Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello revisionist history fans, it's been way too long.
Speaker 2: In case you're curious, we are hard at work cooking
Speaker 2: up all sorts of mischief for you already. I've been
Speaker 2: to Alabama twice. That's how deep we're going this year.
Speaker 2: But while we wait for all those new episodes, I
Speaker 2: wanted to share with you an interview I did with
Speaker 2: my friend and colleague Rick Rubin. If you know your
Speaker 2: Pushkin shows, you'll know that Rick is the driving force
Speaker 2: behind our music podcast Broken Record, in addition, of course,
Speaker 2: to being maybe the most important music producer of his generation.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's worked with Metallica, Adele, Johnny Cash, the
Speaker 2: Beastie Boys, jay Z, the Chili Peppers, Neil Young, on
Speaker 2: and on. I met Rick years ago, and I've been
Speaker 2: out to Shangrilot many times, which is the famous recording
Speaker 2: studio Rick runs up in Malibu. Rick and I once
Speaker 2: interviewed Bruce Springsteen together, which is an experience I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: If you meet Rick, you'll understand immediately what makes him
Speaker 2: such a brilliant producer, because he's one of the most
Speaker 2: open and generous listeners I've ever met. Anyway, over the
Speaker 2: last couple of years, very quietly, Rick's been working on
Speaker 2: a book about creativity called The Creative Act, A Way
Speaker 2: of Being. I read it in one sitting. I loved it,
Speaker 2: and I called up Rick and I asked him, can
Speaker 2: we talk about it? And what follows is that interview
Speaker 2: which I wanted to share with all of you. We
Speaker 2: read it in the Broken Record feed for the music diehards,
Speaker 2: but I thought it made sense to oneted again here
Speaker 2: because although it's a book about creativity by a music producer,
Speaker 2: and many of the examples Rick talks about are about music,
Speaker 2: it's not a music book. It's this beautiful exploration about
Speaker 2: how to open up your imagination that I believe has
Speaker 2: useful insights for all of us. Anyway, here goes our conversation.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3: Rick Hey.
Speaker 2: So I have a million questions, and I thought the
Speaker 2: fun thing to do would be to go through and
Speaker 2: I would just read you things I underlined, because there
Speaker 2: are things that I would love for you to talk
Speaker 2: or that we could talk about, but to you in particular.
Speaker 2: But one of the fantastic things about this book is
Speaker 2: that I'm almost rarely read a book where I felt
Speaker 2: like I was being invited to contribute.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like, every time you made a point, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I have something to add about that or this. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've never read a book like that where I'm like,
Speaker 2: half the time I'm talking to myself as I'm reading it.
Speaker 2: So that's what I thought. We would get into that
Speaker 2: as well a little bit.
Speaker 1: But that's great, that's great. I'm so happy. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'm happy you like it, happy you read it, happy
Speaker 1: you like it, and I'm happy that it had that
Speaker 1: effect on you. And there was I will tell you
Speaker 1: there was a version of the book, an unsuccessful version
Speaker 1: of the book, maybe four years ago, that talked about
Speaker 1: a lot of the same stuff that the book talks about.
Speaker 1: The content was similar and the writing was beautiful, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have elicited the reaction that you had, and
Speaker 1: that's why it didn't come out then. And from the beginning,
Speaker 1: the purpose of the book was always I want people
Speaker 1: to make great things. I want people, I want as
Speaker 1: much beautiful art in the world as possible. I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of beautiful things and exciting things and new things
Speaker 1: happening all the time. And the book was like a
Speaker 1: call to arms to go out and make something beautiful
Speaker 1: change the world. You know.
Speaker 2: So I've known questions, but I wanted to start with
Speaker 2: a very general one, which is, because you're in a
Speaker 2: world of music, we're reading a lot of this through
Speaker 2: the lens of music. We're assuming you're talking about musicians,
Speaker 2: and you give examples of musicians from timesam From time
Speaker 2: to time. You also talk about visual artists. You add
Speaker 2: that into the mix. But I was curious about are
Speaker 2: we really talking about all art here or is there
Speaker 2: a difference in the way that music and visual art
Speaker 2: are done that you're specifically speaking to.
Speaker 1: I think it's how all creative choices are made. So
Speaker 1: not only does it include the visual arts, it includes
Speaker 1: starting a new business, a new recipe you're making as
Speaker 1: a chef, architectural choices you might make, solving a problem
Speaker 1: in life where you're not getting along with a family
Speaker 1: member and you want to get closer to them and
Speaker 1: have better communication. Yeah. Originally I thought of it as
Speaker 1: more of a how to book about creativity. It became
Speaker 1: a book about how to be, how to be in
Speaker 1: the world to allow creativity to happen, and as it
Speaker 1: turns out, how to be in the world that allows
Speaker 1: creativity to happen, solves a lot of issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did feel like about halfway through, I began
Speaker 2: to forget you were in music, and I felt like
Speaker 2: he was starting to talk more broadly about everyone. It's
Speaker 2: hard to escape the assumption that this is going to
Speaker 2: be a book about music at the very beginning. But
Speaker 2: so there's a couple I'm want to start reading to
Speaker 2: you some things and getting you to to talk about
Speaker 2: them a little bit. One is without the spiritual components
Speaker 2: from page from the chapter called the Unseen. Without the
Speaker 2: spiritual component, the artist works with a crucial disadvantage. It's
Speaker 2: a really really interesting idea, and one weirdly that I
Speaker 2: had heard that phrase that way before. What is a
Speaker 2: disadvantage here? And what are you meaning by the term
Speaker 2: spiritual component?
Speaker 1: The spiritual component is belief in something bigger, something different,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. It could be believing in some universal power,
Speaker 1: believing that if you walk under a ladder you'll have
Speaker 1: bad luck. You know, it could it could be anything
Speaker 1: that takes you out of the ordinary to allow you
Speaker 1: to see a wilder potential is good. When you're making art.
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 a very small world for ourselves
Speaker 1: with our reason. Have you ever had a mystical experience
Speaker 1: in your life?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, do you want to describe it at all?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, I mean maybe my definition of mystical I
Speaker 2: have had him.
Speaker 1: I'm open, I'm wide open whatever however you describe it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've had moments probably around the death of
Speaker 2: my father would be an example of the death of
Speaker 2: my father, was a lot more than just about the
Speaker 2: death of my father. I guess that's the best way.
Speaker 2: You become aware in that moment that oh, he's part
Speaker 2: of joining going somewhere whatever, much much, much, much, much
Speaker 2: larger and older than we would have imagined. That's that
Speaker 2: was probably the closest I came to that, that I
Speaker 2: saw that in the gift of my grief, was that, yes,
Speaker 2: was becoming aware of that.
Speaker 1: Would you say that based on that you have been
Speaker 1: able to live at times in a deeper way based
Speaker 1: on that experience. Did it opened something into you to
Speaker 1: allow you to see more than you saw before?
Speaker 2: Yes, I have, absolutely I would. I would count that
Speaker 2: experience as one of the most crucial of my life.
