Stay Free - Russel Brand - Rick Rubin (Creating Through Questioning)

00:00:00.000 Hello you Awakening Wonders!

00:00:02.000 Welcome to the Stay Free Podcast where I have an in-depth conversation with great and influential thinkers with wild and fluid minds.

00:00:12.000 On previous shows we've spoken to Tim Robbins, MIA, Duncan Trussell, Eckhart Tolle, Jordan Peterson and today we're speaking to the legendary record producer Rick Rubin who's of course worked with Jay-Z, Johnny Cash, Run DMC, Adele, the Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Eminem.

00:00:28.000 He's got a new book called The Creative Act, A Way of Being.

00:00:35.000 How's it going, Rick?

00:00:37.000 Can you hear me?

00:00:37.000 Good.

00:00:38.000 Hello?

00:00:40.000 I can hear you.

00:00:42.000 I can appreciate you.

00:00:43.000 It's going in and out.

00:00:44.000 Do you have any experience operating audio equipment and recording vocals, Rick?

00:00:49.000 Do you think you'll be able to handle this?

00:00:51.000 No, sir.

00:00:52.000 Well, what it does is the vibrations, as I understand, are travelling down a little pipe.

00:00:52.000 Right.

00:00:56.000 Now, within there are these signifiers formulated in a pre-agreed set of semantic terms that you and I can use to convey complex and simple ideas.

00:01:07.000 But we will never know for sure that the intended image that I'm trying to convey is accurately recreated in your mind, Rick.

00:01:16.000 That is one of the risks of communication.

00:01:19.000 I'm with you on that.

00:01:19.000 Understood.

00:01:21.000 How do we ever know that we're not merely islands adrift in this cosmos?

00:01:27.000 Do we brush against one another occasionally?

00:01:29.000 Yes, we are islands adrift in this cosmos.

00:01:32.000 On occasion, something resonates.

00:01:34.000 You might say something and it lights up something in me and I think I know what that means and it may have nothing to do with what you said and that's the The closest we get to any real communication.

00:01:44.000 Language doesn't do it justice.

00:01:46.000 So do you think that music is sort of super semantic?

00:01:52.000 It's an opportunity to communicate beyond the limitations of language and perhaps dance and movement.

00:02:00.000 You know, I was watching something about Chaplin the other day and he was saying that when talkies came in, he said it's less A perfect form of communication than what he was able to achieve through the body.

00:02:12.000 And I suppose that really what we're looking for is connection.

00:02:15.000 The point of communication is to create common unity, to create connection.

00:02:21.000 And I suppose through your life you found ways of enabling artists who by their nature are complex people to deal with To generate and curate the best version of themselves.

00:02:36.000 With this incredible array of people you've worked with, is it something that was sort of intuitive to you, the kind of sensitivity that must be required?

00:02:46.000 And is it something that's altered from when you first started producing your legendary work?

00:02:53.000 I think I said to you at the time, it's the most I've ever understood Paul McCartney.

00:02:56.000 like right to present day, like, you know, we communicate when you're doing that thing

00:03:00.000 with Paul McCartney.

00:03:01.000 And I thought it was there, I thought, I think I said to you at the time,

00:03:06.000 it's the most I've ever understood Paul McCartney, that like, I've always been drawn to like George Harrison,

00:03:11.000 'cause I thought, oh, he was spiritual, and John Lennon, because I thought,

00:03:14.000 oh, like he's radical and anti-establishment.

00:03:17.000 And then I thought the reason that Paul McCartney doesn't have a kind of a cultural flavor

00:03:21.000 in the same way as those two Beatles, is because he's purely a conduit, a vessel for music.

00:03:26.000 He is the music come to life.

00:03:29.000 He's music personified.

00:03:31.000 And I got that from watching the joy between the two of you.

00:03:34.000 So are you able to chronicle your increasing, enhancing sensitivity in dealing with artists?

00:03:42.000 Is it something you're able to articulate, given that we're somewhat discussing the ineffable by By its nature.

00:03:48.000 I think it's it's every it's individual case by case.

00:03:52.000 It's not a any method that works for everybody.

00:03:55.000 Everything is tuned to who the artist is and I really listen like when you were just speaking.

00:04:01.000 I was really listening to everything you were saying and I look at you.

00:04:05.000 I listen to you.

00:04:06.000 I pay attention to what you're saying and it's rare in our world for somebody to really listen.

00:04:14.000 And just through truly listening and wanting to understand, I want to know what you're thinking.

00:04:21.000 I want to know what you're feeling.

00:04:22.000 I want to know how you see it.

00:04:25.000 I don't want to tell you how I see it.

00:04:27.000 I don't want to put my ideas on you.

00:04:30.000 I want to I'm as close as I can, and I may ask questions to draw you out, to understand who you are.

00:04:37.000 And through that process, I get to learn who the person is.

00:04:41.000 And then when we're making something together, there's a sense of, is this true to the person that I'm coming in contact with?

00:04:51.000 Is this true to who they are?

00:04:53.000 Because in our minds, We create an idea of what we think we're supposed to do, or what's right to do, and it undermines who we really are.

00:05:08.000 And to get closer to that true spirit of who we are, and how we see the world, and sharing that is the most beautiful thing.

00:05:19.000 It's the reason we're here on the planet, is to get to share Who we are and how we see it.

00:05:24.000 And between all of these different points of view of people sharing who they are and how they see it, we make some sense of what's going on.

00:05:34.000 It's the best we can do.

00:05:37.000 To get a grasp on what's happening is through talking to people, hearing how they see it, discussing it, open mind, you know, being open minded and going in, not wanting to change somebody's mind so much as really understand if someone thinks something differently than we do, really understand why do they think that?

00:05:59.000 What can I learn from this person who thinks something so different than me?

00:06:04.000 That's so beautiful, Rick, and such an invitation to being creative and acknowledging spontaneity.

00:06:13.000 And it seems as well that embedded in what you just said is the acknowledgement of the possibility But all of us live with a self-generated system, the persona, that I bring so much to the world, that I map my reality onto every experience that I have, that I have a tendency to recreate conditions of the past, like that I can re-experience the traumas that I've already experienced because, in effect,

00:06:45.000 I am projecting reality onto apparently external experience.

