The Rich Roll Podcast - Rick Rubin: Modern Master Of The Creative Act

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

An absolute icon of modern music whose influence on culture has been nothing short of titanic, Rick Rubin is one of the greatest music producers of all time, noted for his unique—and some might say counter-intuitive—way in which he is able to help manifest the absolute best in every artist he works with. But lesser appreciated is Rick’s spiritual approach to artistry, explored in his newly released and completely transformative book, The Creative Act, which is all about cultivating the innate creativity that dwells within all of us. But more than that, creativity is a way of moving through the world. Enjoy. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Seed: seed.com/RICHROLL Calm: calm.com/richroll Momentous: LiveMomentous.com/richroll Squarespace: Squarespace.com/RichRoll  Thesis: takethesis.com/RICHROLL Peace + Plants, Rich

The idea that one person says, my art is better than your art, it's an insane idea. It's like saying, my diary entry is better than your diary entry. It's insane. The things we make are a reflection of who we are in this moment.

And that's all it is. It's not more than that. It can go on and mean more than that, but that's not in our control. And it's something that cripples artists thinking, I have to make the greatest thing ever made to humankind. And then they basically psych themselves out of being able to make something good. There's a great benefit in taking a risk, making the thing that's interesting to you,

sharing it with the world, because if you don't do it, nobody else will. You're the only one who can make the art that you can make. Everything that you make is a reflection of who you are and how you live in the world will impact the things that you make. And I wish the best of luck on the journey in making beautiful things that we can all enjoy.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Today, I want to talk about magic. I want to talk about awe and wonder and oneness. And I want to do that with a very special human. For most, he needs no introduction, an absolute icon of modern music whose influence on culture has been nothing short of titanic. Rick Rubin is one of the greatest producers of all time, noted for his unique and some might say counterintuitive way in which he is able to manifest the absolute best

in everyone he works with. Rick is the founder of Def Jam Records, who now runs his own label, American Recordings, and over the course of his storied career has worked with a litany of greats like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Jay-Z, Adele, the list goes on and on and on.

And it's all coming right up, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how

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decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life and recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Rick Rubin. So the thrust of today's conversation surrounds the release of Rick's brand new and completely transformative book, The Creative Act, which is about cultivating the innate creativity

that dwells within all of us. But more than that, it's about a way of being. It's about an openness to possibility, wonder, energy, and of course, magic. And while this is a rare audio only episode recorded outside with Rick, characteristically sitting across from me shirtless, I assure you that the contents

that lay within this conversation are nothing short of profound and dare I say, perhaps even life-changing. So let's just get after it. I mean, needless to say, I can't wait to share this conversation with you. So without further ado, please enjoy this illuminating discourse

between me and the truly singular Rick Rubin. Yeah, I started it coming up on 10 years ago on the North shore of Kauai. Oh, beautiful. Yeah, which is a place I know you've spent quite a bit of time. I love it. Yeah, in a warehouse up there.

My second or third guest was Gabby Reese. Incredible. Cause they were up there at the same time back in 2012. And it's just been a creative odyssey, you know, over these many years. And I still love it just as much as I did on day one. It's a privilege. It's a gift. It's just been such a fulfilling experience. Gives me the opportunity to sit down with people like yourself and then share that wisdom with so many people. It's been really cool. Cool. What I found interesting in doing a podcast with musicians is one, I get to meet people I've never met before. And it's interesting. The conversations are interesting. And also I get to,

when I interview someone who I know for a long time, I've never interviewed them before. Like I've interviewed people that I've known for 30 years and I learned a tremendous amount through the interview because you don't really ask your friends interview type questions. By introducing a structure and formality, it kind of forces everybody into a presence of mind that ordinarily we wouldn't do on our own.

Like I did one with my dad and I was able to ask him questions that I had never asked him. What a great idea. I think everybody should do a podcast with their parents or their extended, and not necessarily to share it, but as a document. Yes, beautiful. For future generations.

Yeah, for future generations. Yeah. Cool. So we were introduced by our mutual friend, Steven Pressfield. We have lots of mutual friends, but it wasn't until the past couple of days that we actually got a chance to meet. And we've been corresponding for,

I don't know, like a year and a half, two years or something like that. Yeah, I think two years. Trying to make this happen. And you're always traveling and in distant places. And at one point you were like, look, I do tons of Zooms, happy to do it. Like, let's just do it digitally.

I'm super comfortable with that. And I was like, no, I don't. That's not the experience that I'm looking for. I am willing to wait until everything, the universe sort of conspires to bring us together. Beautiful. And in my experience, that like discipline to wait

always proves to be the correct choice as opposed to like willing it into happening when it doesn't feel like the right moment. Like there is something about timing and I'm really grateful that we're doing this now and not when originally maybe we were going to do it. Yes. And I think it'll be a richer experience as a result.

Beautiful, I'm in. Yeah, man. So I guess we have to be cryptic about where we are and what's going on, but- We're in an undisclosed location somewhere in the world. It's a weird fight club thing, but basically we've been hanging out for the past couple of days,

getting to know each other a little bit. And I have so many questions for you. I'm fascinated by your life, but really the occasion for this conversation is this beautiful new book that you've written called The Creative Act, which I had the privilege of reading. It hasn't come out, it comes out in January. We're recording this in the middle of the summer.

So I got an early peek at it and it was great to read it with a beginner's mind, which is part of the message of the book without having read any reviews or having had anyone tell me this is what it's about and this is what it's not about. And among the many kind of fascinating, you know, sort of emotions that I had

in the experience of reading the book was that, first off, it defied my expectations of what it would be. And I had this assumption, you know, I went into it, even with the beginner's mind idea, like I still formed an assumption of what this book was going to be because there are certain conventions that kind of come along for the ride

with people who write a book at a certain stage of their career. So I was like, oh, this is gonna be somewhat of a memoir. It's gonna be all these crazy stories of the bands and the amazing artists that you've worked with over the years. And then, you know, through that, it will be interlaced with takeaways

or some wisdom that you've accrued. And it very much was not that. It was heavy on the wisdom part, but it's not a memoir at all. It's really a standalone work of art, a timeless meditation on the act of being a creative being. What is the experience of being an artist and how to, you know, sort of manifest the artist within all of us. So what was the kind of inception of the idea to write this book?

When the thought of doing a book, I had an experience where I got to work on someone else's book about Johnny Cash, an artist I worked with, the Robert Hilburn's book, beautiful book. And the last few chapters are about Johnny Cash, the later period Johnny Cash, and that's when I got to work with him. So we spent some time together and he suggested we listen back to the records and talk about different song choices. And I found through the process of helping Robert with his book, I learned a tremendous amount that I didn't know

about my relationship with Johnny Cash. Just through, I tend not to look back. I'm always making something new. I tend not to listen back to any work I've made in the past. I'm just moving forward. I might come across hearing a song in a coffee shop. It's like, oh, wow, I produced that. It's unbelievable. But I don't choose to listen also because in the studio to get the things to sound like they do, we work on them for such a long time that I'm good not hearing it again. You know, like we've done that.

