The Daily Stoic - Rick Rubin on The Creative Act Part Two

Episode Date: March 4, 2023

In the second of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with Rick Rubin about his new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, respecting everyone’s unique approach to the creative process during collaboration, his new podcast Tetragrammaton, the importance of studying art created long ago, and more.Rick Rubin is a renowned American record producer and the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. He has produced albums for a wide range of acclaimed artists, including the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Audioslave, Rage Against the Machine, and Johnny Cash. He has won nine Grammys and has been nominated for 12 more. He has been called "the most important producer of the last 20 years" by MTV and was named on Time's list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World".You can hear part one of Ryan’s interview with Rick here. 📰 Check out Bill Oppenheimer’s writing and Six at 6 on Sunday newsletter at billyoppenheimer.com.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebooSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives

and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down be sure to take some time to think to go for a walk to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey it's Ryan Holiday welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I was telling you last week about my chance of eating with Rick Rubin many years ago. Well, how did Rick come back into my life? Also, a chance random reintroduction. In this case, I've

told you about Billy Oppenheimer before Billy is my researcher. He's written a bunch of awesome articles for the Daily Stoke. He helps me bring the Daily Stoke email into being, as well as many of the stories that you find in my books. Well, Billy, as I once did, is making the transition from just a behind-the-scenes guy to a creator in his own right. And he started this great email about a year and a half ago, two years ago called The Six at Six on Sunday, which you can sign up for at billiopinheimer.com. I'll link to it in the show notes.

I love the email, I think you'll like it too. Well, anyways, Billy was riffing on something in the email and then on Twitter about Rick Rubin. And somehow that made its way to Rick, Rick being a voracious consumer of all things, creativity and ideas and art. I've been amazed at how plugged in I've found him to be about things. I guess it makes sense. That's how he's had his finger on the pulse

of so many amazing trends in music. Well, anyways, Rick had someone on his team reach out to Billy and they started talking and then it came up that he worked with me and then we got reconnected and it's been wonderful and Rick and I have been going back and forth. This interview was a long time coming. He sent me an early copy of the book

and asked for some marketing advice, which I gave. And then it's been awesome to see this book be just a monster seller, which it deserves to be. And Rick has been on a ton of awesome podcasts, which I suggest you listen to in addition to today's episode. But in today's episode, I'm bringing you part two of my two-hour conversation with the one and only Rick Rubin, perhaps the greatest American record producer, perhaps the greatest record producer of all time. Certainly worthy of some goat status.

LL Cool J. Rundy, MC, the Beastie Boys, Red Hat, Chili Peppers, Metallica, Aros, Smith, Lincoln Park, the Chicks, Neil Diamond, Adele. Pretty much anyone you can think of has either worked with Rick or wants to work with Rick. Why is made very clear in his new book, The Creative Act, A Way of Being, which just came out in January. I loved the book, Carried at the Painting Ports.

I was so excited to have this interview, proud of Billy, to be even swimming, buzzing around in these circles, but I think it says something also about Rick and his willingness to get insights and ideas from any source. And anyways, without further ado, I'll get to this interview. I think you'll really like the creative act of way of being follow Rick on Instagram.

He puts a great quote every day. So if you follow the Daily Stoke, this is another great quote account to follow. And I think you're really gonna like this interview. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward.

Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, you talk about seeing creativity as a devotional act. I thought that was a beautiful expression. If you do see something sacred about it and that everyone's way of doing it is sacred to them, I think you're a lot more respectful of the process and other people's process than if you think there's one way to do it. I don't think that there's a right way to do anything, and I would never dictate to anyone else how to do anything. If someone asks, I would say, maybe this is how I would try it, but I would never assume

that that's what's going to be best for them, because you can't know. You can't know. We all have our own set of experiences that form who we are. And my solution to a problem has to do with my life experiences. And your solution to a problem has to do with your life experiences. And one is not more right than the other. One that's right for me is the one that's mine and the one that's right for you is yours. You can't compare or say one's better than the other. It's like if Like if, you know, is Bob Dylan better at being the Ramones than the Ramones? No. The Ramones are better at being the Ramones and the Ramones.

