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- [00:01]
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- [00:26]
Chris Duffy
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- [01:00]
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- [01:38]
Chris Duffy
You're listening to how to Be a Better Human. I'm your host Chris Duffy. When I first started comedy and I was going to open mics, it was often immediately clear who a new aspiring standup's favorite famous comedian was. You'd see this person get on stage and then you'd go, okay. This person is, without knowing it, doing an impression of Mitch Hedberg or Anthony Jeselnik or Sarah Silverman. You know, like, like I'd get up there and people would be like, okay, here is a guy telling jokes like a much less funny John Mulaney. And that was true. I did want to be like him, right? There's always this weird tension in being a creative person where on the one hand you want to do something that is original and unique and on the other hand you also want to be like the people whose work you admire. I struggled with that for a really long Time. But now I embrace the idea of being inspired by and emulating people whose work I admire. I keep a list on my desk of artists that I want to be like. It's a rotating cast of characters, but it's people like Spalding Gray and Ira Glass and Sarah Kay and Chris Gethard and bell hooks. I welcome them all into the simmering soup pot that is my brain. My recipe list of artists was itself inspired by today's guest, Austin Kleon. When I first read Austin's book Steal like an Artist, everything that I'd been worried about with creativity, it suddenly clicked. Here's a clip from Austin's TED Talk where he's explaining his philosophy.
- [03:03]
Austin Kleon
I am a creative kleptomaniac, but unlike your regular kleptomaniac, I'm interested in stealing the things that really mean something to me, the things that I can actually use in my work. Mr. Steve Jobs actually has a better way of explaining it than I think I could.
- [03:21]
Chris Duffy
It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. I mean, Picasso had a saying.
- [03:32]
Austin Kleon
He said, good artists copy, great artists steal.
- [03:36]
Chris Duffy
And we have, you know, always been.
- [03:39]
Austin Kleon
Shameless about stealing great ideas. Picasso, he said it artist theft. One time, a writer asked the musician David Bowie if he thought he was original. He said, no, no, no, I'm more like a tasteful thief. And he said, the only art I'll actually study is the stuff that I can steal from. When you look at the world this way, there is no longer good art and bad art. There's just art worth stealing and art that isn't. And everything in the world is up for grabs. If you don't find something worth stealing today, you might find it worth stealing tomorrow or the month after that or years later.
- [04:18]
Chris Duffy
Okay, consider this your invitation to steal as many ideas as you can from this podcast. Here's Austin.
- [04:25]
Austin Kleon
Hi, I'm Austin Kleon. I call myself a writer who draws. I make art with words and books with pictures.
- [04:31]
Chris Duffy
Okay, so let's start with the art that you make, since podcasting isn't traditionally a visual medium. So can you describe for us what your art or your artistic style is?
- [04:41]
Austin Kleon
Yeah. So I first became known for these things called newspaper blackout poems. And if you can imagine the CIA doing high coup, that's what it looks like. So what I do is I take an article in the New York Times, and I leave just a few words behind, and then I black out everything else. And it, they kind of connect into these little funny phrases or sayings. And that's what I got known for first. And when you watch my old TED Talk, that's sort of the work that led to that TED Talk.
- [05:12]
Chris Duffy
I love the like heavily redacted newspaper articles instead of as like a way of protecting national security, as a way of finding beauty.
- [05:20]
Austin Kleon
Yes, it's co opted.
- [05:22]
Chris Duffy
You talk about this a lot in the TED Talk and in your book Steal like an Artist. The idea to do that comes from a tradition of people who've done somewhat similar things, even though you didn't necessarily know that there was such a tradition when you started.
- [05:36]
Austin Kleon
So when you're a young artist and you sort of discover that the thing that you're doing is very similar to some people who have come before you, I think the only truly honorable thing to do is to locate yourself in a kind of lineage and to try to swim upstream and to say, okay, well these people that I might be borrowing from either unintentionally or intentionally, where did they come from? Where did their work come from? Who are they inspired by? And I think when you kind of swim upstream this way, you can kind of build a creative family tree. And what it does is it does a couple of things. One, it kind of gives you this whole kind of root system that you have that you can draw on. And it kind of creates this like undercurrent of strong DNA, I guess, for your work. But the other thing it does is it gives you ideas for your own work because you can start saying, okay, that person did this, what did they not do? Like, what did they not cover? Like, what did these heroes of mine that came before, what did they not get to attempt? And also what would happen if I got these heroes together in a room and had them collaborate? Maybe that's what my work can be. So it's kind of a general method of studying is the more you go back, the more you know how to go forwards.
