Just Make Art
A conversation about making art and the artist's journey with Ty Nathan Clark and Nathan Terborg, two artists trying to navigate the art world, just like you.
In each episode, the duo chooses a quote from a known artist and uses it as a springboard for discussion.
Through their conversations, Ty and Nathan explore the deeper meaning of the quote and how it can be applied to the artists studio practice. They share their own personal stories and struggles as artists, and offer practical advice and tips for overcoming obstacles and achieving artistic success.
Whether you're a seasoned artist or just starting out, "Just Make Art" provides valuable insights and inspiration to help you navigate the creative process and bring your artistic vision to life. With their engaging and conversational style, Ty and Nathan create a welcoming space for listeners to explore their own artistic passions and learn from two artists working hard to navigate the art world.
Just Make Art
David Lynch on Ideas, Meditation and Artistic Freedom.
What if the mind could fish for ideas just as easily as one casts a line into the sea? Join us on a voyage into the enigmatic world of the late David Lynch as we explore his profound influence on creativity. From the haunting landscapes of "Twin Peaks" to the visceral imagery in "Eraserhead," Lynch's work has left an indelible mark on the arts. We share personal stories about encountering Lynch's films for the first time and how his distinct vision has shaped our own artistic paths. The episode also highlights Lynch's unique approach to capturing ideas, likening them to fish swimming in the vast ocean of our subconscious, just waiting to be caught with the right amount of patience and silence.
The art of meditation takes center stage in our conversation, revealing how it can be a powerful tool for achieving balance in your studio practice. By examining David Lynch's philosophy and the insights from his book "Catching the Big Fish," we delve into how meditation aids in nurturing the true self. This introspective journey includes reflections on the wisdom of philosophers like Donald Winnicott, historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and musical poets like Nick Cave, with anecdotes that illustrate how meditation serves as both a shield and a weapon against life's inevitable challenges. The discussion underscores the importance of clarity and focus in the pursuit of artistic expression.
In the quest for creative freedom, we navigate the essentialism and the balance between light and darkness in the artistic journey. We uncover the liberating potential of saying no to distractions, embracing the mystery of the unknown, and documenting fleeting thoughts to ensure they aren't lost to time. Practical tips come to life, offering listeners ways to capture inspiration through journaling and other methods. Whether you're a seasoned artist or a curious beginner, this episode invites you to rethink the boundaries of your creative process and rediscover the joy of genuine artistic freedom. We will mis you David Lynch.
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ideas are the number one best thing going. And ideas come to us. We don't really create an idea, we just catch them like fish. No chef ever takes credit for making the fish, it's just preparing the fish. So you get an idea and it is like a seed and in your mind the idea is seen and felt and it explodes, like it's got electricity and light connected to it and it has all the images and the feeling and it's like in an instant. You know the idea in an instant.
Speaker 1:Then the thing is translating that to some medium. It could be a film idea or a painting idea or a furniture idea, it doesn't matter, it wants to be something. It's a seed for something. So the whole thing is translating that idea to a medium and in the case of film it takes a long time and you always need to go back and stay true to that idea, keep checking that idea is. The idea is more than you realize and if you're true to it, when the work is finished and some years go by, you can even get more out of it if you've been true to the idea in the first place.
Speaker 2:Well, that was the majestic, wonderful, beautiful legend, david Lynch, that you just heard there in the beginning, and many of you know that voice very well. Many of you are just finding out about that voice. We unfortunately lost David Lynch a few days ago. I know something that hit Nathan and I both like a ton of bricks, kind of like what? Wow Gosh, what a massive loss. And it made me reflect on so many Lynchian memories from my life and somebody who's been kind of just a steady influence and inspiration through his films and his art making as well. Many of you don't know that he was also an incredible painter and artist as well, outside of making films.
Speaker 2:And my very first memory of David Lynch would have been at my grandparents' house in Santa Barbara and I didn't even know who he was, but I remember everybody watching the Elephant man on HBO. When it hit HBO it was probably 1982-ish. I'm trying to find those bits and pieces of memories as I'm thinking through this and I remember coming in the room and they're watching this movie and John Hurt playing Elephant man and just I think they said, okay, you need to leave. It was one of those things as a kid like it's the adult time to watch something. You guys stay in the back and then, as time went on, I remember watching Dune, probably 1986, 88. I know he hated the film but I know I loved it as a kid. I thought it was absolutely incredible. I still do, in all of its cheese and gloriness today. I watched it before the new Dune films came out again and I still love it because of those memories as a kid. And of course we all know Twin Peaks. Many of you have watched it maybe since COVID it kind of resurfaced when he brought the new series back out and the old series resurfaced. So that was high school. I remember watching that in high school and I really didn't know Lynch or Lynchian things until probably art school when Eraserhead and all those films kind of became part of our conversations in art school and I watched Eraserhead this morning before we jumped on and my buddy Mike and I were big David Lynch fans in uh in college and so we saw wild at heart in the theater. Lost highway, uh, mole hole and drive Like. Some of those films are such inspirations for me as an artist and I think the lost highway soundtrack is still one of my favorite soundtracks ever created.
Speaker 2:I remember watching the film. There's just those moments where Marilyn Manson or smashing pumpkins uh, you know, come on in those scenes and you're just like transported into it. Total difference from Eraserhead, which is basically all audible sound, very, very little music in Eraserhead. But then you go to Lost Highway, where music plays an incredible part of some of those scenes and I mean he's just God. He blows me away in everything that he does. And then his wisdom, which we're going to jump into big today. Just so many phenomenal things. And I mean Chris Isaac's Wicked Game video. That's an music video. That's an iconic music video that he did. And definitely encourage everybody to watch David Lynch the Art is Life documentary as well. That's a fabulous documentary of him and his little studio just talking about making. And we're going to talk a lot today about being true to your vision and really sticking to it. And so many things, nathan, I'm so excited to jump into this today.
Speaker 3:Now you got me on the soundtrack. You got Lou Reed, nine Inch Nails, lesnar, pumpkins, bowie, I'm definitely listening to that later today it's an incredible soundtrack.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's one of those that we had on all the time in art school.
Speaker 3:Uh, back in the day well, ty, I'm gonna say, the future is so bright I have to wear shades. I've been sitting here like an asshole wearing sunglasses for the first few minutes oh yeah, you're about to get a text.