And Bob Dylan is better at being Bob Dylan than the Ramones. Everything is like that. Everything. It's like we can't inhabit anymore Because otherwise, it's all the same. I heard an interesting thing recently that there's a lot of talk about AI art now, and that if all of the inputs into the AI are the same, which they will be from all the competing AI's. They'll all have the same database that eventually, as they get better and better, and you put in the parameters of what you're looking for, they'll all spit out the same answer. And that's the, technically the right answer.

Now, if you were going to engage with a subject, and another writer was going to engage with a subject, and you were both right about it, the chances of those articles being similar or books being similar, I mean, the subject will be the same, but the perspective is completely different. Yes. I actually had chat GBT. I was fucking around with it and actually Billy helped me with this who you know.

I was like, Billy, can you have chat GBT write a daily stoic email on the theme of replaceability? Which I thought was a fun little artistic statement in it of itself. And it did, it did a okay job. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's perfect, and I would say you could definitely feel a difference between it writing it and me writing it, and there's some inaccuracies and blah, blah, blah. But to me, the Creative Act there, even though it is not the text on the page,

the Creative Act there, even though it is not the text on the page, the Creative Act was, I'm going to have a computer replace me and write an email about replaceability. And so I think the reason AI is both interesting but also fundamentally not a threat in the way that people are thinking about it, is that humans always have the ability to use the tools how we see bit. And that is inherently what creativity and art is about. Agreed. Yeah, it's our, it's about taste.

And the computer doesn't have taste. Right. The artist doesn't make the toilet, but the decision to say that the toilet is a piece of art, that is the art. Exactly. It's always the, it's funny, because you know, the pointing the finger don't,

you know, don't look at the moon, don't look at the finger pointing at the moon, but when it comes to art, there is something about that finger. In some ways, the finger is what tells you the moon's the moon in art when it comes to art. It's the artist inseparable from the artist and the artist's intention and what was included and not included. Yes, and that said, your reading of the art and the artist's intention don't have to match it all. Totally. What they said and what you hear can be totally different things.

Totally different. And I have a feeling are most of the time. And I have a feeling are most of the time. Yeah, I mean, speaking of system of it down, I was reading about the, I forget what song it is on the album, but isn't there like a bridge, a famous bridge in one of the songs that was just randomly selected from a book? Yes. And it's one of the peak moments in the song.

So it just happens. So yeah, so the artist's intention there is both irrelevant, and totally irrelevant at the same time. Like what it means is totally up to both the singer and the listener. Yes, and there's the Beatles song, the benefit for the benefit of Mr. Keite, for the benefit of Mr. Keite, you know, that song? No. John, it's on, I think it's on the, might be on the white album, John London sings it.

And the lyrics are just a poster. It was like an old circus poster in his room and he looked up at the poster and he just sang the words written on the poster. And it's a great Beatles song. And it's just what happened to be the lyrics that were in front of them in the room. I made a whole album with Tom Petty where we got, do you remember when refrigerator, magnet, poetry, kits were popular in bookstores.

Sure, where you could buy a little kit and it would have, you know, 50 words or 100 words. And we have one on my fridge right now. Great, so we bought all of the different choices of the magnetic poetry kits and took out all of the connecting words, all of the connecting words, all of the bivas and the uhs and the stuff that makes the sentence and just kind of kept the more substantial words. And we had them all on a music stand because the music stands metal. And so it looked like a like a blackboard with just words all over it, not in any order, just split all over.

We did have them all right side up, but not like put together in sentences, just like looking at a series of words. And Tom already had the songs written, but he didn't have the lyrics. So we would record the band would play, and he would look at these just the words in front of them and Make up a song as we went in real time pulling words from the from the magnets and It was incredible and there's some beautiful songs and they wouldn't have happened any other way You know, they wouldn't have happened any other way. You know, they wouldn't have happened any other way than that.