You did. I put in my thousands of hours. It's everybody else's turn now. Yes. So I'm good next. So in that experience of working on the Johnny Cash book or participating in the Johnny Cash book, I understood what working on a book could be and how it could be about me learning something.

And I thought about what could I possibly offer. I don't want to talk about myself. I'm not interested in myself. But I am interested in what happens in the studio. And so much of what happens in the studio isn't about music. It's about, I guess we could say their principles. Although at the time that I started, I didn't know what they were. I knew that I wanted to share what happens, the choices being made in the studio, how that happens in a way that someone else could use it and apply it to their lives.

And so it took a very long time to figure out what those things were because at the time that they happened originally in each case, it was an intuitive choice. So I spent seven years thinking back both for all the projects I've worked on in the last seven years in real time if something would happen I would once something good happened I would try to understand okay is there a principle at play here that might be useful to someone else and I would make notes and then I tried to reverse engineer decisions that I could remember from my earliest works and all the way through. And again, it's not about those works at all.

Those were just a portal into what was the thought process to solve a problem at the time? And is there some tool there that can help someone else? And if so, I wanna share that. Right. So in other words, it's a canonization of these instinctual tools that you didn't sort of conceptualize them and bring them into the studio. It's just been a process

of them emerging over time in the context of solving the typical type of problems that come up. Yes. And I would say they were all essentially reactions to a problem, essentially a problem. And the problem could be writer's block or the problem could be a transition in the song doesn't work. Or a problem could be there's a story to tell through a song that works in almost a coded way. Explain what that means. I'm not sure I get that last point. I'll talk specifically. I don't speak specific in the book,

but here I can speak specific. At the time that I was working with Run DMC, it was in the early days of hip hop. And you have to understand what the world was like at this point in time. Hip hop was a tiny niche form of music. So tiny and so niche that most people, not only did they not think it was good music, most people didn't think it was music. I can remember being courted by the head of a big record company because we were having some success and he wanted to work with us.

And he said, what do you attribute the success of rap? We all know it's not music. And he's being kind. Or just confused. Yeah, or imagine what the people who, there were some people who just hated it, just were offended by it. Uh-huh. So we were finishing Run DMC's album and the album was done and I listened to it and I felt like there's some, one, it's missing something.

I don't know what it is, but it's missing something. There's a piece missing. And I had just had these experiences of people telling me what I was working on wasn't music. And I was thinking about it as solving a problem. How do I demonstrate this is not so foreign from what we're used to? And the thought was to find a song that was an existing well-known song, not change it really, and have Run DMC do it true to what it was,

yet have it be a rap song. And the choice was Aerosmith's Walk This Way. And I picked it because of the phrasing of the verses are essential. It's a non-melodic verse. It's all about the phrasing. And it works like a rap song, same as a rap song. And another meta layer on top of that

is that there's a breakbeat in hip hop music. There are breakbeats, which are little instrumental snippets from longer works, not indicative of the big work, just a tiny snippet that if you loop it up, it's its own thing. And in hip hop world, they called it the toys in the attic break,

which was walk this way. But no one who heard that break knew who Aerosmith was or ever heard the song. All they ever heard was that drum beat. Right. So. Da-na-la-da-. All they ever heard was that drum beat. Right. So. Yeah, and the. It's more the.

Right. And I'm trying to recollect like, because Aerosmith has its own amazing history of being huge in the seventies and disappearing and them having, you know, sort of personal issues. And then this incredible renaissance in their career, was that song coming out in addition to being the crossover event for hip hop

that introduced this new genre or medium of music to a much broader audience, was that the kind of inception point for Aerosmith's resurgence on the timeline? Yes, it worked in both directions. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So were you the one who chose that band and that song and it was a conscious choice,

the purpose being like we need that crossover and this will achieve that? Or was it just a, this would be cool? Yeah, crossover is not the right word because crossover makes it sound like it was a commercial decision. This was not a commercial decision. But a way of telling a story. This was a communication decision of people don't understand this. I want to explain it in a way that someone can understand it. That

was the goal. I want to demonstrate it. Right. And it, I mean, it had to have exceeded your expectations of what it achieved. I mean, to this day. Absolutely. It's crazy. Absolutely. What year was that? I don't know. I'm not really good. It was a while ago. Yeah. Yeah. A long time ago. You know, your story's well told and well documented,

but I think for people who aren't familiar, you know, with who you are, or just kind of know some of the work that you've done, it would be good to recap that a little bit. But just to introduce that idea, most recently, not that recently, it was probably last year, I watched the Beastie Boys documentary

and you recur in that story. A lot of which, your role in all of that, I already knew. But one thing I didn't know was that you were actually a band member of the Beastie Boys at the inception. We know about the NYU dorm room and how that was kind of a ground zero space and how the hip hop community at that time was such a small, close-knit group of people. And there were only a couple venues and it was the same people showing up at those venues that created this massive global movement.

But, you know, maybe talk a little bit about, you know, how you came into this space and a little bit about, you know, how you've architected your career. Okay, we were all punk rockers. We all love punk rock and the hip hop wave happened. And for me, I experienced the hip hop wave as black punk rock. It was the same. It was a democratization of music. It was taking music back to the streets.

You didn't have to be a virtuoso player. You just had something to say and a point of view, a gripe, an energy, something to brag about in the case of hip hop sometimes, or a fantasy. And it appealed to me in the same way that punk rock did. And the Beastie Boys were already a band that I was not a member of, and they were a punk rock band. And I met them through friends and a guy named David Skilkin, who was a really cool kid, who's no longer with us, but a good friend of all of ours. And they had recorded a song before I was involved called Cookie Puss, which was a college radio hit.

And it was a parody song, rap-related parody song. And they wanted to play that live. And it wasn't a song that you play as a punk rock band. You need a DJ. And I was a DJ going to NYU and I DJed at NYU events and sometimes at Danceteria and clubs in New York. Not much, more mainly in the dorm, but was a big fan of music.

Right, Danceteria pre-Madonna? Around the same time, like Madonna would be around and that was part of that world. As a matter of fact, the first Beastie Boys tour, we went on tour with Madonna as her opening act for her, the Virgin tour, her first tour. Yeah, yeah. So you hook up with these kids, high school kids.

