“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”
The Creative Act, by the accomplished music producer Rick Rubin, is an absolute slammer.
You may think that creativity is something people are born with – some innate characteristic reserved only for the artistically elite. Rubin completely shatters this preconception.
He argues that human beings are innately creative. Anything we bring into the world from our own unique perspectives and experiences is creation. Traditionally, we might think of creative output in the form of paintings, music, dance, craft, writing… but it can also be a conversation you initiate, an idea you share, a different path you take on your commute home.
We start to see that creativity is much more of a state – a way of being – than a coveted ability.
Rubin lowers the barrier to entry for accessing creativity.
It’s not what you think, and its by no means out of reach.
I’ve gleaned so many insights from this book, and because of this I want to offer my perspective of how these ideas relate to the art and skill of woodworking. I’ll zero in on three specific ideas from the book and describe how they can provide significant unlocks for the craft. The ideas are: the ability to tune in, having a beginner’s mind, and using (or breaking) rules.
Tuning In
Rubin explains the process of creativity starts with being in a state that’s open and ready to accept what the universe has to provide. He uses the analogy of a conveyor belt, continuously transporting packages – that’s the universe offering inspiration, and we’re free to take any of the packages we discover. To receive inspiration, we must tune in.
Rubin argues that to tune in, we need to free up the clutter in our minds to provide space for the new insights to come in. We draw it in with a vacuum-like effect.
We also need to be able to experience things in the rawest form possible. This means that we don’t try to analyze or predict; we don’t try to compare it to something else; we don’t determine how it fits into our own story or identity.
Rubin explains that these actions overprocess our experience to the point where the beauty, the novelty, the interest is lost. Rubin references the natural behavior of a child: experience without judgement or analysis, no story, no prior experience to compare. Everything is new, interesting and awe inspiring.
A woodworker looking for inspiration for their designs needs to be open to where that source material may come from, because it might not be where you expect. The key, as Rubin states, is to hold a problem loosely in the back of your mind as you experience life.
For example, an initial thought might be to study other woodworkers who have designed and built beautiful furniture. But if you limit your source material to just this realm, you are likely over-constraining yourself to only what already exists in your medium.
If every creator only pulled inspiration from other creators in their same domain, I don’t think the art would ever really grow. It would be a long and uninteresting loop of minor variations and remixes of what’s been done before.
We owe it to our creative impulses to look elsewhere. Here are some places I have begun to look since reading this book:
Architecture: This one is not a huge leap from building furniture, but because both areas need to consider the structural integrity of the creation, it is a very good jumping off point.
As woodworkers gain experience, we might start to adopt a certain style (minimalist, modern, mid-century modern, arts and crafts era etc). We can use our affinity for that style to go looking at architecture with a similar style.
What intrigues you about that old brick building across from the train station? Or the brand-new apartment complex that went up in your city? Or the temples you visited in southeast Asia? Or that wild modern sculpture in the airport terminal? Grab what interests you first and collect it all – without judgement or categorization. Rubin calls these “seeds”.
Then you can try to analyze why it pulls you in and see if you can recreate that feeling in your designs.
Nature: We are creatures of nature, producing handmade items with raw materials from nature. It only makes sense that we look to nature, and our experiences of it, for design inspiration.
Maybe you have a favorite local park, and in that park is your favorite tree. Maybe it’s your chosen picnic or reading spot. Something about that tree has always drawn you in, pushing the other nearby features into the background.
It could be the immense circumference of the trunk, creating a feeling of stability and age. It could be the way the branches subtly arc and stretch out independently, allowing the leaves to provide a near perfect sunshade. Or maybe it’s the fact that the tree is rooted in a specific area of the park, far away from all the other organic or man-made features, and it’s the negative space that helps to elevate its profundity.
The beautiful thing about what you perceive, in nature, architecture, or anything else, is that no one else can perceive it in the same way. You are uniquely suited to transmute that experience into a design and bring something beautiful into existence.
Beginner’s Mind
This concept has two meanings to me. One I’ve learned from the book and one I’ve learned from my time in the martial arts. Both apply to creativity.
Rubin’s Take
Rubin says that the beginner’s mind speaks to the power of purity in the creative process. That, when untethered by cultural norms, past precedence, or accepted narratives, you are free to accept source material in its raw form and creative something that truly speaks to you.
Just like any other medium, woodworking is full of standard conventions and accepted norms for how something should be built or how it should look.