Speaker 2:Take them off.
Speaker 3:Off we go. All right, they just happen to be sitting here. So, of the many you know incredible clips, many of which we're going to share today, that was one of my favorites is him, you know, and just in his like, sweet, pure, joy-filled voice.
Speaker 1:I'm wearing dark glasses today because I'm seeing the future and it's looking very bright.
Speaker 3:Yeah, saying that and like a genuine authentic saying something, super cheesy yeah but so authentic 100%.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was great, it's interesting. So I came to. I was, of course, aware of Lynch. I was, of course, aware of Lynch as a filmmaker before this, but what really, I think, drew me into his world was when I heard about his book, which we'll talk about a lot today, catching the Big Fish. And I learned about it from Brian Koppelman, who's a tremendous screenwriter, showrunner, filmmaker as well, who has a podcast called the Moment that I absolutely love, and I heard about it maybe I don't know, six, seven years ago.
Speaker 3:The book, I think, came out in like 2007. But that's really what introduced me to him as a, you know, philosopher. And you know, kind of like we talk about Rick Rubin like the, the, the uncle that we all wish we had. You know what I mean, and so that was super, super cool. I think what's what's different than you know the, the creative act by Rubin, is that you know there's something special about ideas like this that are shared from the perspective of a maker.
Speaker 3:Of course, ruben is involved in hundreds of incredible projects, but as far as somebody who's doing and making the work, similar impact to me as Nick Cave, where, respect the work, but then reading the book and hearing him talk about it. Or I've talked about this book a lot on the podcast too, but Stephen King's book on writing tremendous, but again, I haven't read any of his other books in their entirety, but but just that. So anyway, the perspective that comes from somebody who is, you know, actively and prodigiously, you know making a ton of tremendous work that is unique to their own voice, is, I think, you know, really really special to their own voice, is, I think, really really special and so really excited to talk about kind of his ideas and just share a bunch of quotes and kind of break them down. So I'll stop babbling.
Speaker 2:Let's dive in. Yeah, it's going to be great. And I think just a great quote to kind of start with is from page 159 in the book, and the book is titled Catching the Big Fish. We'll definitely have it in our show notes. So it's something that, as Nathan said, titled Catching the Big Fish. We'll definitely have it in our show notes. So it's something that, as Nathan said, you know, he introduced. He didn't introduce it to me, but he forced me to read it. So my buddy, zane Walliman, who I've spent a lot of time with in Kenya and here in the U? S for years, was telling me Ty, you got to read this book, you got to read this book, you got to read this book and, as a friend, you say forced like I.
Speaker 3:I hogtied you, you did. I held your eyelids open. Clockwork orange style Opened it up. You're going to read this, right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then, you said I think it was a short book.
Speaker 3:I didn't have to rank you for too long. No not at all.
Speaker 2:And I think initially I thought the book was only about meditation, right. I'm like, okay, I've read enough meditation books, whatever. I didn't realize that it was really artist maker, the importance of meditation, right. So that's kind of why it was lower on my radar than other books. And so when you said no, no, no, ty, you need to read it now, bought it, read it, read it a few times and use it in my program as well with other artists, because it's just fabulous.
Speaker 2:But let's start out with a quote from page 159. And it's a piece of a larger quote that we're going to use a couple other pieces from today. And he says stay true to yourself, let your voice ring out and don't let anybody fiddle with it. And that kind of goes hand in hand with part of the Patti Smith quote from the last podcast where William Burroughs told her to create a strong name right, and don't do anything that take takes anything away from that name Right.
Speaker 2:And that's something that Lynch had a lot of pride in. And he learned a very valuable lesson as well with Dune, which he would say is his biggest mistake, you know, because he kind of left that independent film world and went to a big studio, and then he realized that once you do that, your name is now gone. Yeah, they now kind of own your name and they own these ideas and they own these things, and that's really where this comes from, right? Is he learned? I have to stay true to myself. To make my art, the only way to let my voice ring out is not to let anyone else fiddle with it, and that's a constant theme I think that we have talked about through all of our episodes is don't let anyone make you do something you don't want to do with your work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's, I think, what you know. One of the things that you come across him saying more than once is never give up final cut, and he shares his experience in making Dune as exhibit A and the only example of him having ever done that. Because of how it went, this quote, I think, rings especially true. And again, this is where reading the words and absorbing the wisdom of somebody whose work is so this quote just rings true. Because he had such a unique artistic vision and you watch a Lynch film and you know that's what it is.
Speaker 2:Because it could only be. Yep, it could only be. That's a great point. That's such a valuable point, nathan. When you look at it, it can't be anything else. Isn't that the goal for us as artists? When somebody sees our work, it can't be anybody else's. That is Nathan Turborg's work, that is Ty Nathan Clark's work, and you have no doubt? Yep, you just yeah, that's what we're working towards.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yep, all right, let's move on to our next quote, cause we got a whole pile of goodies to get into here. Let's actually share this quote with uh, uh, patti Smith sitting with with Lynch.
Speaker 1:We all have this channeling, this shamanistic ability. Some make more use of it than others. Do you have that experience? I get ideas in fragments. I always say it's as if in the other room there's a puzzle. All the pieces are together, but in my room they just flip one piece at a time into me and a first piece I get is just a fragment of the whole puzzle. But I fall in love with this fragment and I love this fragment and it holds a promise for more and I keep it. I write it down and then I say that having the fragment is more bait on the hook and it pulls in more and the more that come in, the more faster the rest come in.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 1:This is great. I want a copy of what you just said.
Speaker 2:I love if you're watching the video version of this. I just love Patty's face. You know what I mean. She's just totally nerd. You can see the respect and the admiration that she has for every word that's coming out of his mouth. That's what a magical moment between two people who are so groundbreakingly important over multiple genres of art. Multiple.
