The Creative Act

Author: Rick Rubin

Release: January 17, 2023

Tagline: A Way of Being

Publisher: Penguin Press

Genre: Creativity, Process

ISBN-10: 0593652886
ISBN-13: 978-0593652886

Declassified by Agent Palmer: Did Rick Rubin just become my spirit guide?

Quotes and Lines

Creativity is not a rare ability. It is not difficult to access. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It’s our birthright. And it’s for all of us.

The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe.

This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create from, but of the life we get to live.

The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.

Look for what you notice
but no one else sees.

Living life as an artist is a practice.
You are either engaging in the practice
or you are not.

Nature transcends our tendencies to label and classify, to reduce and limit. The natural world is unfathomably more rich, interwoven, and complicated than we are taught, and so much more mysterious and beautiful.

The person who makes something today
isn’t the same person
who returns to the work tomorrow.

It’s helpful to view currents in the culture without feeling obligated to follow the direction of their flow.

To the best of my ability, I’ve followed my intuition to make career turns, and been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realize that it’s better to follow the universe than those around you.

We’re all different and we’re all imperfect, and the imperfections are what makes each of us and our work interesting.

All art is a work in progress.

We’re not playing to win, we’re playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process. To make and put out successive works with ease.

Sometimes disengaging
is the best way to engage.

Thoughts and habits not conducive to the work:

  • Believing you’re not good enough.
  • Feeling you don’t have the energy it takes.
  • Mistaking adopted rules for absolute truths.
  • Not wanting to do the work (laziness).
  • Not taking the work to its highest expression (settling).
  • Having goals so ambitions that you can’t begin.
  • Thinking you can only do your best work in certain conditions.
  • Requiring specific tools or equipment to do the work.
  • Abandoning a project as soon as it gets difficult.
  • Feeling like you need permission to start or move forward.
  • Letting a perceived need for funding, equipment, or support get in the way.
  • Having too many ideas and not knowing where to start.
  • Never finishing projects.
  • Blaming circumstances or other people for interfering with your process.
  • Romanticizing negative behaviors or addictions.
  • Believing a certain mood or state is necessary to do your best work.
  • Prioritizing other activities and responsibilities over your commitment to making art.
  • Distractibility and procrastination.
  • Impatience.
  • Thinking anything that’s out of your control is in your way.

The work reveals itself as you go.

Failure
is the information you need
to get where you’re going.

A point of view is different from having a point.

Great art is created through freedom of expression and received with freedom of individual interpretation.
Great art opens a conversation rather than closing it. And often this conversation is started by accident.

We revel in the satisfaction of seeing the whole shape come into clear focus.

We are the unreliable narrators of our own experience.

We are dealing in a magic realm.
Nobody knows why or how it works.

Do what you can
with what you have.
Nothing more is needed.

The artist is always on call. Even after we get up from hours engaged in our craft, the clock is still running.
This is because the artist’s job is of two kinds:
The work of doing.
The work of being.

There is no wrong way to make art.

The best work
is the work you are excited about.

We create in service to art, not for what we can get from art.

Creativity is contagious.

Sometimes the most valuable touch a collaborator can have is not touch at all.