Now in our show,
Speaker 1: we do all the music break, so the music shows
Speaker 1: up in there. But I mean, that is like the
Speaker 1: lowest form of like who cares? No one cares, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, and uh, most of what I playing guitar
Speaker 1: never does. But it's just nice to have something like
Speaker 1: that in life. And I loved something you said in
Speaker 1: your book. I've been talking a minute here, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: shut up and let you talk in a second. But
Speaker 1: you talked about making gifts. You know, you said, we're
Speaker 1: now trained to heat praise on our loved ones by
Speaker 1: using market terminology. The minute anybody shows any talent for anything,
Speaker 1: we suggest they turned into a profession. And boy, that
Speaker 1: really hit me as so true because when I let
Speaker 1: go of the guitar as something that might get me something,
Speaker 1: it became a solace. But that's not the way we
Speaker 1: are oriented in today's world at all. We are all
Speaker 1: taught if you're good at something, do more of it
Speaker 1: and sell it. Anything worth doing is worth doing well
Speaker 1: or you know, or professionally or or on stage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, this is something I learned too late.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, like I was lucky in that
Speaker 1: I sort of knew that the musician's life wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be for me. Like it's funny because I used
Speaker 1: to say, like I don't know, getting up in front
Speaker 1: of an audience every night and trying to bear you know,
Speaker 1: that sounds too hard. And now, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: like a big part of my job is like getting
Speaker 1: up on stage and talking to people. But for me,
Speaker 1: it was like I got lucky because I kind of
Speaker 1: like knew music wasn't gonna be a thinking So it
Speaker 1: happened to me like that's suddenly became the hobby, and
Speaker 1: hobby has become such a pejorative term. Now, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: just a hobby. He's just a hobbyist, you know. And
Speaker 1: at different points in time and in different cultures, I mean,
Speaker 1: hobbies are what make life kind of worth, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean the English have a much different approach to hobbies.
Speaker 1: For example, there's a really wonderful essay by George Orwell
Speaker 1: that he wrote during the war, and he said that
Speaker 1: one of the reasons he felt that the English had
Speaker 1: resisted fascism was that they were very fond of personal hobbies,
Speaker 1: things like gardening or puttering around or tinkering. Or Well
Speaker 1: really thought that one of the reasons that the English
Speaker 1: people were good at resisting fascism was because they practiced hobbies.
Speaker 1: If you think about America right now, I mean everyone's
Speaker 1: trying to professionalize everything is a side hustle or you
Speaker 1: know whatever. And I particularly with creative people, it's like
Speaker 1: most of us have tried to turn our hobbies into professions.
Speaker 1: And so then it becomes very very very important that
Speaker 1: you find another hobby. Yeah, that you find something outside,
Speaker 1: whether it's gardening or you know, like whittling, I don't know, whatever,
Speaker 1: it is, the thing that you can do for no reason.
Speaker 1: You said something so beautiful. It's like, once I stopped
Speaker 1: looking at my guitar, is something that could get me something?
Speaker 1: You know, get me something. Oh, that's it, really, you know,
Speaker 1: like that, that's it. Once you stop looking at the thing,
Speaker 1: is something that will get you something, then something can happen.
Speaker 1: Like then you can really make something happen. And I do, though,
Speaker 1: I think the way out of that market mentality is
Speaker 1: to make gifts. You know, like if you're a painter
Speaker 1: and you're really feeling I think like painting something for
Speaker 1: your mother or something, or you make something for a
Speaker 1: hero of yours who's been dead for two hundred years,
Speaker 1: you know, just getting into that idea them, and it
Speaker 1: makes something for someone else, and I don't expect any
Speaker 1: thing in return. I'm gonna take the gifts that have
Speaker 1: been giving me and I'm gonna, you know, pass them on,
Speaker 1: because that's really what the gift is about. And there's
Speaker 1: a great book about that called The Gift by Lewis Hyde,
Speaker 1: where he talks about like all really great art has
Speaker 1: a gift element, and that someone's brought to their gifts
Speaker 1: from the gifts of others and then they pass on
Speaker 1: that gift through their work. So if you come kind
Speaker 1: of like just pull yourself out of that market thing
Speaker 1: for a while long enough to get in touch with
Speaker 1: that gift again and to kind of grow it, then
Speaker 1: you can kind of like get back in the game,
Speaker 1: or you can just pull it out completely. You know,
Speaker 1: you can just say I'm not doing this for work anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have that luxury, you know, and
Speaker 1: there have been multiple artists throughout history who have said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna work at the post office and right at night,
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna become an insurance
Speaker 1: vice president of this insurance company and I'm going to
Speaker 1: write these wild poems and you know, poets. It was
Speaker 1: very helpful to me as a young man to look
Speaker 1: up to so many poets because they all had day jobs.