00:06:51.000 And it's only through this sort of genuine commitment to presence that you can experience

00:06:56.000 a kind of actual transcendent reality.

00:07:00.000 I know that every conversation that I have, if I'm not careful, I'll just replicate conversations

00:07:08.000 that I've seen you have or imagine that might be pleasing to you.

00:07:13.000 I've seen you on Joe Rogan.

00:07:14.000 I know about your career.

00:07:16.000 I've seen you speaking at McCartney.

00:07:20.000 You know, like, I suppose it's because of the conversations that we've previously had and the communications that we've previously had that I feel that I can talk to you with a degree of confidence.

00:07:32.000 You know, I was struck when you were speaking that in the space of global communication, where we have the potential now for a For almost universal communication.

00:07:46.000 People can communicate continually now.

00:07:49.000 We're experiencing censorship to an unprecedented degree.

00:07:53.000 We're experiencing polemicism and polarity.

00:07:57.000 People aren't willing to listen to an alternative perspective.

00:08:02.000 We are siloed into our particular echo chambers and at a time where there could be more communication, more unity, more More unification and more acknowledgement of the likely unitary force that underwrites all consciousness that we are each an individual expression of.

00:08:19.000 People are more and more infatuated with individualism.

00:08:25.000 So in this work, The Creative Act, A way of being.

00:08:29.000 I know from the part I read that you said that by the more we are willing to become our personal selves, our authentic selves, the more we will discover the universal and that there's a kind of a fractal, there's an implication of a fractal reality inferred there that by becoming who you truly are, You will make universal connections.

00:08:54.000 How's that going to be possible when we live at a time that's defined by surveillance and censorship and conflagration and the amplification of our differences?

00:09:03.000 I'm referring to the cultural war and the actual war that's taking place now.

00:09:10.000 And may I ask, Rick, how do you interface with those, let's face it, somewhat political and cultural arguments as an artist and a creator?

00:09:20.000 Well, it's always been an issue that's been around.

00:09:24.000 The first time I came in contact with this was in the 80s, living in New York and starting to make music.

00:09:35.000 Whatever the mainstream forces were trying to censor the type of music I was working in and wanted it not to exist.

00:09:44.000 They didn't understand what it was, and that was hip-hop.

00:09:47.000 So hip-hop was originally uh verboten and it was not played on any radio stations and it was uh it was people who did it were unpeopled and it was un-music and whatever it was it was bad and it was evil and now it's the most popular form of music in the world so that gives me some sense of uh assurance

00:10:12.000 That when people come together to do something good with a positive, you know, the people who are making hip hop, we're doing it out of love for this art form and having something to say.

00:10:26.000 And maybe these are people who never went to a musical academy or were great virtuoso musicians, but they had something to say and they had an experience of life that was different from others and they wanted to express it.

00:10:40.000 And they expressed it in a very elegant, beautiful way that if you weren't part of it, you didn't understand.

00:10:50.000 Now, over time, people have come to understand it.

00:10:53.000 And now it has taken over the world.

00:10:56.000 And it's fascinating to see.

00:10:57.000 And at the time, in the early days, I could have never predicted that rap music

00:11:01.000 would be what it is today, or that it would ever have even been popular.

00:11:05.000 Because it was such an underground form of music and reviled.

00:11:13.000 To see it live where it lives today is, again, reassuring that something good, it comes around.

00:11:24.000 Like the forces that are trying to hold down goodness They're not strong enough to do it.

00:11:32.000 They're not strong enough to do it.

00:11:33.000 Whilst I am excited by your perspective that something that was esoteric, particular, literally ghettoised has become powerful and ubiquitous, my concern is that it became that through a process of commodification and commerce.

00:11:56.000 When you're dealing in the alchemic What do you feel about the necessity for commodification?

00:12:10.000 Do you regard things only as a success once they become commercialized and commodified?

00:12:17.000 Do you think the original art form loses something as a result of that process?

00:12:22.000 Do you think it becomes sterilized?

00:12:23.000 The history of rap and hip-hop is one that Its origin felt like a transgressive and dangerous movement that provided a voice to the voiceless, that mobilized a kind of movement that was previously oppressed and invisible, exactly as you say.

00:12:46.000 But that acceptance is achieved ultimately through financial success, which it seems to me comes with a degree of nullification and neutralization.

00:12:59.000 It concerns me.

00:13:00.000 What do you feel about that?

00:13:01.000 Am I off track, Rick?

00:13:03.000 I don't think that's the case at all.

00:13:05.000 I think it's true what you're saying, that as things grow, they become commodified.

00:13:12.000 But both you and I are practitioners of transcendental meditation.

00:13:17.000 And transcendental meditation is something that could be taught for free, but you pay for it if you want to learn it.

00:13:24.000 And Maharishi made a point of saying, if we want someone to take this seriously and to honor it, it has to have more value than free.

00:13:35.000 And he said, if someone's not willing to pay to learn meditation, what they're willing to pay for a refrigerator, then they're not going to treat it in the same way that they and with the same degree of commitment as they do to using a refrigerator every day.

00:13:52.000 So there's something about it.

00:13:53.000 Now, it doesn't have to always be the case.

00:13:56.000 And yes, when we're focused on commodification, it can undermine everything.

00:14:01.000 And so much of what the book talks about is ignoring commodification, essentially, in the making of art.

00:14:08.000 So in terms of in the making of art, we cannot think about commodification.

00:14:12.000 We cannot think about commercial aspects.

00:14:15.000 Once the art is made, my interest is for the most amount of people to be able to experience it.

00:14:21.000 And if they're willing to pay for it, and if they feel good about paying for something that they want, I support that.

00:14:28.000 But that's it.

00:14:29.000 That's the nature of the... The commodification doesn't come before.

00:14:35.000 We're not making things to sell.

00:14:37.000 We're making things to be beautiful.