Speaker 3:And then watching her, you just touched on it. But there's that moment where you let, she makes an audible like, like it's literally what he's saying, capturing her heart so much that it just takes, takes her breath away. It's, it's absolutely beautiful, I mean, and can't you just picture this just so perfectly, like just wanting to be, you know, in the room? I mean, thankfully we get to, we get to watch the video and listen to the audio. But there's something about the way he says things so simply and elegantly, you know, and and the way that he puts things into words that immediately resonates and makes sense, Like obviously you know Patti Smith had never heard that before, or she's a phenomenal actor and was behaving as though she had, but I'm pretty sure that was her first time hearing him say that and you can just tell the way that it connects. And you know, we both had that experience so many times I'm sure our listeners have as well of just like that's it, yep, that's it. And to me, like that's why it's so damn important, and I would say necessary, as artists, for us to continue to seek out these words of wisdom, these nuggets, these little gems, that when we can hold on to them. It's like it's so valuable because we get to carry that with us into our own practice and apply these ideas, and there's something just so magical about when someone else can put things into words that we just kind of had like a general sense of maybe before, which is, of course, why it makes so much sense when we hear it. It's just a beautiful thing. Something we've all felt and something we're all chasing is just that whole idea.
Speaker 3:I wanted to kind of piggyback on that and read more on the whole big fish idea, which is where the title of the book, of course, comes from. This is page one. It's funny. I got to share this. I had somebody message I think it was our Instagram on the Just Make Art page, but they said something to the effect of I love this podcast, but you're making me spend way more money on books than I normally do. Yes, win. And my reply was you're welcome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, win, big win, I'll take it.
Speaker 3:Tell me how you could better spend $17 and I'll buy you, your next book.
Speaker 3:So this is page one. Ideas are like fish If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water, but if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper. Down. Deep the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract and they're very beautiful. I look for a certain kind of fish that's important to me, one that can translate to cinema. But there are all kinds of fish swimming down there. There are fish for business, for sports, there are fish for everything, her fish for business, for sports. They're our fish for everything.
Speaker 3:I just I mean that whole idea of where we're spending our time where and how we are putting our antenna up for ideas. It really matters, it really does matter. And you know he talks about. He uses a number of different metaphors. He talked about seeds in one of the previous ideas. But however we think about it, I think that I can't really think of a better sort of calling or a better pursuit for us than to really think about and consider how can I get bigger ideas? How can I get bigger ideas? How can I get more of them? Like, what's the and we'll get into this a little bit but what's the sort of tactical approach to actually having access to an entire ocean of these big, beautiful, powerful, pure fish that he talks about. What do you think?
Speaker 2:about that. Well, you know, what's funny is prepping for this podcast and rereading through, catching the Big Fish and watching a bunch of Lynch clips on YouTube, and now my YouTube algorithm is all David Lynch right, because I've been going through everything which is awesome for me, I'm like I've never seen this one and finally, you're pushing out all those cat videos that you tend to watch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, gosh, bye.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry, allison, I'm getting rid of all the cat videos. Gosh bye. Yeah, sorry, allison, I'm getting rid of all the cat videos. But anyways, I was reading Jack Whitten yesterday in the morning and what is one of the things that Jack Whitten often ends one of his studio journal pages with Do you remember I will, when you tell me Going fishing? Oh yeah, hold on. He's never literally said.
Speaker 2:I'm going out to catch fish in the river or the ocean. But he keeps ending all these big studio sessions that he's writing all these notes and literally it's right, it's just stream of ideas. And then he says, go and fishing. So I can't help but say that he's got that same mindset of David Lynch.
Speaker 3:I think he actually did fish. I think he actually did, because that often would precede his trip.
Speaker 2:Well, don't ruin it for me.
Speaker 3:You're right, you're right, my bad.
Speaker 2:But anyway, but.
Speaker 3:I mean honestly what you thought.
Speaker 2:But it is. It's the metaphor yes, Right, he's got. He's got all these ideas, yeah, and now he's going to go fish. I can't help but think that even if he was physically fishing right in Brooklyn, wherever he is off the pier and looking at this huge ocean and thinking about all the ideas he's reeling in constantly in the studio and that's what David Lynch is saying, right, like you've got to constantly be casting. And what is fishing? It's meditative as well. It's supposed to be calm, the place where you're kind of out with your soul. You're outdoors, in nature. You're spending an enormous amount of time thinking, it's usually silent, and you're casting into this huge body of water and trying to reel in as much as you can. Because what does it do? The more you reel in, the more it feeds you.
Speaker 3:Well, it's funny, I don't know. Have you done much fishing in your life? Yeah, I'm not a big fisherman. I have.
Speaker 2:I hate it.
Speaker 3:Actually I enjoy it. I've not done a lot of it, but a couple of times I've got friends that are really into it and some family, so occasionally. Well, some of my best memories are with my, my grandpa and my great uncle um, fishing for, uh, for, for, for pike and sunnies, with cane poles. Where there was no reel, you just, you just lifted it up and, um, it's beautiful. But that, that metaphor, I mean it. It tracks in a number of different ways because when you're fishing, the more hooks you have in the water, the higher. It's basic math, right. The more hooks you have in the water, the better your chances of catching fish. If I'm in the boat by myself, with one hook in the water, the boat will likely catch fewer fish than if we've got six people who are, all you know, trolling for. And so, to carry that through to our practice, just thinking about, you know, how can we, how can we have more hooks in the water? In other words, how can we give ourselves more opportunities to catch fish? You know, I mean it's it's, it's basic, uh, it's basic math. You know, the the more, the more hooks we have in the water and the more we, the more time we spend fishing, the bigger fish we're going to catch and the bigger those ideas are going to be.
Speaker 3:And and this is where the meditation piece, I think, really comes in is and one thing he talks about a ton and hits from a number of different angles and a number of different ways, some of which we're about to get into here. But it's how can we be fishing all the time? You know, I mean, we've talked, we've talked about this many times on the pod before, but it's not something where you know we're only okay, I'm, I'm in the studio and I'm in front of the work, and here we go and and go, let me receive no, no, no, I mean we're, we're always. You know, the the antenna is always up, the hooks always need to be in the water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how do we, how do we become more aware of those ideas? Like you know, the antenna always being up and always being pulled, how do we get to that point where we can be more aware of things, because there's obviously lots of distractions outside that studio door that can do everything possible to kind of shut that down Right? How do we do that?
Speaker 3:You set up the next quote.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's hear what Lynch says.
Speaker 3:You're up.
