Rubin
I don't float around the world with my arms open to the heavens hoping a Nanaboozhoo created Eagle Friend floats down from above and drops game on me, but Rick Rubin just did.
It’s a bad sign for me when I spend more time reading and learning about creativity than actually being creative. Reading this, you might say, “But Ryan, learning, growth, and inspiration are vital to the working artist. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Let me unpack this for you.
This weekend Madeline bought me Rick Rubin’s, The Creative Act: A Way Of Being, and it has me spinning around in my head.
Short and punchy chapters serve up just enough of Rubin’s blood, sweat, and tears in the music industry mixed with a borderline annoying amount of eye-rolling, hippy-dippy prose to keep me interested. Mad and Sam went down for a nap on Saturday and I lay beside them and ripped through 200 pages in one sitting.
“At least you’re reading, Ryan,” the hopeful side of my brain whispers with a smile.
“It’s embarrassing and unnecessary,” I reply
Floating from cloud to cloud might be a necessary evil for the artist. I’m at my worst when floating. I think I’m most effective and most inspired when my hands are dirty and covered in the filth of the process. I oscillate from floating to dirty hands all the time, I guess I could call it my process.
I’m a big believer in process. When I give advice to emerging artists, writers, and creative types, I say the same thing every time, “Process over product.” The problem with this of course, is that my productivity is directly related to being able to food in my family’s face. My process can go fuck itself when I’m broke.
My productivity VS process battle rages on for days and weeks at a time. I find myself between the punk rock fuck it i’m a comedian it’s me against the world space and a fuck it I just want to buy a sweater vest and be a professor at a school somewhere on the side of a hill space.
These two existences are very different and they’re both toxic for my spirit, they’re a trap. I recognize the trap now.
The trap makes me float.
Floating isn’t great for me. That’s when I start looking for signs around me that my creativity is tied to something bigger than me, something important, profound, or moving.
It’s not that I float around the world with my arms open to the heavens hoping a Nanaboozhoo made Eagle Friend floats down from above and drops game on me, but it is that I’m always open to expanding my mind.
(I’m not high, I promise)
I’ll say it plainly. I’m a sucker for spiritual ass-kicking. Spiritual ass-kickings help me to not float. They’re a reset, a necessary reset.
The Tao of Pooh. The War Of Art. Karl Pilkington. All books that found me at weird times and had an unexpected impact on me. They reset me.
So expand my mind, Rick.
My reset has found me yet again.
No more floating.
The words are out there for me to grab.
Inspiration is everywhere - you just have to be willing to pay attention.
- Rick Rubin
I’ve mentioned here before that my emotional and mental health are up and down and when it’s down, oh fuck, is it down.
I think part of my struggle is that my work lives in a space between art and craft.
So what am I working on then?
I’m shaping up close to 30,000 words for the first draft of a book I’m co-writing.
I've listened to a bunch of podcasts with Rick Rubin interviewing or being interviewed. He is an interesting character. There's no questioning his output. It's broad and fascinating. And yeah, often the woo that comes out of him makes my eyes roll so hard that I almost fall over!