Way to Live, Way to Create
Book Review: The Creative Act: A Way of Being
This post is a part of IndieWeb Book Club October. Check this page for October’s Hostage information.
Toutes les grandes actions et toutes les grandes pensées ont un commencement dérisoire. Les grandes œuvres naissent souvent au détour d'une rue ou dans le tambour d'un restaurant.
– Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Are you an artist?
Do you want to be an artist?
For some people, it seems an impossible task to create art. It is universally thought that being an artist requires talents. Thus, advising them to make art could be an unwilling thing to them. They just have nothing to express on the canvas, not knowing what to do, and how to do.
Yeah, you might have already known something about the secret of the art. Of course, for creative tasks like art, talents are necessary. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that every ordinary person who wants to cast a glimpse on this enchanting world are up against the brick wall. A Gift is a jealous quality, whereas it is not ever an only entry condition. Nobody is going to be deprived of the right of entering the grand hall of Art.
When we are talking about talents for art, we are talking about technics. But whether possessing such technics is not the point. The truth is that people believing in their shortage in art abilities lack the basic perception of what’s going around in the corner of their lives. In other words, they do lack the concentration on details that make wonders.
In his widely known book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, a famous music producer who won five Grammy awards on one night in 2007, states his methodology for art creation in detail with eighty chapters, which covers almost every aspect of an artwork from the cradle.
This book means nothing new to me (self-boosting), but a significant introduction to the hall of art for those who attempt to escape the situation of a life without miracles. The deepest abyss between you and Art is, from my point of view, an automatic procedure, which the book devotes to articulating, within you. Puts it clearer: the decisive difference between the Heidegger’s das Man (the They) and artists to a more general extent is that the people sliding into the They ignore nearby small marvels whereas the artists widen their eyes of curiosity beholding every uniqueness, and the most important is such observation is driven by something automatically, springing out from within.
To internalize this procedure or power, you need to practice your mind. Through practice, there will be something subconscious drilling into your mindset unaware. It would be a long road for those who has been drowning in the ocean of dullness for a lengthy time of their lifespan. But it’s never too late to re-focus on Life itself, where Art is sourced from.
This book has too many chapters. Maybe it will stun you especially at present when we are living in a world full of tyrannies of short clips and trivial tweets. But, on the contrary, this book is absolutely a perfect alternative of your time-killer and pastime object. Each chapter is short, written in simple but beauteous proses. This is a book you can pick up, turning to a random page and read, and feel. Ideally fit for those impatient.
Another blogger has mentioned AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, which is an example used in the chapter Beginner’s Mind. I went to watch the documentary AlphaGo. When Move 37 that shocked the world appeared in front of Lee, he wore a strange expression.
At first, he smiled with a little mockery and confusion, but soon, the smile froze and vanished, altered by a silent shock and, if I could say, somber and tension.
Every time I review this scene, I have no capacity to evade such mixed feelings. As we push the artificial intelligence further outward the border of our perception, as we reach deeper into the dark universe, we may encounter more creations that do not belong to our own hands. At those moments yet-to-come, I hold a firm belief that the same turbulence swirling within Lee Sedol will actually recur in all of us. In the face of those unprecedented being, we are all beginners. But in many of the time it is the beginner’s luck that creates the unbelievable. So if you are persuaded by my post and get ready to read the book and gain sensibility for the world again, remember, keep humble, keep innocent, and marvelous fantasies are to lead you into the grand hall of Art.