UNLOCK Your CREATIVITY w/ Rick Rubin | Rich Roll Podcast

today I want to talk about magic I want to talk about awe and wonder and Oneness and I want to do that with a very special human for most he needs no introduction an absolute icon of modern music whose influence on culture has been nothing short of Titanic Rick Rubin is one of the greatest producers of all time noted for his unique and some might say counter-intuitive way in which he is able to manifest the absolute best in everyone he works with Rick is the founder of Def Jam Records who now runs his own label American recordings and over the course of his storied career has worked with a Litany of greats like the Red Hot Chili Peppers Johnny Cash the Beastie Boys LL Cool J Jay-Z Adele the list goes on and on and on but the thrust of today's conversation surrounds the release of Rick's brand new and completely transformative book the creative act which is about cultivating the innate creativity that dwells within all of us but more than that it's about a way of being it's about an openness to possibility Wonder energy and of course magic and while this is a rare Audio Only episode recorded outside with Rick characteristically sitting across from me shirtless I assure you that the contents that lay within this conversation are nothing short of profound and dare I say perhaps even life-changing needless to say I can't wait to share this conversation with you so please hit that subscribe button and enjoy this Illuminating exchange between me and the truly singular brick room yeah I started it coming up on 10 years ago on the North Shore of Kauai oh beautiful yeah which is a place I know you've spent quite a bit of time I love it yeah in a warehouse up there my second or third guest was Gabby Reese incredible because they were up there at the same time back in 2012 and it's just been a creative Odyssey you know over these many years and I still love it just as much as I did on day one it's a privilege it's a gift it's it's just been such a fulfilling experience gives me the opportunity to sit down with people like yourself and then share that wisdom with so many people it's been really cool cool what I found interesting in doing um a podcast with musicians is when I get to meet people I've never met before and it's interesting the conversations are interesting and also I get to when I interview someone who I know for a long time I've never interviewed them before like I've interviewed people that I've known for 30 years and I learned a tremendous amount through the interview because you don't really ask your friends interview type questions right well you don't by introducing a structure and formality it kind of forces everybody into a presence of mind that ordinarily we wouldn't do on our own like I did one with my dad and I was able to ask him questions that I had never asked him what a great idea I think everybody should do a podcast with their parents or their extent and not necessarily to share it yes but as a document yes and also yeah for future Generations yeah cool so we were introduced by our mutual friend Stephen pressfield we have lots of mutual friends but it wasn't until the past couple days that we actually got a chance to meet and we've been corresponding for how don't know over like a year and a half yeah two years something like that yeah I think trying to make this happen uh and you're you know always traveling and in distant places and at one point you were like look I do tons of zooms happy to do it like let's just do it digitally I'm super comfortable with that and I was like no I don't that's not the experience that I'm looking for I'm willing to wait until everything the universe sort of conspires to bring us together beautiful and in my experience that like discipline to wait always proves to be the correct Choice as opposed to like willing it into happening when it doesn't feel like the right moment like there is something about timing and I'm really grateful that we're doing this now and not you know when originally maybe we were going to do it yes and I think it'll be a richer experience as a result beautiful I'm in yeah man so I guess we have to be cryptic about where we are and what's going on but with an undisclosed location somewhere in the world it's a weird Fight Club thing but basically uh we've been hanging out for the past couple days um getting to know each other a little bit and I have so many questions for you I'm fascinated by your life but really the occasion for this conversation is this beautiful new book that you've written called the creative act uh which I had uh the privilege of reading it hasn't come out it comes out in Jan anyway we're recording this in the middle of the summer so I got an early peek at it and it was great to read it with a beginner's mind which is part of the message of the book without having read any reviews or having had anyone tell me this is what it's about and this is what it's not about and among the many kind of fascinating you know sort of emotions that I had in the experience of reading the book was that first off it defied my expectations of what it would be and I had this uh assumption you know I went into it even with the beginner's mind idea like I still formed an assumption of what this book was going to be because there are certain conventions that kind of come along for the ride with people who write a book at a certain stage of their career so I was like oh this is going to be somewhat of a memoir it's going to be all these crazy stories of the bands and the amazing artists that you've worked with over the years and then you know through that it will be interlaced with takeaways or some wisdom that you've accrued and it very much was not that it was heavy on the wisdom part but it's not a memoir at all it's really a standalone work of art a Timeless meditation on the act of being a creative being what is the experience of being an artist and how to you know sort of manifest the artist within all of us so what was the kind of inception of the idea to write this book when um when the thought of doing a book I had an experience where I got to work on someone else's book about Johnny Cash an artist I worked with the the let Robert hilburn's book which beautiful book and the last few chapters are about Johnny Cash um the later period Johnny Cash and that's when I got to work with him so we spent some time together and he suggested we listen back to the records and talk about different song Choices and I found through the process of helping Robert with his book I learned a tremendous amount that I didn't know about my relationship with Johnny Cash just through I tend not to look back I'm I'm always making something new I tend not to listen back to any work I've made in the past I'm just moving forward I might you come across hearing a song in a coffee shops like oh wow that's I produce that it's unbelievable um but I don't choose to listen also because uh in the studio to get the things to sound like they do we work on them for such a long time that I'm good not hearing it again you know like we've done that I've put in my thousands of hours yes so I'm good next um so in that experience of working on the Johnny Cash book or participating in the Johnny Cash book I understood what working on a book could be and how it could be about me learning something and I thought about what could I possibly offer I don't want to talk about myself I'm not interested in myself but I am interested in what happens in the studio and so much of what happens in the studio isn't about music it's about um I guess we could say their principles although at the time that I started I didn't know what they were I I knew that I wanted uh to share what happens the choices being made in the studio how that happens um in a way that someone else could use it and apply it to their lives and um so it took a very long time to figure out what those things were because at the time that they happened originally in each case it was an intuitive choice so I spent seven years thinking back both for all the projects I've worked on in the last seven years in real time if something would happen I would once something good happened I would try to understand okay is there a principle at play here that might be useful to someone else and I would make notes and then I tried to reverse engineer decisions that I could remember from my earliest works and all the way through and again it's not about those works at all those were just a portal into what was the thought process to solve a problem at the time and is there some tool there that can help someone else and if so I want to share that right so in other words it's a canonization of these instinctual tools that you didn't sort of conceptualize them and bring them into the studio it's just been a process of them emerging over time in the context of solving the typical type of problems that come up yes and I would say they were all essentially reactions to a problem essentially a problem and a problem could be writer's block or