- [06:57]
Chris Duffy
There's so much that I love about that. It's not actually about being solo. It's about being a part of a community and having a, like you said, a lineage, but also a peer group.
- [07:06]
Austin Kleon
Oh, I'm glad. And you know, that was not original to me. That was something I stole. Like the musician Brian Eno puts it this way. He says most of the time when we talk about creative work, we talk about genius, like the individual genius, the very special, superhumanly talented individual. You know, what we don't talk about as much is what Brian Eno calls seniors, which is the collective form of genius. So you know, you take someone like I was just watching George Carlin and it's like, here's this guy, he's on stage and it's just like, you know, one of our most genius comedians in one sense, but he didn't come out of nowhere. What's harder is for people who might like say you're a writer or something that's a little bit more solitary. You have to really understand that you're always collaborating because you're collaborating with what came before you. You're collaborating with the kind of now that will receive you. And in some ways you could think about collaborating with the future even because when you write something, you're making something that eventually down the line, you know, when I write a book, it doesn't do anything on its own. It's only when someone picks that book up and opens it that they activate whatever's inside, you know. So creative work is always a collaboration. So I err on the side of Scenius and not genius.
- [08:22]
Chris Duffy
If I was going to pick out the single biggest and most important piece of advice for someone who's thinking about being more creative or being professionally creative, it would be to focus on Scenius instead of genius. Two quotes that I think are related here from you is one is an artist's job is to collect ideas and then the other is nothing is original. All creative work builds on what came before.
- [08:45]
Austin Kleon
Yeah. So let's take them out of sequence. So the first part, nothing is original. That's, that's ancient wisdom. Right? That's in the Bible. There's nothing new under the sun. And actually that idea was borrowed from 2000 years before from the Egyptians. So that's a very ancient idea. The idea that, that there's nothing new. And I love the idea that there's.
- [09:05]
Chris Duffy
Nothing new as an idea is not a new idea.
- [09:08]
Austin Kleon
That's not a new idea.
- [09:09]
Chris Duffy
It's incredible. Yeah.
- [09:10]
Austin Kleon
And neither is the idea that everything's been done. This is a 4000 year history, writers complaining about how everything's been done. So that's like the starting point. If you say, okay, nothing is completely original when you start from that place, then your job becomes not to just come up with great ideas, you know, out of your own noggin. It's to expand your brain out into the world and to like put your tentacles, you know, kind of out into the world and grab stuff and collect stuff.
- [09:41]
Chris Duffy
I took a class once on screenwriting, how to format a movie script. And One of the parts that we spent a lot of time on was, how do you come up with an idea for a movie? And the thing that I now can't unsee is this person, this teacher, was really talking about how people get so obsessed with the idea of having a completely original idea. Whereas most really successful movies are just take an existing idea and then put it in a new place or put it in a different context. So the example they gave is like, Alien is a haunted house in space. That's all you needed to do is like, take a classic haunted house movie and then what if it was in space?
- [10:19]
Austin Kleon
Yeah, and that's how they pitch, you know, and that's how they pitch stuff. It's this, but this, right? It's Jaws in space. And I think that that's where the transformation part comes in. And I think that this is another Brian Eno idea, is that it's always generative to take something from one place and you just literally transport it to another place. And in doing so, you transform it. The reason I really like the steel metaphor, because people ask me all the time, oh, Austin, why you have to use the word steal. Like, isn't stealing bad and stuff? And the reason I like the steel metaphor is that it's kind of like being a jewel thief. You know, you're like always casing the joint. Like, you're always looking around for, like, what are the little bits and nuggets that I might be able to pick up? And I think it causes you to pay a certain kind of attention to the world. Because if you assume that every person you meet has some like, little nugget that you could use, something that you could steal, what you do is you pay attention to them in a way that's like, really fruitful. And I think that a lot of people who want to be creative, who want to make new stuff, they really need to learn to pay attention to the world. And I just think that the steel metaphor causes people to pay attention to the world in this, like, very, very specific and rich way.