00:14:39.000 And then if it turns out there's a market where people want them, It's fine to sell them.

00:14:43.000 I'm not anti-capitalism in that way.

00:14:47.000 It's just when the cart comes before the horse and it only becomes about commodification that, you know, you turn on the TV and there's a bunch of terrible stuff on.

00:14:57.000 It's because people who are making it are making it with this business idea.

00:15:00.000 They're not making it with this artistic content.

00:15:04.000 We want to make the most beautiful thing we can make and nothing else matters.

00:15:08.000 It's made by committee, what people think will work.

00:15:13.000 All things that undermine the potential beauty of the art that's being made.

00:15:19.000 Throughout my whole career, I've only tried to make the best thing that I can make that moves me.

00:15:27.000 And then in the hopes that if it moves me, maybe it'll move someone else.

00:15:30.000 But I don't think I'm smart enough to project I'm going to make something I don't really like, but this seems like the kind of thing someone else would like.

00:15:38.000 It's insane!

00:15:39.000 And it seems like that's the majority of the output of the mainstream commercial artistic output is just what somebody thinks somebody wants to see.

00:15:53.000 Yes I think it becomes inorganic at that point because as you say it's a project of commodification.

00:16:03.000 I suppose I'm speaking about this in particular in an environment that it seems to have been completely immersed in an ideology not just in music but in culture and in sport that we that All of our creative endeavours might be regarded as invisibly undergirded by commercial imperatives that, as you have explained, the artist cannot engage with and consider themselves still to be an artist rather than a kind of trader.

00:16:35.000 But you used the example of transcendental meditation and that makes sense, the idea of exchange, the idea of valuing, that those ideas, those tools are not necessarily of themselves bad.

00:16:53.000 But I have concerns about the commodification of spirituality and specifically this, Rick,

00:16:59.000 that in a sense contemporary spirituality, new age spirituality, which is the sort of area both you and I,

00:17:07.000 if we're not cautious, could be categorized as operating within,

00:17:13.000 is a spirituality that in my view is guided implicitly by the principle of meditate,

00:17:23.000 you will be a better unit in the system. Meditate, you will become a better, you know,

00:17:30.000 in order that you, there's a telos, there's the presumed telos that you should meditate,

00:17:35.000 do yoga, take ayahuasca, do whatever it is, so that you can function better in this system.

00:17:42.000 and this system is...

00:17:43.000 Isn't, it seems to me, you know, like some of the things we've touched upon the moment, the inability to communicate authentically, the ongoing censorship, polemicism, a stoked conflagration between different groups, the needless cultural war, the constant posing of traditional ideology against progressive, you know, socially and culturally progressive ideologies in order to create hate because of the way that social media has evolved.

00:18:07.000 Look, spirituality, in a sense, you know, this is the quote I think that helps, we have been taught that freedom is the freedom to pursue our petty trivial desires, but real freedom is freedom from our petty trivial desires.

00:18:21.000 And that for me, as a person that...

00:18:23.000 You know, I'm governed by appetite so much.

00:18:25.000 I am all mouth.

00:18:27.000 I want, I want, I want.

00:18:27.000 All mouth.

00:18:29.000 You know, I become spiritual because otherwise I'm not gonna live. 1.00

00:18:34.000 You know, I'm gonna kill myself. 0.97

00:18:35.000 I'm gonna take drugs. 0.99

00:18:36.000 If I don't awaken, I'm finished.

00:18:39.000 So like, you know, for me, when it becomes about, you know, learning to meditate ultimately so you can fit within a system better, it concerns me.

00:18:48.000 So I wonder if there is something necessarily that creates compromise, you know, whether it's in music or spirituality or anywhere.

00:18:58.000 And I wonder what your thoughts are, perhaps, with spirituality.

00:19:01.000 He's just said something very interesting, which is your reason for getting into spirituality for yourself had to do with controlling of your appetites.

00:19:14.000 And I imagine, so that's what got you in.

00:19:18.000 Now that you're in, is that all that it's about?

00:19:21.000 I'm guessing not.

00:19:22.000 I'm guessing you found something that Resonates with you on a deeper level and it's not just about that and I'll tell you I've had a friend who originally used to go to yoga classes because there were a lot of girls in yoga classes and he thought if I go to yoga classes I'll meet girls at the yoga class and then he started doing yoga every day to meet girls and then he became a yogi and he maybe even become celibate because he it didn't matter what got him in.

00:19:52.000 It's like the seed was planted in him And once the seed is planted, I think when we're young, we think about, I want to be a rock star, I want to be famous, or I want to do this, and then it gets you to start.

00:20:06.000 But once you start, you realize it's about something completely different.

00:20:10.000 You realize it's about, one of the things I talk about in the book is when we're making art, it's not even about the end product, that we think it's Most artists think it's about the song I'm recording, or it's about the movie I'm making, but really it's a connection to something outside of ourselves, a greater source of creativity that we're tapping into, that we get to feel part of.

00:20:39.000 and we're part of this like universal communication that's going on.

00:20:44.000 When you really get deep into creativity, it's not really us.

00:20:48.000 We're just vehicles through which it happens.

00:20:52.000 And in the early days, you don't know that.

00:20:55.000 It's something that comes over time and mastery.

00:20:59.000 The more you do it, the more you see, ah, this isn't really me.

00:21:02.000 This is not really me.

00:21:04.000 This is not by my hand.

00:21:06.000 My hand's involved, but only as a vehicle for something bigger than myself.

00:21:11.000 And there was something else that you said earlier about worrying about the commodification

00:21:18.000 And I think about your show.

00:21:20.000 So your show has gotten very popular now.

00:21:23.000 I have no fear that you're going to change your show based on what would, in terms of commodification, benefit the message.

00:21:34.000 In other words, if someone got you to change your message, Because you could make more money doing that.

00:21:41.000 I don't have fear in you that that's going to be the case.

00:21:45.000 The movie Network is about that.

00:21:47.000 I was thinking about that as you were saying it.

00:21:49.000 You know, the movie Network, Howard Beale has these incredible revelations and he's this wild character and then basically the corporation tells him that's not how the world works.