I love that, and I also hate it at the same time. There's something about it. Like I love Bonnie Verre, and you never know what he's singing about, and then sometimes you look up what he's singing, and you go, this doesn't make any sense at all. It changes it for me, because there's some part of me that wants it to be some profound thing that I'm hearing in it and then you find out that yeah

It was singing about something totally different Sometimes it's just the sound of the words Yes, sometimes it's not the story sometimes it's the sound the right sound at the right time really makes a big difference We'll often work on songs where an artist will make up scat words, not just nonsense talking through the song. And on occasion, there'll be a phrase that just sounds good in that spot, maybe several of them. And we'll do this over and over again and get collect phrases that fit in certain moments in the song. And then the artist takes those and looks at it like a like a crossword puzzle. It's like, okay, I have this line, I have this line, I have this line. What could the story be? What what would

make sense with this? Because this sounds really good here. So it doesn't have to be. Sometimes it's not about the story. It's just about the way the words make you feel. I remember asking Neil Young about you know if he knows what his songs mean. He said he has no idea. You know that's a very zen thing too, like these, the sort of zen paradoxes or parables or sentences or mantras. And you're just like, I think the enlightenment is figuring out that it's both gibberish and not gibberish at the same time.

Yeah, there is something interesting about certain phrases. When you hear songs, certain phrases and songs, you can hear them over and over again, repeated over and over again. And every time you hear them, you think of something different. Like, it's almost like the same phrase unfolds over the course of a song. And there are other phrases where if you try that the third time you hear, it's like, phrase unfolds over the course of a song. And there are other phrases where if you try that, the third time you hear, it's like, I already heard that, I don't wanna hear that anymore.

And I can't tell you what makes one work and what makes another not work. It really happens through trial and error, but when you hear something that sounds good repeated, it's like a, it's miraculous. It's like, why is this, why does this stay interesting over and over and over again? Maybe get more interesting as the song goes. I can only write to songs that not only do that,

but where I can, like, you know, when you hit, when you hit repeat on a song, and then if you hit repeat one more time, it just plays that song on a loop. I can only write two songs on a loop, and I'll get, you know, maybe a few hundred listens out of each song, and then I have to move on to a different song.

But there's something to me about getting lost in the not knowing what place you are in a song, but it's just going over and over and over and over again that allows me to access whatever creativity comes in my writing. It has to be those kinds of songs. Cool. From me, either writing or reading, I can't listen to Anything with lyrics if there are lyrics in the music. I can't focus on what I'm reading

I can't I can't digest the information my ear goes to the music to the words and I get confused So I probably are at a different music. You're probably at a different wavelength than I am, and that's what allows you to be a music guy. Who knows? It's not for me to say, I don't know. I just know that I can listen to lyrics in a different language that I don't understand, and then I can still function in an English world. Right. You know what's it? We were talking about songs that sound like they're totally

timeless, speaking of Tom Petty. How the fuck was free falling written in 1989? What do you mean? That song feels like at least 50 years older than that. It's so perfectly timeless. But there's some songs like that, like, blowing in the wind. You know, I can't believe Bob Dylan wrote, blowing in the wind. It feels like they were singing that song 100 years ago, had to be. That's forever. Yes.

You know, there is no world before blowing in the wind. Yeah. Like, free falling, if you were like, oh, this is no there is no world before blown in the wind Yeah, like freefalling your if you were like oh, this is America's national anthem. I'd be like that makes sense So obviously we updated a little bit, but like that's how old that song feels It's funny. I recently interviewed Iggy pop for the Broken Record Podcast. And the Stooges, Iggy's Band, was going on at the same time as the Beatles. Yet, you think of the Beatles as forever ago. And the Stooges feels kind of more modern, more current,

and they were going on at the same time. Right. Right. And he attributes it to the fact that they just didn't get popular. It's like the beetles were popular from the first day, so you start tracking them from when they were popular. And the stooages, everyone kind of came to the stooages whenever they it came to them. Many many people more recently and still people are coming to it in a different way than.

It's just this ubiquitous thing I don't know if that's true, but it was an interesting interesting idea. I want to tell you about my new podcast. Yeah, it's called it's called tetragramaton. And it's where where I've doing broken record for five years. And I interview musicians. And at some point I came to realize, I'm so interested in things beyond musicians. Why am I just talking to musicians? Sure. So in the Tetra Grammerton podcast,

I'll talk to writers, directors, actors, chefs, coaches, craftspeople, astronauts. Anyone who's interesting, so I'm really excited about that. I feel it's going to be fun and open up the excitement of doing deep dives into all the things I'm interested in. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting.

Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident not so expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that will have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone.

So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. That's amazing. I can't wait to listen. And yeah, I think what you find, what I have found is like elite performance is elite performance is elite performance. So if I am talking with a bunch of Navy SEALs, their vibe is the same as an NFL team, which is the same as like a great rock and roll band, which is the same as, you know, insert some other form of elite performance. They're all tapping into some higher plane. Absolutely. And it's interesting hearing it from the different perspectives. And the other thing that I find really interesting from

doing, from talking to people in a podcast form is I get to learn a tremendous amount about myself. Like when we really listen to other people talk about themselves, we get to learn about ourselves too. And it's beautiful and interesting. And it wouldn't happen in any other way. When you talk about, you talked about this, like if you're an artist and you're looking for inspiration, don't turn on the radio, like go to a museum filled with, you know, the greatest works of antiquity. And I think that's one of the things you find in great performers is that they don't try to steal little advantages from their peers in that

profession. They go to elite performance in totally different domains and that's where they find the little things that they tend to incorporate into what they do. What's also great about that is it's new again. You know, if you if you're inspired by an idea from 200 years ago, that's not on top that's not on everyone's top of mind today. Yeah. So it has a freshness that's different. Whereas if you if you make a song that sounds like the song that just played on the radio, yes, that's the current sound, but it's also, well, that was just on the radio. Why bother making one that sounds like that? That's one's already, already out.

I remember at one point, Nate and our person telling me they were all excited about they found, you know, someone who's like, was like the new prince. Like, we don't need the new prince. We have prince, you know, we need someone who's's the new prints isn't going to be anything like prints. Right. The new prints could be a rapper or a classical musician or something totally, the genre doesn't even have a name. Absolutely. Yeah, usually doesn't have a name is a good point because It doesn't have a name, it's a good point because prints really reinvented. I mean, he was doing in some ways an extension of traditional R&D music, but prints music is different than all the music that came before it.

It's very particular to him. And that's part of what makes it great is when it goes through the when it goes through your filter and you find a way to do it. Where no one else does it in that way. The other the other version that's the version that excites me the most when you find a way to do it that no one else does it. The other version maybe less exciting but also great is when you can do the same thing that other people could do, but you can do it so much better than anyone's ever done it before, it's just crazy. So, and that happens sometimes with singers.

Like certain singers just, you can't believe you're in the same room while they're singing. You can't believe anyone on earth can sing like that, and that's thrilling no matter what. You know what I love about that idea of going back to the ancients or whatever, is that that's also what matter what. You know what I love about that idea of going, going back to the ancients or whatever, is that that's also what the ancients were doing. I was in meditations,

Mark's really quotes a bunch of the Greek playwrights, Euripides, Escalis, et cetera. And I don't know one day it just hit me, I was like, how long between that period of Rome and then the Greek playwrights? And I realized that like Euripides, who Marcus is quoting from memory, and he is even quoting plays that no longer exist.

Like they were lost. All we have is the fragments that appear in these little letters and stuff. The Greek playwrights were as distant to the Romans as Shakespeare is to us. Incredible. And were things still done in an oral tradition at that point? No, they would have been written. He might have read the plays. He also would have seen them perform, but what is Shakespeare doing? Shakespeare is stealing from the writings of Plutarch who, you know, existed roughly around the time of Marcus Realis. You quotes

other fables and stuff, but like you can tell that Shakespeare is stealing from ancient stories, just as like the Renaissance was powered by them falling back in love with the Greeks and the Romans. Incredible. Incredible. So that's all we're all doing that. Yeah, and it goes back to the folk revival story. It's like it all just,