Speaker 1: That's right, poets. Yeah, there's never been any market and poetry,
Speaker 1: so they've been able to kind of stay pure in
Speaker 1: the sense. Yeah. Well I really related to that. Not
Speaker 1: that creating a podcast is exactly a deep art, but
Speaker 1: it was my love and you know, when it became
Speaker 1: something that went from something I just did because I
Speaker 1: loved to do in it to something that pays the bills.
Speaker 1: There is a real change there, and I consistently have
Speaker 1: to sort of do what you're talking about, which is
Speaker 1: like how do I get back to what started this?
Speaker 1: What was the fire that was here? You know, like
Speaker 1: it takes work to get back to that place, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean I've been thinking a lot. My kids went
Speaker 1: back to school, and I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: teachers and just how many teachers. I talked to a
Speaker 1: lot of teachers and they all, you know, you have
Speaker 1: to be passionate to do that because you are not
Speaker 1: going to get rewarded in a way that is commensurate
Speaker 1: with what you do. Especially in this economy. There are
Speaker 1: so many professions that that happens. You know, you're brought
Speaker 1: to it because you love something and then it becomes
Speaker 1: your bread winning and like how do you get through that?
Speaker 1: That's a big part of the job in some ways,
Speaker 1: and very few of our jobs train us in that,
Speaker 1: you know, how to recover some of that joy, how
Speaker 1: to recover some of that early energy, some of that rawness.
Speaker 1: You know, you're obviously a musician. I'm a musician, So
Speaker 1: it's it's fun to think about how musicians do it
Speaker 1: make Jagger jumping on stage at a bar. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a musician, you know, jamming. Prince used to
Speaker 1: when he was on tour. You know, he'd just show
Speaker 1: up somewhere and play. You know, he'd do his big
Speaker 1: show at the arena, but then he'd show up somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, do a set, and then leave immediately, you know,
Speaker 1: because he just wanted to play. Can you imagine sitting
Speaker 1: in a bar and Prince walk in and climb up
Speaker 1: on stage and just blow the roof off the place.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would be unbeloved. The guy was so talented.
Speaker 1: I just think about, like, it would be mind melting
Speaker 1: to see that. My friend's name is Att Thomas and
Speaker 1: he was a Prince fan long before I was. And
Speaker 1: Matt saw him on his piano and a microphone tour,
Speaker 1: and I just think like, oh man, that's that's a
Speaker 1: that's a big regret of my life, not the Prince
Speaker 1: when he was when he was here on the planet.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but I mean, you know, it's finding those
Speaker 1: things in your life. How can you just practice? You know,
Speaker 1: it would be like if Lebron did a pickup game
Speaker 1: and print or something, you know, whatever it was that
Speaker 1: you know, you to try to go back to that
Speaker 1: and to recapture that. I just think a lot about
Speaker 1: energy these days. Like one of the things I love
Speaker 1: about art and books is that I feel like the
Speaker 1: good stuff it's embodied energy. There's some sort of energy
Speaker 1: that's been like locked in the piece the reader. Like
Speaker 1: with books, really good books have a kind of energy
Speaker 1: to them that is activated once the reader comes and
Speaker 1: opens it up. It's like the reader has to breathe
Speaker 1: life into it and then all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: like works, and all that energy that the writer put
Speaker 1: into it, it will be there forever, Like when you
Speaker 1: pick up Moby Dick, whatever weird, dark, crazy energy Melville
Speaker 1: channeled into that. Whoever picks up Moby Dick and opens
Speaker 1: the pace like it's there for them, And that I
Speaker 1: think is part of the magic of art, and it's
Speaker 1: what really sustains me in my rougher days. It's trying
Speaker 1: to find you know, I've got books around here where
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, I need some of that. I need
Speaker 1: some of that Linda energy, you know, I need some
Speaker 1: of that the Row energy. I need some of the
Speaker 1: Hackney energy. You know. It's like, go to it and
Speaker 1: it's there for you. Well, I think that's a great
Speaker 1: place to wrap up with thinking about the energy that's
Speaker 1: embodied in great works of art. Austin, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show. You and I are
Speaker 1: going to continue in the post show conversation, and what
Speaker 1: I really want to talk about is a chapter title
Speaker 1: called Demons Hate Fresh Air, which is such a such
Speaker 1: a great idea. We'll talk about that in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, as
Speaker 1: well as a special episode I do each week called
Speaker 1: Teaching Song and a Poem and all the other benefits
Speaker 1: of being a member, go to one you Feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash join. Austin, thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 1: We'll have links to all your work in our show notes.
Speaker 1: And I've really enjoyed this. Thank you, it was really fun.
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