The Creative Act: A Way of Being

by Rick Rubin

To navigate our way through this immense world of data, we learn early in life to focus on information that appears essential or of particular interest. And to tune out the rest. As artists, we seek to restore our childlike perception: a more innocent state of wonder and appreciation not tethered to utility or survival. Our filter inevitably reduces Source intelligence by interpreting the data that arrives instead of letting it pass freely. As the vessel fills with these recast fragments, relationships are created with the material already collected. These relationships produce beliefs and stories. They may be about who we are, the people around us, and the nature of the world we live in. Eventually, these stories coalesce into a worldview. 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.