Rick Rubin Speaks
She opened the grey linen-bound book where it had been abandoned many months before, demoted under her compulsion for book buying. Her enthusiasm for devouring the wording of ideas and inspiration no longer matched her capability to regularly read nor accommodate her default of nodding off after a few pages, so the books in waiting were many.
Rick Rubin had been waiting patiently in the grey linen, sat in full Lotus with his long white beard stroking the breeze, waiting knowingly to tell her about the seeds of creativity. With a calm and generous conviction he offered that her seeds needed to be watered with awareness and given good time and space to germinate.
“The temptation to insert too much of yourself in this first phase can undermine the entire enterprise….At this point in time it’s helpful to think of the work as bigger than us. To cultivate a sense of awe and wonder at what’s possible, and recognise that this productivity is not generated by our hand alone.”
Had he been watching her? She had just completed a year long apprenticeship with the wild joining amazing strangers who were now dear friends, her Wolf pack. She had returned home so nourished and inspired but only a few weeks beyond and she was congested with ideas and possibilities, their multiple threads ever more entangled and residing in her chest as an inert knot. She was frustrated by so many sparks unable to catch fire, feeling suffocated by their smoulder. She felt like the result of her earliest attempt at making compost when her over zealous mounding of green in one fell swoop had mulched heavy, stagnating in slime and smelling more than it was useful.
But it was Winter. Thankfully, it was Winter and she honoured the seasons and elements enough to know it was a time of listening and non-doing. So with Rick’s encouragement firmly nestled in her heart she tipped her head to the side, put a pause on striving and allowed all her seeds to slide gracefully from her left ear into the large earthenware pot she had rescued from the cellar. The pot was now re-homed in her hearth with an ample fire warming its bottom, a fire she was rather pleased with. She would tend the fire day and night, stirring the pot just enough to keep it aired and loose. She would wait for the aromas to tell when it needed a little seasoning, a story or prayer to enrich, perhaps a little more water or heat. She would sit alongside that newly beloved pot and craft, allowing her mind to weave amongst the threads, letting go of old parts of self with each wood shaving given to the flame and listening to her Heart-song with each tune sung. And she would wait until Spring stirring to see what had cooked.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin, Canongate, 2023
One to Gift