there echoes of the past that are reinterpreted in a new way. And often the reason they are reinterpreted in a new way. And often the reason they're reinterpreted in a new way is only because the people are different, not because they're trying to do it different. You know, there's a story in the book about how, you know, the Beatles were imitating American Rock and Roll, and it sounded like the Beatles. It didn't, it definitely sounded like it was rooted in American rock and roll, but it was just different because they were different. And yes, you can't help but bring your own filter into it. I just, I talked to George Clinton yesterday two days ago for the podcast. And I asked him where the mother ship came from. So I remember his kid, the mother

ship connection was one of my favorite, maybe my favorite parliament, Funkadelic albums. My dad just been parliament on that one. And the idea of having this spaceship land and then I have only seen images that I didn't could see them live, but of this giant spaceship on stage. And I asked him what the inspiration was, and he said, Pink Floyd. And I never would have imagined that in a million years. But he's like, Pink Floyd had these big stage shows, and it was really cool. And I thought, oh, maybe we can do something like that.

How about we do a spaceship? But we never know where the direction the ideas are coming from. It's always surprising. And that's one of the great things about the podcasts is we get to talk to these people who make things that we love. And hearing where some of these things came from or the line of thinking that allowed these things

to come into existence is so interesting to learn about if you're a fan like I am. Yeah, the Stoics love this idea that we never step in the same river twice. And I think that's obvious to people, like the river is changing, but like what we also forget is that the second meaning of that quote is that we aren't the same.

Yes, we're always changing. I think there's a line in the book that the person who comes back to the work the next day is saying exactly right. But the person who comes back to the work the next day isn't the same person who was working on it the day before. Right. Yeah, what do you think about artists

re-recording their masters? I thought that some of the Taylor Swift stuff is interesting because she's now in her 30s re-recording songs that she did from a place that you can't recreate. In some ways, I feel like the songs are better. I really don't like the idea. I don't like the idea of redoing something that you've done for the reason that it's being done, which is a commercial reason. If the reason you want to go back to an old work and reinterpret it because you want to shed new light on it, that's exciting.

But to put your creative energy into... I just know I've been burned so many times. I like oldies music. A lot of, you know, like there was a group with the station in New York called WCBS that played like 50s, 60s into the 70s, but it's called oldies. There's most cities have an oldie station. And I love the music on the oldie station. And on occasion, I'd hear an oldie that I'd love. And then I would, in those days, iTunes by the song iTunes. And the version that would come wasn't the original version.

It was a later not remastered, replayed. It was a new version of the old song trying to copy the old version so that whoever owned the old version, it was purely a business thing. And it was so heartbreaking to hear the new version because they were close, but there's so many little magical elements in what makes something that you like, what it is, and to upset that balance in any way, or try to recreate it, it almost seems sacrilegious to me. Like, it's, yeah, so I will say, I'm really against the idea.

Now, at one point, Led Zeppelin went back, they made an album called No Quarter, where they came together, I think it was called No Quarter, I'm not sure. They came back together at some point maybe in the maybe in the 80s, maybe in the early 90s, and they did like Middle Eastern versions, or African versions of their songs. And that was fascinating because that was something they wanted to do. They wanted to like reinterpret their material in a new way. And it's thrilling to hear something you like through a new lens. Yeah.

So I'm very much into reinterpretation. I'm not into copying, you know, copying for the sake of commerce. All right, so somewhat personal artistic question I have for you. Maybe you can give me some reassurance or guidance. Okay, so I who we are when we make something, we'll never be that thing again. And I actually, I had to go back through and read some of my earlier books. I'd reread the obstacle as the way. And what I was struck by, what I noticed there really for the first time, was that there was a tightness to the writing, and the book is shorter. Almost each one of my books has gotten slightly longer than the last one.

And I can't tell, or I don't know how I would tell, if not that that's positive or negative, but is that coming from a place of nuance and complexity and better material, or am I growing more self-indulgent? And that keeps me up at night. Yeah, well, don't let it keep you up at night. First of all, there's no way to answer that question. Only you could answer that question.

And if the self-indulgent version of yourself is better than the more concise version of yourself, it doesn't matter. So all that matters is which is better. Your your reason for doing it or how they came to pass doesn't matter at all. All that matters is which do you prefer to read? If you prefer to read in the old the old you maybe the next book you do in a more tight way. If you prefer to read in the more self-indulgent way, that's not a bad thing. There's no, in art, self-indulgence is not a bad thing.