Speaker 1:If you have a golf ball size consciousness when you read a book, you'll have a golf ball size understanding. When you look out, a golf ball size awareness and when you wake up in the morning, a golf ball-sized awareness and when you wake up in the morning, a golf ball-sized wakefulness. But if you could expand that consciousness, then you read the book more understanding, you look out, more awareness and when you wake up, more wakefulness. It's consciousness and there's an ocean of pure, pure, vibrant consciousness inside each one of us and it's right at the source and base of mind, right at the source of thought, and it's also at the source of all matter I I've got a lot of thoughts on that, but I first want to say that if you're not watching the YouTube version to see the video of him speaking, that's fine.
Speaker 3:Just go and find these videos. There's something I love about his mannerisms where he does this thing with his hands, where he just you can see it's the kind of thing that an artist does right, like if you just do what we do when we're trying to, it's just it's. I love it, I love his, I love his nonverbal communication when he's when he's speaking. So you asked how, and Lynch would tell us this is, this is exactly how that meditation is for for him, uh, the the way to collect more of these ideas, to really to develop more awareness and wakefulness in everything that you do, which speaks directly to what we just talked about in terms of having more hooks in the water and having those having those hooks in the water, you know, all the time, not just some of the time.
Speaker 3:I wanted to share a quote from the book that pairs really well with something that I've got, you know, highlighted and underlined a couple of times in the book on page one, sorry, just 57. And this is a very digestible book, you know there's, there's the sections are very short and to the point, this section is exactly one line. I guess technically, just one sentence is exactly one line, I guess technically just one sentence. And it reads like this the thing about meditation is, you become more and more you Okay, and I want to share. So let me kind of back up a little bit, I think, and I just want to share, like I have been really curious and fascinated by meditation for probably I don't know 14, 15 years, maybe longer than that, and have not been a consistent, you know, daily I've had streaks of it. You know where I've been daily for you know four or six months and then fallen off. Very rarely have I gone, you know more than a couple of days without realizing, hey, it's time to sit down and get still and meditate. I use an app for a long time called Headspace, which is like a guided meditation, you know app and that was, that was kind of my introduction to it in terms of doing it over, you know, longer periods of time and staying consistent with it. But I wanted to kind of read I don't know if I'll read all of this, but that struck me yesterday in a really deep way and I journaled about it a little bit. But what I wrote yesterday is better than what I'll be able to come up with today to really explain how that struck me and, I think, how that really impacted me. So I wrote the quote down.
Speaker 3:I love this quote. I think I understand it at its essence. Maybe I think I understand it at its essence. Maybe it strikes me like this you are the purest you at birth. By pure we mean free of programming. You haven't yet acquired the weight of expectations, worries, fears, all the external inputs. Then, as you grow up and adopt certain ways of being the pure, you gets crowded out like weeds in a garden. Precious nutrients are siphoned away from where they belong to feed that which doesn't.
Speaker 3:So meditation helps weed the garden, removing the junk that has crept in and taken root over time. It gets us back closer to the you. You were born to be childlike and free as artists. It helps us identify and eliminate, or at least reduce, the voices in the room that don't belong. So that's what meditation, I think, does for me, specifically from a creative standpoint. I mean, these are the types of things that apply to every part of your life when we become, uh, less fear-based, less anxious. We become less reactive. We become better to deal with.
Speaker 3:There's a story that he shares where, when he first started meditating, his first wife came to him after two weeks and said what's up, what's going on? Because he described himself as being very angry before you know, before he started meditating, and so the change was noticeable almost immediately to the person that was in his life. So these things, these things apply broadly to us as human beings, which, of course, then translates into the work as well. But I think that you know, the more junk, the more weeds that we can remove from the garden that are taking away those vital nutrients, the energy that should be put into our highest calling, the better off we're going to be as people and certainly the more productive and creative we're going to be as artists. Yeah, but that got me thinking about something that you've talked about before too, ty, which is the series that you did on. Are we born fragmented and become whole? You say it. I'm going to butcher it if I try.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a series I did. I think it was 2016, maybe or 2015. I can't remember Called Fragments and the whole idea was just the philosophical theological thought of whole idea was just the kind of the philosophical theological thought of are we born whole and become fragmented over life as we're broken down with trauma and things and experience? Or are we born fragmented and over our life we become more whole?
Speaker 2:and really it was just me exploring that idea and those thoughts through my work, through painting, through my trauma, through the things that I've experienced in life, and trying not really to come to an answer but just kind of working those thoughts out but also thinking of, you know, the whole concept of true self, false self, right, and something you kind of mentioned too, like feeling more true, right, donald Winnicott, that created that whole idea and dichotomy of the false self and the true self and really talking about true self being based on an authentic experience of feeling alive, having a real self, with no contradiction it's you, this is who I am and who I'm supposed to be, and I feel it and I know it. Then the false self, as a contrast, is this self-created as a facade. It's like a defense that can lead to feeling just dead inside and empty and not yourself, right, it's a fake appearance of being real. So narcissism would be that side right Of the false self. And I think what you're kind of talking about, what Lynch talks about as well, is that.
Speaker 2:Let me read a quote on page 159 that kind of really goes into it deeper with meditation, right, as he says it's important to experience that self right, because when you're meditating, you are you, you're just with you, there's nothing else there.
Speaker 2:And he says that pure consciousness, when everything else is pushed away, everything else is pushed aside, and it's just purely you and your thought. And he says it's really helped me. He's not saying you must do this, he's like, guys, this helped me and I think it helped any filmmaker and I think he would say, any artist. And so he says start diving within and enlivening that bliss consciousness, Finding that true self, that center of you, and then really going there and emptying out of everything else and really being you. And I think with that series that's kind of what I was doing in a way. And you know, making art in solitude can be meditative. I don't, that's not what we're really talking about here, but it can be meditative and thinking through those thoughts and emptying out and unpacking story, unpacking life, and really trying to focus in on what I'm trying to say and where I'm going.
Speaker 3:It can be meditative and it can also not be meditative.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Yep A hundred percent.
