Rick Rubin- The Creative Way: A Way of Being

The best books in our lives are those that come across us at random and win us over, without us really knowing why.

That's how I came across this magical book - The Creative Way. I was walking through a book shop in Johannesburg when, while browsing the bestsellers, I was drawn to a different book in the "Staff recommendations" section. Something immediately drew me to the book. I picked it up, felt it and knew there was something special there. It's like that with some books; you know you're going to like them before you even read them. The artistic simplicity of the cover showed its character. I had a different book in my hands. A book about art. A book that is art.

Last week I finished my first tour of this work, certain that many more would follow. The book now rests on the sacred shelf of my home library, where it has been welcomed by other books that are eternal in me, such as The Book of Disquiet or The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others.

The Creative Way is a philosophical book about creativity. It's a must-read manifesto for any artist. In it we rediscover the essence of art in its purest expression.

The book is not structured by chapters, but by stages, more emotional than logical, which guide us through the creative process.

Rather than rules, which are often limiting, it brings us principles that expand us as creators. More than teachings, it leaves us with feelings. Rather than moulding us, it helps us to free ourselves.

A true epitome of the feeling that needs to exist in order to exist, this work takes us back to the moment when we fell in love with art, whatever its form.

Filled with brilliant phrases that are too tempting not to share, what remains is the absolute simplicity of what is most important when it comes to artistic creation. Art should be created because you, the artist, feel it and your duty is to find the best possible form of expression in it. Art is created, argues Rick Rubin, from the inside out. As if we could find in it the purpose of certain moments in life. In certain cases, in certain works, perhaps our whole lives.

Art is not interpreted, he adds. You feel it. Anything more complex than that is superficial and therefore unnecessary.

I believe it's impossible to read this work and not feel inspired to create or, at the very least, to fall in love with life and the invisible possibilities it holds.

Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life, Rubin tells us in a short sentence with the depth of eternity.

In another part of the book, more extensively but just as beautifully, Rubin challenges us to imagine that we are going to live in an isolated house on top of a mountain. A house where no-one will visit us. A refuge of ours, only ours. And he urges us to think about every detail we want to put there, in that absolute refuge, where we will be alone and be us. Although it's not a space open to visitors, Rubin intuits that we will put our soul into every detail of this house. And, he concludes, that is, after all, the essence of true art.

There is an audiobook available on YouTube for those who prefer this format. But, I have to tell you, this book, in its physical version, is a real stimulus to the feelings.

I hope that you allow yourself to enjoy this beautiful read, that you have the courage to connect with your own feelings and, in the end, that you have the humility to allow the art that this work inspires to be born within you.

"The object isn't to make art,

it's to be in that wonderful state

which makes art inevitable."

Robert Henri

Carlos Osvaldo Mabutana