Speaker 2: And in a million years, I would never have thought
Speaker 2: that the death of someone I love more than anyone
Speaker 2: else would open me up in that way.
Speaker 1: That would be an example of touching something. I would
Speaker 1: say spiritual, something unseen, something from beyond, something that wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made sense to you before it happened. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: someone would have described it to you, you might have thought,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really make sense to me, But then you
Speaker 1: got to feel it, and then you understood. And belief
Speaker 1: is that way. There's a part in the book that
Speaker 1: talks about what you believe in doesn't have to be true,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really matter, but belief has a power, and
Speaker 1: belief allows you to go further than you thought you
Speaker 1: can go. Yeah, and there are a lot of tools
Speaker 1: in the book that talk about overcoming voices that tell
Speaker 1: us we can't do things because we've learned we can't
Speaker 1: do things. You know, we've learned what's possible and what's impossible.
Speaker 1: And if we accept what's possible and what's impossible, we
Speaker 1: can't go beyond. If the Wright brothers accepted it was
Speaker 1: impossible for man to fly, we still wouldn't be flying.
Speaker 1: All of the great revolutions that have happened have happened
Speaker 1: because someone believed in something that everyone thought wasn't possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this taps into a larger theme in your book,
Speaker 2: which I thought was really powerful, which is time and
Speaker 2: again you come back to the idea that the artists
Speaker 2: one of the artist's jobs is our obligations is to
Speaker 2: look outside of him or herself. I mean, you do
Speaker 2: talk about how you need there's that chapter where you
Speaker 2: talk about the importance of paying very close attention to
Speaker 2: what's going on inside your own head and heart. Like
Speaker 2: here's an example not long after that first quote, when
Speaker 2: looking for a solution to a creative problem, pay close
Speaker 2: attention to what's happening around you. And what I love
Speaker 2: about that is like, it's not that you think back
Speaker 2: over your history, remember some important thing you read five
Speaker 2: years ago written by some genius. No, No, you're talking
Speaker 2: about in the moment here and that look around and
Speaker 2: you can find kind of solutions clues, what have you
Speaker 2: just in the kind of most prosaic details of your
Speaker 2: existence at that moment, like in the room where you.
Speaker 1: Are, yes now I can't say it works one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the time. It's not saying that, it's saying
Speaker 1: that if you live in a way where you're really
Speaker 1: open and paying attention to everything around you, the answers
Speaker 1: you're looking for are knocking on the door all the time.
Speaker 1: They don't come when you're searching for them. They come
Speaker 1: when you're open and allow them to come. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I talk about in the book is
Speaker 1: if you have a problem them to solve, instead of
Speaker 1: thinking about it, hold the question in your awareness and
Speaker 1: go for a walk or swim or do something that
Speaker 1: takes your mind off of what you're trying to solve
Speaker 1: and engages you in something else. Yeah, and most often
Speaker 1: when you're engaged in something else, the part of you
Speaker 1: that's in the way of solving the problem loses its
Speaker 1: control over you, and you through whatever it is. You
Speaker 1: can find a way to go for a drive something
Speaker 1: where you have to you have to pay attention enough.
Speaker 1: If you're driving, you can sort of drive on autopilot
Speaker 1: in you know, without really paying attention. But if you're
Speaker 1: really not paying attention, you'll crash. You mean, you can
Speaker 1: you can tune out that much. So there is some
Speaker 1: part of you that's occupied when you're driving with the
Speaker 1: work at hand.
Speaker 2: The reason I thought that was interesting was I wondered,
Speaker 2: I mean that one thing that struck me, And I
Speaker 2: could be totally wrong, but my sense is that increasingly,
Speaker 2: in a lot of creative fields, creativity is defined as
Speaker 2: something that is internal and deliberate. You look within yourself
Speaker 2: and your own experience and you mind them for and
Speaker 2: you're talking about something that is in part external and unconscious.
Speaker 2: And I have a good friend who's a screenwriter, and
Speaker 2: I think by virtue of being my friend and watching,
Speaker 2: I'm a reporter, a journalist, you know, I call people
Speaker 2: up and interview them and record what they say. He's
Speaker 2: changed the way he writes screenplays. Now he does as
Speaker 2: much reporting as he does as much as someone who's
Speaker 2: writing a nonfiction book. And he's doing it not because
Speaker 2: he's just cutting and pasting what he hears in the world.
Speaker 2: To do is but he's doing a version of what
Speaker 2: you're talking about, which is he's opening himself up to
Speaker 2: the if he wants to talk about, you know, scientists,
Speaker 2: he goes and talks to lots and lots of scientists,
Speaker 2: and it opens him up to the way they think
Speaker 2: and feel, and that kind of approach to creativity strikes
Speaker 2: me as being one that seems out of vogue in
Speaker 2: a certain way. I mean, it's not what they're teaching
Speaker 2: in writing schools.
Speaker 1: No, it's not what they're teaching. And there was a line,
Speaker 1: there's a line in the book and I only know
Speaker 1: it because I was working on the audiobook yesterday and
Speaker 1: I read it yesterday, and it's against funny, counterintuitive line
Speaker 1: that self expression is not about you and it's just
Speaker 1: such a and when I read it, you know, 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.
Speaker 2: Read another one of my favorite lines. Distraction is not procrastination.
Speaker 2: Procrastination can consistently undermines our ability to make things. Distraction
Speaker 2: is a strategy in service of the work, which is
Speaker 2: to your point. So a lot of what this exposure
Speaker 2: to the world outside of us is about is a
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: You have a little moment where you're talking about how
Speaker 2: different all of us have different strategies, or that kind
Speaker 2: of inspirational place, and you said Andy Warhol was said
Speaker 2: to create with a television, radio, and record player all
Speaker 2: on simultaneously. For eminem the noise of a single TV
Speaker 2: set is his preferred backdrop. Marcel Bruce lined his walls
Speaker 2: with soundless absorbing cork clothes, the drapes and warrior plugs.
Speaker 2: And I was curious what's yours. Do you have a
Speaker 2: kind of mode like that.
Speaker 1: I would say I like to be in a quiet place,
Speaker 1: big beautiful nature, less people. Yeah, i'd say natural beauty
Speaker 1: and less people. It's funny.
Speaker 2: I'm exactly the opposite.
Speaker 3: I was right.
Speaker 2: I had a very productive morning in a coffee shop.
Speaker 2: It was crowded and I was seating it like literally
Speaker 2: right up against this six foot four kid, I think
Speaker 2: it was like twenty two years old, sitting next to
Speaker 2: his parents, and the kid was super interesting, and he
Speaker 2: was talking about the PLO in the nineteen seventies and
Speaker 2: wow yair Arafat and there was something about like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I can't put my finger on what. That
Speaker 2: kind of triggered. After a while, I kind of he
Speaker 2: became my background noise. But it was such a different
Speaker 2: voice that I was fixing a chapter of something I
Speaker 2: was working on, and I just saw suddenly sound a solution,
Speaker 2: And I think it was what we were talking about.