- [11:43]
Chris Duffy
You obviously are really cross disciplinary, right? You're an artist, you're a poet, you're a writer, you're an author. I think a lot of people also struggle with the question of how to self define. And so I wonder, how do you think about that? Is that something we should even do?
- [11:56]
Austin Kleon
Yeah, I've gotten to this place where I have started thinking that nouns are more deleterious than verbs in the sense that I think that if you forget about whatever noun you're Trying to be. And you just focus on the verbs. The verbs will take you further. I'll be very concrete here. I meet a lot of people who want to be a writer, right? Like, I'd love to be a writer. Oh, but that writing part. Oh, I don't know about the writing part. You know, they would love to have like the noun, right? They'd love to be the writer and like all their ideas about like, what goes into that. But the actual verb, the actual thing that you do, that's the thing you have to worry about. And I think that, you know, job titles, that's for other people. You know, like, if you just consider yourself a novelist, well, what happens when you have a really good idea for a screenplay? You know, if you're only a stand up comedian, what happens when you want to do a podcast, right? Like, so if you focus on the verbs that you like to do and what kind of activates your creative mind, then that will take you someplace, you know, richer and further down the road than what you could imagine, just as a noun. And that's why I love to call myself like a writer who draws, because it just kind of weirds that writer thing. But I do think that internally, the more you think about the verbs, the things that you like to do, that's just way more fruitful than whatever the noun is that you want to be.
- [13:30]
Chris Duffy
We're going to take a quick break for some ads, but when we come back, we will have many more nouns for you to harvest. This episode is sponsored by Headspace. You know when someone asks, how are you doing? And we automatically say, I'm good. Lately I've been thinking, what if we actually meant that? That's the idea behind Headspace. It's an app designed to support mental health and well being through guided meditations, mindfulness practices, breathing exercises, and more. Over 100 million people use it to reduce stress, boost their mood and sleep better. What's interesting is how personalized it is. There's content for total beginners and longtime meditators alike. Whether you're navigating big life changes or just trying to get through your to do list, Headspace has tools for that. Even short on the go sessions when time is tight, feel good and mean it when you say it. For a limited time. Get headspace free for 60 days. Go to headspace.com betterhuman that's H E A-S-P-A C E.com betterhuman to unlock all of headspace free for 60 days headspace.com betterhuman banking with capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Ah, really? Thanks. Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Term supply see capitalone.com bank capital1na member FDIC.
- [15:15]
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- [15:58]
Chris Duffy
And we are back. We're talking about creativity with Austin Kleon. There can be a really high mental bar to think about, like, well, what would it mean if I was a writer or if I was an artist? But often there's a much lower internal bar to what would it mean to write something today? What would it mean to draw something today? I wouldn't have to be a capital A artist to take out a pen and sketch something on this piece of paper. It can be bad. I'm still drawing something.
- [16:24]
Austin Kleon
So the book I'm working on right now that will come out next year is called Don't Call It Art. And the the book is inspired by my kids when they were little. And there's something the artist John Baldessari said. He said, you know, I learned so much from watching little kids draw. Kids don't call it art when they're throwing stuff around. They're just making stuff. And I think that when it comes to making stuff, if you could just forget about art. You know, again, forget about that noun, forget about making art. And you just focus on like, what are the things that you do? Like, we're going to draw a picture and we're going to see what happens. We're going to get on stage and, and tell some jokes. That was the major thing that my kids gave me. It was just like, if you're not worried about the product and you're just focused on the process, just how good it feels to be scribbling, that's Something.
- [17:13]
Chris Duffy
Else that I wanted to talk to you about because I notice that you often write about and describe how your family and your kids are part of your creative life. They're not a separate thing. And I'm wondering, how do you think about that balance between family and inspiration and work?