That's interesting. I didn't think about it that way. Yeah, for me, I was thinking, I think I'm prouder of the later books, because I know what went into them and I feel like I did a better job. I wouldn't classify it as self-indulgent. I more thought about it as I see the world as being more complicated and I'm unable to

how I could write when I was 26. I wouldn't let myself get away with at 36. I think that's all good news. That sounds like growth. And there's nothing to question. And I use, I said self-indulgent because you said self-indulgent. Yeah. That was funny. And I thought it was funny to talk about it as a good quality, which it can be as an artist. There's definitely a place for that. There's something about something about self-indulgence demonstrates confidence.

And having confidence in your work is a good thing. If you kept it concise out of concern that someone wasn't going to like it, so you have to make it really tight and perfect, now you're confident enough to let it flow. Now again, there's no right or wrong here. It really is down to you how you feel, which version is true to who you are today. And if you feel like if you read something from the past and it inspires you, it's like, wow, I really like it tight like that. I want to do one of those. You could do that. Sure. But

but not there's not a right or wrong. It's more of a what's what strikes your fancy? What what speaks to you? Yeah, although I'm sure you've seen it that as someone becomes successful and has more and more control, that that isn't necessarily a good freedom, right? You can become pompous or out of touch or long-winded or you know any number of seemingly negative threats. Do you feel pompous, long-winded, or out of touch? No, but I'm not sure anyone that is those things feels those things.

I don't know. I think the people who are those things are probably not worried about being those things. That's what I mean, and that's why they're those things. No, but you're worried about it. So what I'm saying is if you're, if it's like, Dr. I'm crazy, I need to be committed to the mentalist asylum. I'm crazy. It's like, well, if you think you're crazy, you're not crazy. I remember once I was at this event and this guy was supposed to get up and talk for 15 minutes and he talked for like an hour and a half. And I just think no one wanted to be rude to that guy but somebody needed to cut him off

and I think about not being that guy. Well, I think the other way, I think we don't need to be rude to him. And if you were in the audience and you were uncomfortable at 15 minutes, you and everyone else could have got up and walked out. And that would have been fine. Because if everyone were to left and if he would have stayed there and just kept talking,

that would have been fine too. Like that's okay. It's all okay. Sure. You know, there isn't a right and wrong of, it's not anyone's job to say you only have 15 minutes. It's like, I only have 15 minutes, so I'm leaving when it comes to 15 minutes. But if I'm interested, I'll stay for five days. I'll stay forever. That's true. Right. Really, the criticism is that it was boring, not how long it was.

Exactly. Exactly. I had a similar experience recently, where I did feel like I was trapped in a cook, but it was a personal presentation given to me and one other friend, and it just never ended and it was not good and it was a bad feeling in the room. Well, maybe we should take that as a sign to wrap this up. This has been a total

honor for me. I have written probably as much of my writing to your music as any of the artists you've worked with as any other probably living or dead person. So thank you very much for this. And I love the book. I think the book is incredible. And actually, do you have one more minute? Because there's one more thing I want to bring up. Yeah. All right. Obviously, you're not really in this book. Really at all. The word I appears like maybe once.

And there's no real gossip. And I was thinking about, that's probably the book that publishers wanted. I'm sure. That's probably the book that publishers wanted, I'm sure. That's probably the book that readers expect, but this is ultimately a much more valuable book in that it's universal and more prescriptive than a bunch of celebrity stories. But what do you think it is the part of us? I bet that book would sell better than this book in the short term at least right?

Maybe so. This is all stories of Adele and the Red Onchill Peppers and stuff. Yeah. So what part of it wants that versus this, even though this is much more useful and valuable? I can't speak to that, but I know that other book was not interesting to me to write. And this book was, and I feel like this book, we talked earlier about the, you know, timeless music and natural instruments. And I felt like if the book was about me or my experiences, it would be limited to this

40-year period, this now. And I think the things I'm talking about, are things I've noticed, but they're not related to time. It's like pointing outside and saying, look, it's raining. I'm noticing the rain. I'm pointing out the rain. I didn't write the rain. I'm pointing out the rain. I didn't write the rain. I didn't create the rain.

