The Creative Act: A Way of Being

by Rick Rubin

Early in a project, excitement is the inner voltmeter to watch to help choose which seed to develop. When you’re handling a seed and the needle jumps, it indicates that the work is worthy of your attention, your devotion. It holds the potential to sustain your interest and make the effort worthwhile.

The call of the artist is to follow the excitement. Where there’s excitement, there’s energy. And where there is energy, there is light.

Each day is about showing up, building things, breaking them down, experimenting, and surprising ourselves. If a four-year-old loses interest in an activity, they don’t try to complete it or force themselves to have fun with it. They just shift gears to a new quest. Another form of play.

If one collaborator likes Choice A and another prefers Choice B, then the solution is not to choose A or B. It’s to keep working until a Choice C is developed that both artists feel is superior. Choice C may incorporate elements of A, of B, of both, or of neither. The moment one collaborator gives in and settles on a less preferential option for the sake of moving forward, everyone loses. Great decisions aren’t made in a spirit of sacrifice. They’re made by the mutual recognition of the best solution available.

Editing is a demonstration of taste. It isn’t expressed through pointing to items we like: the music that pleases our ear or the films we revisit. Our taste is revealed in how our work is curated. What’s included, what’s not, and how the pieces are put together.

The reason we’re alive is to express ourselves in the world. And creating art may be the most effective and beautiful method of doing so. Art goes beyond language, beyond lives. It’s a universal way to send messages between each other and through time.

Our inability to comprehend the inner workings of the universe may actually bring us more in tune with its infinitude. The magic is not in the analyzing or the understanding. The magic lives in the wonder of what we do not know.