00:22:01.000 It doesn't work the way you think it works.

00:22:03.000 Corporations run everything.

00:22:05.000 And you're part of that.

00:22:06.000 And he went along with it.

00:22:09.000 He didn't stick to his original guns.

00:22:14.000 In some ways, he was undermined by the corporate interests.

00:22:20.000 So I don't have that fear with you.

00:22:22.000 Thank you.

00:22:23.000 I mean, that's a high praise from you because you are regarded in this culture as almost authenticity personified.

00:22:32.000 I think you are like a cauldron for it.

00:22:35.000 You are where people go to be healed.

00:22:37.000 And this is just like as a voyeur, it seems that that's the relationship that artists have with you.

00:22:43.000 So I'm honoured that you would say that about me because there are times when I...

00:22:49.000 Because I talk about subjects on this show, about, like, corruption, about the military-industrial complex's possible incentives in a war that's being portrayed as humanitarian, and of course there is a humanitarian aspect because people are suffering and dying, and the simplification of the narratives around war, and what happened in the last couple of years, the pandemic, and trying to stop short of stuff that's conspiratorial and not underwritten by good information and good data.

00:23:16.000 Sometimes I, um, You know, because I'm dealing with these things and I recognize I have to convey them in a way that's consumable and accessible and scintillating, I every so often forget this is actually bloody real.

00:23:28.000 You're actually talking about things that are real.

00:23:31.000 And there's a sort of necessity for a kind of spiritual hygiene when dealing with these matters, Rick.

00:23:37.000 And it's sort of challenging because, and I must say, because I'm a person in recovery and because I believe in God, I have to, I keep this at the forefront, I'm fallible.

00:23:46.000 I'm a fallible, flawed individual and I never let that stray too far from the forefront of what I'm dealing with.

00:23:56.000 I try never to be didactic.

00:23:58.000 I try never to... because I know that I don't like people talking to me like they think they're cleverer than I am and I try to remember that and I've learned because of the touring aspect of what I do for a living that most people want to be left People want guidance, people want instruction, but people don't want to be told what to do.

00:24:17.000 We want to be free.

00:24:18.000 People want to be free.

00:24:21.000 Absolutely.

00:24:22.000 Thank you for the beautiful compliment.

00:24:24.000 A moment ago, when you talked about this feeling of grace in your work, of knowing that there is something moving through you, can you tell me a few examples that come to you in your working life where you have felt the evidence of that, the bliss, the joy, the playfulness of being touched by Krishna or Christ Consciousness or however you feel it and describe it, particularly in your work?

00:24:49.000 It happens all the time, and an example would be a band will be playing a piece of music and it sounds ordinary, and it's ordinary for a period of time.

00:25:01.000 They play it over and over and over again and try little changes, try little differences, and nothing, and it doesn't really change, ordinary.

00:25:10.000 And then sometimes something happens, and when I say something happens, not because We had a great idea or change something radical where it all of a sudden what's happening goes from pretty good.

00:25:29.000 Too extraordinary.

00:25:32.000 And nobody involved knows what's different.

00:25:35.000 And none of us have any control over it.

00:25:37.000 It's miraculous when it happens.

00:25:40.000 And there are certain artists who are able to tap into it more easily.

00:25:46.000 Red Hot Chili Peppers are an example.

00:25:48.000 When they play, it's usually good, But they can reach these levels of musical transcendence on a very regular basis.

00:25:57.000 Like not every time, but a lot, a lot.

00:26:02.000 And it's wild being in the room for everyone.

00:26:05.000 We're just kind of looking at each other like kind of dumbfounded because you can't believe what's happening.

00:26:12.000 I've had it happen in the studio with Carlos Santana where he's playing and It just seems like it's not coming from him.

00:26:21.000 It's this beam of music that's happening in the room and the people there aren't even playing it.

00:26:32.000 I've had it happen with Nusrat Fatali Khan where when he's singing His mouth isn't moving in the same way that what you're hearing.

00:26:41.000 Do you know what I'm saying?

00:26:42.000 Like, it's like an out-of-sync movie where you're hearing these sounds and his mouth is not making those sounds and it's just this otherworldly presence in the room.

00:26:54.000 I can't explain it.

00:26:55.000 It's just, it's stunning.

00:26:57.000 Neil Young can go into these states of just Disappears in the music where he's gone.

00:27:05.000 And it's I don't know what to say about it.

00:27:08.000 So I get to see it on a regular basis and it's magic.

00:27:12.000 And all we can do is recognize it when it happens, be respectful of it, be thankful, and do anything we can to set the stage to allow it to happen, but never be arrogant enough to think that we can ever make it happen, because we can't.

00:27:30.000 It's some other energy happening.

00:27:36.000 You're describing, it seems to me, Rick, shamanism.

00:27:39.000 And there are some arguments that the entire profession of show business is fueled by our kind's need for an experience of the divine.

00:27:53.000 And this somewhat loops back to my earlier point. 0.99

00:27:57.000 And believe me, I'm going to be asking what you had in that bottle, because you can't have shit floating around in a bottle like that and not have people inquire about it. 0.98

00:28:07.000 Just a teabag, just simple life. 0.99

00:28:10.000 Spring dragon longevity tea.

00:28:13.000 Mushroom tea.

00:28:14.000 Longevity.

00:28:17.000 Glory unto him that would afford you this long life, Rick Rubin.

00:28:22.000 When we talk about shamanism and perhaps when we talk about interfacing with divinity It seems that the individual charged with conveying that power needs mostly to get out of the way.

00:28:39.000 To get out of the way.

00:28:41.000 I read a beautiful book, and I'll send it to you actually, called The Death and Resurrection Show, which talks about the transition from... It posits that there was a...

00:28:53.000 When there were settled cultures and there were still nomadic cultures that the relationship between the nomadic cultures and the settled cultures would be the nomads would turn up and perform their shamanic rites and rituals and it talked about how many archetypal components of these rituals are found in show business and it talked about great examples of ambiguity and self-annihilation and self-destruction that are to be found at these Tropes are found throughout show business.