Learning from other craftspeople, reading books, watching videos, and studying other’s work can all be great for learning, but they have the unintended effect of hamstringing you into a certain way of thinking.
Once you see everyone on Youtube building a trestle table base with a certain type of joinery, it can be hard to realize that the same method may not be the best choice for your project, whether for aesthetic or structural reasons. You become more informed, but you also become more jaded – it’s a double-edged sword.
My Take
Because I practice both martial arts and woodworking, I like to build connections between the two wherever I can. There are so many similarities.
Beginner’s mind is a concept in Japanese, translated as “Shoshin”. Shoshin is what you need to embody if you wish to continually learn and improve throughout your life. This mindset keeps you asking questions, paying attention, and staying humble so that you may gain the knowledge and skills you lack.
As soon as you believe that you have mastered something, well you’re probably wrong, and you’ve also squandered your chance for further progression.
On the surface, continually improving at your craft and accessing creative potential seem like two different things. But there’s more connection underneath.
Having a beginner’s mind = Realizing you can improve
Realizing you can improve = looking for opportunities to improve
Looking for opportunities = Exposure to new things
Exposure to new things = fresh perspectives
Fresh perspectives = Beginner’s mind
It’s just simple math.
In woodworking, once you find a design style or a build method that works, you might be inclined to stick with that. After all, it’s makes it easier when you become more proficient and you know what to expect with the finished product, right?
Yes BUT… it becomes the antithesis for exploration and growth. It’s more productive to open your mind to the idea that there might be a better way – better for build quality, or design, or just your enjoyment of the process.
How to Use (or Break) Rules
Rules are constraints, good or bad. They limit our choices and guide our actions to achieve a specific result (again, this can be good or bad).
Rubin explains that rules governing creativity are not the same as the laws of nature. “They are assumptions, not absolutes”.
From reading this book and from prior experience, it seems as though the value of following rules does not remain constant over time and skill. When we are first starting out in a particular domain with no knowledge or skill, rules are extremely helpful. They help us to learn by providing concrete guideposts.
But this value starts to diminish if we continue to use rules in the same way as we advance in our art or our craft.
Once again, I’ll introduce a concept from martial arts and Japanese culture to help reinforce this idea – a concept called “shuhari”. This concept highlights the process for attaining skill and mastery in any endeavor. Rough translations as follows:
“Shu” – to obey or protect the rules.
“Ha” – to break or detach from the rules.
“Ri” – to transcend the rules.
It’s so important to understand where you are on your creative journey so you can understand where you should be employing rules and where you should be breaking them.
Rubin suggests that both complete beginners and masters of a domain can both produce something unique because they either have no idea what the rules are (beginner) or because they know which rules no longer apply (mastery).
“Often, the most innovative ideas come from those who master the rules to such a degree that they can see past them or from those who never learned them at all.”
Just like Rubin compares creative laws to natural laws, woodworking has certain laws that shall be followed unconditionally. These rules include respecting wood movement, reading grain direction, understanding strength the of joints for certain applications, and appropriateness of wood finish selection.
But so many other decisions, both in the design phase and the crafting phase, are not constrained by absolute rules. They may be constrained by previous craftsman or cultural expectations, but they’re not real, and they’re probably maladaptive to your progress.
Back to woodworking… once you begin to understand the immutable laws for constructing a piece of furniture that will last, you are free to get as weird as you like.
If most cabinets you see have hinged doors, what if you used magnets so that you could remove the door and use it as gameboard?
If most tables are completely flat, what if you made one with very subtle texture? Flat enough to sit a glass on, but irregular enough to make you interact with its tactile intrigue.
Consciously set rules that can help you. Uncover the hidden rules that are holding you back, and transcend them.
Conclusion
I pulled a select few ideas from this book to talk about in this blog post. There are so many other insightful ideas in the book that are worth checking out for artists, craftspeople, and anyone looking to show up in the world in a new and creative way.
Thanks for reading! This is blog post 4 for Longolucco Woodworks and I am gaining immense pleasure from planning and writing these articles. It is challenging and engaging. I am by no means a good writer but am slowly trying to improve, thought by thought, sentence by sentence. I would definitely appreciate any feedback!
I plan to continue writing a post every week for the foreseeable future with the hopes that I can create an archive of content that will be valuable to woodworkers and non-woodworkers alike.
Cheers! Until next time.