the problem could be um a transition in a song doesn't work or a problem could be um there's a story to tell through a song that Works in almost a coded way explain what that means I'm not sure I get that um I'll talk specifically I don't speak specific in the book but I can hear I can speak specific [Music] um at the time that I was working with Run DMC it was in the early days of hip-hop and no [Music] you have to understand what the world was like at this point in time hip-hop was a tiny niche form of music so tiny and so Niche that most people not only did they not think it was good music most people didn't think it was music I can remember being courted by uh the head of a big record company because we were having some success and he wanted to you know work with us and he said what do you attribute the success of rap we all know it's not music and he's being kind you know like imagine what or just confused yeah or imagine what the people who there were some people who just hated it just were offended by it um so we were finishing Run dmc's album and the album was done and I listened to it and I felt like there's some one it's missing something I don't know what it is but it's missing something there's a piece missing and I had just had these experiences of people telling me what I was working on wasn't music and I was thinking about it as solving a problem how do I demonstrate this is not so foreign from what we're used to and the thought was to find a song that was an existing well-known song not change it really and have Run DMC do it true to what it was yet have it be a rap song and the choice was Aerosmith's Walk This Way and I picked it because of the phrasing of the verses are a sentence it's a non-melodic verse it's all about the phrasing and it works like a rap song same as a rap song and another meta layer on top of that is that there's a break beat in hip-hop music there are break beats which are a little instrumental Snippets from longer works not indicative of the big work just a tiny snippet that if you Loop it up it's its own thing and in in hip-hop world they called it the Toys in the Attic break which was Walk This Way but no one who heard that break knew who Aerosmith was or ever heard the song All they ever heard was that drum beat right so Daniel yeah I recollect like because Aerosmith has its own amazing history of being huge in the 70s and disappearing and them having you know sort of personal issues and then this incredible Renaissance in their career was that song coming out in addition to being the crossover event for hip-hop that introduced this new genre or medium of music to a much broader audience was that the kind of inception point for Aerosmith's Resurgence yes in both directions yeah it's unbelievable so were you the one who chose that band and that song and it was a conscious Choice the purpose being like that we need that crossover and this will achieve that or was it just us yeah crossover is not the right word because crossover makes it sound like it was a commercial decision this was not a commercial decision there's a way of telling us this was a communication decision of people don't understand this I want to explain it in a way that someone can understand it that was the goal I want to demonstrate it right and it I mean it had to have exceeded your expectations of what it achieved I mean to this day absolutely it's crazy absolutely inside I don't know it was a while ago yeah yeah a long time ago um you know your story is well told and well documented but I think for people who aren't familiar um you know with who you are or just kind of know some of the work that you've done it would be good to recap that a little bit but just to introduce that idea um most recently uh I not that recently it was probably last year um I watched The Beastie Boys documentary and you know you recur in that story a lot of which you know your role in all of that I already knew but one thing I didn't know was that you were actually a band member of the Beastie Boys at the Inception we know about the NYU dorm room and how that was kind of a ground zero space and how the hip-hop community at that time was such a small close-knit group of people and there were only a couple venues and it was the same people showing up at those venues that created this massive Global movement but you know maybe talk a little bit about you know how you came into this space and a little bit about you know how you've architected your career okay we all um we were all punk rockers we all love punk rock and the hip-hop wave happened and for me I experienced The Hip Hop wave as um as black punk rock it was the same it was uh it was a democratization of Music it was taking music back to the streets you didn't have to be a virtuoso player you just had something to say and a point of view uh a gripe an energy something to brag about in the case of hip-hop sometimes or a fantasy and it appealed to me in the same way that punk rock did and the Beastie Boys were already a band that I was not a member of and they were a punk rock band and I met them through friends and um a guy named David skilkin who's a really cool kid who's no longer with us but a good friend of all of ours and um they had recorded a song before I was involved called Cookie Puss which was a College radio hit and it was um parody song rap related parody song and they wanted to play that live and it wasn't a song that you play as a punk rock band he needed DJ and I was a DJ going to NYU and I DJ'd it NYU events and sometimes the dance interior and clubs in New York not much more mainly in the dorm but was a big fan of music right dance interior pre Madonna around the same time like Madonna would be around and that was part of the that world as a matter of fact the first Beastie Boys tour we went on tour with Madonna as her opening act for her the Virgin tour her first tour yeah yeah so you hook up with these kids high school kids yeah well I'm one year older I'm in college there in high school Adam Yak was already in college he was at Bard I was at NYU we hook up it starts with me DJing in in the part of the set where they don't play their instruments and as our appetite for rap music grew it was it ended up being all we listened to that side of making music took over and I had already at this point in time produced LL Cool J's not yet album they were just singles at this time and that were and uh t larocque uh record called it's yours the very first rap record I ever made which was like a cult hit um using the techniques of that I used with Tila rock or LL Cool J we tried making Beastie Boys records in that format like real rap records then that's that's what we did right and in that process was there a sort of Awakening like oh this is this is what I love about music it's being you know in the producer seat trying to craft these things with great artists or was it just oh this came up and this seems cool and just I'm jumping from one thing to another and one thing you know your your Universe just kind of slowly expanding a series of events happened I remember I had to leave the Madonna tour because I had an ear infection from flying and while I was home recovering I was continuing to make records and based on that experience and again luckily the universe set up this system where uh it basically told me home was the place for me and um and I just realized I wasn't resilient enough to be an artist on the road didn't suit my um my lifestyle and then in the earlier records that I worked on with LL or the beasties or Run DMC I would I would write a lot I would write a lot of music and sometimes in the case of the beat more in the case of the Beastie Boys write lyrics [Music] um the idea of how much work I could be involved in if I was going to write everything it would really limit how much I could do so the idea and I like to I like to work on a lot of things it's just I've really eclectic tastes I love music and I like to be busy so if I had to wait until every time I wrote something it took I remember the first Beastie Boys album took over two years from the time we started till we finished not of recording every day but until the ideas came it just took a long time and you were heavily involved in the writing aspect of that first record yes yeah yeah all of the music except for one or two songs and um I don't know 40 half the lyrics something like that right I didn't know that I didn't know that but that changed after that album it was it was it didn't that life of writing it's a very time consuming Act and it would just limit the output and for some reason I I don't know it always seemed important for me to make a lot of things I like I like being productive and um so it just again it happened if not for the ear infection it might not happen that way it's super interesting yeah these little obstacles or I'm sure at the time you were disappointed yeah right it was unbelievable to run towards Madonna people you know it was wild yeah um and then with License to Ill I mean that just I mean I vividly remember