On The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

Over the last few days, I’ve been making my way, slowly and intermittently, through Rick Rubin’s incredible book “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”. A gorgeous, well-crafted, and thoughtful object in and of itself and a collection of short essays, even sometimes just a few paragraphs in length, all exploring the nature of creativity, the life of the creative person, and the act of creating itself. It’s been a deep pleasure to drop in on the book at different times and in different places and meander through these delicate, reflective passages. 

Music is not a big part of my life so I can’t speak to the work of Rick Rubin who is, I’m now informed, a major music producer with a huge string of famous artists to his name. There’s some presence of that in the book - anecdotes drawn from the music industry, reflections on the craft of music making - but it is as much about writing, painting, sculpture, pottery, poetry, film, photography and any and all kinds of creative endeavours as it is about music. 

“To live as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention. Refining our sensitivity to tune in to the more subtle notes. Looking for what draws us in and what pushes us away. Noticing what feeling tones arise and where they lead.”

There’s a great deal of intellectual weight in a book that is so light and airy in tone and tenor. I was particularly struck by Rubin’s reflections on working practices and his philosophy of creativity more generally. There’s much discussion of the idea that the creator or artist works in service of what they are creating and that anything that comes after that - success or failure, recognition or celebration, is really out of the creator’s hands. That focus on the work itself is a motif that repeats time and again, with Rubin urging the creator to focus on completing the work and learning from the process before moving on and carrying that learning and insight forward. This momentum is essential, for Rubin;

“We tend to think that what we’re making is the most important thing in our lives and that it’s going to define us for all eternity. Consider moving forward with the more accurate point of view that it’s a small work, a beginning. The mission is to complete the project so you can move on to the next. That next one is a stepping-stone to the following work. And so it continues in a productive rhythm for the entirety of your creative life.”

There are also some really interesting suggestions and ideas for shaking up one’s creative practice, ways of trying new things and bringing new energy to one’s work, and lots of great methods for spurring new thinking and new ways of working.

“Examine your methods and consider what the opposite would be. What would balance the scales? What would be the light to your dark, or the dark to your light? It’s not uncommon for an artist to focus on one end of the seesaw. Even if we don’t choose to create on the other side, understanding this polarity can inform our choices.”

The book is also, I’m going to suggest, just as resonantly informed by Taoism and the Tao Te Ching, as well as philosophy more broadly, as it is rooted in culture, art, and the world of commercial artistic practice. After reading the book I looked more into Rubin and his history and he explicitly mentions the Tao Te Ching in an interview he gave a few years back as the book he has most gifted to others so I feel confident that my sensitivity to the deep harmony with Taoism I felt throughout the book is on pretty firm ground. After all, there are essays entitled “The Vessel and the Filter”, “The Unseen”, “Non-Competition”, and even “Beginner’s Mind.” This latter explores what in Zen Buddhism is called Shoshin;

“There’s a great power in not knowing. When faced with a challenging task, we may tell ourselves it’s too difficult, it’s not worth the effort, it’s not the way things are done, it’s not likely to work, or it’s not likely to work for us. If we approach a task with ignorance, it can remove the barricade of knowledge blocking progress. Curiously, not being aware of a challenge may be just what we need to rise to it.”

Throughout the book, Rubin also spends time reflecting on the creative processes and practices that we develop. Thinking not just about what we create but also how we create, and under what conditions. There’s a strong practical edge to all of this, it isn’t mere ideal speculation, and Rubin seems to hold the view that reducing anything and everything that may tie us up and keep us from the work is absolutely essential. We should, he thinks, be keeping as much of our mental capacity alive and free to invest in the work itself and not have it depleted by all of the extraneous thinking and decision-making we might so easily occupy ourselves with. 

“Put the decision-making into the work, not into when to work. The more you reduce your daily life-maintenance tasks, the greater the bandwidth available for creative decisions. Albert Einstein wore the same thing daily: a grey suit. Erik Satie had seven identical outfits, one for each day of the week. Limit your practical choices to free your creative imagination.”