- [17:36]
Austin Kleon
I don't. I don't think of balance at all. And I don't think about separating. I see everything as just a big stoop. I got really lucky early on. I had a couple of people I looked up to when I was younger that were very involved parents and also brilliant artists. And there didn't seem to be some sort of. I think a lot of people hear, like there's a Cyril Connolly line where he says, the enemy of art is the pram in the hall. So the stroller in the hall is the enemy of art on the whole, like, mothers do so much more labor that studying artist mothers ended up being a way more fruitful thing for me as a dad because it just gave me a higher bar to try, you know, live up to. But yeah, for me, the kids, I mean, if you are feeling stuck creatively, just borrow a four year old for an afternoon and you will see the world the way an artist sees it. Because everything is new to a four year old. They haven't seen this stuff before and they've just acquired language and so they have all sorts of crazy. They're poets, really. They're like ecstatic poets. I used to just like scribble things that my kids were babbling, you know, because they're just so. They're so tapped into the world in that kind of psychedelic artist way where they see the world with fresh eyes. And the reason they see them with fresh eyes is they've just never seen this stuff before.
- [19:02]
Chris Duffy
It also feels like there's this level where especially thinking about, right, like an artist's job is to collect ideas. You are able to get new ideas from being a parent because you're seeing the same old stuff, the same mundane things, but through this completely different lens where all of a sudden, like the idea of a lawn isn't just, oh, yeah, everyone has a lawn, it's like it's grass. And you could do this with the grass. And you know that if you dig, there's like a worm down here. And what's a worm?
- [19:31]
Austin Kleon
It's great that you mentioned grass because. And lawns because that's what Walt Whitman is doing in the first, you know, poem in. In Song of Myself in Leaves of Grass is he's literally looking at a grass and like talking to a kid about it. So it's like, that's what a poet does. A poet looks at the ordinary and pays really close attention to it. And then the ordinary plus extra attention equals the extraordinary, you know. But like, yeah, with the kids, I was like, these people are going to be my teachers. I'm going to make these little beginners my teachers was kind of my idea because I, I just like sort of started out with this idea that they would have way more to teach me than I would have to teach them. And that's what it turned out to be. And like that, that's where the whole idea from this next book came, is that I just was like, what happens when you're the studio assistant to these little pint sized Picassos? You know, because my four year olds drew like every artist dreams of, you know, they would just, just go at it, look at it. Ah, yeah, great. And throw it over their shoulder and start over. Just the most magical way of drawing. Just the way every artist would love to make work. It was really inspiring.
- [20:45]
Chris Duffy
But this idea that a lot of parenting I think can be viewed as like, ugh, mistakes and messes and that if you look at it in a different way, you know, you gave this example of like your kids, I think it was your couch, but like they, they drew in permanent marker on your couch and all of a sudden you were like, this is a masterpiece.
- [21:04]
Austin Kleon
My son Jules just got really into drawing skeletons and he drew a couple of skeletons on the couch cushions of the outdoor couch. I, you know, I posted it and said, well, sometimes we go overboard. And my friend said, what if you embroidered it? And so my wife actually embroidered over the drawings for the couch cushions. And so it became this whole thing. And it's about dealing with constant uncertainty and everything changing on you all the time. Because that's the thing is that kids are changing so much that every time you think you have them figured out, they change on you again. If you just show up every day and you put in the time and you're flexible and you're adaptable and you do what you're supposed to do, something eventually happens.
- [21:51]
Chris Duffy
And this is true with objects too. It's not just with people, it's true with objects is we often think that we take care of things because we love them. But actually it's just as true that we love things and that they're meaningful to us because we take care of them. That putting in the work builds the relationship. It's not necessarily just one Way or the other.
- [22:11]
Austin Kleon
Yeah, this is a beautiful idea that I think my friend Rob Walker first turned me on. He has a book called the Art of Noticing. And in that book, he has an assignment he gives his students where the assignment is to care for something. And so you have to care for something for a week. And I think that he got this idea from a student of his who took care of a plant for a week. And he was like, all of a sudden, I love plants, you know, because I spent time, like, caring for this plant. And I think, you know, I see everything as connected. And so it's like that with your art, if you are feeling uninspired and even if you hate your work, there's something about just showing up and going through the motions. And I love that. Going through the motions is a very underrated phrase, because that's what you do when you're a creative person. It's like, that's the big misunderstanding with creative work is so many people think you have the idea, and then you just have to figure out how to express it. And I find that it's really in the work. It's like writing is not about having an idea, then expressing it. Writing is about figuring out what you think. Like, figuring out what is going on inside you and what you really think. Actually, you don't know it until you see it on the page.