when that record came out and you know me and my friends had an obsessive relationship with every song on that record um that had to be mind-mounting the extent to which that became a cultural phenomenon and another you know kind of real Tipping Point in terms of the broadening of hip-hop or a certain kind of genre within hip-hop yeah I don't follow stats or um charts of any kind but I read the other day that licensed ill was the first hip-hop record to be a number one album I didn't know that until the other day yeah um but it's interesting well I guess as a producer you have to be a buffer between the business side of music and protecting the artists but at the same time to the extent that you're capable of like you try to stay out of numbers results externalities award shows I don't know how many Grammys You've Won but like you've never shown up for an award ceremony no that's part of the process of staying grounded in what's important about what you do like talk a little bit about this for me the the success happens when we sign off on a finished thing and say okay send it out into the world that's the moment of success and once that happens on to the next yeah um because that's the only part I have any participation in that's the only part I can control everything else is based on market conditions on stars aligning on one of the store one of the stories uh one of the stories we heard today in what we were doing was uh many of the people whose music came out on 9 11. their music got lost and their careers never recovered just because it happened to come out on 9 11. and it's fascinating and that's out of everyone's controls and that's again it's it's Universal intervention we don't know how it works but these are all um one of the things we talk about in the book is watching these occurrences sometimes they're good sometimes they're bad and thinking of it as riding a wave and that the universe is pushing us in a direction and we can ride with that energy and like when you're surfing if you really try to fight the wave it's probably not going to work you know we try to use the power of the wave where we're almost dancing with the wave not against the wave and um that's that's the work of creativity as well certain projects come together very easily and they happen quickly and they have a momentum to them and others others are a real fight and sometimes we fight that fight and other times we decide is there another a path of less resistance around this is there a better way in let's rethink well if it's so hard something's up not supposed to be so hard again it's wildly time consuming takes a great deal of focus takes patience but if there are no signs that some things working at for a long time that might be a time to step back step away there's so much packed into what you just said I mean first off it being very counter-intuitive or you know opposite to this notion that if you want to be successful you just you push you hustle you force things into existence and that is antithetical to the expression of great art there is a surrender and an allowing and a shaping and a sort of dispassionate relationship you have to have a non-romantic you know connection to the result of the work uh in the book you say the work is the work right what is the work the work is lots of things the work is hard but it's play it's about sharing and it's about passion it's about structure of course like it's very Elusive and difficult to pin down like when you said like oh I just you know this book came about because I've been doing this thing for so long but I never really had a formal sort of structure in my mind of what exactly is in the process of creating this book its own work of art that you become more deeply connected to like who you are and what it is exactly that you do that makes you unique or you know allows you to bring a certain sensibility into the studio that can Elevate the artist that you work with but it is ephemeral so it's understandable you're like I don't know what it is yeah but I know what it's not yes and and I don't know how to do it that's another thing like before you start any new project I always have a lot of anxiety because I have no idea what's going to happen now I have a lot of experience that helps now but that doesn't make it happen takes a tremendous amount of patience to wait for it to reveal itself and I guess now I have the wisdom to know this that be patient and I have the discipline to stay with it for a long time and I want to make that point because we were just talking about sometimes you have to bail but while you're in it for a long time there are usually Clues they're usually and it might be a radical course change you could start out you have a moment Something Beautiful happens think ah this is what it's going to be and you start running in that direction and then you realize we're going in the wrong direction right and then you have to you know set a new course be nimble enough to not to be able to walk away from that even when you've invested you know some ungodly amount of time and effort into this Direction that's not functioning it's something that we see often is the um the initial moment when an idea Springs forth that first sketch the first demo the first very first rough often has some um energetic charge in it that's really compelling and we hear many stories in in music where records come out and people don't uh respond and then they go back to oh well but it was we missed it it was all in the demo you know we the record screwed up and um being aware of that's helpful because you can just because you put more time in like from the time you've make the demo you may put in let's say we'd work for a month after we've made a demo we work on something for a month might work on a song for a month we might realize at the end of that month if we listen back which is the key always checking back see I know we're putting time in but are we progressing right is it different or is it better right just because you're working on it a lot doesn't mean that it's better and after hearing it you know ten thousand times you're so close to it and you become like sort of immune to its Allure and you think there's something wrong with it yeah and so you tinker and then you actually end up dismantling the whole thing it's true yeah many just get overdone um so in in cases when the demo is the best version luckily we recognize it and that ends up being the version now but it takes discipline confidence and experience to recognize that the original GarageBand version of it is actually better than the highly polished studio version yes and even if it has mistakes sometimes you fix them sometimes you hear mistakes you fix the mistakes and it's not as good right you wouldn't expect that it's drained of its energy it's strained if it's Humanity yeah it's straight and we don't know this is the other part we don't know why it's good you you you hear it there's no there are no metrics for this the idea that one person says my art is better than your art it's an insane idea it's like they're all it's always apples and oranges it's like saying my diary entry is better than your diary entry it's insane it's the things we make are are uh a reflection of who we are in this moment and that's all it is it's not more than that can go on and mean more than that but that's not in our control and that's not the reason to do it no and it's something that cripples artists thinking I have to make the greatest thing ever made to humankind and then they basically psych themselves out of being able to make something good they give in to the pressure of thinking it's more than it is um so one of the things we talk about in the book is lowering the stakes where we're not setting out to make the greatest album of all time we're not setting out to make the greatest song of all time we're there to have fun in the studio we're going to entertain each other we're going to see if something happens that's interesting to us and there's no better um I found luckily over the course of my life that the things that I truly believe in that really feel like something to me other people resonate with I don't know if that's the case for everybody but I don't know of a better metric to use for anyone than I really feel this if I really feel it it's much better than I think someone else might like this it's not really from you know it's not really me but I think someone else might like it that's a dad it's a losing game yeah yeah you have to make it to please yourself absolutely and one of the things I say in the book is the audience comes last and the audience comes last in service to the audience the audience wants the best thing they don't get the best thing while you're trying to service them they get the best thing when you're servicing yourself when you're true to who you are and the more you can trust yourself as an artist in my case I've been every decision I've made from working in a different genre that I started in every time every time I do something different or new always