Although it is gently structured and philosophically explored, there does seem to be something of a design-thinking-like process that is expressed in the book. Rubin seems to roughly group the stages of the creative act into Gather, Experiment, Craft, and Complete. These stages are not wholly unlike those of the standard Design Thinking model; Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test, but are perhaps looser, and more specifically formulated around creative endeavours rather than problem-solving ones. The language deployed is really thoughtfully chosen. Rubin talks of gathering seeds of insights and inspiration, of focusing on flourishing and growth, of mystery, the unknown, and discovery. These are all very unstructured, even organic, concepts and I think really vividly reflect the reality of thoughtful, reflective creativity. Our choice of words can be incredibly important and yet extraordinarily easy to overlook. I am often caught out by the expectations and assumptions that the terms of the Design Thinking process can come with and frequently find participants herding their thinking into a very narrow channel because of those terms. Rubin’s choice of phrasing isn’t immune to this, but it’s eye-opening to explore other ways of expressing the flow and form of creative activities. 

“If you know what you want to do and you do it, that’s the work of a craftsman. If you begin with a question and use it to guide an adventure of discovery, that’s the work of the artist. The surprises along the way can expand your work, and even the art form itself.”

The book also has a whole array of powerful insights for design work, facilitation, and working with Design Thinking. Not necessarily new ways of working, although there are those, but perhaps new ways of thinking about the processes we engage in. In a wonderful section entitled “Try Everything” Rubin is discussing the ways that we make choices and decide which threads to follow. We often work with this kind of moment in Design Thinking and Rubin speaks directly to this, and the challenges participants often face in refining their ideas in a collaborative context;

“Instead of talking through different solutions to work out which is best, take it out of the realm of the verbal. To truly weigh choices, it’s necessary to bring them into the physical world. Have them acted out, played out, or built into a model. Descriptions do not do ideas justice.

We want to set up an environment where decision-making occurs free of the misguiding force of persuasion. Persuasion leads to mediocrity. To be evaluated, ideas have to be seen, heard, tasted, or touched.”

Moving from the verbal to the physical space, understanding that even understanding our own thinking is challenging let alone understanding that of others, and removing persuasion from the activity of decision-making are all incredibly powerful ideas that I think any creative, collaborative process could hugely benefit from. These are certainly things I will be sure to emphasise, implement, and underline in my own work going forward. 

There are so many observations, in fact, that struck me and held me in a moment of reflection throughout the book. Oftentimes I felt like Rubin was speaking directly to me, addressing the thoughts, fears, insecurities, and uncertainties, I have had now and in the past. Of course, that’s because he is speaking to something so universal - the urge to create, to share, to connect. Something I’ve been particularly conscious of more recently is putting more of what I do out into the world. I can have a very strong tendency to keep it all to myself, either hoarded away or languishing unfinished somewhere in a notebook or digital file. Pushing through to completion and getting it out into the world is now something I am very consciously working on and Rubin frequently urges this in the book;

“One of the greatest rewards of making art is our ability to share it. Even if there is no audience to receive it, we build the muscle of making something and putting it out into the world. Finishing our work is a good habit to develop. It boosts confidence. Despite our insecurities, the more times we can bring ourselves to release our work, the less weight insecurity has.”

Finally, there’s the issue of purpose. So deep a hold has modern capitalism and the work-a-day life of making a living and performing a job that it can feel almost perverse to engage in something creative that has no obvious financial or commercial purpose. If I am writing just to write, or painting just to paint, or designing just to design then surely I am wasting time, money, and opportunity. I should be writing things to boost my profile, build my brand, and sell content shouldn’t I? I should be painting to make sales or fulfil commissions, I should be designing for a client or producing a product! It can be tremendously hard to swim against that current, so strong it is - boosted by so much of modern culture. Rubin argues that work created to serve those masters will always fall short of work created purely for itself. That’s not to say that we can’t or shouldn’t live lives supported by what we create - if we are so fortunate - but that work that has money, success, or fame as the ultimate end will ring hollow and false. Produce good work that is good for itself, in itself, by itself, and put it out into the world. Leave the question of why we are creating the work that we’re creating to one side - it’s not a question that holds any meaning for the activity of creation itself.

“You may sometimes wonder: Why am I doing this? What’s it all for?…

If we like what we are creating, we don’t have to know why. Sometimes the reasons are obvious, sometimes not. And they can change over time. It could be good for any of a thousand different reasons. When we’re making things we love, our mission is accomplished. There’s nothing at all to figure out.”

Coming to the end of the book the words I’ve held to the most, though, and that now sit in large, black marker pen letters at the front of my notebook come from page 142, and simply say;