When I’m not listening, watching or posting about music, I’m probably reading about it in a memoir or biography. Like this one:
The Creative Act: A Way Of Being
By Rick Rubin
Over the years, I have interviewed plenty of artists who have worked with superstar producer Rick Rubin. And I’ve asked many of them what the experience was like, since the bearded maverick — who doesn’t sing, write songs or even play an instrument — obviously doesn’t approach the job like a typical producer.
Some of the musicians I spoke to likened him to a guru / advisor who shows up now and then to gently guide you along the creative path, as opposed to an authority figure who’s behind the glass every day giving you specific instructions. Ttruth be told, I never really got what they meant — until I read Rubin’s book The Creative Act: A Way of Being.
In keeping with its title — and those musicians’ descriptions — this lightweight 250-page offering is basically a collection of hippie-dippy platitudes (“The universe never explains why”), Mr. Miyagi-like philosophy (“You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not”) and meaninglessly vague advice (“Look for what you notice but no one else sees”), divided into bite-size chapters with titles like Surrounding The Lightning Bolt, The Prism Of Self and The Opposite Is True. The point? Well, basically the notion that your entire life is a form of self-expression, and you exist as a singular work of art — a creative being in a creative universe. Or something like that.
Granted, like Brian Eno’s famous Oblique Strategies cards from the ’70s, I can see how being told that “taking a wrong turn allows you to see landscapes you wouldn’t otherwise have seen” might help nudge an artist out of a creative cul-de-sac and onto a new path. But if I were a frustrated musician on the studio clock asking him for help, only to have him reply “The work reveals itself as you go,” I’d probably want to clock him, you know? And if he told me — as he does here — that he ignored his burst appendix because he picked up a random book that told him not to trust a doctor who wanted to remove something from his body, I’d start backing towards the door while inquiring about a refund. Ultimately, The Creative Act: A Way Of Being might inspire some people who are receptive that that sort of thing. But mostly, it seems like a good way of being parted from some of your cash.