Yeah, well, I'm one year older. I'm in college there in high school. Adam Yalk was already in college. He was at Bard. I was at NYU. We hook up. It starts with me BJing in the part of the set where they don't play their instruments. And as our appetite for rap music grew, it ended up being all we listened to that side of making music took over and I had already at this point in time produced LL Cool J's not yet album there were just singles at this time and that were and Tila Rock record called It's Yours very first rap record I ever made, which was like a cult hit. Using the techniques that I used with Tila Rock or LL Cool J,

we tried making Beastie Boys records in that format, like real rap records. And that's what we did. Right. And in that process, was there a sort of awakening like, oh, this is what I love about music. It's being, you know, in the producer's seat, trying to craft these things with great artists, or was it just, oh, this came up and this seems cool. And just, I'm jumping from one thing to another and one thing kind of, you know, your universe just kind of slowly expanding. A series of events

happened. I remember I had to leave the Madonna tour because I had an ear infection from flying and while I was home recovering I was continuing to make records and based on that experience and again luckily the universe set up this system where uh it basically told me home was the place for me. And I just realized I wasn't resilient enough to be an artist on the road. Didn't suit my lifestyle. And then in the earlier records that I worked on with LL or the Beasties or Run DMC,

I would write a lot. I would write a lot of music. And sometimes more in the case of the Beastie Boys, write lyrics. The idea of how much work I could be involved in, if I was going to write everything, it would really limit how much I could do. So the idea, and I like to work on a lot of things. It's just I have really eclectic tastes. I love music, and I like to work on a lot of things. It's just, I have really eclectic tastes. I love music and I like to be busy. So if I had to wait until every time I wrote something,

it took, I remember the first Beastie Boys album took over two years from the time we started till we finished, not of recording every day, but until the ideas came, it just took a long time. And you were heavily involved in the writing aspect of that first record. Yes. Licensed to L. Yeah. All of the music except for one or two songs.

And I don't know, 40%, half the lyrics, something like that. Right. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. But that changed after that album. It was, it didn't't that life of writing it's a very time-consuming act and it would just limit the output and for some reason I don't know it always seemed important for me to make a lot of things I like I like being productive and um so it just again it

happened if it not for the ear infection, it might not have happened that way. It's super interesting. These little obstacles, or I'm sure at the time you were disappointed. Yeah, it was unbelievable. We were on tour with Madonna, people, you know, it was wild. And then with License to Ill, I mean, that's just,

I mean, I vividly remember when that record came out and, you know, me and my friends had an obsessive relationship with every song on that record. That had to be mind melting, the extent to which that became a cultural phenomenon. And another kind of real tipping point in terms of the broadening of hip hop or a certain kind of genre within hip hop.

Yeah, I don't follow stats or charts of any kind, but I read the other day that License to Ill was the first hip hop record to be a number one album. I didn't know that until the other day. Yeah. But it's interesting. Well, I guess as a producer, you have to be a buffer between the business side of music

and protecting the artists. But at the same time, to the extent that you're capable of, like you try to stay out of numbers, results, externalities, award shows. I don't know how many Grammys you've won, but like you've never shown up for an award ceremony. No. That's part of the process of staying grounded in what's important about what

you do. Like talk a little bit about that. Yes. For me, the success happens when we sign off on a finished thing and say, okay, send it out into the world. That's the moment of success. And once that happens, I don't look back. On to the next. On to the next. Yeah. And once that happens, I don't look back. On to the next. On to the next. Yeah. Because that's the only part I have any participation in. That's the only part I can control.

Everything else is based on market conditions, on stars aligning. One of the stories we heard today in what we were doing was many of the people whose music came out on 9-11, their music got lost and their careers never recovered just because it happened to come out on 9-11. And it's fascinating. And that's out of everyone's control. And that's, again, it's universal intervention. We don't know how it works, but these are all, um, one of the things we talk about in the book is watching these occurrences. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're bad and thinking of it as riding a wave and that the universe is pushing us in a direction and we can ride with that energy.

And like when you're surfing, if you really try to fight the wave, it's probably not going to work. You know, we try to use the power of the wave where we're almost dancing with the wave, not against the wave. And that's the work of creativity as well. Certain projects come together very easily and they happen quickly and they have a momentum to them and others are a real fight. And sometimes we fight that fight and other times we decide, is there another, a path of less resistance around this? Is there a better way in? Let's rethink, less resistance around this? Is there a better way in?

Let's rethink. If it's so hard, something's up. Not supposed to be so hard. Again, it's wildly time consuming, takes a great deal of focus, takes patience. But if there are no signs that something's working for a long time, that might be a time to step back, step away. There's so much packed into what you just said. I mean, first off, it being very counterintuitive

or opposite to this notion that if you wanna be successful, you just, you push, you hustle, you force things into existence. And that is antithetical to the expression of great art. There is a surrender and an allowing and a shaping and a sort of dispassionate relationship. You have to have a non-romantic connection to the result of the work.

In the book, you say the work is the work, right? What is the work? The work is lots of things. The work is hard, but it's play. It's about sharing and it's about passion. It's about structure, of course. Like it's very elusive and difficult to pin down. Like when you said like, oh, I just, you know,

this book came about because I've been doing this thing for so long, but I never really had a formal sort of structure in my mind of what exactly, it's in the process of creating this book, its own work of art, that you become more deeply connected to like who you are and what it is exactly that you do that makes you unique or, you know, allows you to bring a certain sensibility into the studio that can elevate the artists that you work with. But it is ephemeral.

So it's understandable. You're like, I don't know what it is, but I know what it's not. Yes. And I don't know how to do it. That's another thing. Like before I start any new project, I always have a lot of anxiety

because I have no idea what's gonna happen. Now I have a lot of experience that helps now, but that doesn't make it happen. It takes a tremendous amount of patience to wait for it to reveal itself. And I guess now I have the wisdom to know this, that be patient. And I have the discipline to stay with it for a long

time. And I want to make that point because we were just talking about sometimes you have to bail. But while you're in it for a long time, there are usually clues. There are usually, and it might be a radical course change. You could start out, you have a moment, something beautiful happens, think, ah, this is what it's going to be. And you start running in that direction. And then you realize we're going in the wrong direction. Right. And then you have to, you know, set a new course. Be nimble enough to not, to be able to walk away from that, even when you've invested, you know, some ungodly amount of time and effort into that direction that's not functioning. It's something that we see often is the initial moment when an idea springs forth, that first sketch, the first

demo, the very first rough, often has some energetic charge in it that's really compelling. And we hear many stories in music where records come out and people don't uh respond and then they go back to oh well but it was we missed it it was all in the demo you know we the record screwed up and um being aware of that's helpful because you can just because you put more time in like from the time you've made the demo, you may put in, let's say we'd work for a month after we've made a demo, we work on something for a month. Might work on a song for a month. We might realize at the end of that month,

if we listen back, which is the key, always checking back. See, I know we're putting time in, but are we progressing? Right. Is it different or is it better? Right, just because you're working on it a lot doesn't mean that it's better. And after hearing it, you know, 10,000 times, you're so close to it and you become like sort of immune to its allure and you think there's something wrong with it. And so you tinker and then you actually end up dismantling the whole

thing. It's true. Yeah. Many just get overdone. So in the cases when the demo is the best version, luckily we recognize it and that ends up being the version now. But it takes discipline, confidence, and experience to recognize that the original GarageBand version of it is actually better than the highly polished studio version. Yes, and even if it has mistakes, sometimes you fix, sometimes you hear mistakes, you fix the mistakes and it's not as good. Right. You wouldn't expect that.

It's drained of its energy. It's drained of its humanity. Yeah. And we don't know, this is the other part, we don't know why it's good. You hear it, there are no metrics for this. The idea that one person says, my art is better than your art.