Speaker 2: It was some combination of there's something about that being
Speaker 2: surrounded by unusual voices that really wakes me up to
Speaker 2: the range of solutions. Right, I'm a reminder. Oh, there's
Speaker 2: like there's this kid who's thinking about something I don't
Speaker 2: think about in a context I'm not in. Who's super interesting, Like, wow,
Speaker 2: so you know there's a solution out there.
Speaker 4: It was that.
Speaker 2: It was funny because I had just read your chapter
Speaker 2: which talks about that, and I was in that situation.
Speaker 1: Is is that a place that you go to every day?
Speaker 2: Many days? I like, I need I need so, I
Speaker 2: need voices, I need noise and voices and activity in
Speaker 2: order to be able to create. During the pandemic, I
Speaker 2: had one Stirgle Simpson album that I played over and
Speaker 2: over and over again.
Speaker 3: He was my voice?
Speaker 2: Was it meta? Modern?
Speaker 3: Meta?
Speaker 2: What is that album? Fantastic album?
Speaker 4: Whatever?
Speaker 2: He's great. I don't know if he's out there. He
Speaker 2: helped me through is that many many lean times during
Speaker 2: the pandemic. But that idea, I almost feel like you're
Speaker 2: describing the things you have learned by working with elite
Speaker 2: practitioners of the art of creativity. But I was struck
Speaker 2: by the gap between what you've learned from the top
Speaker 2: performers and what we're teaching to people at the outset,
Speaker 2: and that it concerned me. I almost feel like there's
Speaker 2: a gap between what we're telling people and what the
Speaker 2: truly creative.
Speaker 1: Are doing Yes, yes, that's true.
Speaker 2: On the same point on this gap. There's a moment
Speaker 2: when you're talking about it's actually my favorite part of
Speaker 2: the book, when you're talking about strategies for unblocking yourself
Speaker 2: into all the different ways that you think about that
Speaker 2: or approach that. When you're working with people and one
Speaker 2: of them was right, writ in the voice of someone else,
Speaker 2: that's right, that's what we said, and Rick, once again,
Speaker 2: in the world we live in, that is an incendiary thought.
Speaker 2: That's called appropriation. And you have this beautiful I want
Speaker 2: to quote in a similar vein you say there are
Speaker 2: countless examples of imitation turning into legitimate innovation. Having a
Speaker 2: romanticized vision of an artist, genre, or tradition may allow
Speaker 2: you to create something new because you see it from
Speaker 2: a different perspective than those closer to it. So not
Speaker 2: only are you saying that it can be really useful
Speaker 2: to inhabit someone else's voice or tradition, you're also saying
Speaker 2: that that can spark a whole new, more beautiful, greater
Speaker 2: kind of innovation because you're approaching it from your own perspective.
Speaker 2: You talk about Sergio Leoni spaghetti westerns, being a good
Speaker 2: example of that that they transform understanding of what a
Speaker 2: what a question is. I thought a lot about the
Speaker 2: audiobook we did with Paul Simon when he's talking about Graceland,
Speaker 2: which is that right, yes?
Speaker 1: Or or talking heads you know, remain in light or
Speaker 1: fear of music. Those were inspired by African rhythms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a great tradition in doing this. I mean pretty
Speaker 1: much the best of everything was based on something else always,
Speaker 1: and then it's the it's through the new interpretations. Like
Speaker 1: the Beatles were doing American motown music, but because they
Speaker 1: were English and because of the distance, they weren't trying
Speaker 1: to do it different. They did it different because they
Speaker 1: were different, and that was the beauty of it. And
Speaker 1: that's how the Beatles became the Beatles. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they became the Beatles because they are the Beatles. But
Speaker 1: the music they were doing was they were trying to
Speaker 1: do motown.
Speaker 2: Or as you point out, the Ramones were trying to
Speaker 2: be the Bay City Rollers, yes.
Speaker 3: Which is a true.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Johnny Ramone told me that himself, so I know that
Speaker 1: to be true.
Speaker 2: It is so for those of you who don't know
Speaker 2: the basy De Rollers, they were just about the dumbest
Speaker 2: bubble bubble gum band of the they were't like the
Speaker 2: boy band of the early seventies, and the Ramones think that.
Speaker 1: Well, they had that song s A t U r
Speaker 1: d A y s A t u y. And then
Speaker 1: if you listen to the Ramones, they have those type
Speaker 1: of gabba gabba we accept, you know, similar types of chance.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, Yeah, they take it and they twist
Speaker 2: it in this brilliant, beautiful, revolutionary way. But so we
Speaker 2: walk about it was sort of harp on this, but
Speaker 2: how do we get away from that notion? So it
Speaker 2: is legitimately the case. And I know this because I
Speaker 2: are examples of people who I know who are legitimately
Speaker 2: terrified of even so much as dipping their toe in
Speaker 2: another traditionary voice for fear of being criticized. It's almost
Speaker 2: like we're terrified of the sources of creativity. We're terrified
Speaker 2: to admit to ourselves what we're doing in the name
Speaker 2: of creativity.
Speaker 1: The reason someone imitates someone else is because they love
Speaker 1: someone else. That's why it's only flattery when someone is
Speaker 1: inspired by someone else. If you if you decided to
Speaker 1: write because someone else wrote and you like their writing,
Speaker 1: and you decide to become a writer that's not against them,
Speaker 1: that doesn't take anything away from them. That's a tribute
Speaker 1: to them. Yeah, and all of the music that gets
Speaker 1: made based on loving someone else's music is a tribute
Speaker 1: to them, whether it be people of the same color
Speaker 1: or different color. It doesn't matter that it has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with that. That's not what it's about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a current misread of the situation.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know what it is. And it goes to
Speaker 2: something else. You talk a little bit. You talk about
Speaker 2: the abundance mindset. In getting to that part of the book.
Speaker 2: You talk about the importance of understanding that number of ideas,
Speaker 2: essentially the number of ideas out there is infinite, not finite. Yes,
Speaker 2: when you understand it's infinite, then you're not scared of
Speaker 2: imitating someone because you're like, there's a million things out there.
Speaker 2: We don't we don't have to hold tightly to what
Speaker 2: we've done and be react in a hostile manner if
Speaker 2: someone tries to imitate us because there's a million efficiency,
Speaker 2: you know, it's fine. I think the idea that the
Speaker 2: number of new ideas is infinite has kind of fallen
Speaker 2: out of favor somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's just odd. It's I mean, people can
Speaker 1: be wrong and it's okay, you know, like that's fine.
Speaker 1: In some ways, the fact that it's falling out of
Speaker 1: favor means the people who embrace the tried and true
Speaker 1: methods that have worked will find greater success and they'll
Speaker 1: be less stuff in between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is your understanding of this notion of abundance? Is
Speaker 2: it a product of having worked for I don't know
Speaker 2: how many years you've been in the industry, many decades.
Speaker 2: Did you feel the same way when you were twenty one?
Speaker 2: In other words, is it natural for the very for
Speaker 2: the very young to be much more jealous, much more
Speaker 2: jealousy guard their ideas because they haven't had years and
Speaker 2: years of experience in seeing the kind of waterfall of
Speaker 2: ideas that's out there. Is that fair?