- [23:29]
Chris Duffy
I think that one of the biggest misconceptions that I had and that I still try and fight against is this idea that what I'm going for is something perfect. Like, if only I could write a perfect book or craft a perfect joke or have a post online that every person who saw it would have to, well, that is perfect. That's actually not. Like, that is something that I kind of think is my goal. But then in practice, the things that I feel the most are the most meaningful to me. The things that I feel the most connected to are the ones that are, like, obviously broken. And I found ways to fix and take care of. Right?
- [24:03]
Austin Kleon
Yeah. And I think it's really important to think about some of the art that you love or the people you look up to. And it's never, like, the perfect. Why is it that we're so attracted to things that are imperfect in other people's work, and then we don't let it into our own work? And I think that sometimes when things are imperfect, it lets us into the work a little bit. You know, if something's totally perfect, it's like, well, who would want to enter this thing and enter into a conversation with it. But if things are, like, just slightly off, then it, like, kind of brings us in. Like, I think the Japanese are a lot better at that than us. You know, I think, like, the idea of wabi sabiha is, like, good. Like, find things that are like. That have a. You know, like, a little bit of scratches and it's been worn in. I love the art of kintsugi, which is when you, like, break a pot and you use, like, golden glue to put it together, and they. They don't try to hide the seams. They actually bring them out. But I think there's a lot to be learned from that tradition of imperfection. That's what punk rock did for me.
- [25:06]
Chris Duffy
Like, when I.
- [25:07]
Austin Kleon
When I discovered punk rock or, you know, some of the real, like, rougher indie filmmakers, like Jim Jarmusch or something like that. Like that.
- [25:14]
Chris Duffy
That's.
- [25:14]
Austin Kleon
That kind of stuff, like, really spoke to me as a kid, because it was like. I think it was Bernard Sumner of New Order. He's like, yeah, I saw the Sex Pistols on stage. They were terrible. I wanted to get up on stage and be terrible with them. It's like that. You see imperfection in someone else. You're like, I want to do that.
- [25:33]
Chris Duffy
My version of this is improv comedy. Because, like, I mean, if it's a really good scene, it means that, like, people are having so much fun that they're like, I wish I could get up there and, like, be in. It's so funny. I wish I was part of that. And I think that probably that we've talked a lot about attention and paying attention to detail. And the thing that I think I've loved the most about performing comedy of that kind with other people is that you're not trying to avoid the mistake. You're trying to look at the mistake and pounce on it and use it as a gift.
- [26:00]
Austin Kleon
Yes.
- [26:00]
Chris Duffy
Oh, what a fun that is. To be like, okay, if you don't stumble over your words at all and you don't say anything weird, we're gonna be high and dry up there. Someone needs to do something weird unintentionally. So then we can take that path and make it look good and make it look like it wasn't a mistake at all.
- [26:16]
Austin Kleon
Well, you know, like, I live in a city where it's like, keep Austin weird is, like, the awful slogan we've had for so long. And I've been modifying it myself lately. I've been like, be the weird you wish to see in the world. Right? I Think about that a lot. And that's kind of what you're talking about on stage. You want something weird to happen just enough to make it interesting, right? That's what we're wanting. We want to mess up just enough to make things interesting and give us something to work with, you know, so.
- [26:43]
Chris Duffy
There'S these artistic ways that you can put this into practice even if you're not, you know, if you have a totally boring, random job that you don't particularly care about, you can still have these creative and artistic outlets in other parts of your life too.
- [26:56]
Austin Kleon
Oh, absolutely. I mean, one of the primary things I tell people is to get a hobby. I think hobbies are just so underrated in this culture because we're this culture of like, time is money. And then if you do get a hobby, you're supposed to professionalize immediately. Like, I love riding bikes and people say, oh, you're a cyclist? I say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not a cyclist. I like to ride a bicycle. I don't have a bunch of gear. It's not about like, you know, optimizing my speed and all that stuff. I like to ride bikes. I like to be an amateur. When you show people the process of everything that goes into what you do, it doesn't devalue it. It actually makes it even more valuable. Because there was this idea for a long time that like, but I think we're living in this world where if you can show people some of the work and all the effort that goes into what you do, people feel more attached to the product.
