Given my age and my aversion to hip-hop and other music genres that came after Herman and the Hermits, it’s not surprising that I had never heard of Rubin despite his being named by Time as one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.  So it was not his name on the cover that drew me to this book when I saw it on the shelf at the Cambridge Public Library.  Rather, I checked it out after I recognized the cover as one of the 10 best covers chosen by the New York Times Book Review last year.  I’m glad I picked it up.

Rubin is best known as the co-founder of Def Jam Records and the former co-president of  Columbia Records.  In those roles won two Grammy’s for Producer of the Year and two more for Best Album.  This is his first foray into writing, and it’s a good one.  A cross between a self help mindfulness book and a work of Eastern philosophy, Rubin argues that creativity is something you are, not something you do.  Everyone can be creative if they’re open to something that this very large, bearded 61 year old calls ‘The Source” which is where he feels ideas, the ‘seeds’ of creations arise from.  He admits that “We are dealing with a magic realm. Nobody knows how it works“, but that doesn’t stop him from providing 78 chapters with suggestions/ideas/plans for how to open yourself up to the creative spirit.  In chapters headed tuning in, practice, self-doubt, the ecstatic, etc., Rubin offers up his advice for how to tap into those creative juices he claims we all have.

The book reads in many ways like a collection of aphorisms, and among his own there are scattered those of others like Robert Henri’s “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”  At times, Rubin sounds like Yoda as when he writes “When the work has five mistakes, it’s not yet completed. When it has eight mistakes, it might be”.  Deep!

But don’t be put off by some of the new age stuff. This is a solid book in which a guy with absolutely solid creative credentials shares some of the lessons he’s learned along the way.  While it’s tilted towards music, there is good advice for painters, sculptors, writers, and other creatives.  The bottom line is to just do it!  When you have an idea, experiment with it.  If you find it exciting, pursue it and find that state of flow or absorbedness that characterizes the creative process.  It’s all about showing up each day, nothing more.

Rubin’s book is an easy read, and I do love the cover.