Speaker 1: No, it's fair. I've always felt this way because I
Speaker 1: see it, you know, I see all of the ideas
Speaker 1: I see. I want to learn everything. There's no time.
Speaker 1: There's no time to learn all the things I want
Speaker 1: to learn. I'm endlessly curious, and I'm always looking I'm
Speaker 1: thinking back to It's really more about what we were
Speaker 1: just talking about But the reason I learned about reggae
Speaker 1: music was because of the Clash. If it weren't for
Speaker 1: the Clash, I don't know if I would have ever
Speaker 1: come in contact with reggae music. So is it bad
Speaker 1: that the Clash did reggae music? Yeah, because they turned
Speaker 1: on a whole generation of people who otherwise may not
Speaker 1: have ever heard about it. Do you know? It's like,
Speaker 1: it's a crazy idea to think that, not to be
Speaker 1: inspired by the things that are inspiring us and to
Speaker 1: show it and to own it and to fly the
Speaker 1: flag of these great trends or genres is nothing more beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna pause for a quick break, and then we'll
Speaker 4: be back with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 4: We're back with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: I remember pretty early in my writing career when I
Speaker 2: was unhappy. I thought I was limited as a writer.
Speaker 2: And I remember sitting down with I've forgotten which book
Speaker 2: it was, one of Michael Lewis's books and one of
Speaker 2: Janet Malcolm's books, two narrative nonfiction writers who are extraordinarily
Speaker 2: good at the one thing I thought I was weak at,
Speaker 2: which is character literally sitting down and studying them like
Speaker 2: they were with a talmud, Like, what's he doing here?
Speaker 2: How much time does he spend literally measuring how much
Speaker 2: time does he spend describing someone? I was getting itchy feet.
Speaker 2: I would I did introduce a character and I think, oh,
Speaker 2: you must be bored of the character list.
Speaker 3: And then I would.
Speaker 2: Then it would Michael Lewis and is like, he has
Speaker 2: the same character the whole book and we're not bored
Speaker 2: of him. How does he do that?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Or Jed and Malcolm would like peel one layer after
Speaker 2: another off the onion. You'd be like, there can't be
Speaker 2: any onion left. There was always onion left. I was like,
Speaker 2: how does she do that? To your point about you
Speaker 2: got that lovely thing about the back and forth between
Speaker 2: the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson sees White
Speaker 2: Album and says, is it White album that inspired always?
Speaker 1: It starts with it starts with rubber Soul. It starts
Speaker 1: with rubber soul. Yeah, And then based on Brian Wilson
Speaker 1: hearing Rubber Soul, he makes pet sounds based on the
Speaker 1: song God only Knows. Paul has the idea for Sergeant pepper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the point that I make there is not they
Speaker 1: weren't doing that at a competition. It was out of
Speaker 1: love and inspiration, and it was an upward spiral between
Speaker 1: them of inspire a reaction, inspire a reaction, inspire, lifting
Speaker 1: the level, lifting the level. It was they made each
Speaker 1: other better. They weren't trying to beat each other. It
Speaker 1: was different than that they loved each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, explain to me. It's sort of obvious, but I'd
Speaker 2: love for you to talk about it. Why is it
Speaker 2: important that it comes out of love and not competition.
Speaker 2: What is it about a competitive drive that is more
Speaker 2: limiting than a drive of love.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, we're talking about. Majority of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is art, and the way that I
Speaker 1: see art is it really is about our own self expression.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you an example. I just wrote a book.
Speaker 1: You write a lot of books. The idea of Rick's
Speaker 1: book competing with Malcolm's book is an insane idea. You
Speaker 1: write a Malcolm book, I write a Rick book. No
Speaker 1: one but Malcolm can write a Malcolm book. No one
Speaker 1: but Rick can write a Rick book. They're mutually exclusive things.
Speaker 1: Everything is like that. So if you're focused on beating
Speaker 1: someone else. It makes me think you're not actually playing
Speaker 1: the same game that I'm playing. The game that I'm
Speaker 1: playing is I want to make the best thing that
Speaker 1: I can make for me, that's all, and if someone
Speaker 1: else likes it, it's great. There's a chapter in the
Speaker 1: book about success, which is success is when you feel
Speaker 1: good enough about it a piece of work you've made
Speaker 1: to share it in the world. That's the moment of success.
Speaker 1: Whatever happens after that's completely out of our control. But
Speaker 1: the moment that you sign off, it's like you're okay,
Speaker 1: here we go, and then move on to your next project.
Speaker 1: That's where success lies. So to work on a vibration
Speaker 1: of competition. It's one thing. If it's about running a race,
Speaker 1: this is not running a race. This really is always
Speaker 1: apples and oranges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although you know it's funny, I think you're selling
Speaker 2: your idea a little short. I was thinking about this
Speaker 2: when I read that part. I'm a big fan of cars,
Speaker 2: and there's a very particular moment in the early aughts
Speaker 2: when car design goes through a stage that I think
Speaker 2: everyone in the who loves cars thinks was one of
Speaker 2: a kind of extraordinary moment of it was a kind
Speaker 2: of when cars started to look very kind of bowhusy.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know cars, but there was
Speaker 2: a very beautiful E Class that Mercedes put out in
Speaker 2: the early aughts, which is veryy, clean lines, round headlights.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Audi put out the first iteration
Speaker 2: of Estyle. They're still in but it was very clean
Speaker 2: and very They all were doing this a very similar aesthetic,
Speaker 2: which was a rejection of a lot of the kind
Speaker 2: of clutter and complication that had gone on in the
Speaker 2: in the previous generation of car design. And you could
Speaker 2: see it across all the kind of elite car makers.
Speaker 2: And you know, normally you would say, these are guys
Speaker 2: who really are in competition with each other. They are
Speaker 2: battling over a finite marketplace. They're making the same thing
Speaker 2: cars that people drive. But they weren't all pursuing this
Speaker 2: Bauhaus design strategy. It was out of love.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: The guy at Audi saw the E Class and it's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, that's a gorgeous car. I want to
Speaker 2: do my version of it. I mean it was no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't like let's take market share from you know,
Speaker 2: at that level. I mean, maybe it was in the
Speaker 2: marketing group, but at the level of the designer it
Speaker 2: was clearly they all fell in love, yes, with this
Speaker 2: particular So I think it goes beyond what we think
Speaker 2: of as the as the art narrowly as the arts.
Speaker 2: I think you see it everywhere that fundamentally, in a
Speaker 2: million different ways. Even people who are locked in competition
Speaker 2: with each other sometimes push that aside and do things
Speaker 2: out of a genuine affection for what they were just
Speaker 2: they're just blown away by something they see and know, like,
Speaker 2: 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, and Audi, 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, not based on
Speaker 1: seeing each other, yeah, just based on it's time for this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's possible that the thing that inspired Mercedes
Speaker 1: to want to do it is the thing that inspired
Speaker 1: Audi to want to do it. But that's different than
Speaker 1: Audi wanting to copy what Mercedes did, And that's a
Speaker 1: fascinating thing when there are these movements of art where
Speaker 1: it just springs up all over the planet at the
Speaker 1: same time, not because they saw it and wanted to
Speaker 1: do it, but because now is the time for this
Speaker 1: new thing, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: But at its root, it's the same thing, because they're
Speaker 2: falling in love with the same idea in the world simultaneously.