- [27:57]
Chris Duffy
Product. Okay, we are going to play a few quick ads speaking of products and then we will be right back after this. Don't go anywhere.
- [28:17]
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- [28:48]
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- [29:13]
Chris Duffy
Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to change. See capitalone.com for details.
- [29:17]
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- [30:05]
Chris Duffy
And we are back. One of the most amazing tricks for creativity, in my opinion, is to just walk away from a problem and do something else to let your brain simmer away in the background on the idea or the issue while you do something else entirely. Whether that's hanging out with a friend or swimming or cooking dinner. I'm so often shocked when I come back that the perfect solution or idea just suddenly appears.
- [30:28]
Austin Kleon
Well, we talked about collaboration earlier and one of the things that you're always collaborating with is time. Time is really a resource that people don't utilize enough is what the power of a good night's sleep or just a 15 minute break. Just that time travel of becoming someone else and coming back to your problem. Because I, because I've been through all and I've been things. So now I'm seeing this thing through a different lens. So yeah, you're absolutely right. It's like people think if I just sit here and I pound and I pound and I pound and I like drill through, I'll get to this thing. And it's like, no, the more you like, you put your time in and then you say okay, I'm going to walk away and then you come back, you go away so you can come back, right?
- [31:15]
Chris Duffy
There's like a really lot of examples and a depth of research showing that for creative work that the kind of, the maximum that almost anyone can do is three to four hours of creative work in a day, that there's a long history of that kind of being about the max that you can get done in a day. Which is not to say that you don't do more work in a day. It's just not creative work.
- [31:33]
Austin Kleon
Right. The really intense creative stuff. Yeah. I don't have more than three or four hours in me.
- [31:40]
Chris Duffy
We talked a little bit about show your work, and I want to talk about show your work and keep going. I have a newsletter that I know I'm going to write it every Friday. It's going to come out. Saturday morning, it's going to get scheduled. And that just takes all of the decision making out of it. So then it's not, am I going to do this? It's I am going to do it. How do I get it done? How do you think about that? Like, committing your future self to doing something versus leaving yourself this wide open space to kind of do whatever and have it come up. How do you balance those two pieces? Because you obviously need a little bit of both.
- [32:10]
Austin Kleon
Oh, well, that's. I love that you said, how do you leave this wide open space? That's the known variable. But the unknown is that empty space. What the hell's gonna go into it? Right? And so that to me is the spontaneity is the kind of like you. You have the. Like, you know, you have the date, you have the. The. You know what you're gonna do. You're gonna write a newsletter, but what's gonna go into it? And that's like the spontaneous part. And I think those blackout poems we talked about, when I was making one of those, two or three, four or five of those every day, like, I knew I was gonna sit down and try to make a poem, but I didn't know what it was gonna be. And that was the. I knew I was gonna sit down and work, but I didn't know it was gonna happen. And I think that's like the magic thing that creative people have to get hooked on. You have to get hooked into the kind of, like, what's gonna happen part of it. Right? Like, to be really, really orderly, to schedule your work, to, like, show up like it's a job, but then to get hooked into that magic of, like, what's gonna happen this time?
- [33:17]
Chris Duffy
I love that. That really resonates for me.