told not to do it I'm always told it's a terrible idea um so now every now you know you're on the right track when you hear that well I mean I just always be correct I'm not but I know it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks really you know I know what I know and my job is to share what I know that's all I can do I can't second-guess myself well the idea that the audience would dictate to the artist what to do because this is what we want is insanity right Insanity it's the artist's job to express themselves in a way that makes the audience think differently or feel something yes and the audience doesn't necessarily know that yet yes right yes Steve Jobs said you know famously the consumer doesn't know what they want until you make it yeah Julie what would you say to somebody who comes to you and says you know what I find your lifestyle or the way that you eat really aspirational but I'm too busy I just don't have time I don't want to be cracking open cookbooks and trying to learn a new skill when I'm already exhausted after a long day how do you guide this person where should they go the plant power meal planner is really really such an amazing value it is under two dollars a week and for that it gives you this inspiration know-how and thousands of recipes to create the plant-based meals that you crave in your own life so it's so amazing to be able to log on to the plant power meal planner and get the recipes the ingredients the shopping list and then the support from all of the coaches that we have available to answer all of your questions so join us in eating more healthy vibrant plant plant-based meals and to kick start our health intentions this New Year we're offering you twenty dollars off a one-year membership with the code power 20 throughout the entire month of January to learn more and to sign up go to meals.richroll.com again that's promo code power 20 for 20 off at meals dot richroll.com [Laughter] so talk about the making I think there might be some confusion about what it is that you exactly do like oh you're the producer well what is a music producer oh you go in you have this amazing taste and when the artist is going in a wrong direction you say no it's better like this and you kind of impose your opinion in a certain direction like place a a script or a format on top of the whole thing and like drive it to completion and ultimately Commercial Success yes that is nothing at all yeah that is not at all what I do there are many producers who work like that I don't really know the details because I've not watched other producers work but I know that everyone has their own style some producers today are people who make beats and they're producing a record and then when you hear on the what you hear on the radio or streaming is uh something that they made the beat they gave it to an artist they never met the artist then the artist puts the song the words on top and then that comes out and they're the producer of the song right and there's nothing wrong with that not at all I know I remember like that's how Madonna always continue to innovate and keep what she was doing fresh because she would work with these different producers yes who had a certain sound or a way of working with music that was different from what she had been doing historically yes and when I first started I had a sound but very quickly and just my tastes are too eclectic it's like I would never do the same thing for too long um I will say there there tends to be a thread that runs through my work um not always but I like to think of it as getting to the essential heart of what's there so um whereas it would be like the opposite Phil Spector was famous for the wall of sound right a lot of sounds all put on top of each other to the point where you couldn't tell what anything was it was just the wall of sound I'm the opposite in that I want the least amount of information the most space whatever you do here I want you to be able to hear well and hear its personality almost like a conversation between two or three voices more than a wall of sound you build the songs and then you have to strip them down to see if it holds up right it's about like the paring down like what is the truest essence of this thing and then we can add things if we think it's improving it but like let's take it down to the studs and see what we're actually dealing with yeah I like to get to like an architectural framework of something and experience it that way and I will say more often than not although not always it tends to stay very close to that the minimalist version um but I would imagine it brings Clarity like now you know what you're dealing with right like we're all on the same page when it's at its Bare Bones this is what we have yeah then we can have a discussion about whether we need to add anything to it or not it also puts a tremendous amount of pressure on those individual elements when you can really hear them I can remember one one successful record producer saying to me very successful record producer saying like I don't know how you have the patience to make music with so few elements because for that to work everything has to be perfect in in his case he would just layer things on top until a big thing happened that he liked and again that's fine there's no the beauty of all of this there's no right way we all find our own way and if I worked with an artist where the best version of it was a heavily layered dense work I'd be fine to do that I'm I'm open to wherever it goes I'm um when I say the minimalist tends to happen often that's probably where my taste lies but my taste in relation to whatever the thing is that I'm dealing with and sometimes the thing that we're dealing with the whole point of it is its density so I maybe right minimal would undermine what that is in service of the highest expression of the artist of itself yes that's the ultimate parameter right like that's what you're obviously always driving towards um but to just kind of extend that thought of minimalism a little bit like in reading the book I mean the book's long it's like 432 pages I think at least the manuscript I read right and uh you know it is like this you know I Ching sort of uh devotional piece on a way of being right and even though it's long and I read it in like one and a half sittings which is not the way you're supposed to consume this book this is a book that should be consumed with patience and consideration it's a book that you can put down and pick back up and reread Etc it felt very minimal is the point that I'm trying to make like it didn't feel like there was any extraneous sentences like it is distilled down to um you know a very specific point that you're trying to make even the very few stories that you use to illustrate some of these points are like two sentences long and like no names are used and then you move on yeah it's not about that I was thinking about that early on and and um I think if the information had the name of an artist attached to it when you read it you would visualize that artist and it would be harder to put yourself in the place because your association with that artist would bring some baggage into your opinion on the point that you're trying to make yes it couldn't help it it would sensationalize it in a way that would undermine the information and this was about the information and the ability for the information to help someone else it wasn't about to um talk about a past Glory right in any way there's a lot of shared DNA with this book and the way that you think about creativity and the expression of art with the work that Stephen pressfield does in His Marvelous books like this book that you've written is very much a piece with the war of Art and turning pro like these things should be read in tandem or on the bookshelf together yes but I think one distinction between these two things is you have a broader Embrace of the mystical like the Act of Creation is an act of magic it requires playing with energies and and really considering the Unseen as very real like these are tangible forces that you have to channel and reckon with if you are gonna be in this space of creation right so talk a little bit about like how that came to be part of your sensibility and so important in the work that you do I'll start by saying I'm a Believer and I'm a Believer in everything I start with the idea that I believe everything and I'm willing to try things the in some cases the more uh edgy the more interesting they are to me I'm less interested in what the Orthodoxy thinks I'm more interested in what the fringes think I live on the fringes and uh you know I'll try I I won't take any pharmaceutical drugs but I'll take all kinds of crazy biohacking stuff yeah um that's yeah that's my Mo and I and I see you know and I've had mystical experiences in my life um non-drug related mystical experiences in my life so I can't discount these things that happen um will you share one of those mystical experiences think of a good one okay um I've suffered with depression at