Speaker 3:That's what's so interesting about this too is like you think about. So we're talking about Absolutely, absolutely, yep, 100% pursuing a holistic existence where we are, you know, fully integrated and who we were meant to be, right. I'm going to drop another quote in here from Abraham Lincoln that I think about a lot, and he said give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax, and to me, that perfectly describes what meditation is capable of and what it does for me creatively, in terms of that being a, a proactive act before, before, creating right. It's a, it's a pre-chopping activity that always pays for itself 10, x or more. In other words, the sharper the X, the more efficient each of those chops is going to be. It also works, I think, reactively, and I and I think about that. So when I'm, when I'm on the beam and when I'm consistent, I'm doing it proactively, sometime in the morning, the first hour of my day, when I'm not consistent, it tends to be more of a reactive thing where I just acknowledge, like I'm not in the state that I want to be in, I'm not in a good place, and so, even if it's just, lynch was a very committed, uh, practitioner of transcendental meditation, which is 20 minutes twice a day. But even if it's five minutes, even if it's 10, I mean like it, it. It's amazing to me how well it works and how often I'm just like, oh, I don't have time for that, right, because I just want to keep swinging that fucking dull axe, because it feels like, it feels like action, it feels like activity, right, I'm very action and results, you know, oriented by nature, so it feels like I know, I just got to keep, I just got to keep swinging, and meanwhile meditation is just sitting right there with the uh, what? The whetstone, and they're like, hey, just give me 10 minutes, give me 10 minutes with that ax, and you will be every chop will be that much more effective. So I think that meditation, it really it's a reset. It makes challenges and frustrations return to their right size.
Speaker 3:We want, I think, as human beings, to be able to deal with life on life's terms and respond accordingly. This is I can't remember where I heard this, but it's. You know, if somebody says that Ty is reacting to the medication, that's not good. If you're getting treated for something, ty's reacting to the medication, that's not good. We don't want reaction. Oh, ty is responding to the medication, that's fantastic. Then it's doing what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 3:We want to respond, we don't want to react, and so meditation gives us, I think, the ability to really process and deal with frustrations that, in the absence of a practice like this, it can be meditation, it can be other things everyone's got, you know, different things that may work for them but something that gives us the ability to take a breath, take a step back and realize, oh, this is, it's going to be okay, this isn't that that big of a deal, you know.
Speaker 3:And I think that when I do it reactively in the studio, you know, as I was preparing for this last show, you know, um early evening, you know, four or five, six o'clock, a time of day when I'd normally be wrapping up and getting ready to call it a day, but I needed another whatever three, four or five hours or more sitting down meditating it just hits that reset. It's like a hard reset where, when I'm done, it's like, okay, the things that I was ballooning and mushrooming in my head to be these massive challenges, most of which were completely just self-invented or created, just the monkey mind just chattering away, they take on their right size and they then allow us to get back after that tree with a properly sharpened ax.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and distraction, it comes in so many levels for us as artists, right. Stress, negativity, frustration, confusion is a big one for us. What do I do now? How do I get to the next level? How do I do these things? And then that builds and builds and builds into anxiety and questioning and doubting and then sometimes can creep in and cause artists to leave the vision that they have that's clear and try and look for somebody else's vision Right, because it's just so hard by myself, somebody else's vision right, Because it's just so hard by myself. And I think you know he does a great job in the book of really talking about what meditation does for the self in those moments to really be able to fight and overcome that negativity. And we've got a great video of him kind of talking about that a little bit too. You teed that up perfectly. You're a professional of him kind of talking about that a little bit too.
Speaker 3:You teed that up perfectly. You're a professional.
Speaker 1:They say negativity is just like darkness and you say what is darkness? And you look at it and it's nothing. It's just the absence of something. You can't go down to the store and buy a dark bulb, turn it on and the room gets dark. Darkness is the absence of light.
Speaker 2:You ramp up this all positive and automatically negativity will go, just like darkness goes in sunlight or with an, it's the absence of light, all these things coming into you that are hiding you from where you're really trying to go and what you're trying to do. And avoiding those things and overcoming it. It's just as simple as just letting that little bit of light in.
Speaker 3:I should say too. I want to comment on that, but I should say that this is you can tell by the way that that clip is lit. That's from his masterclass, which is, I noticed, available on YouTube for free. So if you don't want to buy the book but you want to get more Lynch in your life, highly recommend spending. I think it's like just under three hours, but it's beautiful. I mean, it's really fantastic.
Speaker 3:On that quote, if darkness is the absence of light, we have to find ways, whatever they might be, to find sources of light that automatically eliminate the darkness. And I think, as I was reflecting on that, darkness is inevitable in the absence of light. Inevitable in the absence of light. It doesn't mean anything other than there's no light. And I think it's easy to to assign meaning to things that aren't real, or to assign inappropriate meaning, I should say, to things that aren't actually worth our, our energy. Again, just these ideas, the, the not not good ideas, but but bad ideation. You know the types of things that that just can, can really just flood in. You know when there's, when there's not light and when we have the ability to access that light and and turn on the. Turn on the light bulb, not the dark bulb. I love how he puts that. Darkness has no quarter. There's no place for it to exist because the light is there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And I love what he says on page 93 and 95 here, kind of discussing those in more practical terms for things that can come in and really hamper your ability to gather those ideas right and cast those lines to catch the ideas and the fish, as he says. And he says kind of paraphrase a little bit here and he says it's good for the artist to understand conflict and stress. Those things can give you ideas but I guarantee you if you have enough stress you won't be able to create and if you have enough conflict it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can understand conflict but you don't have to live in it. It's common sense. The more the artist is suffering, the less creative he is going to be, it's less likely that she is going to enjoy her work and less likely that the artist will be able to do really good work. And if you're an artist you've got to know about anger without being restricted by it. In order to create you have to have energy and you've got to have clarity. You have to be able to catch the ideas. You've got to be strong enough to fight unbelievable pressure and stress in this world. So it just makes sense, to nurture the place where that strength and clarity and energy come from, to dive in and enliven it. It's a strange thing but it's true.
Speaker 2:In my experience, bliss is like a flak jacket. It's a protecting thing. If you have enough bliss, it's invincibility and when those negative things start lifting, you can catch more ideas and see them with greater understanding. You can get fired up more easily. You've got more ideas and see them with greater understanding. You can get fired up more easily. You've got more energy and more clarity. Then you can really go to work and translate those ideas into one medium or another. That's beautiful. I love how he says how bliss and calm can act as a shield, kind of right. Like once you're able to recognize, push away, center yourself, you start to enliven those things and bliss is like a flat jacket, it's like a shield, it's protecting and I love he says then you can get fired up.