00:29:22.000 The weary idea of the self-destructive artist being little more than the inability to hold the flame, to hold the power of what is coming through.

00:29:33.000 The thing you describe casts a shadow, of course, Rick.

00:29:36.000 You describe the sort of benign aspect of the shamanic performer.

00:29:42.000 Revealing the transcendent, the universe in young Krishna's mouth.

00:29:47.000 But the flip side of that is that it burns them and destroys, destroys to have that power.

00:29:57.000 I suppose you must have experienced that as well.

00:30:00.000 Absolutely.

00:30:01.000 It's the way I would interpret it as there's a sensitivity that the great artists have that they feel everything much more than other people.

00:30:11.000 And it's when you feel something, you're with other people and you feel something strongly and no one else can feel it.

00:30:19.000 You start feeling a little crazy, you feel disconnected, and it's difficult.

00:30:23.000 So when you're constantly saying, hey, no, but look, this is happening, and this is happening, and this is happening, and people are like, you're crazy.

00:30:30.000 What are you talking about?

00:30:33.000 This level of pain that comes up from either being not heard, being misunderstood, not being seen, And feeling things much stronger than other people.

00:30:47.000 And people don't, they look at you funny.

00:30:51.000 You know, they look at you funny and they treat you poorly.

00:30:54.000 And then when, then in success, it's a reversion because you go from this sort of person who nobody wants to be around to a person who everybody wants to be around because you're successful or famous.

00:31:10.000 But they still don't understand you, and they still don't treat you for who you actually are.

00:31:16.000 You know, that's why Kurt Cobain's not here anymore.

00:31:19.000 It's the pain of being totally misunderstood and not being seen for who we are.

00:31:29.000 And it's why so many artists, you know, die young from drug overdoses.

00:31:35.000 Our mutual friend, the publisher, Jamie Bing, I love that guy.

00:31:41.000 He's a great guy.

00:31:42.000 I imagine he might watch this.

00:31:44.000 It was him that first said to me, I think I was writing a self-help book, I guess.

00:31:51.000 I'm pretty sure that I'm correctly crediting Jamie with this.

00:31:54.000 He said, all books are self-help books.

00:31:57.000 All literature is self-help.

00:31:59.000 Why would you read, you know, Crime and Punishment or Dickens?

00:32:05.000 It's to illuminate you.

00:32:07.000 And it seems that what you're saying is that art in and of itself is therapeutic in that it is a connector to the

00:32:15.000 divine power, that it is relational between others, that in collaborative

00:32:19.000 art forms you get to feel the transcendent and the imminent simultaneously,

00:32:24.000 that God is within us and beyond us, God is all things.

00:32:27.000 This cannot be instantiated with mere words, it has to be experiential and it comes close to that thing that is the

00:32:36.000 inaccessible subjectivity of my me-ness and your you-ness can be somehow webbed together by great art beyond the

00:32:47.000 facility of simple language.

00:32:52.000 And it seems to me somehow, intuitively somehow, intuitively as well as being learned, of course, I'm sure, you've found yourself Operating in this space, and I feel like when there is a success like yours, not that there is much success comparable to your own, that it's an indication that something like that is happening.

00:33:12.000 That the divine is at work.

00:33:14.000 That the divine is at work.

00:33:16.000 That it isn't always just salt and sugar and synthesis that drives popularity.

00:33:22.000 That there can be magic too.

00:33:24.000 And it seems like this magic is what you're working in.

00:33:27.000 And is this the creative act a way of being?

00:33:30.000 Are you talking about how personal creativity is something that we must access in order to be healed, in order to be whole, in order to be who we are?

00:33:40.000 Well, it's not something we must access, it's something we're...

00:33:45.000 That's available to us to access.

00:33:47.000 I mean, we're creative every day of our lives, whether we're artists, whether we think of ourselves as artists or not.

00:33:53.000 We see a traffic jam and we find a new route home that we never took before.

00:33:57.000 That's a creative.

00:33:58.000 We're creatively solving a problem.

00:34:00.000 We do it every day.

00:34:01.000 All of us do it every day.

00:34:03.000 When being an artist is living in the world, it's not just about the making thing.

00:34:11.000 The subtitle of the book is A Way of Being.

00:34:14.000 Living as an artist in the world is...

00:34:17.000 A way of looking at everything and basically an awareness practice.

00:34:22.000 That artists are always in an awareness practice at all times.

00:34:28.000 Taking it, noticing things that others don't notice.

00:34:31.000 Noticing what's beautiful in the ordinary.

00:34:34.000 And then maybe finding some way to re-present that into the world in a way that other people can see the beauty that we see.

00:34:44.000 That's the goal of what we're doing.

00:34:47.000 We recognize something beautiful.

00:34:49.000 It's usually right there in plain sight.

00:34:52.000 Other people don't notice it.

00:34:54.000 We try to present it in such a way that others can say, oh yeah, wow, that is... I see it every day, but I never thought of it that way.

00:35:04.000 I never thought of it in that beautiful way.

00:35:07.000 That's cool, Rick.

00:35:08.000 It reminds me of two things.

00:35:10.000 One, something I read about Francis Bacon, the artist.

00:35:13.000 He... I read in an interview that the journalist that was interviewing him said that Bacon would not allow people to be neutral and switched off.

00:35:23.000 He said like that when the waiter brought over their coffee or their drink and people are just prescriptive.

00:35:28.000 You know, we are on rails.

00:35:29.000 Most people are on rails.

00:35:31.000 You think the thoughts you thought yesterday.

00:35:32.000 You say the things you thought.

00:35:34.000 Where did these opinions come from?

00:35:36.000 How did this information get in there?

00:35:37.000 What is this pain?

00:35:39.000 You know, that Bacon, like if someone was just switched off, he would vitalise them through his interaction.

00:35:45.000 He wouldn't accept normal interaction in that way.

00:35:49.000 Beautiful.

00:35:49.000 Yeah, it's glorious, isn't it?