It's an insane idea. It's like they're all, it's always apples and oranges. It's like saying my diary entry is better than your diary entry. It's insane. It's the things we make are a reflection of who we are in this moment. And that's all it is. It's not more than that. It can go on and mean more than that, but that's not in our control. And that's not the reason to do it.

No. And it's something that cripples artists thinking, I have to make the greatest thing ever made to humankind. And then they basically psych themselves out of being able to make something good. They give into the pressure of thinking it's more than it is. So one of the things we talk about in the book is lowering the stakes, where we're not setting out to make the greatest album of all time. we're not setting out to make the greatest album of all time we're not setting out to make the greatest song of all time we're there to have fun in the studio we're going to entertain each other we're going to see if something happens that's interesting to us and there's no better um i found luckily over the course of my life, that the things that I truly believe in,

that really feel like something to me, other people resonate with. I don't know if that's the case for everybody, but I don't know of a better metric to use for anyone than I really feel this. If I really feel it, it's much better than I think someone else might like this. It's not really much better than I think someone else might like this. It's not really from, you know, it's not really me, but I think someone else might like it.

That's a dead, it's a losing game. Yeah. Yeah. You have to make it to please yourself. Absolutely. And one of the things I say in the book is the audience comes last and the audience comes last in service to the audience. The audience wants the best thing. They don't get the best thing while you're trying to service them. They get the best thing when you're servicing yourself, when you're true to who you are. And the more you can trust yourself as an artist, in my case, every decision I've made from working in a different

genre than I started in, every time, every time I do something different or new, I'm always told not to do it. I'm always told it's a terrible idea. So now you know you're on the right track when you hear that? Well, I just- I mean, you can't always be correct. I'm not, but I know it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. I have to really-

You know what you know. I know what I know. And my job is to share what I know. That's all I can do. I can't second guess myself. Well, the idea that the audience would dictate to the artist what to do, because this is what we want, is insanity, right?

It's insanity. It's the artist's job to express themselves in a way that makes the audience think differently or feel something. Yes. And the audience doesn't necessarily know that yet. Yes. Right?

Yes, Steve Jobs said, you know, famously, the consumer doesn't know what they want. Until you make it. Yeah. So talk about the making. I think there might be some confusion about what it is that you exactly do. Like, oh, you're the producer. Well, what is a music producer?

Oh, you go in, you have this amazing taste. And when the artist is going in a wrong direction, you say, no, it's better like this. And you kind of impose your opinion in a certain direction, like place a script or a format on top of the whole thing and like drive it to completion and ultimately commercial success.

Yes, that is not at all what I do. There are many producers who work like that. I don't really know the details because I've not watched other producers work, but I know that everyone has their own style. Some producers today are people who make beats and they're producing a record. And then what you hear on the radio or streaming is something that they made the beat, they gave it to an artist, they never met the artist, then the artist puts the words on top and then that comes out and they're the producer of the song.

Right, and there's nothing wrong with that. Not at all. That's different. I know, I remember like that's how Madonna always continued to innovate and keep what she was doing fresh because she would work with these different producers who had a certain sound or a way of working with music that was different from what she had been doing historically.

Yes, and when I first started, I had a sound, but very quickly, just my tastes are too eclectic. It's like I would never do the same thing for too long. I will say there tends to be a thread that runs through my work. Not always, but I like to think of it as getting to the essential heart of what's there. So, whereas it would be like the opposite. Phil Spector was famous for the wall of sound. Right. A lot of sounds all put on top of each other to the point where you couldn't tell what anything was.

It was just the wall of sound. I'm the opposite in that I want the least amount of information, the most space. Whatever you do here, I want you to be able to hear well and hear its personality. Almost like a conversation between two or three voices, more than a wall of sound. You build the songs and then you have to strip them down to see if it holds up, right? It's about like the paring down,

like what is the truest essence of this thing? And then we can add things if we think it's improving it, but like, let's take it down to the studs and see what we're actually dealing with. Yeah. I like to get to like an architectural framework of something and experience it that way. And I will say more often than not, although not always, it tends to stay very close to that, the minimalist version. But I would imagine it brings clarity. Like now you know what you're dealing with, right? Like we're all on the same page. When it's at its bare bones this is what we have yeah then we can have a discussion about whether we need to add anything to it or not it also puts

a tremendous amount of pressure on those individual elements when you can really hear them i can remember one one successful record producer saying to me very successful record producer saying like, I don't know how you have the patience to make music with so few elements because for that to work, everything has to be perfect. In his case, he would just layer things on top until a big thing happened that he liked. And again, that's fine. There's no, the beauty of all of this is no right way. We all find our own way.

And if I worked with an artist where the best version of it was a heavily layered, dense work, I'd be fine to do that. I'm open to wherever it goes. When I say the minimalist tends to happen often, that's probably where my taste lies. but my taste in relation to whatever the thing is that I'm dealing with, and sometimes the thing that we're dealing with, the whole point of it is its density. So maybe minimal would undermine what that is. In service of the highest expression of the artist

that you're working with. Of itself, yes. That's the ultimate parameter, right? Like that's what you're obviously always driving towards. But to just kind of extend that thought of minimalism a little bit, like in reading the book, I mean, the book's long. It's like 432 pages, I think, at least the manuscript that I read, right?

And it is like this I Ching sort of devotional piece on a way of being, right? And even though it's long and I read it in like one and a half sittings, which is not the way you're supposed to consume this book. This is a book that should be consumed with patience and consideration. It's a book that you can put down

and pick back up and reread, et cetera. It felt very minimal is the point that I'm trying to make. Like it didn't feel like there was any extraneous sentences. Like it is distilled down to, you know, a very specific point that you're trying to make. Even the very few stories that you use to illustrate some of these points are like two sentences long and like no names are used and then you move on yeah it's not about that i was thinking about that early on and and um i think if the information had the name of an artist attached to it when you read it you would visualize that artist and it would be harder to put yourself in the place.

Because your association with that artist would bring some baggage into your opinion on the point that you're trying to make. Yes, it couldn't help it. It would sensationalize it in a way that would undermine the information. And this was about the information and the ability for the information to help someone else. It wasn't about to talk about a past glory in any way. There's a lot of shared DNA with this book and the way that you think about creativity and the expression of art with the work that Steven Pressfield does and his marvelous books.

Like this book that you've written is very much a piece with the war of art and turning pro. Like these things should be read in tandem or on the bookshelf together. Yes. But I think one distinction between these two things is you have a broader embrace of the mystical. Like the act of creation is an act of magic.

It requires playing with energies and really considering the unseen as very real. Like these are tangible forces that you have to channel and reckon with if you are gonna be in this space of creation, right? So talk a little bit about like how that came to be part of your sensibility and so important in the work that you do i'll start by saying i'm a believer and i'm a believer in

everything i start with the idea that i believe everything and i'm willing to try things the in some cases the more uh edgy the more interesting they are to me. I'm less interested in what the orthodoxy thinks and more interested in what the fringes think. I live on the fringes. And I won't take any pharmaceutical drugs, but I'll take all kinds of crazy biohacking stuff. That's my MO. And I see, and I've had mystical experiences in my life, non-drug related mystical experiences in my life. So I can't discount these things that happen. Will you share one of those mystical experiences? You think of a good one. Okay.

