How Rick Rubin Finds the Magic in the Moment

When we have an idea, it doesn't come from nowhere. It's not, it's not ours. We're filled with data points of all of the experiences we've had in life. Our real life experiences, our dreams, what we've read, what we've learned in school, what we've overheard, all of those things are in us. Some of them we know consciously, some of them are unconsciously in us. So when we have an idea, it's some reformation of something that's already there. Like you'll see a connection, this data point from junior high school and this data point from the time I was walking down the street in New York. You make a connection and it leads you to, oh, I could try something like this. If those two ideas somehow clashed, something interesting happens. In anything you're making, it's always a question of balance, more of one thing, less of another, until you get to this magic place where things are in balance. And what we see in nature is a self-balancing system. And just because we're seeing it demonstrated all the time, it's a good barometer. It's like if you're in tune with nature, I think you can see balance better just by osmosis. If you pay attention to the changes in the seasons, what happens when it rains, where the water goes, the whole evaporation cycle, you see things happen in nature and the design is perfect. So if we're designing things and if there's an example in the world that you could see anywhere you go, that's perfect. It's helpful to raise your game if you're paying attention to the perfect example. And it's on a grand scale, which is also nice. Like you can see it in so many aspects, just sitting and watching the tides. It's a great feeling. I see it happen all the time. I'm paying attention and I'm trying to solve a problem. I'm working on a project and I get to an impasse and I'm trying to figure out the way to go. And I just go about my life and then I'll read a particular, I'll pick up a book and open it randomly and it'll say something directly related to what I'm looking for. Or I notice something in nature that somehow tells me a story that gives me a glimpse into the thing that I'm looking for. Now, it'd be very easy to miss these things. If you're not really paying attention, they're just going by. But if you're willing to stop and pay attention, we're getting messages from a lot of directions all the time. And my theory and my experience, based on my experience, the theory is that the universe is conspiring on our behalf to feed us the information we're looking for. Now, not all the time. Sometimes you work on a project and you just keep hitting walls and maybe the universe is not supporting that one. It's all instinct. What you're describing, your experience was based on instinct. You thought this would be better if we'd move this like this. You didn't learn that. Nobody taught you that. Same with me. I don't know anything about music at all. I love music. I feel music in my body. And when I hear it, I can articulate what is stimulating to me and what's not. And if I can find the parts that are stimulating and find the parts that are not, differentiate them and talk about how do we take the parts that are not stimulating and make them stimulating, that's it. It's not based on any knowledge. Now, that's how it was in the beginning. Now, while it's still the same, the difference is I now have 40 years of experience. So now I've tried a lot of things and seen things that work. So I probably have a bigger bag of tricks now than I had when I was starting. But when I was starting, nothing was impossible. Yeah, and nothing was a trick. Now I've tried a bunch of stuff. So maybe there's some part of me that feels like, well, I tried that once before and it's not going to work. But I know enough to know that's not true. Like, I know that we never know until we try things what works and what doesn't. And I often will think of a bad idea and on purpose try that bad idea just to see where it leads. Sometimes it turns out not to be bad. Sometimes it's worse than I thought. But the spark of seeing this bad idea through, you start recognizing where it can go. It's like, this is a bad idea, but if this part of it got amplified and if this part of it went away, maybe it's more interesting and that'll be the next iteration. And it's just a series of iterations and looking for clues, looking for bad ideas, strange ideas, dangerous ideas, and seeing what happens. Any of the greats usually have some series of things that happened that allowed them to be tuned in in a deep way. Now there are things that all of us can do to get as close to that as we can. Tell you what. We can't all be Mozart, but we could all get better at whatever the thing that we're interested in getting closer to. And when I started the book, I thought it was more about what to do. But as the subtitle of the book tells it, it's more of how to be in the world. It's as much about what you're doing when you're not working as when you are working and living in this open state of curiosity, open state of awareness, kind of like in meditation, which the goal of meditation always was never what happens in the 20 minutes or 30 minutes or hour on the cushion. It's always you do that as a practice, as training, so that eventually when you're not on the cushion, your reactions are closer to what they would have been sitting on the cushion. So any awareness practice that you do will lead you to being more in tune with what's going on around you, more sensitive in a good way. I believe in a good way can also be painful, but that's, you know, that's the balance of everything. People who take antidepressants, it doesn't just make the bottom less of a bottom. It also limits the top. Sure. You know, it compresses the range and things like meditation open the range. You can feel more, but because you're used to sitting in an uncomfortable way for a long period of time, you also develop a, like a tenacity to be in that discomfort. We're conditioned to bring stories, our story to whatever we see. So if I have certain beliefs and I see something happen out in the world, it either confirms my beliefs or it goes against my beliefs. And if it goes against my beliefs, it makes me angry. And if it confirms my beliefs, it puffs me up and I feel good. And it's not really a way to make any progress. You're kind of stuck in this one place and anything that comes at you either fits your narrative or doesn't fit your narrative. And I'm suggesting the detached part of it is to take everything at face value, not bring any of your baggage to the things that you see. So no, no previous beliefs, including what is and isn't possible. That's a big part of it. Right. As soon as you start thinking it can't work, it won't work. As soon as you think it's impossible, it will be impossible. It's a fair to complain. Yeah. So coming at everything with this open desire for pure understanding with no beliefs, no baggage.