Speaker 3:And in the absence of that shield, the absence of that flak jacket, you're going to be catching those bullets of negativity. It's inevitable. You just are, you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he says that you have to be strong enough to fight the unbelievable pressure and stress in this world. He's talking about the creative world, the art world, and he uses the word unbelievable pressure, unbelievable stress, and it helps us to focus the art world and he uses the word unbelievable pressure, unbelievable stress, and it helps us to focus on the right things.
Speaker 3:Light can be channeled, can be directed. I turn on the lights. It illuminates the entire room, but there's also a spotlight, and that, I think, is something that flows in the undercurrent of a lot of the things that he shares, meaning that we can illuminate where we want our focus to be. Think of it like a tightrope. If we're walking the tightrope, we are focused on where that next step is supposed to go, not the void below. Yeah Right, where we want to be, not where we would be if it didn't go the right way. So, in channeling our focus, it just frees us up to really do our best work. And just, you know we talk about this a lot, but just creating the right conditions for art to happen and for life to happen, for that matter, I mean again, all of these things are universally transferable to all of our waking hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you led into our next video quote really well when you start talking about that freedom.
Speaker 1:Let's hear what David Lynch has to say about that. There's a thing called freedom and it's very, very important Free to think anything and do anything. To think anything and do anything. Every human being has a line they won't cross, but it's a different and it can kill creativity.
Speaker 2:Wow, any restrictions can be a sadness that can kill creativity, and I want to. I want to go ahead and just read the quote from page 12, cause it feeds right into this one. And he says so the art life? Okay, he's talking about our life as artists, in the studio. So the art life means a freedom to have time for the good things to happen. There's not always a lot of time for other things.
Speaker 2:That is a very simple and very deep and profound quote freedom to have time for the good things to happen. Well, we can't have freedom if we're completely restricted and trying to follow a certain set of rules or things we think we can or can't do, but a freedom from restrictions to do our work. Negativity, stress, conflict, anxiety, all these things right, become restrictions for us doing our work. And so then he says the art life means a freedom to have time for the good things to happen. If we don't have that freedom from restrictions, all those good ideas, all those many ideas that we're casting and casting and pulling in and pulling in, we don't have time for those things to happen because, as he would say, your consciousness, your mind, is so filled with other things that it's not open to the rest and he says there's not a lot of time for other things. Right? You don't have time for all that other shit to be bouncing around and distracting you from your work. You don't have time.
Speaker 2:We say this all the time. This is a long road. You don't have time. We say this all the time. This is a long road. This takes us time, and how sad that we just lost David Lynch. And then you read this quote there's not a lot of time for other things. We don't know how much time we have left in this world, and the art life is long. If we are able to operate in freedom in our studios, we're able to pull in all those things at a faster rate in something that is very slow, and it's going to take us a while to create our best work sands through the hourglass of time.
Speaker 3:I mean it's we've got a finite amount of time to to make our best work and for it to develop. Like you said. I think about how this is. I know a conversation that you have with a lot of your mentees as well. But what do you want from this art life and what are you willing to trade for it? You know what I mean. I think that when I want, I won't speak for everyone, I'll just speak for myself here. But when you want something so badly, when it's when it's baked into your DNA, when it's in your blood, you kind of, I mean for me.
Speaker 3:I'm just not really that interested in a lot of other things and I am perpetually curious. Like I mean, put me in front of a hobby or put me, I'll do it, I'll have a great time. You know what I mean. But things like, uh, what's a good example? Well, fishing, I mean we're talking about that earlier.
Speaker 3:Like I've got a lot of friends that like put a lot of time in, sure, yeah, cause they love doing it, it's great. Like awesometh birthday event, top golf not actually golfing, you know what I mean, but still, it's like a thing I was talking to I forget, I think it was Micah but like, oh, how often do you golf? I'm like I used to golf a lot, you know, before I was making art, and now it's all I want to do. I mean, if you said, hey, you can have, you can take, and it's a, that's a commitment to you. You want to take six, seven hours, you know, round trip to go play a beautiful course with good friends, you know, on a Saturday, or do you want that time in the studio? I'm taking the studio every time and, hey, let's catch up with the friends you know, for a cup of coffee or a phone call while I'm cleaning the studio. It's just like, how bad do you want it and what are you willing to trade for it? I think is a really just important question to ask ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there definitely are a lot of things that you have to trade and sacrifice for it. And I will also say you still need time for soul care, right, and that's not what Nathan's saying by not doing things that you may enjoy. Because you look at David Lynch, he was a filmmaker first, that was his thing. David Lynch, he was a filmmaker first, that was his thing. Making films, writing scripts, directing, you know all of that. But then what did he do in his other time? His soul care time was painting. He painted and he identified as a painter as well. Yes, he did In an interview, like when people are you a painter Are?
Speaker 3:you a filmmaker? I'm both. I'm both. I'm a painter and a filmmaker?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm both. I'm a painter and a filmmaker, yeah, and so you have these things, though that there's still like I write, right, I would identify as a artist and a writer. Yep, as an artist and a poet, whatever you would say. But I spend an enormous amount of time painting and making art than I do writing, you know. But I still write regularly. It's just not at the free focus driven, sacrifice moments of being in the studio and making art.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for clarifying that. I certainly didn't mean eliminate your hobbies, abandon your loved ones.
Speaker 2:Screw my family, screw everything else I like to do. I'm just in the studio, yeah.
Speaker 3:Fall asleep with a paintbrush in your hand and wake up and get back to work.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's what he would. David Lynch would say to him that would be a suffering artist and that is what that would suffocate the amount of creativity and enjoyment that you have in making good work. Living that way, yeah.
Speaker 3:And he talks a lot about, about awareness. That's what, fundamentally, what, what all of this is about. So, just being aware and just asking those questions of like, all right, does this serve the greater goal? You know, if the greater goal is to make our, our best work possible and make our greatest contribution in that way, does this serve the greater goal? And what are the things for self-care, soul care, that that lead to that, that contribute to that right, as opposed to pulling away from that? I'm a crappy golfer, so I'm leaving the course more frustrated than when I got there. You know what I mean, so that's not filling my cup.
Speaker 3:There's a quote from a book, ty, that I am a big fan of, that I read a long time ago. It's called Essentialism. The name of the author is Greg McCown and the subtitle is the Disciplined Pursuit of Less, and I wanted to read a quote from that that applies to what we're talking about here. He writes Essentialism is not about how to get more things done, it's about how to get the right things done. It doesn't mean just doing less for the sake of less, either for the sake of less either. It's about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential. So the part of that that I want to unpack a little bit is making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at your highest point of contribution. In order to operate at your highest point of contribution. So really looking at like what, what matters?