I've suffered with depression at different times in my life. It started when I was 33 years old, which was the year they got Jesus, turns out. But before then, I was great. And then at 33, I got hit with this first panic attack, which I didn't know what it was, but I thought I was dying. And then I had serious depression for probably two years, at which point it was hard to get out of bed. If I even did get out of bed, I would see a different therapist or healer every day, sometimes two a day, at least five days a week, looking for healing.

Every day was just like, maybe this appointment's the one that we're going to find out what's happening. And would drag myself from healer to healer. And nothing worked. And then a friend of mine had taken Prozac and it changed his life. And he said, not only did he say, you ought to try this, but he said, I will never not take this. Like this changed my life.

This is the greatest thing that ever happened. And while our personalities were very different after two years of pain, it was a, it was at least something to consider, but it was a barrier that I wasn't comfortable crossing. You know, I was a vegan. I didn't use any medical, I'm really a person who lives in a natural way. Yeah, cautious about any interference with that. Absolutely, anything that undermines nature, I'm wary of. And I finally, there was a woman who wrote a book who was a, she was a psychic and she was a psychopharmacologist. And I thought, okay, if I'm ever going to take a substance, I'll take it from a psychic.

That, I'll do that. Yeah, okay. So I went to see, her name was Judith Orloff and I went to see Judith Orloff told her what was going on told her the story about my friend in the Prozac and she said it's certainly worth trying and she prescribed it and told me what to do take it take it right before you go to sleep sleep. And I took it that first night and I woke up an hour later, wide awake, feeling energy racing through my body as if there was a race going on in my body. It was the worst feeling, the worst feeling. She also said, when you take this, you're not going to feel anything for six weeks. It takes six weeks to start working. I titrate up or whatever.

So I took it first night, hour later, wake up bad. And I'm just laying in bed scared until the morning, wide awake, terrified that I'm dying until I can call her and find out what to do. And finally, eight o'clock in the morning, I get through and she says, okay, don't take that one again. So that was, it was a bad start. And then I ended up trying many different antidepressants one after another. Every one of them made me sick right away. another every one of them made me sick right away um the ones that didn't make me sick i waited the six weeks taking them every day and didn't work so no nothing worked and then finally one drug worked and it worked again not like i was told it would work. I was told, you know, wait six weeks, see what happens with this drug. I took it the first evening and it felt like

within a half hour, all of the light in the room turned to candlelight and I was being held and braced in a safe hug. And that night I felt better for the first time in those two years. And a side effect of that particular drug is that you gain weight. Nobody told me that. But I was on the drug for six months, eight months, and I gained something like 70 pounds. And I was already overweight. It's interesting also that the,

I've never really researched this, but the fact that the one drug of all the drugs that I tried that worked for me, I already had a weight problem. Also somehow side effect made me gain weight, makes me think my weight and depression somehow are related. I don't know enough about the science of that,

but it seems clear there's some connection there. Too close. So I gained a lot of weight. I got better. I weaned off the drug. I was good again. And the mystical piece was in the throes of the depression, one of the things that would help me, I would drive to Malibu.

I lived in town at the time. I would drive to Malibu and we had a little house, a tiny little shack on the beach that I was renting. And I would sit in that house and usually I would get some, some of the heaviness would lift. usually I would get some, some of the heaviness would lift. So one day I went to Malibu. I got there at around noon. Did nothing, nothing. Listened to classical music, relaxed, meditated, meditated for hours.

Did all the things that would like help get me out. And nothing got me out. And I was devastated and I was hopeless. And in that moment of hopelessness, I prayed and I prayed for a sign. Please, universe, please give me a sign. Please give me a sign to go on because I don't think I can go on. Please give me a sign.

And I walked out to the beach, which was something I never did or rarely did. I walked out to the beach and I'm standing out on the beach and in one minute, the entire sky turned into the most dramatic, orange, wild, biblical painting. I had never seen anything like it up till that moment. Never seen anything like it since. I walk out. I experience

that. It blows my mind. I feel like my answer is, I'm being spoken to. And then within a minute, gone back to normal blue sky. So that was, for me, that was a mystical event. Right, so what do you make of that? Like how did that color your sort of sense of, you know, energies unseen? It felt like I'm not, I felt less alone. I felt like I could, my cry for help was heard and I felt connected.

And that felt really good. In the book, you refer to, you talk about the universe and you talk about source. Steven Pressfield calls it the muse. This is the place from which we can extract those inspirations, those ideas This is the place from which we can extract those, those inspirations, those ideas, and channel them through the artist

into creating something that lives and breathes in the world. But I guess I'm curious, as is Steven Pressfield, because he asked me to ask you this question, like how do you differentiate how he thinks about it, e.g. the muse, versus like how you're thinking about it as source? Are those things synonymous? My sense is that you have a more kind of expansive spiritual version of the muse. Maybe, and I think it doesn't matter. It's helpful to know

that the information we need doesn't all come from inside of us. It might not come, maybe none of it comes from inside of us. Maybe it all comes from outside of us. And whether that be mystical or whether that be physical, whether that be practical, I've had experiences where I'm looking for an answer for something, curious, and I'm holding it lightly in my consciousness, not working on it, just I know there's this problem to be solved, and then I'll be out, and something will happen in the world directly related to answer the question.

It happens all the time. It doesn't happen once in a while. It happens all the time. I believe it happens all the time for everyone if they're paying attention. If you're open to the communication, we're getting information all the time. There's so much more information coming at us than we can digest that we pick and choose unconsciously

certain data points. And then based on those data points, we make up a story about what happens. It's different for everybody. There's so much wisdom all around us all of the time coming in the form of nature, coming in the form of the culture, coming in the form of people speaking at a coffee shop,

you know, overhearing a conversation. If you're open and if you're paying attention, and I would even go further to say, I mean, it probably works either way, but I would say, and if you invite it, it might work even better. I don't know if that's true, but why not? That's the thing.

But if you're inviting it, then you're sort of injecting a level of intention into the practice of paying attention and being open. Yes, and because of the subtle nature of the information that we're looking for, it's not getting shouted at us. It's the thing that if you weren't really quiet and really paying attention, you would likely miss.

So we have to quiet ourselves and we have to live in a way. That's why the subtitle of the book is A Way of Being, is we live in the world in this constant state of looking for clues, looking for information. What can I learn? What shapes align? Where are their connections? What's more to be seen in the picture than just the face value?

If I look deeper, what's happening? And that's the practice. And there are some suggestions of things that you can do to get there. But meditation is a key. For me, meditation is a key. It may not be everyone's. That's the other point of this is we all function in different ways. We can speak about diet. When I was vegan, I was wildly overweight and sick. And that was part of my depression. And when you became a vegan, you became a world-class ultra runner. So it's like, it works different for different people.