Speaker 2: You can d of fall in love with what Joe
Speaker 2: across the pond is doing, or me and Joe can
Speaker 2: fall in love with something you know in the world
Speaker 2: of ideas that's really beautiful and novel. But I think
Speaker 2: the engine is the same, which is it's love.
Speaker 1: Yes, it seems more magical when there isn't when you
Speaker 1: don't see one like it first. 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. It was time
Speaker 1: for that to happen.
Speaker 2: Let's keep going to so much wonderful stuff here. I
Speaker 2: want to give listeners more of a taste of it.
Speaker 2: Was several moments when I was out of surprise and
Speaker 2: in one case really genuinely wanted more of a explanation,
Speaker 2: and that was when the work has five mistakes, it's
Speaker 2: not yet completed. When it has eight mistakes, it might
Speaker 2: be yes, Rick, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: We get hung up on the idea of perfection, and
Speaker 1: we think perfection is what we're looking for, when really
Speaker 1: what we're looking for is something with emotion in it,
Speaker 1: something with humanity in it, and humanity has flaws. So
Speaker 1: we can use the example of the leaning Tower of Pisa.
Speaker 1: At the time that it was made, it was a mistake,
Speaker 1: and now it's one of the most visited buildings in
Speaker 1: the world, and it's visited purely because of the mistake.
Speaker 1: You know, we collect old Persian rugs that were handmade
Speaker 1: and that had been lived in whereas you can buy
Speaker 1: a new machine made rug. Now that's more perfect than that,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't have the same humanity in it. And
Speaker 1: the reason I use the example of five and eight
Speaker 1: are their random choices. Those are not specific. Those are
Speaker 1: not if you have five, you got to get to
Speaker 1: eight for it to work. But it's a way of
Speaker 1: thinking where we're not looking to make it perfect. We're
Speaker 1: looking for the soulful version that could either be going
Speaker 1: further towards perfection or backwards away from it, and it
Speaker 1: might just as well be backwards away from it for
Speaker 1: it to feel good.
Speaker 2: When we're making art, can you think about a project
Speaker 2: you've worked on that you think is beautiful and authentic
Speaker 2: in precisely this imperfect way, that has mistakes that you
Speaker 2: think it benefited from.
Speaker 1: I can give you an example close to both of
Speaker 1: our hearts, which is interesting. When we had the Broken
Speaker 1: Record logo designed, it was originally done. It was designed
Speaker 1: on a computer, and it was a very formal design,
Speaker 1: graphic design, and a friend of mine suggested, you don't
Speaker 1: have tried doing that by hand? Yeah, And then we
Speaker 1: suggested to the design and try it by hand. And
Speaker 1: the one that we ended up picking was the one
Speaker 1: done by hand. It was less perfect, yeah, than the
Speaker 1: original version, but it had more personality. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's very clarifying because I think it's very easy to
Speaker 2: lose sight of what the audience for a work of
Speaker 2: art wants. They want the creator, they want it. It's
Speaker 2: a way of looking into the mind or heart of
Speaker 2: the creator. They want, don't want some abstract thing that
Speaker 2: fits every criteria of perfection, right we're looking for, you know,
Speaker 2: to give the example back of when I was went
Speaker 2: through my period where I was obsessively reading Michael Lewis
Speaker 2: and Janet Malcolm. Jenna Malcolm is a good eample.
Speaker 1: This or both.
Speaker 2: When you read them, you feel like you know the
Speaker 2: two of those writers. When you read their writing, at
Speaker 2: the end of a Michael Lewis book, you feel like
Speaker 2: you've been hanging out with him and have a window
Speaker 2: into his world. Jenna Malcolm's books are weird and quirky
Speaker 2: and sometimes disturbing, but you love that because you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: she's such a kind of fascinating character. And my worry
Speaker 2: when I was reading them was that people weren't having that.
Speaker 2: That was not the experience my readers were having. That
Speaker 2: they were getting something that was too abstract. They were
Speaker 2: getting information, but not that kind of they were really
Speaker 2: getting me. You know, it took a long time. We're
Speaker 2: talking about. That thing I've describing was twenty years into
Speaker 2: my writing career.
Speaker 1: And what you're talking about is really moving away from
Speaker 1: classical journalism. Yeah, because my understanding of journalism is the
Speaker 1: writer is invisible it's only the story, and it's just
Speaker 1: you know, just facts, that's all it is. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: in a way, this would be a bastardization of journalism.
Speaker 1: But that's why it's engaging, and that's why it's interesting,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's popular. It's not regular journalism. It's
Speaker 1: journalism through your filter, the personal filter. There's a documentarian
Speaker 1: named Nick Broomfield who I love, who makes these crazy movies.
Speaker 1: He tends to pick outrageous characters to focus on, but
Speaker 1: he always ends up part of the movie. And usually
Speaker 1: when documentarians make a movie, you just see the subject,
Speaker 1: but he ensconces himself into the finds a way to
Speaker 1: insinuate himself into the story. And it's wild and bizarre,
Speaker 1: and it's unusual for the director of a documentary to
Speaker 1: become a main character in every one of the documentaries
Speaker 1: he makes about different people. Fascinating. Yeah, so I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wait, couple of other things I wanted. I want to
Speaker 2: make sure we you you had a little section that
Speaker 2: I loved. When you're talking about Alpha Go, the AI
Speaker 2: software system that was designed to master the game of
Speaker 2: the Japanese game of Go, and how there's this famous
Speaker 2: showdown between the computer and a Go grand master, and
Speaker 2: the computer wins by making a move that had never
Speaker 2: occurred to any Go player. You know, they had you say,
Speaker 2: you say it was most Go players would have considered
Speaker 2: A or B choice, and the computer went to C
Speaker 2: and it blew everyone's mind. And you said, when you
Speaker 2: read about that that you cried.
Speaker 1: I did, and it was it wasn't. I didn't read
Speaker 1: about it. I watched the documentary, But you watched the documentary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was watching a documentary about it and it made
Speaker 1: me cry. And when I cried, I didn't understand it
Speaker 1: at first. It took it took a while. I thought
Speaker 1: about it more. My reaction forced me to think about
Speaker 1: it more. It's like, why am I crying? I'm not investing.
Speaker 1: I don't play Go, I'm not invested in this story
Speaker 1: at all. Yet I'm crying. And originally my first thought was,
Speaker 1: am I crying because machines are beating humans? No, that's
Speaker 1: not what it is. I'm crying because the way that
Speaker 1: the computer won wasn't by knowing more than the grand master.
Speaker 1: The computer one because it knew less than the grand master.