Speaker 3:The things we say no to are just as important, sometimes way more important, than the things we say yes to. When we say yes to something, we're saying no to everything else. If I commit an hour of my time or a week of my, whatever it is, that is that you're, you're literally crossing every other possibility. You know, with that time, with that energy, with that focus, you know across the list. I'll share one more quote here before we move on. But um, this is also from that same book. You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything, and when I started applying this idea to things, I started crossing things off the list. I was legitimately amazed at how many things I thought were critically important that I just stopped doing or crossed off the list, that I didn't miss, that nobody missed that just weren't really that important, and so just having that sort of essentialist mindset, I think, just ties into what he's talking about. As far as just you have to, that's, that's freedom. The art life is freedom, but you have to have time for the good things to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when we talk about time right and that operating in that freedom, I love what David Lynch says on page 12. And I know this is a quote that probably is possibly both of our favorite maybe in this book. No, that's right.
Speaker 2:You know, and he says this it's always a process of building and then destroying, and then, out of this destruction, discovering a thing and building on it. Nature plays a huge part in it Putting difficult materials together, like baking something in sunlight, or using one material that fights another material and causes its own organic reaction. Then it's a matter of sitting back and studying it and studying it and studying it, and suddenly you find you're leaping out of your chair and going in and doing the next thing. I understand this absolute wholeheartedly. When I read the book, I was like Patti Smith, sitting next to David Lynch and going yes, that's it, that's what I'm doing, that's exactly what I'm doing. And he reinforced in me you're doing it the right way and that's what I think sometimes is so important.
Speaker 2:In reading that book or studying that artist from art history or whatever is you go yes, I am on the right track, I am doing the right thing. Thank you, david, for telling me I'm doing the right thing, because this is all I do, right? I sit there and I build, and I build and I build and I'm gathering ideas and gathering ideas, and then I'm going with the new ideas and it's completely destroying everything I just built and then out of that destruction, I discover something new, and then I build on that and I go on that, and then I stop and I study it, I sit back and I look and I look and I spend time and I just watch and I talk to myself and looking at everything, and then all of a sudden yeah, I've done it multiple times I jump up out of my chair or I run around the studio or I hop on a skateboard in my studio and I, you know, and I'm just going yes, all right, next thing, let's go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's beautiful, I actually it does tie in really well with what we were just talking about, because it does require a certain type of freedom and willingness to destroy, to let go of the good in pursuit of the great. That's something that I really struggled with, I think, early on artistically was oh I got this cool little moment over here, I don't want to lose that. Or on its own it's a, it's a neat little part, or it's something that is interesting, or something that I want to retain. But, um, well, bring things full circle to the that. Uh, one of my favorite Stephen King quotes from that book that I mentioned earlier is kill your darlings. You know, you have to. You may like it on its own, but if it doesn't serve the whole, it has to go.
Speaker 3:And he talked a lot about an interview that I was listening to. I'm going to paraphrase this, but he talked about that idea. This, this quote kind of more in depth in terms of how one idea would, would lead to the next and, before you know it, the, the, the seed is completely gone, it's completely destroyed. But it took that to get to this right. It was that sort of progression and of course, this correlates directly to what I do in the studio and what I do with my work in terms of building things up, and building up layers, layers, layers, and then breaking them down. I actually shared this exact quote on a reel on a, on a reel that I posted yesterday of me of me doing exactly that.
Speaker 3:But that's how I think about it is yeah, this, this, this move might not work. This might act. This quote unquote ruin, you know, whatever that, that part, but you have to have the freedom to risk it and and and see, and see what might be, and I think that's a freedom that is developed over time to have faith in the process, that what is revealed, or what the seed leads to, the thing after the thing, after the next thing, might actually be the thing, as opposed to just falling in love with the initial idea and feeling like you got to just execute on just that first part. Right, it's action. And reaction.
Speaker 2:And all of that is operating in the mystery, because you don't know, we can't know, we don't know. And if we're trying to know and trying to constantly grasp it and totally understand it, you're really putting yourself in a disservice of operating in that freedom, and so we have to allow the mystery to exist. That's part of the freedom is living in that mystery. And he says on page 79, I love going into another world and I love mysteries. If you've watched a David Lynch film, there are multiple worlds that exist in every film. It's not just one straight storyline through. So I don't really like to know very much ahead of time.
Speaker 2:I love that I don't like to know very much ahead of time. I like the feeling of discovery. I think that's one of the great things about a continuing story which I would also translate as a developing work that you can go in and go deeper and deeper and deeper. You begin to feel the mystery and things start coming. Wow, you begin to feel the mystery and things start coming. I want to just piggyback that with one of our favorite Nick Cave quotes that we've shared before, I think quite a few podcasts ago, and he says you have to operate at least some of the time in a world of mystery. Beneath that great and terrifying cloud of artistic unknowing, the creative impulse to me is a form of bafflement and often feels dissonant and unsettling. Yes, it absolutely does. It chips away at your own cherished truths about things, pushes against your own sense of what is acceptable. It's the guiding force that leads you to where it wants to go. It's not the other way around. You're not leading it.
Speaker 3:Well, and that's the chef preparing the fish. Yep, yep, we're preparing the fish. We're not taking credit for making the fish. Yeah, yeah, we're going where it wants to go, we're prepared in a way that serves the overall flavor of the dish and that's, I mean, you know, I think a lot, especially that that first quote about mystery.
Speaker 3:You know, I just love I think we all do we just love being surprised. I mean those moments where we have that Patti Smith from the from the first quote, sort of gasp of like oh, wow, that, that moment of discovery, it's so perfect, it's so beautiful, it's so fulfilling because we don't know if we were just, you know, making a, a paint by number. Just think about a puzzle, my he, his puzzle, from his puzzle metaphor, my um, on my wife's side of the family, the in-laws, uh, for christmas time, they love getting a big puzzle and everyone kind of like chips in and and I'm like guys, we know what it's going to look like at the end it's right on the damn box, like what's like? What are we doing right now? I proudly was the only person, uh, at christmas, who, christmas, who didn't put a single piece in that puzzle, just because it's like why?