We each have to find what works for us and try things and see what works. Which is its own form of openness. Absolutely. Being able to accept people in a nonjudgmental way, leading with curiosity, with patience, all of these principles, which we'll get into that are kind of splayed out

over the course of the many pages of your book. But on this idea of being open, I mean, certainly in my own life, the best decisions that I've ever made, the most important decisions, and the decisions that I've ever made, the most important decisions, and the reason that I'm even sitting here today is a result of a few brief sort of windows of opportunity where I was present enough to notice a whisper and respect it and take action on it.

And I do believe like yourself that we're all visited with these moments, but we have to be in a place of receiving, right? Like receiving is a huge theme of the work that you do. And it resonates throughout the book. Like how can we be better receivers? How can we attune our antennae to be in receipt of the messages that are available to us? And you talk in the book about the idea of, it's sort of a hive mind collective consciousness notion that ideas are real things that exist among all of us. And when

our antenna is properly attuned, we can draw that down and then the artist can translate that into something real. But if the artist or anyone who's receiving that doesn't heed it, doesn't respect it, doesn't fertilize that seed, the seed being another big aspect of the book, it will ultimately be fertilized by somebody else, probably if not simultaneously in time proximity. And that's, it's an idea. Sorry, let me just finish this one thought. We were talking about this the other day,

that idea, you're talking about this idea, but I also read the same notion in Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic. Like she talks about it in a very similar way. Beautiful. I haven't read that in a very similar way. Beautiful. I haven't read that. I'd like to read that. I think you would like that book.

I'll check it out. It's the idea of movements. When movements happen in the art world, movements don't happen where one person discovers something and a bunch of people copy it. It's, there was a time for abstraction, for abstract expressionism. In most art movements, it's difficult to pinpoint who was first

because usually it springs up in groups and it might even spring up in different places in the world at the same time. Punk rock happened all over the world at the same time. It wasn't because one punk rock band influenced everyone else. It was a reaction to what had come before. It was time to take music out of the conservatory and bring it back to a street level. That's what that was about.

And hip hop was the same. Out of the R&B suits and down to the b-boy mentality of people that you might recognize on the street, how your friends might dress. Yeah. Pre-internet, by the way. Absolutely. Before ideas could spread instantaneously across the world. Absolutely. At the time that I went to high school, I was a punk rocker. There were no other punk rockers in my high school. I didn't know any punk rockers. So it was, I just think in my high school. I didn't know any punk rockers.

So it was, I just think had the internet been around when I was a kid, I would have had friends all over the world with similar interests. I had none. I had none. And you had to find your people. Yeah. Or I would go to a show and there were just a couple of clubs. Yeah. And once in a while, you know, there'd be a show once a month and yeah, and there'd be 20 people and those would be, and you might meet, you know, you might meet two of them. Yeah. On that idea of being open, I think what's important about that is the notion of creativity itself

and how we kind of culturally think about it. Like there is this idea that there are artists and there are normal people. I was talking to somebody the other day and he said, I don't have a creative bone in my body. Very successful person, by the way. Of course, that's not true. We're all innately creative.

Now, most people, however, kind of, you were talking about like the stories we tell, how we extract tiny little nuggets of the billions of pieces of information that we're being exposed to on a second by second basis. And we create a narrative out of that. And I think we get calcified around what reality is

and like who we are and what we're doing and what this means and what that doesn't mean. We walk around with blinders, right? We've made decisions about what's important to pay attention to and what isn't. So we don't notice things that somebody who is natively more sensitive or somebody who has cultivated the practice of being more open can see. Like we're sitting here, I have an idea of like where we are and all of that kind of thing. But a more sensitive person sitting here might be paying attention to something I don't even notice because they're

attuned that way naturally or they have developed a practice of expanding their awareness. So they're allowing more in. So talk about this idea, like disabuse us of this idea that creativity is the genetic gift of the few and they walk the earth differently from the rest of us as somebody who's worked with so many brilliantly talented people. We make creative choices. All of us make creative choices every day of our lives. The way, when we choose to take a new route that we've driven the same route every day and we decide to take the scenic route, that's a creative choice. And if we're paying attention and we decide today I'm going to take the scenic route and if you happen to notice something that day on the scenic route that

you didn't notice before and And that ends up helping you in the thing that you're working on. Maybe it's a coincidence, but when you come to expect it to happen, it happens all the time, all the time. Be prepared to be awestruck and surprised on a regular basis by things that you would never imagine happening.

It happens all the time. Isn't that a better, more fun way to live? It's incredible. And you feel like, also you feel like you're part of this bigger thing. You know, I can't remember exactly how I said it in the book, but we think of ourselves as the conductor, but we're not the conductor. We're an orchestra member being conducted. And we're part of this bigger thing that's going on. And it works like clockwork. And we all play

a part. Every one of us plays part. And we all have our part to play. So when someone says, I'm not artistic or I'm not good at art, it'd be like saying, I'm not a good monk. There is no such thing as not a good monk. You're either living your life as a monk or you're not living your life as a monk. Monks aren't good or bad. You're either doing a monk or you're not doing a monk. And we all live as artists, but we don't know it.

And there are things we can do to amplify the artistic side of ourselves that will make everything we do better. Everything, your relationships, your ability to communicate, your ability to listen, your joy of life, your feeling of connection,

your ability to commune with nature will it's like taking off blinders and a problem solve we were talking the other day and and you were like i don't like softball questions i don't know how to just talk about what it is that i do like i know how to solve problems right to bring an artistic sensibility into a problem-solving context is a process of undoing everything you think you know, trying to, you know, ditch whatever baggage and biases that you are loaded up with and approach it with a beginner's mind so that you can see it more expansively. And I think, obviously, it's been very effective

in how you extract the best out of the musicians that you work with, but I can't help but think about the applications in the real world to some of the biggest problems we have, whether it's climate change or artificial intelligence or the things that we're grappling with whether it's climate change or artificial intelligence or the things that we're grappling with that very smart people are trying to come up

with new ideas around, like we need that sensibility as a major part of that conversation. We can't solve these massive problems on logic and reason alone. We need inspiration. We need kind of new orthogonal approaches that maybe we're not seeing.

And there's a really great story in the book about an AI that kind of illustrates that point. Would you like me to tell the story? Yeah, tell that story. I saw a video about seven years ago about AlphaGo, which was a AI system created to play the game Go. And they chose Go because up until this point, chess had been used, computer chess. But Go is the most difficult or it has the most potential combinations of any game. And it's the most difficult.

It would be the most difficult game for a computer to be able to play, be good at. Yeah, there's like hundreds of billions of permutations. Yes, there are more permutations than there are grains of sand on the planet. That's how many permutations. So it's a very difficult computing problem. And humans have been playing the game for 3,000 years. It's a very old game. And there came a point in the movie

where the computer is playing the world's grandmaster. And eventually, the computer makes a move that has never been made before it's a funny thing to say because it's a game where you place a stone on a square you can place it on any square you want you know there's no rule

where you can and can't place it if you place it on one of the intersections of the squares you can place a stone on any intersection that doesn't have a stone on it. And the computer made a move that was outside of the strategy understanding of human beings. It placed a stone in the, as I remember it, there were two choices based on the conditions for the computer to make a move. And it was either going to place a stone on the first line or the second line. And if they placed the stone on the first line, it meant a defensive game.