Speaker 1: And that's what made me cry. It's that the computer
Speaker 1: didn't have all of the baggage and cultural dogma of
Speaker 1: how you're supposed to play Go. It only knew these
Speaker 1: are the rules of the game. I'm playing the rules
Speaker 1: of the game. And it was fascinating to me because
Speaker 1: it made me realize, if we can let go of
Speaker 1: the beliefs of what we're how we're supposed to do things,
Speaker 1: anything maybe possible. It's the tip of the iceberg for
Speaker 1: the game Go, for sure, but maybe it's the tip
Speaker 1: of the iceberg for everything. And if we can get
Speaker 1: back to that beginner's mind of not knowing, of accepting
Speaker 1: that we don't know, we can break through in ways
Speaker 1: never understood before. Yeah, never thought possible before.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I didn't see this documentary, and when
Speaker 2: I read about your description of how much you were
Speaker 2: moved by that moment, I was also moved, but not
Speaker 2: for the reasons you were. I was moved because what
Speaker 2: that told me was that when human beings play Go,
Speaker 2: they're not playing Go. In other words, the computer saw
Speaker 2: Go in its entirety, in a technical sense, saw every
Speaker 2: conceivable move you could make, made one that would never
Speaker 2: have occurred to us. When human beings played We're playing
Speaker 2: this very small parochial version, governed not just by the
Speaker 2: rules and potentials of the board, but by our own assumptions, habits, practices, culturals.
Speaker 2: And I actually kind of love that about us, in
Speaker 2: other words, that we've colonized and humanized and brought all
Speaker 2: of our kind of heartrending limitations even to something like
Speaker 2: a board game. That's very moving to me. That was like,
Speaker 2: the computer has the chile impersonal version of Go, and
Speaker 2: this reminds us we're not playing the chile impersonal version.
Speaker 2: Our Go bears the imprint of our own limitations and
Speaker 2: cultural specificities. And I find that really endearing, you know, Like,
Speaker 2: but it's funny we both see the same thing and
Speaker 2: are moved by it. I don't think what I'm saying
Speaker 2: what you're saying incompatible. I think they're actually competiven.
Speaker 1: Know, I think they're almost opposites, and the fact that
Speaker 1: they are both something to fall in love with about
Speaker 1: the story is amazing. I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is actually something that you What I've
Speaker 2: just described is something you do a lot in this book,
Speaker 2: which is there are a lot of moments where it
Speaker 2: appears that you're making points that contradict each other, but
Speaker 2: you're not. This is the furthest from Black and White.
Speaker 2: This book, there is a lot of this kind of
Speaker 2: yinging and yanging in it. I thought was really very
Speaker 2: very you. It's very like it's not like you do
Speaker 2: it this way, not this way, like the necessity of
Speaker 2: being both inwardly sensitive and outwardly sensitive. It's not one
Speaker 2: or the other. It's like just there's a balance that
Speaker 2: you have to kind of observe.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back with the rest of Malcolm Gladwell
Speaker 4: and Rick Rubin's conversation. After a quick break, we're back
Speaker 4: with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: There's a passage there that I really love. Were you
Speaker 2: talking about Sometimes there is a musician who you'll listen
Speaker 2: to when they're trying something radically new. Do you remember
Speaker 2: this and you're baffled by it the first time you listen,
Speaker 2: and baffle the second time, and you keep listening and
Speaker 2: keep listening, and then finally become something you can't live without.
Speaker 2: And I was wondering, was there someone in mind?
Speaker 1: Would you several the first my first experience of that
Speaker 1: was a group called Trouble Funk in the early days
Speaker 1: of hip hop. When I was in high school, the
Speaker 1: only place you could hear hip hop was once a week,
Speaker 1: one hour show on WHBI called Mister Magic's Rap Attack,
Speaker 1: and that was the only and I recorded it. I
Speaker 1: Cassette recorded it every week, as did all the other
Speaker 1: hip hop heads in my high school and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the six of us, and we would record that
Speaker 1: every week and then that would be all we would
Speaker 1: listen to all week because there were at this point
Speaker 1: in time, there really were no hip hop records available
Speaker 1: to buy. There may have been the Sugar Hill Gang's
Speaker 1: Rappers Delight, but that was the only one. Yet on
Speaker 1: this radio show, he played all these songs. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know where they came from, and they
Speaker 1: were all like twelve inch you know, DJ living where
Speaker 1: I live, it didn't exist. So listen to that every
Speaker 1: week and hear whatever was going on in rap music.
Speaker 1: And again it was a very tight time because all
Speaker 1: there was was an hour and with you know, plus
Speaker 1: it had commercials in it for places like Brad's Record
Speaker 1: Den in the Bronx, which is I guess where you
Speaker 1: could have bought some of those other songs that I
Speaker 1: had never gone at that time. I have gone since.
Speaker 1: And one week, in the middle of these all rap songs,
Speaker 1: he played a Troublefunk song, which is not rap music.
Speaker 1: It's go go music, and it's long. And the song
Speaker 1: was maybe seven or nine minutes long. So a seven
Speaker 1: or nine nine rap song took up seven to nine
Speaker 1: minutes of my sixty minutes plus commercials removed my little
Speaker 1: bit of rap music for the week, and I was
Speaker 1: so angry, and I would every time I would listen
Speaker 1: to the cassette, I would forward through the Troublefunk song
Speaker 1: to get to the rap music. And I did this,
Speaker 1: and then one time I listened to the Troublefunk song.
Speaker 1: And then it took time, but eventually, within a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, the only thing I was listening to on
Speaker 1: that tape was the Troublefunk song. Yeah, so that's one example,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there are many more. When the first
Speaker 1: I first I remember the first time I heard nine
Speaker 1: inch Nails. I didn't like any of the industrial music
Speaker 1: I had heard up until the point of nine inch Nails,
Speaker 1: and when I heard nine inch Nails, my initial reaction
Speaker 1: to it was, this is that kind of music I
Speaker 1: don't like. I don't like the production. I don't like
Speaker 1: those sounds. And then eventually took probably a year, Nine
Speaker 1: Inch Nails became my favorite group. But the things that
Speaker 1: I didn't like about it weren't the things that were
Speaker 1: good about it in the case of Nine Inch Nails,
Speaker 1: case in Nine Nails case, Trent's songwriting was so far
Speaker 1: superior to anyone else making that kind of music that
Speaker 1: once I could hear his songs, it didn't matter whether
Speaker 1: or not I liked the style. And then when I
Speaker 1: liked the songs, eventually I grew to even like the
Speaker 1: style because his songs made me like the style. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: It's this interesting thing about for different kinds of experience
Speaker 2: and creative experiences, there are different thresholds. The familiar has
Speaker 2: a very low threshold. The unfamiliar has a much longer threshold.
Speaker 2: But what's interesting with that story that is, and it's
Speaker 2: very particular to you, is that you had the patience
Speaker 2: to wait long enough so you could reach the threshold
Speaker 2: of understanding what was what Troublefunk was doing or what
Speaker 2: Trent Resident was doing. That's unusual. So a lot of
Speaker 2: what you're talking about in this book really does seem
Speaker 2: to be things that can be taught and understood. And
Speaker 2: the shift you're this, what you're describing now is something
Speaker 2: very not impossible to teach, but very hard to teach.
