“WTF is this guy on about?” I hear you ask.

Well, last week I got my hardback copy of “The Creative Act: A Way Of Being” by Rick Rubin sent through to me via Amazon and I couldn’t be more pleased.

I had known of Rubin through him being one of the founders of seminal Hip Hop label Def Jam as well as his music production exploits with artists such as Run DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys.

However, it was when he produced the Johnny Cash version of “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails for Cash’s last album, that I really started to take notice of the genius that is Rick Rubin.

In terms of sheer inventiveness and depth of musical vision I put Rubin up in my top three producers alongside Trevor Horn and Brian Eno.

Anyways, I found a lot of videos on YouTube singing praises about Rubin’s book that I just had to check out and in doing so I discovered two things that astounded me…

First of all he’s practised meditation since he was 14 years old and secondly (and most importantly) his views on creativity and the process that surrounds it is very similar to my views and it’s because of this that I just had to acquire his book.

Many years ago I purchased “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron and really gravitated towards her concept of the morning pages which is writing (at least) three A4 sized pages of stream of consciousness thinking every morning.

This eventually morphed into my daily journal writing ritual.

For me, The Artist’s Way was a big influence on my life at the time and I know that The Creative Act: A Way Of Being will become just as influential or even more so. I can’t wait to get my highlighter pen out and really start getting into the pages.

I’ll be sharing with all of you what I learn and discover through this blog so watch this space.

Peace,

Corey 🙂