different times in my life starting it started when I was 33 years old which was the year they got Jesus turns out but I before then I was great and then at 33 I got hit with this uh first a panic attack which I didn't know what it was but I thought I was dying and then um and then I had serious depression for probably two years and at which point it was hard to get out of bed if I even did get out of bed um I would see a different therapist or healer every day sometimes two a day at least five days a week um looking for healing just every day was just like this maybe this appointment's the one that's gonna you know we're gonna find out what's happening and would drag myself from healer to healer and um nothing worked and then a friend of mine had taken Prozac and it changed his life and he said not only do you say you ought to try this but he said I will never not take this like this changed my life this is the greatest thing that ever happened and while our personalities were very different after two years of pain it was a um it was at least something to consider but it was a a barrier that I wasn't comfortable Crossing you know I was a vegan I didn't use any medical you know I'm really a a person who lives in a natural way yeah anything any any uh interference with that absolutely anything that undermines nature I'm wary of and um I finally there was a woman who wrote a book who was a she was a psychic and she was a psychopharmacologist and I thought okay if I'm ever gonna take a substance I'll take it from a psychic that I'll do that yeah okay so I went to see her name was Judith orloff and I went CD with arloth told her what was going on told her the story about my friend in the Prozac and she said it's certainly worth trying and she prescribed it and told me what to do take it take it right before you go to sleep and um and I took it that first night and I woke up an hour later Wide Awake feeling energy racing through my body as if there was a race going on in my body it was the worst feeling the worst feeling she also said when you take this you're not going to feel anything for six weeks you know take six weeks to start working right titrate up or whatever so I took it first night hour later wake up bad and I'm just laying in bed scared until the morning Wide Awake terrified that I'm dying until I can call her and find out what to do and finally eight o'clock in the morning I get through and she says okay don't take that one again so that was it was a bad start and then um I ended up trying many different antidepressants one after another every one of them made me sick right away um the ones that didn't make me sick I waited the six weeks taking them every day and didn't work so no nothing worked and then finally One Drug worked and it worked again not like I was told it would work I was told you know well wait six weeks see what happens with this drug I took it the first evening and it felt like within a half hour all of the light in the room turned to candlelight and I was being held embraced in a safe hug and that night I felt better for the first time in those two years and um and a side effect of that particular drug is that you gain weight nobody told me that but I was on the drug for six months eight months and I gained something like 70 pounds and I was already overweight mm-hmm um it's interesting also that the I don't I've never really researched this but the fact that the one drug of all the drugs that I tried that worked for me I already had a weight problem also somehow side effect made me gain weight makes me think my weight and depression somehow are related I don't know I don't know enough about science of that but it seems clear there's some connection there too close um so I gained a lot of weight I got better I weaned off the drug I was good again and the mystical piece was in the throes of the depression one of the things that would help me I would drive to Malibu I lived in town at the time I would drive to Malibu and we had a little house a tiny little Shack on the beach and that I was renting and I would sit in that house and usually I would get some some of the heaviness would lift so one day I went to Malibu I got there at around noon didn't nothing nothing listen to classical music relax meditate meditated for hours did all the things that would like help get me out and nothing got me out and I was devastated and and I was hopeless and in that moment of hopelessness I prayed and I prayed for sign please Universe please give me a sign please give me a sign to go on because I don't think I can go on please give me a sign and I walked out to the beach which was something I never did or rarely did I walked out to the beach and I'm standing out on the beach and in one minute the entire Sky turned into the most dramatic Orange wild biblical painting I've never seen anything like it up till that moment never seen anything like it since I walk out I experience that it blows my mind I feel like my answer is I I'm I'm I'm being spoken to uh and then within a minute gone back to normal Blue Sky so that was and for me that was a mystical event right so what do you make of that like how did that color your sort of sense of you know Energy's unseen it felt like I'm not I felt less alone I felt like I could um My Cry for Help Was Heard and I felt connected and I felt really good in the book you referred to you talk about the universe and you talk about source Stephen pressfield calls it the muse this is the you know place from which we can extract those those Inspirations those ideas and channel them through the artist into creating something that lives and breathes in the world but I guess I'm curious as is Stephen pressfield because he asked me to ask you this question like how do you differentiate how he thinks about it EG The Muse versus like how you're thinking about it as Source are those things synonymous my sense is that you're you have a more kind of expansive spiritual version of The Muse maybe and I think it doesn't matter it's helpful to know that the information we need doesn't all come from inside of us might not come maybe none of it comes from inside of us maybe it all comes from outside of us and whether that be mystical or whether that be physical whether that be practical I've had experiences where I'm looking for an answer for something curious and I'm holding it lightly in my Consciousness not working on it just I know there's this problem to be solved and then I'll be out and something will happen in the world directly related to answer the question it happens all the time it doesn't happen once in a while it happens all the time I believe it happens all the time for everyone if they're paying attention if you're open to the communication we're getting information all the time there's so much more information coming at us than we can digest that we pick and choose unconsciously certain data points and then based on those data points we make up story about what happens it's different for everybody there's so much uh wisdom all around us all of the time coming in the form of nature coming in the form of the culture coming in the form of people speaking at a coffee shop you know overhearing the conversation if you're open and if you're paying attention and I would even go further to say I mean it probably works either way but I would say and if you invite it it might work even better I don't know if that's true but why not that that's the thing but if you're inviting it then you're sort of injecting a level of intention into the practice of paying attention and being open yes and because of the subtle nature of the information that we're looking for it's not getting shouted at us it's the thing that if you weren't really quiet and really paying attention you would likely miss so we have to quiet ourselves and we have to live in a way that's why the subtitle of the book is a way of being is we live in the world in this constant state of looking for Clues looking for information what can I learn what shapes align where are their connections what's more to be seen in the picture than just the face value if I look deeper what's happening and um that's the practice yeah and there are some suggestions of things that you can do to get there but meditation is a key for me meditation is a key it may not be everyone's that's the other point of this is we all function in different ways we speak about diet from when I was vegan right I was wildly overweight and sick and that was part of my depression and when you became a vegan you became a world-class Ultra Runner so it's like it works different for different people we each have to find what works for us and um and try things and see what works which is its own form of openness absolutely being able to accept people in a non-judgmental way leading with curiosity with patients all of these principles which we'll get into that are kind of splayed out over the course of the many pages of your book but on this idea of being open I mean certainly in my own life the best decisions that I've ever