- [33:19]
Austin Kleon
People ask me, like, what's your schedule? And I'm like, well, I know what I'm gonna do on Monday, and I know what I'm gonna do on Thursday. Everything else is like, who knows? We don't Know what's gonna happen if I scheduled every portion of my day and my week for something that would not create the space for new things to fill it and to happen. You know, I think the tension is kind of an interesting idea in creative work. I'm a person who thinks that there's a proper tension between opposites in creative work and that actually the energy for someone's work is found in that. So let me give you one of my tensions, which is I find myself to be a deeply lazy person. I know we're not supposed to use that word anymore, like laziness doesn't exist or whatever. It's, you know. But I'm lazy. Like, I'm a lazy person. Like, left to my own defenses, I would sit around and do nothing. Like, really, I love to lay around and do nothing. But I'm an intensely disciplined person. And by discipline, I mean I take Robert Fripp's definition of discipline, which is making a commitment in time. I know that if I show up in a certain way, over time, I will get the things that I want, want. And so I use my intense discipline to balance out my laziness. But if I was just disciplined, I don't know that I would come up with the same work, you know, because it's like there's something about that tension between my deep longing to do nothing and to be extremely disciplined. Something arises out of that, right? And I think you can find these opposites and these tensions in your work. And I think that, like, this happens a lot in. In the creative life. I could just be giving away the fact that I'm a Gemini, if that means anything to people who are listening. But I've had these tensions. I have these opposites that pull at me as a creative person. Pictures and words would be another one. You know, I have this deep longing to, like, make things out of language and to move, you know, activate that part of my brain. But I also have this non verbal part of my brain that just wants to make pictures, you know, I'm a fairly mediocre writer. Like, I'm like, okay, I'm a perfectly mediocre, like, artist. But when you put the two together, I become pretty good, right? And so it's like the tension between those two. So I think that a lot of times in people's creative works, they're looking to minimize all tension. Like, well, if there's any tension, I don't want to be a part of it. But I'm always kind of like, pushing people to think about the Tensions in their lives as it creates energy. If a guitar string is too slack, it just buzzes. It doesn't make any sound. But if you ratchet it up too tight, it's going to snap. The music comes from the proper tension between the two, like, poles that the guitar strings on. So I think in a lot of creative life, people look at ways like, man, I just, like, I gotta chill out, like, minimize my tension, you know? And I'm like, no, you need to find the proper tension. You need to find the right tension that makes your work sing. And I think a lot of that is identifying the opposing forces within you and trying to wrangle some sort of proper tension so you can get the music.
- [36:39]
Chris Duffy
I've never heard anyone put it that way, but it really resonates with me. Resonates. Pun intended.
- [36:44]
Austin Kleon
Very good.
- [36:45]
Chris Duffy
Thank you so much. Steel like an artist we've talked about. Keep going and show your work. Two of your other books, Keep going, is about making art in chaotic times. And show your work is about how to put your work out there publicly. Now, the thing that is my personal challenge that I really struggle with, and maybe it's just an emotional thing, is when I combine those two, Making art in chaotic times and then putting it out, because I get so self conscious about putting things out there that are not directly improving the world at a time when it feels like the world so desperately needs to be improved. And that's often the barrier where I go, like, I can't post about this. I can't send an email about my little comedy show or send them, hey, listen to this great conversation. When it's like, it just feels like there's such a dire time. And it's kind of always a dire time in some way. So what do you think about that? How do you think about that for yourself?
- [37:46]
Austin Kleon
Here's what I think about art. I have friends who think that art can save the world. And I don't think art saves the world at all. I think that art is trying to throw art at the world is like Kurt Vonnegut said, it's like attacking a knight in armor with a hot fudge sundae. I don't actually think art saves the world. I think it saves lives. Like, I think it saves individual people. And if you do that enough, you save the world in, like, tiny ways. And so when I think about, like, my own work, I'm thinking about just reaching one reader. If I could just like, make one reader's day better, maybe they carry a little bit of something into Their day that, you know, that spreads gently or, you know, and if I can reach, like, enough people and I can kind of improve their day, and I can. I can stand up for the things that I think are worth saving in the culture. Because I think in some ways, just being a person who. Being a person that's curious, who pays attention, who spends time making things, these are things that are rapidly leaving our culture. Like, it's just like going away. If you can be a person who models that kind of thing, you're already, like, making a dent in things. You know, I feel like you just have to really think about the people you're trying to reach. And I think it's good to, like, go back. I always think about being that kid, you know, being 15 and growing up in the middle of a cornfield and how much that music, how much that comedy, how much that, you know, those movies meant to me, but also how that stuff activated the spirit in me that then, you know, made me look at the world a little bit different. So I think that, like, I'm not sure that art changes the world, but I think it changes people. And I think that's slowly, you know, it affects change. And I also think that, like, everybody needs to discover their gift, like what you've been put here to do, you know, like, I'm not really an activist. Like, I'm not very good at that, but I can show up and show people what it's like to think and pay attention and to, you know, have a spine as far as your own point of view goes, and, you know, how to manipulate the world and images and stuff like that. And so I think that if everybody right now would show up and do what they know how to do, like, I think things would be better immediately. Actually, whatever you've devoted your life to, if it was worth doing six months ago, I think it's worth doing now. You know, you just got to show up and do what you know how to do.
- [40:33]
Chris Duffy
So I struggle with, how do I do something that is gonna, you know, when there's only a limited amount of time in my day and in my week, how do I do something that's not gonna make any money and potentially be humiliating and feel really bad? And yet I know that that is the path towards new, exciting ways of self expression is to be humiliated and be terrible at something for a long time, potentially.
- [40:58]
Austin Kleon
I think about someone like Chris Rock who, you know, when he works up one of those specials, he gets into a club and there's no phones and he Knows it's going to be bad, and it's just like it's in private. You know, he's with an audience. But the phone element, not doing things publicly. I think you have to find some sort of wood sheddy kind of like. Like private place where you could put yourself in that kind of beginner's mind, throw stuff at the wall and see what happens type thing. And so I think that's why side projects and hobbies and stuff like that, putting yourself in a place where you can, you know, have a sort of safe failure. When you're starting out, you got nothing to lose. You'll do anything, right? Even a book like Steal like an Artist. People are like, how'd you write this book? I'm like, I didn't know you couldn't do things. And not knowing. Citizen Kane is a perfect example. Orson Welles said that, you know, how did we do Citizen Kane? And he said, ignorance, like sheer ignorance. I didn't know what wasn't possible. And that made it possible, you know, and there's a great. There's a great story and the element. The. Ken Robinson, the late. This is a great talk about the TED Talk, right? Ken Robinson, the TED Talk, where he says, you know, little girls, you know, drawing in a class. And, you know, the classroom teacher says, what are you drawing? And she says, I'm drawing a picture of God. And the classroom teacher says, well, nobody knows what God looks like. And she says, they will in a minute, you know, and it's like, how do you draw a picture of God? Well, you have to know that you've not, you know, you can, you know, it's not impossible, you know, And I think. But I think that's like, with the kids, that was something that really helped is like, what happens when we just sit here and draw something that we know we're just going to toss in the recycle bin afterwards. Like, what. What happens when we know, you know, we. That we know is not getting recorded. We make something we know we're going to burn later. That kind of thing. You know, you're just trying to, like, put yourself in that position where you got nothing to lose again, right? And, like, right now, you got something to lose. And so you just got to find those positions where you could be like those situations where you could put yourself where you got nothing to lose. That's why I like writing a diary, like my diary. I can whine and say awful things that, you know, that I would never want to say publicly. You know, it's the place to be really messy and weird. And then you just like try to find those places in your workday where it's like, how can we go at things like we're like doing our diary, you know, not having anything to lose again, you know.
- [43:39]
Chris Duffy
Yeah.
- [43:40]
Austin Kleon
How do you do it? I don't know. It's hard for me too.
- [43:43]
Chris Duffy
Austin Kleon, thank you so much for letting us steal some of your time and for being on the show. You are fantastic.
- [43:48]
Austin Kleon
Thank you Chris. This was great. I really had a lot of fun.
- [43:53]
Chris Duffy
That is it for this episode of how to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Austin Kleon. He is the author of Steal like an Keep Going and Show youw Work. You can sign up for his newsletter and more of all of his work@austincleon.com I am your host Chris Duffy and you can find more from me, including my newsletter and other projects@chrisduffycomedy.com how to be a Better Human is put together by a team of artists who are the exact kind of iconoclast that you want to steal from. On the TED side we've got the fully formed seniors of Daniela Balorazzo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohagnini, Lainey Lott, Tanzika Suungmanivong, Antonia Le and Joseph De Bruyne. This episode was fact checked by Julia Dickerson and Mattea Salas who always demand that we show our work. When it comes to citations and evidence. On the PRX side, they keep going and going and going. They are Morgan Flannery, Norah Gil Patrick, Patrick Grant and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. Please share this episode with a person who you admire and who you think is more creative and fun than they give themselves credit for. We will be back next week with even more how to Be a Better Human.
- [45:06]
Paige Desorbo
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Chris Duffy
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