The Creative Act: A Way of Being

by Rick Rubin

While the band saw themselves as the next Bay City Rollers, they unwittingly invented punk rock and started a countercultural revolution. While the music of the Bay City Rollers had great success in its time, the Ramones’ singular take on rock and roll became more popular and influential. Of all the explanations of the Ramones, the most apt may be: innovation through ignorance.

Try to experience everything as if for the first time. If you grew up in a landlocked town that you never left, the first time you traveled and saw the ocean would likely be a dramatic, awe-inspiring experience. If you spent your whole life living near the ocean, your experience of it would almost certainly be less dramatic.

It must have been frustrating for these elite athletes, who wanted to get on the court and show what they could do, to arrive at practice for the first time with this legendary coach only to hear him say, Today we will learn to tie our shoes.

A quintessential song of female empowerment, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” was written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin. King—and then, of course, Aretha Franklin—sang it. I was surprised to learn that Goffin wrote the lyrics and King the music.

Your old work isn’t better than your new work. And your new work isn’t better than the old. There will be highs and lows throughout an artist’s life. To assume there was a golden period and you’re past it is only true if you accept that premise. Putting your best effort in at each moment, in each chapter, is all we can ever hope to accomplish.

Perfection is finally obtained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there’s no longer anything to take away. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars