The Creative Act: A Way of Being

by Rick Rubin

What you make doesn’t have to be witnessed, recorded, sold, or encased in glass for it to be a work of art. Through the ordinary state of being, we’re already creators in the most profound way, creating our experience of reality and composing the world we perceive.

In this great unfolding, ideas and thoughts, themes and songs and other works of art exist in the aether and ripen on schedule, ready to find expression in the physical world. As artists, it is our job to draw down this information, transmute it, and share it.

The best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae to draw in the energy resonating at a particular moment. Many great artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves. They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel everything more deeply.

How do we pick up on a signal that can neither be heard nor be defined? The answer is not to look for it. Nor do we attempt to predict or analyze our way into it. Instead, we create an open space that allows it. A space so free of the normal overpacked condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum. Drawing down the ideas that the universe is making available.

Awareness moves differently. The program is happening around us. The world is the doer and we are the witness. We have little or no control over the content.

Analysis is a secondary function. The awareness happens first as a pure connection with the object of your attention. If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.

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

As artists, we want to hold these stories softly and find space for the vast amount of information that doesn’t fit easily within the limits of our belief system. The more raw data we can take in, and the less we shape it, the closer we get to nature.

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.

The things we believe carry a charge regardless of whether they can be proven or not.

Pay particular attention to the moments that take your breath away—a beautiful sunset, an unusual eye color, a moving piece of music, the elegant design of a complex machine. If a piece of work, a fragment of consciousness, or an element of nature is somehow allowing us to access something bigger, that is its spiritual component made manifest. It awards us a glimpse of the unseen.

Look for what you notice but no one else sees.

For the artist, this reflexive action can be a hindrance. Widening one’s scope allows for more moments of interest to be noticed and collected, building a treasury of material to draw from later.

The purpose is to evolve the way we see the world when we’re not engaged in these acts. We are building the musculature of our psyche to more acutely tune in. This is so much of what the work is about.

Awareness needs constant refreshing. If it becomes a habit, even a good habit, it will need to be reinvented again and again.

We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.

The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.

Of all the great works that we can experience, nature is the most absolute and enduring.

It is through communing with nature that we move closer to our own nature.

There are practices that can assist in accessing this deeper well inside yourself. For example, you can try an anger-releasing exercise where you beat on a pillow for five minutes. It’s more difficult than you might think to do this for the full duration. Time yourself and go hard. Then immediately fill five pages with whatever comes out.

It’s not always easy to follow the subtle energetic information the universe broadcasts, especially when your friends, family, coworkers, or those with a business interest in your creativity are offering seemingly rational advice that challenges your intuitive knowing.

Flaws are human, and the attraction of art is the humanity held in it. If we were machinelike, the art wouldn’t resonate. It would be soulless. With life comes pain, insecurity, and fear.

The reason it’s painful is the reason they became artists in the first place: their incredible sensitivity. If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all, you’re confronted with big feelings all the time.

Beginning a work, completing a work, and sharing a work—these are key moments where many of us become stuck.

All art is a work in progress. It’s helpful to see the piece we’re working on as an experiment. One in which we can’t predict the outcome. Whatever the result, we will receive useful information that will benefit the next experiment.

By accepting self-doubt, rather than trying to eliminate or repress it, we lessen its energy and interference.

If you have an imperfect version of a work you really love, you may find that when it finally seems perfect, you don’t love it in the same way. This is a sign the imperfect version was actually the one. The work is not about perfection.

The inspired-artist aspect of your self may be in conflict with the craftsperson aspect, disappointed that the craftsperson is unable to create the physical embodiment of the inspired artist’s vision. This is a common conflict for creators, since there is no direct conversion from abstract thought to the material world. The work is always an interpretation. There are many different hats the artist wears, and creativity is an internal discussion between these aspects of self. The negotiation continues until the selves create the best work they can together.

The purpose of the work is to awaken something in you first, and then allow something to be awakened in others. And it’s fine if they’re not the same thing. We can only hope that the magnitude of the charge we experience reverberates as powerfully for others as it does for us.

If I put so little care and time into it, what might the water taste like? It couldn’t possibly taste as good.”

If the work doesn’t represent who you are and what you’re living, how can it hold an energetic charge?

The creative energy exists in the journey to the making, not in the act of constructing.

The goal is not to fit in. If anything, it’s to amplify the differences, what doesn’t fit, the special characteristics unique to how you see the world.

Every innovation risks becoming a rule. And innovation risks becoming an end in itself.

Holding every rule as breakable is a healthy way to live as an artist. It loosens constraints that promote a predictable sameness in our working methods.

For every rule followed, examine the possibility that the opposite might be similarly interesting. Not necessarily better, just different.

Many artists refuse to use headphones in the studio as it is a poor replica of the real-world listening experience. With speakers, we are closer to the sound of instruments in the room—immersed physically in a full sonic spectrum of vibration.

When you practice listening with the whole self, you expand the scope of your consciousness to include vast amounts of information otherwise missed, and discover more material to feed your art habit.

Listening without prejudice is how we grow and learn as people. More often than not, there are no right answers, just different perspectives. The more perspectives we can learn to see, the greater our understanding becomes. Our filter can begin to more accurately approach what truly is, rather than a narrow sliver interpreted through our bias.

There are those who approach the opportunities of each day like crossing items off a to-do list instead of truly engaging and participating with all of themselves.

Our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply. The pressure to deliver doesn’t grant us time to consider all possibilities. Yet it’s through deliberate action and repetition that we gain deeper insight.

Patience is required for taking in information in the most faithful way possible.

Patience is required for crafting a work that resonates and contains all that we have to offer.

Impatience is an argument with reality. The desire for something to be different from what we are experiencing in the here and now.

Accessing childlike spirit in our art and our lives is worth aspiring to. It’s simple to do if you haven’t accumulated too many fixed habits and thoughts. If you have, it’s very difficult. Nearly impossible.

As artists, we aim to live in a way in which we see the extraordinary hidden in the seemingly mundane. Then challenge ourselves to share what we see in a way that allows others a glimpse of this remarkable beauty.

One indicator of inspiration is awe. We tend to take so much for granted. How can we move past disconnection and desensitization to the incredible wonders of nature and human engineering all around us?

John Lennon once advised that if you start a song, write it through to the end in that sitting. The initial inspiration has a vitality in it that can carry you through the whole piece. Don’t be concerned if some of the parts are not yet all they can be. Get through a rough draft. A full, imperfect version is generally more helpful than a seemingly perfect fragment.

When an idea forms, or a hook is written, we may feel that we’ve cracked the code and the rest will take care of itself. If we step away and let that initial spark fade, we may return to find it’s not so easy to rekindle. Think of inspiration as a force not immune to the laws of entropy.

It’s generally preferable to accumulate several weeks’ or months’ worth of ideas and then choose which of them to focus on, instead of following an urge or obligation to rush to the finish line with what is in front of us today.