according to rick rubin, i am a superhero. not in so many words of course, but he makes the case for it in his new non-fiction treatise on creativity. filled with zen-like koans (“look for what you notice but no one else sees” and “sometimes the mistakes are what makes a work great. humanity breathes in mistakes.”) and many examples of his work as a music producer. anyway, after reading the creative act: a way of being, i feel much better about many of my choices and life direction. almost like i’ve read an artist’s self-help book.

you can open to almost any page and find support that the cause of the artist is good and true. in between those zen sayings, he prescribes balance while accepting what we can’t control. and go with it. yeah, i’m curious and i wonder when he drops a name without giving the name, but there are tons of these page and a half chapters that go into the yin/yang of different parts of creativity and how to welcome more of it into your life. not what i expected. lots of quotables. lots and lots. sometimes reminds me of the magic 8 ball (“if you are open and stay tuned to what’s happening, the answers will be revealed”), sometimes reminds me of marcus aurelius’s meditations in its ideals and presentation. but then rubin makes these defining leaps very casually (“living life as an artist is a practice. you are either engaging in the practice or you’re not”), while admonishing the artist not to assume. this is how to live a life stuff. why i make the case for this and this. somewhat annoying but still interesting.

for instance:

“you may yearn for success as a way to leave an unfulfilling job and support yourself through your passion. this is a reasonable goal. however, if the choice is between making great art and supporting yourself, the art comes first. consider another way to make a living. success is harder to come by when your life depends on it.”

and:

“in a prism, a single beam of light enters and is broken into an array of colors. the self, too, is a prism. neutral events enter, and are transformed into a spectrum of feelings, thoughts, and sensations. All this information is processed distinctively by each aspect of self, refracting life’s light in its own way, and emitting different shades of art…. the more we accept our prismlike nature, the more free we become to create in different colors and the more we trust the inconsistent instincts we hold when making art.”

and something i wish i really internalized during the first 50 years of my life: “it’s ok to have a job that supports your art habit. doing both is a better way of keeping the work pure.”

you get what i’m saying. and on this day that celebrates colonialism and ‘civilization’ and all that entails, while also encouraging gratefulness and grace and appreciation, the inconsistencies of being human and contradictions of being an artist sit right up there for me, alongside a wish that the suffering of those i love and those i don’t know abates, at least for a little while.

blogyogy

artist as super hero