The Creative Act
Rick Rubin
★★★
CANONGATE. £20
‘A Way Of Being’: producer’s guide to making Art.
Rubin’s authorial debut doubtless invites ridicule for its Malibu Zen overload, and avoidance of memoir staples like star gossip or confessions. However, The Creative Act should rightly be recognised as a trove of insight into the process of expressing oneself via music (or any medium) – the spiritual yin to the nakedly materialistic yang of The KLF’s The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way). Though Rubin and ghost-writer Neil Strauss spent years editing down to the final 400-plus pages, there’s scarcely any narrative thread, just an inundation of often wonderfully gnomic wisdom on everything from eradicating the fear of starting your masterpiece (“lower the stakes”!), through to viewing discipline as freedom, and how to remain productive lifelong. Ploughed through in one hit, The Creative Act would probably send most readers around the twist; in random dips, its motivational energy is extraordinary, enough to coax forth the latent genius in us all.