00:35:51.000 And the British artist Damien Hirst A similar thing to what you just said, you know, and of course he's a famous post-modernist and almost situationist artist, most famous for his works like the bisected animals, like the shark in Formaldehyde and all that stuff.

00:36:09.000 He said that, you know, you will walk past the same tree every day, but if that tree falls over in a storm and crashes across the sidewalk and across the road, you'll be like, oh my God, this tree!

00:36:21.000 It's amazing!

00:36:23.000 And a little like, you know, hallucinogenic drugs, that suddenly you realize that we have curated the wonder and awe out of our experience. When I speak to Vandana Shiva, she

00:36:36.000 talks about re-sacralizing the world.

00:36:38.000 We have lost the sacred is all around us. We are living in glory and we have been tuned down to the

00:36:46.000 sort of dour, glum, grayness that happens to us when we are deactivated, when we lose that vitality.

00:36:55.000 And so I see that what you're saying is that it's an invitation to be awake, to be human.

00:37:01.000 What is it that separates us from the, you know, instinctual but presumably not self-conscious behavior of most animals?

00:37:09.000 It's this ability to be creatively aware and present.

00:37:13.000 Yes, and interestingly, The real work of the artist is to be closer to an animal and to be more instinctual.

00:37:26.000 Animals don't make mistakes.

00:37:31.000 Animals do what they do.

00:37:33.000 And they don't later regret a decision that they made.

00:37:38.000 They enter a situation and they do what they do.

00:37:44.000 And that is, and I imagine, I mean, you have experience acting.

00:37:49.000 I imagine the best acting is like that.

00:37:52.000 It's like, you're not doing something, you're completely in it and being natural in the moment and reacting.

00:37:59.000 Not, it's not intellectual.

00:38:02.000 It's something else.

00:38:03.000 So much of art is not intellectual.

00:38:06.000 The intellectual part comes after.

00:38:08.000 After the thing is made, then you may, hmm, I wonder why this is, why is this thing interesting to me?

00:38:14.000 But when you're making it, it's not an intellectual process.

00:38:17.000 It's much more of a body-centered, emotional, feeling process.

00:38:23.000 And we want to make things that make us feel excitement, peace, love, curiosity.

00:38:34.000 The most interesting things are the things that we can't believe we're seeing.

00:38:37.000 You know, when something happens and like you lean forward, is that really happening?

00:38:40.000 Is that true?

00:38:41.000 Is that what's happening?

00:38:43.000 That's the excitement that you can't believe it.

00:38:48.000 And the best art tends to have that.

00:38:51.000 And we don't get there through it's being clever.

00:38:56.000 It's not clever.

00:39:00.000 It's something else.

00:39:02.000 It's bigger than clever.

00:39:06.000 It's really this animalistic, true reaction to what's before us.

00:39:15.000 Yes.

00:39:16.000 Gary Shandling said that the entire endeavour of creativity is to capture, create a moment that is real.

00:39:24.000 We're so used to consuming mediocre art.

00:39:30.000 It just passes before the eyes, the junk food, like gum.

00:39:35.000 And then sometimes, often inadvertently, you capture something that is real, that is authentic.

00:39:41.000 And the fact is, is that these are states, so they are ever present.

00:39:45.000 And perhaps it is the genius or the great artist that accesses it with more regularity and apparently with more ease.

00:39:54.000 But as if those invisible threads, as if the sort of the The living archetype is present and able to be vivified, vitalized, that some incantation, some ceremony or rite will bring it forth.

00:40:08.000 For me, because like, you know, obviously you are a master in the domain of music and for me, I've always had to be, had music brought to me.

00:40:15.000 I'd like all human beings to enjoy and love music and have heroes, you know, throughout the pantheon of music.

00:40:22.000 But for me, As an artist, it's always been in the tunes of comedy.

00:40:27.000 That's where I experience it more viscerally, I suppose, Rick.

00:40:35.000 The tunes that are in language, in comedy, the ongoing revelation of truth that Comedy can provide people with.

00:40:42.000 That's where I find it.

00:40:44.000 And I suppose that when you live in a homogenized and sanitized cultural space that denies us that, it's like we're losing something.

00:40:54.000 We're losing something.

00:40:55.000 I feel that all of these great tools that we're being offered, that could be bringing about a utopia, have been negatively charged, that are robbing us of that potential.

00:41:07.000 And I suppose I enjoy speaking to you because It seems so local and personal and possible to awaken.

00:41:15.000 It doesn't seem esoteric and Himalayan and impossible.

00:41:20.000 It seems it's here now.

00:41:22.000 This is where it is.

00:41:23.000 This is where it is.

00:41:24.000 And so much of it has to do with trust.

00:41:27.000 It's like not second guessing, trusting the moment, trusting your instincts, knowing It can be very simple.

00:41:37.000 If you taste two different dishes of food and we're asked, which one do you like better?

00:41:42.000 It's not hard to say which one you like better.

00:41:45.000 That's all we're doing.

00:41:47.000 We're just really tuning into our own taste.

00:41:52.000 What, what, which one tastes better to us?

00:41:55.000 And trusting the one that tastes better than us, better to us, is the one that tastes better to us.

00:42:01.000 Because that's all it is.

00:42:02.000 It's like everything that I'm, I'm, you know, everything I make is, this is the one that tastes good to me.

00:42:10.000 That's all it is.

00:42:11.000 Yes, it's beautiful that it's discerning as opposed to judgmental, you know, and this quality you described of feeling as opposed to thinking, I love analysis, you know, I like to look at things and work out why, I enjoy that process, I always have, but when I've Consider what appear to be some of the shortcomings we're experiencing culturally right now.

00:42:40.000 Much of it seems, and I spoke to the beautiful Duncan Trussell on this show recently, and he talked about how Ram Dass said to him, we need you to move from here, indicating the head, to here, the heart.

00:42:52.000 I'm reminded of a time I was told that the Australian Aboriginal culture, the word that they have for the, you know, they say they have three brains, the brain of the stomach, the brain of the heart and the, you know, the cognitive mind.