made the most important decisions and the reason that I've even sitting here today is a result of a few brief sort of Windows of opportunity where I was present enough to notice a whisper and respect it and take action on it and I do believe like yourself that we're all visited with these moments but we have to be in a place of receiving right like receiving is a huge theme of the work that you do and and you know it resonates throughout the book like how can we be better receivers how can we attune our antennae to be in receipt of the messages that are available to us and you talk in the book about the idea of it's sort of a a hive mind Collective Consciousness notion that ideas are real things that exist among all of us and when our antenna is properly attuned we can draw that down and then the artist can translate that into something real yes but if the artist or anyone who's receiving that doesn't heat it doesn't respect it doesn't fertilize that seed the seed being you know another big aspect of the book it will ultimately be fertilized by somebody else probably if not simultaneously in time proximity it's an idea sorry let me just finish this one thought and we were talking about this the other day bad idea you're talking about this idea but I also read this same notion in Elizabeth Gilbert's book big magic like she talks about it in a very similar way beautiful I haven't read that I'd like to read that I think you would like that book I'll check it out it's the idea of movements when movements happen in the art world movements don't happen where one person discovers something and a bunch of people copy it it's there was a time for abstraction for abstract expressionism in most art movements it's difficult to pinpoint who was first because usually it Springs up in groups and it might even spring up in different places in the world at the same time punk rock happened all over the world at the same time it wasn't because one punk rock band influenced everyone else it was a reaction to what had come before it was time to take music out of the conservatory and bring it back to a street level that's what that was about and Hip-Hop was the same out of the uh the r b suits and down to the b-boy mentality of people that you might recognize on the street how your friends might dress yeah pre-internet by the way absolutely before ideas could spread instantaneously across the world absolutely at the time that I went to high school I was a punk rocker there were no other punk rockers in my high school I didn't know any punk rockers so it was I just think had the internet been around when I was a kid I would have had friends all over the world with similar interests I had none I had none and you had to find your people yeah or I would go to a show and there were just a couple of clubs yeah you could go and once in a while you know there would be a show once a month and yeah and there'd be 20 people and those would be and you might meet you know you might meet two of them yeah on that idea of being open I think what's important about that is the notion of creativity itself and how we kind of culturally think about it like there is this idea that there are artists and there are normal people I was talking to somebody the other day and he said I don't have a creative bone of my body very successful person by the way of course that's not true we're all innately creative now most people however kind of you were talking about like the stories we tell how we extract tiny little nuggets of the billions of pieces of information that were being exposed to on a second by second basis and we create a narrative out of that and I think we get calcified around what reality is and like who we are and what we're doing and what this means and what that doesn't mean we walk around with blinders right we've made decisions about what's important to pay attention to and what isn't so we don't notice things that somebody who is natively more sensitive or somebody who has cultivated the practice of being more open can see like we're sitting here I have an idea of like where we are and all of that kind of thing but a more sensitive person sitting here might be paying attention to something I don't even notice because they're attuned that way naturally or they have developed a practice of expanding their awareness so they're allowing more in so talk about this idea like disabuse us of this idea that creativity is the genetic gift of the few and they walk the earth differently from the rest of us as somebody who's worked with so many brilliantly talented people we make creative Choice all of us make creative choices every day of Our Lives the way the when we choose to take a new route on a that we've we've driven the same route every day and we try we decide to take the scenic route that's a creative choice and if we're paying attention and we decide today I'm going to take the scenic route and if you happen to notice something that day on the scenic route that you didn't notice before and that ends up helping you in the thing that you're working on maybe it's a coincidence but when you come to expect it to happen it happens all the time all the time you know be prepared to be awestruck and surprised on a regular basis by things that you would never imagine happening it happens all the time isn't that a better more fun way to live it's incredible and you feel like also you feel like you're part of this bigger thing you know I can't remember exactly how I said it in the book but we think of ourselves as the conductor but we're not the conductor we're an orchestra member being conducted and we're part of this bigger thing that's going on and it works like uh like clockwork and we all play A Part every one of us plays part and we all have our part to play so when someone says I'm not artistic or I'm not good at Art it'd be like saying I'm not a good Monk there is no such thing as not a good monk you're either living your life as a monk or you're not living your life as a monk monks aren't good or bad you're either doing a monk or you're not doing a monk and we all live as artists but we don't know it and there are things we can do to amplify the artistic side of ourselves that will make everything we do better everything any at your your relationships your ability to communicate your ability to listen your joy of Life your feeling of connection your ability to commune with nature will it's like taking off blinders and a problem solve we were talking the other day and and you were like I don't like softball questions I don't know how to just talk about what it is that I do like I know how to solve problems right to bring an artistic sensibility into a problem-solving context is a process of undoing everything you think you know trying to uh you know ditch whatever baggage and biases that you are loaded up with and approach it with a beginner's mind so that you can see it more expansively and I think obviously it's been very effective in how you extract the best out of the musicians that you work with but I can't help but think about the applications in the real world to some of the biggest problems we have whether it's climate change or artificial intelligence or you know the things that that we're grappling with that very smart people are trying to come up with new ideas around like we need that sensibility as a major part of that conversation we can't solve these massive problems on logic and reason alone we need inspiration we need kind of new orthogonal approaches that maybe we're not seeing and there's a really great story in the book about an AI that kind of illustrates that point would you like being yeah yeah tell that story uh I I saw a video about seven years ago about alphago which was a AI system created to play the game go and they chose go because up until this point chess had been used computer chess but go is the most difficult or it has the most potential combinations of any game and it's the most difficult would be the most difficult game for a computer to be able to play be good at yeah there's like hundreds of billions of permutations yes they're more more permutations than there are grains of sand on the planet that's how many permutations so it's it's a very difficult Computing problem and humans have been playing the game for three thousand years it's a very old game and there was there came a point in the movie where the computer is playing the world's Grand Master and eventually the computer makes a move that has never been made before it's a funny thing to say because it's a game where you place a stone on a square you can place it on any Square you want you know there's no rule where you where you kind of can't place it if you place it on one of the one of the intersections of the squares you can place a stone on any intersection that doesn't have a stone on it and the computer made a move that was outside of the strategy understanding of human beings it placed a stone in the as I remember it there were two choices based on the conditions for the computer to make a move