The key ideas

The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Rick Rubin, 2023

We tend to think creativity is a rare gift for the chosen few. One of the most influential music producers in the world believes the opposite: it is a way of living and noticing the world, open to everyone. Rick Rubin shows where ideas come from, how to gather them without judging, and how to finish work that never feels perfect. This book is not about tricks. It is about taking back your right to create.

Who it is for

For anyone who thinks they are not creative enough, and for those who do create but get stuck: afraid of what others will say, or unable to finish anything.

Living as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention.

What this book is about

Most of us are sure that creativity is a rare gift. It goes to artists, musicians and poets, and the rest of us can only admire it from the sidelines. Rick Rubin, one of the best-known music producers in the world, says the opposite: everyone has a creative side, because creativity is not a profession but a way of living and looking at the world.

Rubin hardly plays any instruments and writes no sheet music. His job is to create the conditions in which an artist can hear themselves. Over the years he came to see that the most important part of creating doesn't happen in the studio. It happens in how a person notices what is around them, and in how they treat their own ideas and other people's opinions.

This book is not a set of tricks. It is a view of creativity as a way of life. Ahead you will find out why an artist works like an antenna, where to find ideas when there seem to be none, and how to finish work that never feels perfect. And why all of this is open to you right now, with no special talent.

Idea 1. Creativity is a way of living, not a rare gift

We are used to dividing people into the creative ones and the ordinary ones. Rubin thinks this division is false. To create is to notice the world and respond to it in some way, and anyone can do that. If you have ever searched for the right words before a hard conversation, or moved the furniture around so your home felt easier to breathe in, you have done it.

The main creative skill, in Rubin's view, is not technique or taste but awareness: the ability to notice what usually goes unnoticed. An artist differs from other people not in talent but in attention. They see things in the familiar that everyone else stopped looking at long ago.

What holds us back most often is one thought: “I'm not talented enough.” Rubin suggests changing the question. Not “Do I have a gift?” but “What am I looking at right now?” How to use it: today, pick one ordinary object or sound near you and stay with it for a minute, looking or listening as if you were meeting it for the first time.

A man walks to work down the same street every day and remembers nothing about it. One day he leaves his phone at home, walks without a screen in front of his eyes, and suddenly notices the plaster mouldings on an old building he has passed for years.

Creativity starts not with talent but with attention. If you recognise yourself in the man who stopped noticing his street, that is no reason to blame yourself: almost everyone lives that way until they decide to look differently.

Read in Livria

About the author

Rick Rubin is an American music producer and co-founder of the Def Jam label who has worked with artists across a wide range of genres. He is one of the most influential producers in the history of popular music.

All books by this author: Rick Rubin

Terms from the book

  • meditation
  • abundance
  • Perfectionism
  • Awareness
  • Creativity: The ability to notice the world and respond to it in some way. For Rubin it is not a profession for the chosen few but a way of living open to everyone.
  • Antenna: Rubin's image, not a fact: an artist does not create an idea but picks it up, the way an antenna picks up a signal when it is tuned right.
  • Source: The author's image, not a scientific idea. A shared, endless supply of ideas and meaning that, in Rubin's view, surrounds everyone and is open to all at once.
  • Vessel: An image from the book: the artist as a container through which an idea from the Source passes into the world, rather than the sole author of the whole work.
  • Seed: The author's name for a first, still raw idea. Its job is to be noticed and kept, not to be good right away.
  • Critic: The inner voice that judges and rejects. Rubin advises turning it down in the early stages, when an idea is easy to kill with judgement that comes too soon.
  • Inspiration: The state in which ideas seem to arrive on their own. For Rubin it cannot be forced, but you can create the conditions for it: quiet and attention.
  • Phase: A stage of work on a piece. Rubin names four: seed, experimentation, craft and completion, and advises not mixing up their tasks.
  • Experimentation: The phase in which you try many versions without judging them. The goal is plenty of attempts, not a good result straight away.
  • Craft: The phase in which you pick the best out of many attempts and bring it to a finish. This is where rigour and choice belong.
  • Completion: The last phase: the work is released into the world. Not a moment of perfection, but a decision to stop and show what you have made.
  • Non-attachment: The ability not to cling to the result or to other people's opinions. For Rubin it means: do it honestly, let it go and move on to the next thing.

All terms

Similar books