I'm just saying, wow, look how beautiful that looks. Look how cool things down. Look how, look at the direction it goes when the wind is blowing. Look at how when it's raining far away, you can see it in the distance. how interesting that looks. I'm engaging with these ideas that I can't say are my ideas. They're just, they just are, that's just what is. And that's interesting to me. And when I set out to write the book, and I met you, right, when I was setting out to write to book. And I remember, I don't know if you remember, but you would not, it didn't know if you remember, but you, you were not,

it didn't sound like you were sold on what the book was going to be when I described it to you. In the same way that when I described it to publishers, they, they were willing to buy it, but they were willing to buy it with the idea that they could get me to change it to what they wanted it to be. And every conversation I had with the publisher seven or eight years ago was, yes, but of course you're going to tell a story about Jay-Z in the studio. I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. Well, you're going to talk about Johnny Cash.

No, I'm not going to do that. It's not going to be any, what about the stories of, you know, all the people you've met or the, it's like, no, it's not about any of that. It's not about me at all. It's about things I've noticed that are interesting that might be useful to someone else. The purpose of the book is to be useful to someone else. It's not to be sensational. It's not to be charged or get you excited other than about wanting to make something

great. Like that's the marching order of the book is I'm hoping that when you're reading it, you get a feeling of like, I want to stop reading so I want to go make something. That was the hope for the book. And also if I tell, if I tell this one of the same stories that happens in the book, and when I say stories, one of the principles that came up, which is rooted in the story of something that actually happened to me, that's not included in the book, the story, the story leading to what's in the book is, are not in the book.

But if I tell you a story about Jay-Z, and Jay-Z did this and Jay-Z did that and Jay-Z did this. When you're reading the story, you're not thinking, this is something I can do. You're thinking, wow, this is, wow, how cool is Jay-Z? He does that. Right, right. And you don't put yourself in it. And I wanted these to be open to where,

when you're reading these things, you think about, how does this, how do, what do I have to do with this? Where am I in this? And it invites the reader to be part of this. So it's just ideas to engage with. And because it's not prescriptive, and because it's not, this is the right way, and this is the wrong way, it invites you to think about these things and put more of yourself into it. It doesn't tell you how to do it. It invites you to decide how you want to do it.

To me, it's also a book. It's the difference between a book you might read once. So a book of a collection, your sort of memoirs of your time as a record producer would be a fascinating, you know, sort of encapsulation of a multi decade period in the music industry. But I feel like that would be a book

that you would read one time. And I feel like what this book is, obviously with the image of the circle being maybe an embodiment of that, at least to me, is that I feel like it's a book that you go back to. I read whenever I start a new project, I read one of Stephen Pressfield's writing books, again, just from cover to cover.

And I feel like there's something in the way that you did it that is a difference between depth and width. And I think you've created something that has a greater depth and value to people. And it's the less commercial approach in the short term, but I think ultimately a much more important approach. Cool. It's the book I wanted to write.

That's one of the things about it is like, and I think when we did talk about it all those years ago, that was probably what you said. It's like, well, that's not the commercial book. It's like, why do you want to do that book? It's like, why don't you do the one that everybody wants? It's like, because I don't want that. I want this. And it was a real puzzle to figure out how to do it, because I didn't know anything in the book before I started. It would have been easy to tell what I remembered.

But to figure out why decisions were made that when they happened came instinctually, there were not principles that I had worked out. It really was a deep reverse engineering mission to try to understand this stuff. And I'll tell you honestly, I still don't understand it. Like if I open this book anywhere, I'll read from it. My mind will be blown.

I'll say yes, that's what it's like. But I couldn't tell you that and I'll be surprised by it when I read it, because the nature of these, this information is, it's ephemeral. You know, it's like, it's like smoke. It's all out of our control, and it's helpful, it's helpful to me to have it, because I can look at it, and it reminds me,

you know, it reminds me of how it works. But it's none of the stuff in it is easily accessible. It's hard for me to talk about the material in the book. Yeah. I wonder why I said that to you or if I said that to you or if that's what you heard. Because what I remember is that I was working on ego as the enemy when we talked and I was thinking about what that book would be. And I remember trying to explain it to you and not sure if you thought that was a good idea. Really? Yeah, that's what I remember.

