The Consciousness of Creativity

From the Telepathy Tapes, S2 E3 -

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Ideas are conscious entities outside of ourselves that do not come from us but to us. Artists are sort of antennae who absorb ideas, that ideas swirl around the world looking for human collaborators, knocking on our doors and tapping on our shoulders and coming to us in the form of inspiration."

Gilbert's writing discipline: sit at the desk for 60 minutes, no standing up, no internet, no rule about producing anything. "You are not allowed to stand up from this desk for 60 minutes... Like, were you available so that if ideas came, they could find you at your desk?" The point isn't to write. The point is to be findable.

Ideas pick collaborators who are available. If you can't host them, they move on.

Rick Rubin: "The best artists seem to have an antenna open to whatever the universe wants to happen now in this moment. The information comes in and it's magic. And then we - the rest of us - we're the craftsman."

Rubin again: two artists can channel the same idea and make completely different things. The download is the seed; the labor is the manifestation.

Tom Waits to a melody muse on the LA freeway: "Can't you see I'm driving? Do I look like I have a piano here?... If you're serious about wanting to be a song, you know that I spend eight hours a day in the studio. The next time you see me in the studio, come and see me then. Otherwise, stop bothering me and go bother Leonard Cohen." Relationship, not transaction.