and to even make it was either going to place a stone on the first line or the second line and if they placed the stone on the first line it meant a defensive game and if they placed it on the second line it was a defensive game but anyone with experience who's playing the game ago would know it's one of those two moves right and those are the only two moves that any rational person would make anyone yes and the computer put the stone on line three now there's no rule saying you can't put it on line three but it it was outside of the imagination of the culture of go for three thousand years it made a move that was I'll say irrational to the human go world right the community of go Wizards yes yeah and it was so inflammatory that the Grand Master got up from the table in disgust and there were some questions with the commentators because this was this was on on television this is a like a the computer versus Man big story people thought the computer made a mistake it was like it was such a wrong move couldn't be and the computer ends up winning that game the Grand Master eventually comes back after he composes himself and the computer wins the game and the Grand Master ends up retiring because his mind is so blown by what happened right and when I'm watching the story I realize there are tears running down my face and I'm crying and I wasn't sure why and I thought about it for a while and it wasn't the most obvious answer was the computer beat the man oh no it's the end of the world uh man loses to the computer I'm crying because we're but it wasn't that at all what it was was the reason I realized the reason the computer won was because the computer didn't know more than the human the computer knew less than the human the computer only knew the rules of the game it didn't know the Customs the morals the mores the stories what one Grand Master learns from another grand master the cultural references over the years of the game didn't know the history the etiquette didn't know any of that all it knew was I could put it anywhere by putting it here it's going to increase my chances of winning mathematically so the computer solved a problem not by knowing more but by knowing less and that's a really beautiful idea for me because I it gets back to The Beginner's mind idea it's not that we need to necessarily learn more it's more like we need to think different like maybe if we can let go of some of our beliefs if we can let go of some of the stories that we hold if we watch an event happen instead of accepting the first version of the story that comes to us to help us survive in the world that's what we do we'll we'll see a series of events and we make up a story that explains what that is and that way we can sleep at night right because really we don't know anything we don't know anything that's the powerful Epiphany in the whole thing this humility to embrace the idea that we really don't know that much and when you look at the web telescope images it's so awe-inspiring and it's such a healthy dose of humility to that point right we walk around rational beings it's the Age of Reason and Enlightenment we have answered many questions and to the questions that we don't yet have answers to we feel we're capable of answering those very soon and yet that is still such an incredibly Limited perspective on the totality of what we're actually [ __ ] contending with which is beyond our ability as these tiny organisms to comprehend it's true yeah so to walk the earth with that sensibility of actually we don't really know anything we don't really know anything and and when something happens to say oh that it might be that maybe it's that uh-huh or let's see if we can come up with another reason what else could it be and like not assuming things are as they seem on their face sometimes they are sometimes they're not or thinking I can think of so many times over the course of my life where I thought that someone was mad at me or I thought that like I thought I knew it was in someone else's head and it was never true it was only just self-negative self-talk or some misunder something that I misunderstood or that causes our own suffering absolutely so much of the difficulty is self-inflicted and the more we can let go of all of our beliefs and just experience what happens and see what works try things it's like that works and not to assume well that works so that's the only way no that works and maybe there's a hundred other ways so what would be an example of taking that notion into the studio like is there a situation in which you consciously thought you know let's take a tip from alphago and try to unlearn what we think we know about what we're doing here and approach it from the other side uh the first thing that comes to mind and I don't even know if we've done this but the first thing that comes to mind when you say that is to ask a musician a great musician most of the people I get to work with are really talented to try playing on an instrument that they're not familiar with that would be an example of like let's let go of all of your practice and everything that we think of what makes you great at what you do you're the wizard on this instrument let's play something else that you never played before and see what happens and let's see where that goes let's see if we find something new Shake It Up who knows I don't know if this story is apocryphal but isn't that what occurred with the talking heads with naive Melody like every member of the band played an instrument that they didn't play I didn't know that and that is how that song came together which ends up being one of their if not the you know best song they ever created beautiful I didn't know it might not be true but I've heard that I've heard that story yeah a story on the other side that's why it's called naive Melody yeah like the naivete of it is what created the beauty funny that Van Halen's biggest hit at the time and Eddie Van Halen's one of the greatest guitar players of all time and song Jump was maybe the first song he ever just played a keyboard on and that was their biggest hit and he was the you know greatest guitar player of the century for some yet the song that worked was the one where he played the keyboard yeah so in this idea of the creation of Art and creativity is as a way of being there's this quote it's near the beginning of the book if memory serves me this quote by Robert Henry who was a painter and he says the role of the artist isn't to make art but to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable so it's about creating an environment like acculturing a mindset a way of walking the planet such that you're conducive to the messages and the material execution of the inspiration and the ideas and that's really kind of the role that you serve like how can you be a facilitator of enhancing the container of creation right and it's it's a guru role it's a coach role it's a teacher role and it requires a certain delicate touch right like you have to be patient like when the the other the record producer or executive said to you like I don't know how you could be so patient like you have to be patient in order and you have to listen and marinate in all of this stuff and just gently guide the sensitive soul to that Landing place so the highest you know expression can emerge and to do it with as little um I try to do it with as little of a footprint as possible so uh in some cases I'm more involved in some cases I'm less involved but I'm only as involved as I need to be if there was a way to make it happen where I mean in in a dream scenario if I could produce an artist support them in doing their best work without ever meeting or speaking to them that would be the highest form of it I've not achieved that lovely but that would be the the ultimate version of it just the shadow just happened in the background it just happened what happens though I'm sure this happens you're in the studio you're working it out play back something that you just laid down and the artist says well what do you think Rick if your job is not to inject your own sensibility into it do you have to mirror that back to the artist or like how do you kind of gracefully dance around that my job is to mirror my true reflection as it's needed so in that case if if I'm asked what I think I will absolutely say what I think good or bad I'll say it in a way where it's uh not confrontational or not unkind but we're talking about um something outside of ourselves I would never say it about the person it's never about the person that's if someone takes criticism personally the game is over and it's helpful to remove whatever it is that we're making from the people making it we're making this thing it's a reflection of us but it's not us it's this thing out here and once we have this thing out here we could talk about this thing it's not dangerous to talk about this thing because I'm pointing at right now I'm pointing at the table I'm not pointing it rich so it's like I'm not I'm not saying you're no good I'm saying this aspect of this