And if they placed it on the second line, it was a defensive game. But anyone with experience who was playing the game ago would know it's one of those two moves. Right. And those are the only two moves that any rational person would make. Anyone, yes. And the computer put the stone on line three. Now, there's no rule saying you can't put it on line three, but it was outside of the imagination of the culture of Go for 3,000 years. It made a

move that was, I'll say, irrational to the human Go world. Right. The community of Go wizards. Yes. And it was so inflammatory that the Grandmaster got up from the table in disgust. And there were some questions with the commentators, because this was on television. This was like the computer versus man, big story. People thought the computer made a mistake. It was like it was such a wrong move. Couldn't be. And the computer ends up winning that game. The grandmaster eventually comes back after he composes himself and the computer wins the game. And the grandmaster ends up retiring

because his mind is so blown by what happened. Right. And when I'm watching the story, I realized there were tears running down my face and I'm crying and I wasn't sure why. And I thought about it for a while and it wasn't, the most obvious answer was the computer beat the man. Oh no, it's the end of the world. man loses to the computer i'm crying because we're but it wasn't that at all what it was was the reason i realized the reason the computer won was because the computer didn't know more than the human the computer knew less than the human The computer knew less than the human. The computer only knew the rules of the game.

It didn't know the customs, the morals, the mores, the stories, what one grandmaster learns from another grandmaster, the cultural references over the years of the game. It didn't know the history. The etiquette. It didn't know any of that. All it knew was I could put it anywhere. By putting it here, it's going to increase my chances of winning mathematically. So the computer solved a problem, not by knowing more, but by knowing less. And that's a really beautiful idea for me because it gets back to the beginner's mind idea. It's not that we need to necessarily learn more.

It's more like we need to think different. Like maybe if we can let go of some of our beliefs, if we can let go of some of the stories that we hold, if we watch an event happen, instead of accepting the first version of the story that comes to us to help us survive in the world, that's what we do. We'll see a series of events and we make up a story that explains what that is. And that way we can sleep at night. Right.

Because really we don't know anything. We don't know anything. That's the powerful epiphany in the whole thing. This humility to embrace the idea that we really don't know that much. And when you look at the web telescope images, it's so awe inspiring and it's such a healthy dose of humility to that point, right? We walk around rational beings,

it's the age of reason and enlightenment. We have answered many questions and to the questions that we don't yet have answers to, we feel we're capable of answering those very soon. And yet that is still such an incredibly limited perspective on the totality of what we're actually fucking contending with, which is beyond our ability

as these tiny organisms to comprehend. It's true. Yeah. It's true. So to walk the earth with that sensibility of, actually, we don't really know anything. We don't really know anything. And when something happens to say,

oh, it might be that, maybe it's that. Or let's see if we can come up with another reason. What else could it be? And like not assuming things are as they seem on their face. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. Or thinking, I can think of so many times over the course of my life where I thought that someone was mad at me

or I thought that, like, I thought I knew it was in someone else's head and it was never true. It was only just self-negative self-talk or something that I misunderstood or- That causes our own suffering. Absolutely. So much of the difficulty is self-inflicted. And the more we can let go of all of our beliefs and just experience what happens and see what works, try things. It's like, that works. And

not to assume, well, that works, so that's the only way. No, that works and maybe there's a hundred other ways. So what would be an example of taking that notion into the studio? Like, is there a situation in which you consciously thought, you know, let's take a tip from AlphaGo and try to unlearn what we think we know about what we're doing here and approach it from the other side? The first thing that comes to mind, and I don't even know if we've done this, but the first thing that comes to mind when you say that

is to ask a musician, a great musician, most of the people I get to work with are really talented, to try playing on an instrument that they're not familiar with. That would be an example of like, let's let go of all of your practice and everything that we think of what makes you great at what you do.

You're the wizard on this instrument. Let's play something else that you never played before and see what happens. And let's see where that goes. Let's see if we find something new. Shake it up. Who knows? I don't know if this story is apocryphal,

but isn't that what occurred with the talking heads with naive melody? Like every member of the band played an instrument that they didn't play. I didn't know that. And that is how that song came together, which ends up being one of their, if not the best song they ever created. Beautiful. I didn't know that. And that is how that song came together, which ends up being one of their, if not the best song they ever created.

Beautiful. I didn't know that. It might not be true, but I've heard that. I've heard that story. A story on the other side. And that's why it's called Naive Melody. The naivete of it is what created the beauty. It's funny that Van Halen's biggest hit at the time,

Eddie Van Halen's one of the greatest guitar players of all time. And song Jump was maybe the first song he ever just played a keyboard on. And that was their biggest hit. And he was the greatest guitar player of the century for some. Yet the song that worked

was the one where he played the keyboard. Yeah. So in this idea of the creation of art and creativity as a way of being, there's this quote, it's near the beginning of the book, if memory serves me, this quote by Robert Henry, who was a painter.

And he says, the role of the artist isn't to make art, but to be in that wonderful state, which makes art inevitable. So it's about creating an environment, like a culturing, a mindset, a way of walking the planet such that you're conducive to the messages and the material execution of the inspiration and the ideas. And that's really kind of the role that you serve. Like how can you be a facilitator

of enhancing the container of creation, right? And it's a guru role, it's a coach role, it's a teacher role. And it requires a certain delicate touch, right? Like you have to be patient. Like when the other, the record producer or executive said to you, like, I don't know how you could to be patient. Like when the other, the record producer or executive said to you, like, I don't know how you could be so patient.

Like you have to be patient in order and you have to listen and marinate in all of this stuff and just gently guide the sensitive soul to that landing place. So the highest expression can emerge. And to do it with as little, I try to do it with as little of a footprint as possible. So in some cases I'm more involved,

in some cases I'm less involved, but I'm only as involved as I need to be. If there was a way to make it happen, where, I mean, in a dream scenario, if I could produce an artist, support them in doing their best work without ever meeting or speaking to them, that would be the highest form of it.

I've not achieved that level yet, but that would be the ultimate version of it. Just the shadow lurking in the background. It would just happen. What happens though, I'm sure this happens. You're in the studio, you're working it out, play back something that you just laid down and the artist says, well, what do you think, Rick? If your job is not to inject your own sensibility into it, do you have to mirror that back to the artist or like, how do you kind of gracefully dance

around that? My job is to mirror my true reflection as it's needed. So in that case, if I'm asked what I think, I will absolutely say what I think, good or bad. I'll say it in a way where it's not confrontational or not unkind, but we're talking about something outside of ourselves. I would never say it about the person. It's never about the person. If someone takes criticism personally, the game is over. And it's helpful to remove whatever it is that we're making from the people making it. We're making this thing.

It's a reflection of us, but it's not us. It's this thing out here. And once we have this thing out here, we could talk about this thing. It's not dangerous to talk about this thing because I'm pointing at right now, I'm pointing at the table. I'm not pointing at Rich. So it's like, I'm not saying you're no good. I'm saying this aspect of this thing, maybe there's a way to do this part better.