Speaker 2: To persist with something you didn't like, the Troublefunk, and
Speaker 2: yet somehow you kept coming back in one way, you
Speaker 2: didn't dismiss it. You disliked it without dismissing it. That's
Speaker 2: I guess what I'm trying to say. That ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent of people when they disliked, they dismiss, but you didn't.
Speaker 2: I want to understand why didn't you.
Speaker 1: I may have back then, I may have dismissed it,
Speaker 1: but for whatever reason, because it was on a cassette,
Speaker 1: and because I had to keep coming back and forward
Speaker 1: when it would come on and I might be doing
Speaker 1: something else in my room, it was able to get
Speaker 1: through to me. And this again we get to the
Speaker 1: metaphysical aspect of it. The universe wanted me to hear Troublefunk.
Speaker 1: That's why I was able to hear it. If it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have resented itself over and over to me, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have. So yes, I allowed it in, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't all me. I'll give you another example. It's not
Speaker 1: uncommon when I'm out and about to have someone recommend
Speaker 1: something that they think I'll like, and when they recommend
Speaker 1: it to me, I listen and it sounds like a
Speaker 1: terrible thing, something that I don't like, the kind of
Speaker 1: thing I don't like. Whatever it is. An example would
Speaker 1: be it's not a real example. A hypothetical example is, oh,
Speaker 1: you love this new horror movie. I don't like horror movies.
Speaker 1: There's no chance I'm going to watch a horror movie.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't work. If three different people who don't know
Speaker 1: each other all suggests to me to watch that horror movie,
Speaker 1: I will watch that horror movie, even though I know
Speaker 1: it's something I don't like. And the reason is the
Speaker 1: universe really wants me to be aware of this. People
Speaker 1: are telling me. Why are people telling me this is
Speaker 1: not for me? So that's an example of a and
Speaker 1: paying attention to the signs around you. If several of
Speaker 1: your friends tell you the same thing that you initially discounted,
Speaker 1: it might be worth a look.
Speaker 2: This is funny because this goes into one of my
Speaker 2: It's similar to one of my little I have a rule.
Speaker 2: I have these implicit rules I carry around in my
Speaker 2: head and one of my rules is never say some
Speaker 2: things that you consume or see or whatever is bad,
Speaker 2: only say I think it's bad right now.
Speaker 1: Yes? Great.
Speaker 2: And by the way, the whole world social media particularly
Speaker 2: would be so greatly improved by that rule. Right, I
Speaker 2: don't like what you I don't like what you said
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's very different from saying what you said is wrong,
Speaker 2: right it's absolutely whole or opposite. And but adopting that
Speaker 2: with art, I wonder about how many I'm talking about
Speaker 2: some of the critical community, how much criticism, how much
Speaker 2: it would change our understanding of art if critics universally
Speaker 2: followed that rule, and it was if they always acknowledged
Speaker 2: that they may be in a situation that you were
Speaker 2: in with trouble Funk, that the universe wasn't there yet,
Speaker 2: You weren't there yet. And also that story about Troublefunk
Speaker 2: is that you weren't looking for trouble Funk, you were
Speaker 2: looking for hip hop. So like it was an intrusion
Speaker 2: in the beginning, It wasn't a treasure. It was something
Speaker 2: that didn't belong, yes, and.
Speaker 1: It was something that didn't belong and was taking up valuable.
Speaker 2: Time, valuable cassette tech cassette deck space. Yes, because it
Speaker 2: was only sixty minutes. Did you have the nineties back
Speaker 2: then or just the sixties?
Speaker 1: We had sixties and nineties and eventually one twenties.
Speaker 2: I remember that when twenties were huge. But that idea
Speaker 2: of building into our critical assessments some notion about probability,
Speaker 2: that my judgment is conditioned on two things. It do
Speaker 2: seem credic to me, and it is at this moment,
Speaker 2: and both of those things may not be true in
Speaker 2: some future date. I just that just is so insanely
Speaker 2: liberating to me, Like, and I don't understand. Can we
Speaker 2: pass this law that says you're only allowed you must
Speaker 2: always use I think and right now in any creative judgment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's also related to another thing mentioned in the book,
Speaker 1: the idea of I can't do that. Yes, we never
Speaker 1: say I can't do that. You can say I haven't
Speaker 1: done that yet.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's yes.
Speaker 2: That is the same that functions the same way. The
Speaker 2: reason I think a book like this is so important
Speaker 2: is this is a little bit of a tangent. But
Speaker 2: I went to give a talk at a university two
Speaker 2: weeks ago and I was to the psychology department and
Speaker 2: I was talking to these psychologists and they were talking
Speaker 2: about mental health, and they were talking about a lot
Speaker 2: of really lovely research right now about how the language
Speaker 2: that you use to describe your feelings in emotions and
Speaker 2: traumas and things is enormously important. You know, to describe
Speaker 2: something this way or that way is not a difference
Speaker 2: in style. It is actually a difference in the way
Speaker 2: that you are processing, understanding, recovering all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: And one of the things this book did to me was,
Speaker 2: I think this one way of understanding your book is
Speaker 2: it is in that spirit the categories that we use
Speaker 2: and the language that we bring to our understanding of
Speaker 2: creativity really really matters. Like in that section I love
Speaker 2: this that I love so much about when you're talking
Speaker 2: about all the ways you can jog someone out of
Speaker 2: being stuck. When you're stuck, you don't think you don't
Speaker 2: think you can be jogged out by some change in
Speaker 2: your setting or some but in truth, you can. You
Speaker 2: remain acutely sensitive to the influences of your environment. And
Speaker 2: it's so hard for us to understand that those kinds
Speaker 2: the influence and impact of those kinds of framing devices
Speaker 2: and settings. Language are framing devices, right, that is often
Speaker 2: what causes us to suffer unnecessarily.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. There's a teacher named Marshall Rosenberg who wrote a
Speaker 1: book which is not a great book, called Nonviolent 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 means 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 when at the time you're doing the best you can,
Speaker 1: to make yourself wrong isn't helpful. Yeah, And there's a
Speaker 1: whole list of trigger words and ways of sharing a
Speaker 1: vocabulary of feeling that helps us better communicate, and when
Speaker 1: we communicate better, we tend to get along better. It's beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful teaching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple other smaller things. There's a couple of
Speaker 2: bones in this book where I scribbled in the in
Speaker 2: the margins who is Rick talking about? But there was
Speaker 2: one that I wanted you to if you don't mind.
Speaker 2: You talked about how you were working with an artist
Speaker 2: on a song which was a love song, and you
Speaker 2: were trying to solve the problem, and you finally solve
Speaker 2: the problem by telling the artists don't think of a
Speaker 2: romantic partner, think of it as a devotional to God.
Speaker 2: Who is the song and who was the artist?
Speaker 1: Can you tell me? That was Johnny Cash? And the
Speaker 1: song was the first time ever I saw your face.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. Oh that's so interesting. I know that
Speaker 2: version so well. That's totally blowing my mind because that's
Speaker 2: what it listens like. Yeah, oh my god, it's genius, Rick,
Speaker 2: that is genius.
