Best Of: The Tao of Rick Rubin

The Ezra Klein Show

In this episode of The Ezra Klein Show, legendary music producer Rick Rubin discusses his book 'The Creative Act: A Way of Being,' a spiritual

Key takeaways

• Creativity is not about summoning ideas from within but being receptive to signals from the world around us.
• The most creative individuals are those with heightened sensitivity—'antennas' tuned to subtle, often overlooked experiences.

Main topics

• Mindfulness and presence in creative practice
• The role of receptivity over intentionality in art

Notable quotes

"The most important thing in the world to me is this conversation that we're having. This is what we're doing now."

"Discipline and freedom seem like opposites. In reality, they are partners."

Conclusion

Rick Rubin's philosophy reframes creativity not as a skill or talent, but as a way of

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi, it's Alexa Y. Bell from New York Times Cooking. We've got tons of easy weeknight recipes, and today I'm making my five-ingredient creamy miso pasta. You just take your starchy pasta water, whisk it together with a little bit of miso and butter until it's creamy. Add your noodles and a little bit of cheese. Mmm. It's like a grown-up box of mac and cheese that feels like a restaurant-quality dish. New York Times Cooking has you covered with easy dishes for busy weeknights. You can find more at NYTCooking.com. We're off this week, but we wanted to repost a really nice conversation for Labor Day, which is my 2023 conversation with the legendary music producer Rick Rubin. Hope you enjoy. I'm Ezra Klein. This is The Ezra Klein Show. Speaker 1 (1:01) How do you introduce a podcast with Rick Rubin? So he may be the most influential music producer alive. It seems like a fair statement. He holds nine Grammys. He co-founded Def Jam Recordings. He was a co-chair of Columbia Records. And he's just worked with the most stunning array of artists. Just a very, very partial roll call. Jay-Z. The Beastie Boys. Run DMC. Slayer. Slipknot, Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Eminem, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West, Brandi Carlile, Adele. It is a lot of very different kinds of artists who trust him, who seek him out. So what does he have to offer them? What is he giving them? Speaker 1 (1:52) Ruben just came out with this really fascinating and usual book called The Creative Act, A Way of Being. I expected stories of late nights in the studio with famed musicians, but it is not that at all. This is a spiritual tract. It's a guide to finding and cultivating and inhabiting states of mind that foster creativity, but not just the kind of creativity that leads to art. You don't have to be an artist to get a lot out of this. How to really listen to another person. How to deepen your openness to the world and then also deepen your discernment in it, your judgments about it, your taste. How to know when something is for you good. How to know and trust yourself when it's not good enough or not done yet. Speaker 1 (2:39) There's a funny way in which the conversation ended up playing out themes of the book. We did two versions of it because the first one didn't quite find the right level. And then as we began, and this is a conversation about a book all about achieving more open states from which to listen, Ruben's suggestion was we get ourselves closer to that state by taking a few deep breaths and sink. And so we did. And I left that in the audio because it may open your taste and it may change your experience of the conversation too. Speaker 1 (3:08) As always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com. Rick Rubin, welcome to the show. Thank you, sir. So this is going to be a conversation about finding the states of mind that help you listen, that help you discern, that help you create. And so as we start it, how should we find the right state of mind for this? Well, we can do maybe five slow, deep breaths together to get us rolling. And on the inhale, think about the inhale and on the exhale, when I say think, maybe that's not the right word. Maybe say, say to yourself, cue yourself, inhale. As you're inhaling, we're inhaling. And then when you exhale, focus on the exhale. We're exhaling now and nothing else. Let's do it. So assuming you're about to take about the same amount of time as mine, where are you that you weren't a minute ago? Speaker 1 (4:57) We had a little technical issue before we started, which created some energy in my body that was like a rattle. And by the second breath, it felt like that settled. And by the, I don't know, towards the end, I realized I don't know how many breaths I've done because I'm... feeling very relaxed. And that felt really good. That's what it did for me. And I also felt like, and I don't know this, but it tuned us to each other that now we're starting at least on a closer wavelength than before that happened. I think that's right. So I normally think it's cliche to begin by asking anybody about the title of their book. Speaker 1 (5:50) But I do think there's an interesting interaction for you between the title and subtitle, The Creative Act and A Way of Being. So tell me about the way of being side of this. The way of being is really what the book is about. The creative act is what I started out wanting to write. And through the process of looking at what were the decisions made to make things to the best of our ability. It came back to a way of being and that right now, regardless of what else is going on in my life, the most important thing in the world to me is this conversation that we're having. This is what we're doing now. And as long as it takes is as long as it takes. And if it went all day, I would go all day. Speaker 1 (6:41) And that's the way of being in the world. It's a combination of paying attention and commitment to doing whatever it takes to do your best, whatever that is. You and I have talked a bit about your love of Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching. This struck me very much as a Taoist book, not just in content, but in form. I think when I saw this book coming, I expected to read a lot of recollections of Rick Rubin's history with various artists and times in the production room and in the studio. And it reads very Taoistly. It's very poetic. It's very spare. There's not a lot of I. Speaker 1 (7:28) It's very comfortable with paradox and tension and contradiction. So that was intentional. Absolutely. Absolutely. It would have been much easier to do the book that you described, but it was never interesting to me from the beginning. And when I first set out to work on this seven or eight years ago, I met with a handful of publishers at that time and told them about what I wanted the book to be. And all of them had the same reactions. Like, well, Speaker 1 (7:56) yeah, but you're going to tell your stories from the studio and you're going to tell the stories of, you know, all the great people you've worked with. I said, no, no, no, that's not what it is. That makes it a smaller book. This is a timeless book. This is about a way of looking at things. And I wanted to be very clear in talking about the book. This is not a book about me. There's not one story about me in the recording studio. There's not one story about any artist I've ever worked with. That's not what this book is. It's more of a philosophical work thinking about how we make beautiful things. Speaker 1 (8:29) Let's talk about that philosophy. And I want to start with something you say very early in the book that seems very important to me, which is you frame artists and really you frame all of us as translators, as picking up signals from the world around them that many hear but ignore, or maybe many never even hear. And so you write then that the best artists tend to be the people with the most sensitive antenna. Give me some... examples of that to make that grounded? Okay. The first example that comes to mind is recent. I just made a new album with Neil Young and it's called World Record. And the way that that came about was he was hiking. Speaker 1 (9:16) in Colorado on a daily basis. And he noticed that he was whistling and he doesn't whistle much and he doesn't whistle well, but he noticed that he was whistling and he noticed what he was whistling was interesting and it wasn't a song he knew. And he decided to record on his little flip phone because he has an ancient flip phone, the whistling. And he did this every day and he collected 10 or so of these whistling melodies that if you asked him he would say he did not write they just he essentially channeled them they just happened and he was aware enough to capture them and then aware enough when he had a handful of them to say you know i think i could make this into an album this is interesting i like these melodies and they're unlike any melodies that i normally write so Speaker 1 (10:11) That's the basis of this album. It came from something outside of himself. We laughed a lot in the studio about, I'd love to meet the guy who wrote these songs. You know, who is this guy? They don't sound like Neil Young songs. And then when he sat down to write the words, he wrote the lyrics to all of the songs in two days without changing any words. It just sort of happened. And he said, that's never happened to him before either. From the beginning, and this is someone who's been making albums for 50 years, he found an entirely new way to work, not based on him deciding to find a new way to work, not on an intellectual choice he made, but on noticing. Speaker 1 (10:58) these whistling pieces are coming through. First step is I'll collect them. And then looking back, it's like, I feel like these are good. This is the beginning of something. So that's an example of being open to what comes. We recognize, we'll overhear something that someone says that's just the phrase we're looking for. One dimension of this for you is a view that the out there. of art and ideas, of zeitgeist, of energy is real. That creativity isn't just something we summon from inside ourselves, but something that we are. Speaker 1 (11:37) being able to pull from the world around us. And it creates a sort of sense of ideas as having their own volition. You write that if you have an idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it's not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn't because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea's time has come. Yes. You call it elsewhere a great unfolding. Tell me a bit about that idea of ideas as having almost their own life. We see it happen in movements of art where there'll be one artist somewhere in the world who starts working in a particular way. And then someone in far off reach, unconnected, a similar thing starts happening. Sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes five. And they're not imitating each other. It's like a bubbling up of this is what's next. Speaker 1 (12:37) Now, maybe the less mystical version of it would be if all of these things came before, this is the natural reaction to all the things that came before. You could make that argument. You could say that punk rock was a reaction to, you know, the complexities of progressive rock. Maybe. I don't know. But the fact that the Ramones sprung up in New York and the Clash sprung up in the UK. Speaker 1 (13:11) And didn't really know about each other at the beginning of that. It's interesting that these movements happen. And we see it again in painting all the time where you'll see a style appear and it changes. All of abstract expressionism isn't a copy of the first abstract expressionist. It happened. The time was right. And it seems like we see big ideas change in the world and we see things happen where possibility is unlocked. Is it purely that the mental block of believing it's not impossible is what allows us to do it? Maybe so. I don't know. But belief is a very, very powerful thing. I talk about it in the book. And the beauty of belief is it doesn't matter whether the thing you believe is true or not. Speaker 1 (14:05) It's your belief in it that gives it its power. It's not the truth in it that gives it its power. It's your belief in it. So belief is a really powerful force in the universe and a great one to have on your side. I talk also in the book about how you have to believe that something that doesn't exist can exist to bring it into the world. If you start with the idea that it's impossible, then it's impossible. We believe our way into things, allowing them to come into being in the world. And it is, for me, I have to say it's magic because that's my experience of it. I imagine something outlandish and... Speaker 1 (14:55) it somehow finds a way to come together. I think this would be interesting to me. I haven't seen anything like this. What would that be like? How can I bring that into the world and see how does it make me feel? So there's a belief and a suspension of disbelief that goes into all