This part's good. This part's maybe can be better. Let's see, you have any ideas? How would we make this part better? Can it be better? It's powerful to restrict that feedback to the work, taking the personality out of it so that it's purely focused on the common goal

of making the thing great, right? Like it's not a commentary or a referendum on the human being. Never, it can't be. Otherwise you're dead in the water. Yes, it can't be. And that's applicable in life. It's really interesting to sort of be a fly on the wall for like a note session

with people who really know what they're doing. And you can see it's its own art form, right? To do it properly. And it takes a lot of, you know, it's a soft touch, it takes grace, it takes experience to do it well. And it requires that the ego has to vanish, right? All egos have to be set aside. We're in unison as a team to create this great thing.

Our only interest is in making the best thing possible, credit, all of that, who cares about that? And there's a maturity that's required for that, right? But it's cool. There's, you know, the comedian, Mike Birbiglia? He's great standup comedian. He has a podcast called Working It Out. And what he does is he'll bring people on,

other comedians, writers, actors, people who are artistic in some way, and they each share what they're working on. And then they give each other feedback on the podcast, which I think is such a service to people, to hear people who really care about craft and know how to communicate what's good, what isn't working, et cetera,

in a really constructive, healthy way, because it's so applicable to all other areas of our life. If you're having an argument with your spouse, your partner, if you're having a conflict at work, like all of these skills have high, high applicability in all areas of life. Absolutely. And taking the ego out of all of it is such a key component of allowing the thing to be the best thing it can be. If it's about you, it's about you. It's not about it. And it's not about it being its best, whatever that is, whatever that is.

Or to in any way be defensive when someone's sharing information. defensive when someone's sharing information. When someone gives criticism, that's how they see it. It's helpful. It's helpful to you to know you don't have to see what they see, but it's helpful to know that that's what they see. And the fact that it's different than what you see, that's good for you to know. That's not bad for you to know. That's helpful information. good for you to know. That's not bad for you to know. That's helpful information. Right. But our insecurities end up hearing you're an untalented hack. You're a terrible person. You don't know what you're doing. You truly are the imposter that you believe yourself to be. Like we create these narratives out of that in a way that ends up being destructive. And I would suspect, I'm interested in your thoughts on this, that the most generative artists are the ones who understand how to remove the ego

and receive the feedback for the best interest of the project. Absolutely. And it's something for someone who's never had helpful criticism before, it can be shocking. I can remember one artist very successful artist i was um listening to some new songs that they were playing me and um and i gave you know very analytical everything that i felt on every song as they you know on this one i felt this this this this on this one i felt this this this this and i finish and it's completely analytical, talking about the craft, just the specifics of these things.

And he said, have you ever talked to an artist like this before? I said, every day. It's my job. He's like, no one's ever talked to me like this before. I said, well, I'm here in service to you. I'm here to help. These are the things that resonated with me. These are the things that didn't.

This is information to help you. And we ended up working really well together after that. But there was this initial like, wow, no one's ever told me anything before. Right. No one's ever shared what they, especially with people who are successful, people who are successful are used to hearing yes, yes, yes. Everything's great. And it's not

helpful. Right. It's not helpful. It's helpful to have yes, yes, yes. When it is yes, yes, yes. And is that as good as it could be? When is that as good as it can be? Having some sense of reality. Otherwise, there's no grounding. They're operating in a vacuum and they lose perspective with what's really happening if they have no ability to get real feedback. Humbling yourself to be a craftsman among craftsmen, right? Beautiful. In service.

Well said. To the higher purpose of the work. Absolutely. So in this idea of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we're capable of and how the means by which we communicate with others, the assumptions we make about how those communications are received,

I think we need a new perspective on how to shift how we make about how those communications are received, I think we need a new perspective on how to shift how we think about that or to dislodge our entrenched thinking about how we see ourselves and how others see us. And this idea is illustrated beautifully by this psychological experiment that we were talking about the other day. So I think it would be cool to kind of end, even though we are ending a little bit shorter than I wanted to, like it will give people something to ponder and consider until we meet again,

because we're gonna have to do a part two. Great, I'm in. All right. Let's close our eyes, unless you're driving. Close your eyes and envision a desert. A desert. Once you have pictured the desert, in the desert, there is a cube.

A cube. Visualize the cube in the desert. There is also a ladder. See the ladder. There are flowers in the desert. Notice the flowers. Notice the flowers. There's a horse in the desert. Picture the horse. And finally, there is a storm. What's interesting about this experiment is if you were to,

you might even want to write down the details of what you're imagining and the next time you're with a friend or a loved one, ask them to do the same. You can either play this for them or read them the cues, the six cues. And then compare your cube image story and their cube image story and see how similar or different they are. Try it with your friends.

It's an old, I first did this about 20 years ago. And I remember the first time I did it, having a very clear vision of what my story was when I was given those cues, very simple cues. And I imagined that's what it looked like. And then I spoke to some other people around the table who took the same, answered the same questions. And it was mind-blowing how different our pictures were. And it's a great example of how we all imagine Mm-hmm. more tuned to ours and they pick up the same source material, the thing they make, it's not going to be the same thing we would make. No one can do our part.

Our picture is our picture. So there's a great benefit in taking a risk, making the thing that's interesting to you, sharing it with the world, because if you don't do it, nobody else will. You're the only one who can make the art that you can make. And it's not in competition with anyone else. There is no competition. There's no competition who has a better picture in their head. It's a reflection of you. Everything that you make is a reflection of who you are. And how you live in the world will impact the things that you make is a reflection of who you are and how you live in the world will impact the things

that you make. And I wish the best of luck on the journey in making beautiful things that we can all enjoy. Yeah, it's beautifully put. I think a fantastic way to end this, this call to action that we all have something inside of us that is worthy of exploration and expression because there is no other you. And that in and of itself makes you infinitely valuable. Absolutely. And you're depriving all of us of that if you choose not to share.

True. And if you wanna know the psychological meanings of your cube, you can Google cube psychology test, and I'm sure you'll find what everything means if you're interested. Yeah, do that, then pick up the creative act. It really is a beautiful expression. If you wanna more finely attune your radar

to the subtle art of making things and adopting a certain way of being, I can't think of any better way to start there. I mean, it's really something special. So thank you for writing it. And I think people are gonna really enjoy it. Beautiful, thank you for speaking to me and thank you so much for reading it.

Yeah, I hope that I can call you friend. And again, I would like to have you back. So if we ever find ourselves, even though we kind of live close to each other, you're in parts unknown. So I had to grab this opportunity. We have background noise and all of that, but it's an organic living, breathing thing, man.

Beautiful, I love it. And when we hear it back, we'll remember where we are and what's happening. It's beautiful. For sure, forever. it. And when we hear it back, we'll remember where we are and what's happening. It's beautiful. For sure. Forever. Cool. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Thank you. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today,

visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast,

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Namaste. Thank you.