thing maybe there's a way to do this part better this part's good this part maybe can be better let's see you have any ideas how would we make this part better can it be better it's powerful to you know restrict that feedback to the work taking the personality out of it so that it's purely focused on the common goal of making the thing great right like it's not a commentary or a referendum on the human being never otherwise you're dead in the water yes it can't be and that's applicable in life you know it's really interesting to sort of be a fly on the wall for like a note session with people who really know what they're doing and you can see it's its own art form right to do it properly and it takes a lot of you know it's a soft touch takes Grace it takes um experience to do it well and it requires that the ego has to vanish right all egos have to be set aside we're in unison as a team to create this great thing our only interest is in making the best thing possible credit all of that who cares about that and there's a maturity that's required for that right but it's cool there's a um you know the comedian Mike Birbiglia he's great stand-up comedian he has a podcast called working it out and what he does is help bring people on other comedians writers actors people who are artistic in some way and they each share what they're working on and they sh and then they give each other feedback on the podcast which I think is such a service to people to hear people who are who really care about craft and know how to communicate what's good what isn't working Etc in a really constructive healthy way because it's so applicable to all other areas of our life if you're having an argument with your spouse your partner if you're having a conflict at work like all of these skills have high high applicability in all areas of life absolutely and taking the ego out of all of it is such a key component of allowing the thing to be the best thing it can be if it's about you it's about you it's not about it and it's not about it being its best whatever that is whatever that is or to in any way be defensive when someone's sharing information when someone gives criticism that's how they see it it's helpful it's it's helpful to you to know you don't have to see what they see but it's helpful to know that that's what they see and the fact that it's different than what you see that's good for you to know that's not mad for you to know that's helpful information right but our our insecurities end up hearing you're an untalented hack you're a terrible person you don't know what you're doing you truly are the Imposter that you believe yourself to be like we create these narratives out of you know out of that in a way that ends up being destructive and I would suspect I'm interested in in your thoughts on this that the most generative artists are the ones who understand how to remove the ego and receive the feedback for the best interest of the project absolutely and it's something for someone who's never had helpful criticism before it can be shocking I can remember one artist very successful artist I was um listening to some new songs that they were playing me and um and I gave you know very analytical everything that I felt on every song as they you know done this one I felt this this this on this one I felt this this this and I finish and it's completely analytical talking about the craft just this the specifics of these things and he said have you ever talked to an artist like this before I started every day it's my job he's like no one's ever talked to me like this before I said well I'm I'm here in service to you I'm here to help these are the things that resonated with me these are the things that didn't this is information to help you and we ended up working really well together after that but there was it's initial like wow no one's ever told me anything before right no one's ever shared what they especially with people who are successful people who are successful used to hearing yes yes yes everything's great and it's not helpful right it's not helpful it's helpful to have yes yes yes when it is yes yes yes and hmm is that as good as it could be when is that as good as it can be having some sense of reality otherwise there's no grounding they're operating in a vacuum and they lose perspective with what's really happening if they have no no ability to get feed real feedback humbling yourself to be a Craftsman among Craftsmen right beautiful in service well said to the higher purpose of the work absolutely so in this idea of a the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we're capable of and how the means by which we communicate with others the assumptions we make about how those Communications are received I think we need a new perspective on how to shift how we think about that or to dislodge our entrenched thinking about how we see ourselves and how others see us and this idea is Illustrated beautifully by this psychological experiment that we were talking about the other day so I think it would be cool to kind of even though we are ending a little bit shorter than I wanted to like it will give people something to ponder and consider until we meet again because we're going to have to do a part two great dude all right uh let's close our eyes if unless you're driving close your eyes and envision a desert a desert once you have pictured the desert in the desert there is a cube a cube visualize the cube in the desert there is also a ladder see the latter there are flowers in the desert notice the flowers there's a horse in the desert picture the horse and finally there is a storm what's interesting about this experiment is if you were to you might even want to write down the details of your of what you're imagining and the next time you're with a friend or loved one ask them to do the same you can either play this for them or read them the cues the six cues and then compare your Cube image story and their Cube image story and see how similar or different they are try with your friends since an old it's an old I first did this about 20 years ago and I remember um the first time I did it having a very clear vision of what my my story was when that when I was given those cues very simple cues and I imagine that's what it looked like and then I spoke to some other people around the table who took the same answered the same questions and it was mind-blowing how different our pictures were and it's a great example of how we all imagine such different worlds and it's why if we don't make the thing we want to make if someone else's antenna is more tuned to ours and they pick up the same Source material the thing they make it's not going to be the same thing we would make no one can do our part our picture is our picture so there's a great benefit in taking a risk making the thing that's interesting to you sharing it with the world because if you don't do it nobody else will you're the only one who can make the art that you can make and it's not in competition with anyone else there is no competition there's no competition who has a better picture in their head it's a reflection of you everything that you make is a reflection of who you are and how you live in the world will impact the things that you make and I wish the best of luck on the journey in making beautiful things that we can all enjoy yeah it's beautifully put I think a fantastic way to end this this call to action that we all have something inside of us that is worthy of exploration and expression because there is no other you and that in and of itself makes you infinitely valuable absolutely and you're depriving all of us of that if you choose not to share true and if you want to know the psychological meanings of your Cube you can Google Cube psychology test and I'm sure you'll find the uh what everything means if you're interested yeah cool do that then pick up the creative act it really is a beautiful expression if you want to more finely attune your radar to the subtle art of making things and adopting a certain way of being I can't think of any better way to to start there I mean it's it's really something special so thank you for writing it and I think people are gonna really enjoy it beautiful thank you for speaking to me and thank you so much for reading it yeah I hope that I can call you friend and again I would like to have you back so if we ever find ourselves even though we we kind of live close to each other you you're in Parts Unknown so I had to grab this opportunity we have background noise and all of that but it's an organic living breathing thing beautiful you know I love it and when we hear it back we'll remember where we are and what's happening it's beautiful for sure forever cool thank you sir thank you [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 131,183

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindfulness podcasts, mindset podcast, vegan podcasts, plant-based nutrition

Id: 6pxUXCRrq8Q

Length: 88min 4sec (5284 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 16 2023