Speaker 1: And it was also Oh and I interviewed Roger mcgwinny
Speaker 1: the other day and he talked about the first Bird
Speaker 1: single was Mister Tambourine Man and out of the blue.
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, when I sang it in the studio,
Speaker 1: no one knows this, but I sang it as a
Speaker 1: devotional to God. I said, but the lyrics aren't about that.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, I know, but that's how I
Speaker 1: was able to sing it and feel it, and it
Speaker 1: blew my mind.
Speaker 2: Oh that's really interesting. This is why I missed liner
Speaker 2: notes so much. I feel like this is the functional
Speaker 2: but ray those two facts about the first time I
Speaker 2: saw your face and mister Tamery Man, those both changed
Speaker 2: radically change the way you hear those songs. Yes, the
Speaker 2: Cash song makes way more sense. I've almost not understood
Speaker 2: why I found that song so powerful. Yes, it really
Speaker 2: in the context of all those ones, it's one of
Speaker 2: the ones that it pops in this kind of strange
Speaker 2: way and it's haunting in a way you don't And
Speaker 2: now I understand why he's singing it with a completely
Speaker 2: different intention than I imagined.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's and if you listen to the original song,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. Or when I say the original the popular version,
Speaker 1: because the popular version is not the original either. You
Speaker 1: know it was written by Iwan McCall and it's an
Speaker 1: Irish folk song. And if you've ever heard the Irish
Speaker 1: folk song version of it, it's almost like a yodel,
Speaker 1: you know, it's very unlike all the versions that we're
Speaker 1: familiar with.
Speaker 2: I realized when I read that as well, that I
Speaker 2: have a version of that, which is years and years ago.
Speaker 2: I sat down on an airplane next to a guy
Speaker 2: who happened to be reading one of my books, and
Speaker 2: I had this very very long conversation with him, and
Speaker 2: he was I s don't know what he did.
Speaker 3: He opened.
Speaker 2: His job was to go around the country opening Trader Joe's.
Speaker 2: He was coming from New York. They were opening a
Speaker 2: store like in Brooklyn or something. And he'd just been
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn for a month, lived in Atlanta, had two kids,
Speaker 2: was about thirty, you know, eight years old, business school degree.
Speaker 2: I think maybe not. Anyway, I had a lovely chat
Speaker 2: with him, and I realized, oh, that's my reader. And
Speaker 2: every time I'm stuck I think about him. Beautiful, it's
Speaker 2: for him. He was beautiful and he said because he
Speaker 2: only read. He told me. He said, I'm very very busy.
Speaker 2: I teach Sunday school, like I'm a coach in my
Speaker 2: kids little league, and I have this job which is
Speaker 2: very demanding. I have time to read three books a year.
Speaker 2: And I realized, oh, and he's chosen one of mine.
Speaker 2: I'm one of his three, which is like phenomenally flattering thing.
Speaker 2: And I realized, Oh, if I can keep being one
Speaker 2: of his three books every year, then I I will succeed.
Speaker 2: Beautiful and that beautiful about them all the time it
Speaker 2: was like.
Speaker 1: A let's love great.
Speaker 2: Yeah really really but it is. It's insanely liberating to
Speaker 2: know that's what it's for, right, Yes.
Speaker 1: On the fact that you randomly got assigned that seat
Speaker 1: he 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. Yeah, but if they happen, and if you
Speaker 1: can use that information like you do, we all win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all to the better or one last thing, the
Speaker 2: last the underlines in your book, Page three sixty five,
Speaker 2: and I was like, wait, I didn't expect this. Rich
Speaker 2: was hold on, let me just go there. Also, I
Speaker 2: don't know why in retrospect I found this so surprising,
Speaker 2: but you say, when I work with artists, we make
Speaker 2: an agreement, we continue the process until reaching the point
Speaker 2: where we are all happy with the work. All in
Speaker 2: is italicized in that. And I was like, I realize,
Speaker 2: and maybe this is because how badly I needed your book.
Speaker 2: It never occurred to me that there would be art
Speaker 2: on the level that you have been a part of
Speaker 2: creating without dissent. I just I was just shocked by
Speaker 2: I was like, wait, You've done all this for so
Speaker 2: many years, with so many different people under an explicit
Speaker 2: promise of unanimity. That blew my mind.
Speaker 1: They'll be descent along the way. Yeah, but that just
Speaker 1: means we haven't gone are enough. It just means if
Speaker 1: you like it and I don't, it's not good enough.
Speaker 1: And if I like it and you don't, it's not
Speaker 1: good enough. And if we can get to the point
Speaker 1: where we both love it, it's probably better than the
Speaker 1: one that one of us loved and the other didn't.
Speaker 1: And if there are five people in a band, and
Speaker 1: if three of them like it and two of them don't,
Speaker 1: and you get to the point where all five of
Speaker 1: them like it, chances are it's better and not.
Speaker 2: Just that you're done. Yes, yeah, No, it was just
Speaker 2: like such a kind of I just thought of that.
Speaker 2: That idea that what you're building in the end is
Speaker 2: a kind of harmony among all the all of the voices,
Speaker 2: is a beautiful way to end a very very beautiful book.
Speaker 1: There's there's a part in the book where we talk
Speaker 1: about cooperation, which is exactly this working with other people. Historically,
Speaker 1: I'll say most times that people work together, there's a
Speaker 1: rivalry of ideas. Each person is arguing to win the
Speaker 1: debate to have their idea be the one that's chosen.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying that's not productive, and the best way
Speaker 1: to do it is for everyone to demonstrate their ideas.
Speaker 1: It's even better if they're demonstrated in a blind way
Speaker 1: where we don't even know whose idea is what. We
Speaker 1: just hear the ideas and then everybody picks and usually
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious, and it really does happen naturally, and
Speaker 1: it's only through the ego of wanting it to be
Speaker 1: my way. That they are these conflicts, but if everyone
Speaker 1: is working together for it to be the best that
Speaker 1: it can be, and if we respect each other enough
Speaker 1: to know, if I think it's the best it can
Speaker 1: be and you think it can be better, I'll go
Speaker 1: on that ride and same the other way. Ultimately we
Speaker 1: get to a beautiful place Rick. That is lovely.
Speaker 2: And thank you for writing such a beautiful book. Any
Speaker 2: many many people enjoy it as much as I have.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you reading it.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. It makes me happy.
Speaker 4: I want to thank Rick on the Record for taking
Speaker 4: the time to put his philosophies around creativity and a book.
Speaker 4: The Creative Act, A Way of Being is out now.
Speaker 4: Be sure to check it out. You can subscribe to
Speaker 4: our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast.
Speaker 4: We can find all of our new episodes. You can
Speaker 4: follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
Speaker 4: produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Talliday,
Speaker 4: and Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record
Speaker 4: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this
Speaker 4: show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin plus
Speaker 4: Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
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Speaker 4: Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if
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Speaker 4: review us on your podcast app. I Think Music, Expectkenny Beats.
Speaker 4: I'm Justin Richmond
Speaker 1: M HM.