I recently listened to a podcast when Ezra Klein interviewed Rick Rubin, the famous recording producer. In the introduction, Klein says this about Rubin:
“Reading Rick Rubin’s production discography is like taking a tour through the commanding heights of American music over the past few decades. Jay-Z. Run-DMC. Beastie Boys. Slayer. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Johnny Cash. Kanye West. Neil Diamond. Brandi Carlile. Eminem. Adele. And it’s not just his production credits: Rubin co-founded Def Jam Recordings and was a co-chairman of Columbia Records. What’s allowed him to work with so many different kinds of artists, across such a stunning range of genres, so successfully?”
“In his hew book, ‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being,’ Rubin turns his philosophy of creativity into a manual for living. It is not, to be honest, the book I was expecting. It is less about music than mind states: awareness, openness, discernment, attunement to nature, nonjudgmental listening, trust in your own taste. It is at once mystical and practical, alive to the tensions of creation but intent on holding them gently. I found it unexpectedly moving.”
During the podcast, Klein asks Rubin to elaborate on something he wrote in his new book: “…that the best artists tend to be the people with the most sensitive antenna.” Rubin elaborates by telling a story about composer, singer, and rocker Neil Young:
“I just made a new album with Neil Young. And it’s called ‘World Record.’ And the way that that cam about was he was hiking in Colorado on a daily basis. And he noticed that he was whistling. And he doesn’t whistle much, and he doesn’t whistle well, but he noticed that he was whistling.”
“And he noticed what he was whistling was interesting, and it wasn’t a song he knew. And he decided to record on his little flip phone, the whistling. And he did this every day. And he collected 10 or so of these whistling melodies that if you asked him, he would say he did not write. They just – essentially channeled them. They just happened.”
“And he was aware enough to capture them and then aware enough when he had a handful of them to say, you know, I think I can make this into an album. This is interesting. I like these melodies and they’re unlike any melodies that I normally write. So that’s the basis of this album. It came from something outside of himself.”
“We laughed a lot in the studio about, I’d love to meet the guy who wrote these songs. Who is this guy? They don’t sound like Neil Young songs. And then when he sat down to write the words, he wrote the lyrics to all of the songs in two days without changing any words. It just sort of happened. And he said, that’s never happened to him before either.”
“So from the beginning – and this is someone who’s been making albums for 50 years – he found an entirely new way to work, not on an intellectual choice he made, but on noticing these whistling pieces are coming through. First step is I’ll collect them. And then, looking back, he’s like, I feel like these are good. This is the beginning of something. So that’s an example of being open to what comes. We recognize – we’ll overhear something that someone says that’s just the phrase we’re looking for.”
Whereas the traditional system of learning tells young learners how to “whistle,” when to “whistle,” and what to “whistle,” the new system of learning will be all about “the whistlers” and their creativity. It will be their creativity that plans the day’s activities, celebrates struggle and success, and introduces all of us to a new lifelong learning pathway.
It’s going to happen.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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