of the creation of art. If you want to make something new, there's no template to follow. Speaker 1 (15:20) we're really going out on a limb all the time. And we crash and burn a lot. You know, we crash and burn a lot in the process, just hopefully not too often on a grand stage. But the beauty of it is when we're making things, we're making them for us. And then it's up to us to say, okay, this is something I want to share with other people. Or this is something that not only do I not want to share with other people, this is telling me I want to go in this completely different direction because I found this is more of a dead end than I expected. Speaker 1 (15:50) I want to hold then on this idea, though, of the translator and needing a sensitive antenna to pick up on what signals you're hearing. From the people you've worked with, from yourself, how do you make that antenna more sensitive? If you want to be better at listening, not just to other people, but to the world, to what is maybe out there waiting to be born, out there waiting to be woven into a single thread, how do you become more sensitive to that? it seems the awareness practices and meditation are probably the best way to get there. And once you have an awareness practice, expanding it from the meditation cushion into the world to where you're living in a constant state of awareness, the beauty of the awareness practice and meditation is you get the tools to learn how to do it. Once you have the tools, it can't help but change the way you see the world. It happens organically. Speaker 1 (16:55) If you want to use it as a tool in your creative work, it becomes an obsession. And you're always looking for opportunities. You become Sherlock Holmes. You're always looking for clues. You're always seeing why is this color this color? Why did this tree decide to grow in this spot instead of on the other side of the road? Did someone plant it or did it happen naturally? If it happened naturally, why? But I would say it's a daily practice out in the world. And I'm giving examples from nature, but it's also, you can find it in literature. You can find it in movies. You can find it listening to people. It's everywhere you go. There's so much information that's being offered up and we only collect small pieces. Speaker 1 (17:45) But the more open we are to taking it in and looking for what's interesting, why is something interesting to us? What are we keying in on? What are we noticing that no one else is noticing? If you become aware of it, you start seeing it everywhere. Right now, I'm sitting in a room, I've sat in many times, and I'm noticing that there's a piece of wood that makes up a beam, and I can see that there's a red... streak in the wood. I've sat in this position many, many times. I've never noticed this red streak before. I see a red streak and I see some chips in the wood. And now, now that I noticed that, I start looking at every beam in the room. How is this one different? Why is this one like this? How come I never noticed it before? Speaker 1 (18:34) It just happens. We're talking about noticing things and I'm looking up. First thing I notice like, hmm, never saw that before. It's interesting. So it's like living in a constant questioning with everything you see, everything you hear, everything you do, just looking for what's interesting and why, what's different and why, what changed and why. One thing you say in your section on awareness is that awareness is not a state you force. And I want to say as an unaligned person that that doesn't often feel true. The distraction is not a state I force. And that awareness, you mentioned the constant practice of it, that awareness takes... Speaker 1 (19:21) a tremendous amount of energy and practice. And patience, yeah. And yet, I read enough Buddhist literature to know that it is supposed to be a state of rest and openness. So tell me a bit, for yourself, but also because you're working with a lot of people, and I'll get to this in a sec, who I think do have a lot of distraction in their lives, how do you navigate the actual difficulty of awareness, the getting to this non-force state? sometimes takes a lot of force, a lot of changes in context, a lot of work. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of dedication. It takes a lot of practice. But ultimately, if you're forcing it, it isn't what it is. The reason we say it's not something you can force is because it really isn't something you can force. And if you're forcing it, that isn't it. Speaker 1 (20:13) Do you know what I'm saying? You may force yourself to practice, but eventually you get to the point where you're there. It's like learning a habit. It's like learning to ride a bicycle. There's a lot of work to learning to ride a bicycle, but once you learn to ride a bicycle, you ride the bicycle and it's fairly effortless in terms of how to ride the bicycle. Maybe it's work and pedaling and steering. But the idea of getting the bicycle to balance, once you have that ability, you have that ability. Awareness is a bit like that. When you meditate, and I will say, it's a hole that gets deeper and deeper forever. So once you get the feeling for it, I would say if you were to meditate every day, twice a day for 40 days. Speaker 1 (21:03) At the end of 40 days, I'd be surprised if you didn't feel like a different person than the person who started. Now, to get to the point where you feel like you feel at the end of 40 days all the time is probably a lifetime of dedicated practice. You say that awareness is a practice maintained by rituals. We've talked a bit about meditation here, but tell me about some of the other rituals you've seen and particularly things that maybe somebody from the outside wouldn't realize is a ritual. What in the artists you've worked with or the people you've learned from have you seen as a ritual of awareness that might to someone else simply look like living or habit or routine? Speaker 1 (21:52) The first one that comes to mind is not one of awareness, it's of connection. And it was right before we started this together, I did a ritual for us where I imagined my higher self, I envisioned my higher self floating above me, and I envisioned you, and I envisioned your higher self floating above you. And then my higher self and your higher self embraced and agreed that we would work together to bring forth the best information that would be helpful to others. Now, you didn't know about that when we started, but that was something I did