00:43:07.000 And the word they use for the cognitive mind is the same word they use for a tangled fishing net.

00:43:13.000 And we live in, like our culture lives entirely in this sort of Tangled, synaptic, neurotic network of the mind with all of its great capacities.

00:43:24.000 Our solutions in short, in my opinion, are not going to come from the intellect.

00:43:28.000 They're not going to come from the rationale.

00:43:30.000 It's taken us, science, progressivism with all of its wonder, technology with all of its glories, You know, surely they will provide more solutions medically, but these false markers of technology and medicine are obscuring the fact that we have become almost neanderthal when it comes to feeling and heart.

00:43:48.000 That we've forgotten how, at least behaviorally, we are not practicing the intuitive connections that are available to us Through what used to be called a love of God and Lord alone knows the problems of religion, organized religion, are evident and manifest and the traumas and travesties they have practiced hardly need reiterating here.

00:44:07.000 But with this loss of a realized and radical God, we are starting to create something somewhat threadbare.

00:44:17.000 And I suppose, Rick, another concern of mine is that if it's only available to us, I think it's just part of the process.

00:44:22.000 If art is only available to us in commercial spaces rather than explicitly sacred and spiritual

00:44:28.000 places, I wonder if we're losing something there.

00:44:31.000 And are you attempting here in this book to once again conflate or reintegrate spirituality

00:44:40.000 and creativity?

00:44:42.000 I think it's just part of the process.

00:44:45.000 You can't pull them apart.

00:44:49.000 is a spiritual act.

00:44:53.000 [BLANK_AUDIO]

00:44:54.000 It's not separate.

00:44:56.000 I understand.

00:44:57.000 It's not separate.

00:44:57.000 There's no way.

00:44:58.000 If you separate them, you're working at a tremendous disadvantage.

00:45:04.000 Tremendous disadvantage.

00:45:07.000 If you're working without the sacred as part of your process, you're working alone and small.

00:45:19.000 And, you know, we can only do so much.

00:45:22.000 But if we allow in what's possible, and if we're open, and also, none of it's us even forgetting the sacred, none of it's us, because all we are is a compilation of the experiences we've had over our lives.

00:45:39.000 You've seen the things that you've seen over your life, and that formed your opinions of how you see the world today.

00:45:45.000 And if you came into a situation, it might trigger something that happened to you 20 years ago, and then you would react based on something that happened 20 years ago.

00:45:54.000 That's all we are.

00:45:56.000 We're machines that have collected all of this data, and then somehow think that the data we collected is ours.

00:46:06.000 None of it's ours.

00:46:09.000 I feel funny about saying that the ideas in the book are mine.

00:46:13.000 They're not really mine.

00:46:14.000 They're mine in that if it were raining outside and I point to the rain and I say, look, it's raining, that doesn't mean the rain is mine.

00:46:24.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:46:25.000 I wrote the rain.

00:46:27.000 The things in the book are things I've noticed that just are.

00:46:36.000 In the man that you've become, can you see threads back to the boy you were, the child that you were?

00:46:42.000 Can you see, do you feel like that you could, the seed, was it identifiable?

00:46:48.000 Do you feel that it was there, that there was a sort of a spiritual inquiry that was present in you that has become, that has been unfolding over your life?

00:46:56.000 Absolutely.

00:46:57.000 Always.

00:46:58.000 I remember I would burn incense in my room as a nine-year-old and Would always read about, I became a magician as a child because I didn't really know where the line was, you know, where is, I was always interested in the unseen world.

00:46:58.000 Always.

00:47:15.000 And whether that was doing card tricks, or whether that was a seance, or a Ouija board, or hypnotism, that's all part of this, the things that we can't explain.

00:47:28.000 And I always felt like there was more going on behind the scenes.

00:47:31.000 And when you learn magic from an early age, you learn very quickly that there are always things going on.

00:47:40.000 When you learn magic, you learn that there are several principles at work And that's how most tricks work.

00:47:48.000 And misdirection is a big part of it.

00:47:52.000 And that there's something else.

00:47:54.000 Everyone's looking here, so I could do something down here.

00:47:59.000 And once your eyes are open to that, then you start seeing that when you watch the news.

00:48:09.000 Everywhere, you start seeing it everywhere.

00:48:11.000 When a politician talks, you start seeing, oh, this is all just a magic show.

00:48:16.000 None of this is real.

00:48:17.000 You know, this is all... I've said before that professional wrestling is the closest thing to reality that we have.

00:48:26.000 You know, people say it's fake.

00:48:28.000 It's like, it's the only legitimate sport.

00:48:30.000 And it's the only legitimate... The way that that is a combination of performance and scripted, and sometimes the real world works its way into the script, and you never know what's really happening.

00:48:46.000 That's our life.

00:48:48.000 That's what it is.

00:48:50.000 Do you think we can do a meditation together and that maybe you'll guide the meditation for us?

00:48:57.000 Sure, shall we do it with, how about we do a breathing meditation?

00:49:02.000 We'll do Let's do five slow, deep breaths with our eyes closed.

00:49:11.000 They don't have to be in unison.

00:49:13.000 And then when we finish our slow, deep breaths, we'll check in with each other again.

00:49:16.000 again, okay?

00:49:17.000 Sign here, we have back up what you can't fix the connector to.

00:49:32.000 Yes, sir.

00:49:33.000 Sign here.

00:49:35.000 Sign there.

00:49:37.000 Sign up here.

00:49:39.000 This is all from that.

00:49:46.000 Thank you.

00:49:53.000 Thank you.

00:50:00.000 Thank you.

00:50:07.000 Thank you.

00:50:14.000 Thank you.

00:50:21.000 Thank you.

00:50:28.000 Thank you.

00:50:36.000 Thank you.

00:50:44.000 Beautiful.

00:50:45.000 Thank you.

00:50:46.000 Next time we do this, let's start that way.

00:50:50.000 When we stopped, or at least altered, the manner of our communication,

00:50:56.000 I became aware that it is raining here, and I could hear the rain on the window.

00:51:01.000 That was the first sensory experience, the rain.