But that may just be what creative people do. We never, we never hear, we hear something very different than what other people are saying. I believe that's probably true. I think that's true, not even just creative people. I think we, I think language isn't sufficient to share what's going on inside of ourselves with others. And then you put memory on top of that, and it may as well be a totally different experience.

Yes, it's all made up. That's one of the reasons that I like pro wrestling so much. It's like I feel like pro wrestling is more closer to reality than anything else that we get to experience. It's like it's part made up where it's made up and where reality comes into it. We're never told, we're never told if you know one of the characters doesn't like another character and wants to beat them up. Do they really not like them? Yeah. Sometimes they don't. Like sometimes real life they don't. Or a character is getting a divorce in the plot line. Are they really getting a divorce in the plot line. Are they really getting a divorce? Because sometimes they are. It's like, we never know. It's like,

where's the line? We know we don't know anything, and we know that, let's say there's a match, and the guy breaks his arm in the match, which really happens because they're doing these crazy things. The next week, he'll be on TV in a cast, I broke my arm. And there could be a version where in storyline, he broke his arm, but he didn't break his arm in real life. And it would look exactly the same when we're watching it. We never know. So it's this, it helps clue us in to the fact that it's all the Wizard of Oz. It's all made up. Everything we're told is just what's in our heads. And we don't even know if we're seeing, even if we agree we don't know if we're seeing the same thing.

It's all, the way perception works is just not, it's just hours. It's not, you can't share it. Well, people are really critical of like Facebook and this plans to build the metaverse. And they're like, people would never want to do that. And it's like, people already live in the metaverse. We're there.

We're there. None of this, people live in totally different realities. One of my favorite examples of this is like, in the Odyssey, I talked about this with a bunch of people on the podcast before, but in the Odyssey, he talks about the wine dark sea. Who thinks the ocean looks like wine? That's like, so was he colorblind? Was the ocean a different color back then? Was wine a different, like, there's so many different things it could be. It could also just be a weird artistic choice, like we were talking about earlier.

But we're a mistranslation. It could be any number of things, but it really makes you think about what color the ocean is. Yes, I've seen a wine dark seed, by the way. I feel like I've seen that over the course. I don't see it every day. So well, I have I have and I wouldn't use that to describe how it is. But on a particular day, that might be the right description. And I'll tell you an experience I had when I went to when I went to school, I was a I took a lot of art history classes. And I remember when we were learning about impressionism and seeing paintings of trees that

had, it was like a brown tree with a green blotch and a yellow blotch and it looked almost like Like a rudimentary like a preschool painting where you just kind of put colors on like if you did a cow and you put like you know Spots on the cow, so it looked like And I'm thinking oh that's what impressionism is. Impressionism is like it's taking the idea and it's kind of reducing it into this more abstract version of itself. And then, but I don't know, 25 years later, I went to the South of France where these paintings were painted. And I saw those trees. And they looked exactly like that.

I may have these blotches. And that's what they look like. That is actually what they look like. But growing up in New York, I never saw a tree like that. So I assumed this is a fantasy tree. Right. Yeah. And to you, it was a fantasy tree because it did not exist.

Yes. It did not exist until it did. Yes. And then, you know, all art about an experience that is not yours is effectively that. Yes. Yes. And then, and from that specific experience comes hopefully some kind of universal connection. Yes. And again, when we say universal connection, the connection is universal.

But what we're connecting over, we each make our own. Yes. We might connect to the same thing for two completely different reasons and it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. And the only time we're aware of that disconnection is when you start to explain what something tastes like to you or looks like to you and then you're like, what? Wait, did we just, do we have different conceptions of what the color purple is, and then everything, all your sense of reality

is thrown into depth. Yes, and that's why wrestling explains, explains reality better than anything else. That's perfect. Rick, thank you so much. This was amazing. My pleasure. Speak soon, my so much. This was amazing. My pleasure. Speak soon, my friend.

Let's do it. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.