00:51:05.000 And of course, with the example you gave, you talked about the rain as being the methods

00:51:12.000 that you have iterated in your book.

00:51:15.000 After the rain, then my thoughts come, and the feeling of sadness,

00:51:21.000 you know, the feeling of sadness that I have been carrying lately.

00:51:26.000 And then, feelings about the body.

00:51:30.000 You know, what I notice is, lately someone who helps me, and most of my, as we've discussed before, my personal spirituality is formatted through the folk technology of the Twelve Steps, which I believe to be sort of an American religion, really, of personal awakening.

00:51:50.000 Someone told me to observe for a day, like anytime you're in a situation and you start to think about doing something else, like you want to change reality, just observe it.

00:52:01.000 And like that day, I happened to have been eating with some people and I was just happily eating with the people.

00:52:07.000 And then I noticed I was eating with the people and I thought, yeah, I'd like to leave now.

00:52:11.000 Right.

00:52:12.000 And when I observed all of the thoughts, the thing I went back to him and said is every time I think it's sort of I'm not good.

00:52:22.000 Like it's not good.

00:52:23.000 I usually think about sort of like some kind of control or assertion, you know, and like with the rain and with the five breaths we just took, and with my meditative practice generally, you know, Bob Roth, who taught me TM for the David Lynch Foundation, Bob Roth always says, notice how easily the thoughts come, but you don't have to ask the thoughts to come.

00:52:49.000 In the same way like the rain, and Bob Roth always says, in this way we think the mantra, in this way we think the mantra, or observe the breath if it was vipassana.

00:52:59.000 And yeah, it's nice to experience that while I may experience sadness, I am not that sadness.

00:53:07.000 While I may experience my thoughts, I am not those thoughts, so I don't need to be governed by them, you know.

00:53:16.000 What was the title of your last audiobook?

00:53:23.000 It was Revelation.

00:53:24.000 I absolutely love that book.

00:53:29.000 That was a beautiful book and it reminded me of something you just said which was being somewhere that you didn't want to be and I think you told a story in the book about being invited to a party or To a dinner or something, and then weeks in advance you think, oh this sounds great, I'll go, and then weeks later it comes and you're dreading it, and it's the last thing you want to do.

00:53:55.000 And I just thought, I know that experience as well.

00:53:59.000 That is because of the technique, Rick, you may be referring to.

00:54:02.000 If someone asks you to do something, always imagine that you had to do it now.

00:54:07.000 And then you might recognize whether or not you want to do it.

00:54:12.000 Because normally for me, I want to be at ease.

00:54:16.000 I want to be in peace.

00:54:17.000 I want to be in peace.

00:54:20.000 Rick, what is your relationship with addiction?

00:54:23.000 Do you have that tendency?

00:54:26.000 Do you have obsession?

00:54:27.000 Do you have addiction?

00:54:29.000 I don't really know how to answer it.

00:54:31.000 I've never taken drugs or drank.

00:54:34.000 So as far as the traditional addictions go, I've never participated in any of those.

00:54:40.000 I probably have a somewhat imbalanced relationship to food and was very overweight for most of my life.

00:54:50.000 And that was a big hurdle.

00:54:52.000 You know, at one point I weighed as much as 318 pounds, which was very big.

00:54:57.000 How was it to change that behaviour and to change your relationship to food?

00:55:04.000 And my intentions were always good in changing my... I was never lazy about doing the work to change my diet to lose weight.

00:55:04.000 It was radical.

00:55:15.000 I just wasn't successful at doing it because I had so much poor information.

00:55:20.000 So I was a vegan for 22 years, during which time is when I got my biggest.

00:55:26.000 And I thought I was doing that both for my health and the health of the planet, and it turned out that that was not correct.

00:55:32.000 And my body thrives with animal protein and I didn't know that.

00:55:36.000 So I made myself very sick in trying to be healthy and lose weight and do the right thing.

00:55:44.000 Yeah, there is some complexity and some bespoke decisions that need to be made.

00:55:49.000 I'm vegan.

00:55:53.000 I try to stay away from judging people.

00:55:58.000 Like with my kids who are vegetarian.

00:56:00.000 I do explain to them, we don't eat these animals.

00:56:05.000 What that is, is that is a piece of an animal.

00:56:08.000 I've kind of made the decision that you guys are vegetarian.

00:56:11.000 I'm vegan.

00:56:12.000 I've not pushed them that far.

00:56:14.000 But I also say people do eat meat and we try not to judge people on that basis.

00:56:21.000 But there's kind of an expectation that if you're a vegan person that you've got to have this very militant and judgmental attitude towards other people and I don't feel that's very helpful with any ideal.

00:56:31.000 I don't think that's a good manner to deal with people from, you know? 1.00

00:56:36.000 Agreed.

00:56:37.000 I was there as well when I was a judgmental vegan.

00:56:40.000 I was that person and Unhealthy, an unhealthy judgmental vegan.

00:56:47.000 Yeah.

00:56:48.000 But I was, I was, I was saved.

00:56:51.000 Saved, Rick.

00:56:52.000 You look like the living embodiment of salvation today.

00:56:55.000 I hope we get to spend some time together in person soon.

00:56:59.000 I really do.

00:56:59.000 I find it, what do I find it?

00:57:01.000 I feel warm and emotional when I, when I communicate with you.

00:57:06.000 It's, and enriched.

00:57:08.000 Thank you so much for taking the time and for your kindness.

00:57:12.000 My pleasure.

00:57:13.000 I feel a deep connection with you always and one that I honestly would say, while we don't know each other well, I don't have the connection I have with you with very many people.

00:57:23.000 That's beautiful.

00:57:24.000 I'm honoured.

00:57:26.000 I love you.

00:57:26.000 You're really beautiful.

00:57:27.000 Thank you.

00:57:27.000 Thank you so much.

00:57:28.000 I love you too.

00:57:29.000 And I can't wait to see you in person.

00:57:31.000 Thanks, man.

00:57:32.000 I'll see you soon.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - January 13, 2023

Rick Rubin (Creating Through Questioning)

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