Speaker 2:do I want to.
Speaker 3:That's essentialism in practice. Why? Do I want to spend mental and emotional energy, even at Christmas, staring at something, just trying to put something together, just so we can get to an end that we already know how it's going to go. Already know how it's going to go. Yeah, anything about like films, tv, whatever, like you know, when you can predict the ending. It's kind of like okay, yeah, let me guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're not predicting a Lynch ending.
Speaker 3:Right Ever, and that's what's great about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what's beautiful about it.
Speaker 2:And that's, I think, what we're trying to do with, with our, our art as well, when he Well, and he operated that same way, because there's a great story in the book about running into Laura Dern, right, who was his neighbor, who's been in a number of his films, yeah, and then he had this idea because he had this little dream about something. And then he runs into her and he's like, oh, hey, got this idea. And then they go to do a little short, and then he sees something and all of a sudden these other ideas come and he starts writing them down and kind of running with them and then it turns into a feature film, right. So after they were filming, yeah, and doing the short, and then all of a sudden things start to happen in this. And then you know those moments, like the story of placing the lighting tech in a room I believe this was during Twin Peaks Just in a room, and then this was during Twin Peaks just in a room, and then didn't even know why he had the person in the room, but it was an idea and he went with it.
Speaker 2:So he's just doing the next thing, but then after the cut, somebody said oh wait, we have to stop. So-and-so is sitting on the bed, reflected in the mirror, and he goes. That's why I went with that idea, because that shot ended up being perfect and he would have been a big missing link if that had not been reflected in the. So we don't know where those ideas take us, but we have to be free enough to go deeper and deeper, and deeper and then feel the mystery. And then they start coming.
Speaker 3:You know it's funny. You mentioned that I didn't think of this until just now. But like he uses the word abstract and abstraction so many times, and you know you think about, you know for having the freedom that he had creatively to just drop those little things in there, knowing full well that people were going to read into it and have any number of conclusions about what that represented or what that symbolized, when in actuality, in many cases, it was just I thought it was interesting. You know what I mean. It's almost always disappointing when music artists, musicians, explain their lyrics, right, Because we've assigned meaning to certain things that we're sure connects to this thing over here, because that's what it means to us. Yeah, and they're like no, it was just, it had the right number of syllables and we needed to finish, so you're like yeah, but anyway we have talked about that, yeah, but it's just that.
Speaker 3:It's just that freedom to be like I'm going to leave that in there, you know, and pulling the thread and just being confident and free enough to follow where it leads.
Speaker 2:Yep, and then I. We've got a great video where he talks about that taking those ideas and then figuring out how to run with them.
Speaker 1:And so you just stay alert. Do your work. Don't worry about the world going by. It doesn't mean that you can sit around and not do anything. You've got to get your butt in gear and do it, and don't take no for an answer. Translate those ideas to cinema or to a painting or to whatever, and figure out a way to get it done.
Speaker 2:This is something that I'm constantly trying I think with quite a bit of success, but at times it doesn't always come through to really enforce into any of the artists that go through my program that I work with, and it's figuring out those ways to stay alert, right, to be open in that freedom and the mystery all these things that we've already talked about in the episode so that you can gather, so that you're shutting off the world outside your studio and you're just able to be your true self and gather, gather, gather, gather, gather. Now have our button gear. You have to be driven, like we talked about. There's things you're going to have to sacrifice. That's button gear. You've got to be working and doing things.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how many times I hear from artists in my program. I got a message from somebody, from this guy, totally mansplaining to me, about how I shouldn't use this on this material or that on that material. You're doing it the wrong way. I just had this conversation with one of my current artists and she had some guy on Instagram mansplaining to her materials and things and I was like no, no, you do what you want to do. You do what you want to do. You make what you want to make right.
Speaker 2:You have to be able to shut all that shit out so that you can translate those ideas, like he said, because interference distracts us from those ideas. And now we start to gather what other people's ideas are for where we want to go and we start bringing the world in and then it just interferes with everything. And I think that's really part of that big focus for him on meditation. That's what helps him stay David Lynch, To stay focused on his ideas and not have any conformity to others who are trying to control Cause I guarantee there were people even at 74, 75 years old trying to kind of point David in directions. I can guarantee he was getting studio calls and emails and people like, hey, you should try this, do this, here's my, this, this. And he's shutting that off through his practice of meditation to be able to be focused and translate all those ideas that he has constantly coming in.
Speaker 3:The part of that that really strikes me is the the don't worry about the world going by. Yeah, circling back to that idea of essentialism and just being intentional about where we put our energy. I would never presume to tell somebody what they should or should not be thinking about or putting energy into, but I would absolutely say that having a series of conversations with ourselves around is this worthy of my energy, understanding that me focusing on this thing, whatever it is, is it means that I'm not focusing on the big thing or the big things that really matter that I can actually influence in a positive way, matter that I can actually influence in a positive way. I was thinking a lot about the David Foster Wallace piece. This is water. We've talked about this and the whole. I mean what strikes me the most about that and what I love so much about it?
Speaker 3:It was written as a, as a commencement speech. Um, you know, giving advice to, obviously, graduating. You know university students and the whole idea of you know it's not what, it's not how to think. It's teaching you what to think about and talking about the idea that we have a choice about what we spend time on. What we spend time thinking about. We know how to think, but it's it's being intentional about what we think about and the energy that we put into. That is incredibly important, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:And you know he says on page 159, this is a great little trailer for that moment Experience the joy of doing and you'll glow in this peaceful way, like do we spend time trying to experience the joy in what we're doing? I try to push this really hard onto artists that go through my program. It's like freedom in the studio is having joy messing up. It's having joy making something good and making something weak. It's joy and having to try new things that don't work at all. Because you have the ability to do it and you're trying and you do. You glow in a completely different way. When you can experience that freedom, you really do.
Speaker 2:And this quote is so true to me. Your friends will be very, very happy with you. Everyone will want to sit next to you, like that's so great. Because when I was working full-time and painting on weekends and nights and when I could, I was not very fun to be around at home. Mandy, my wife would tell me all the time like we got to figure out a way for you to paint full-time, we got to speed this up somehow, because you are not fun to be around at times when you're not painting. You're not fun, right Cause that's that's my true self.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my true self is when I'm emptied of the world and I'm completely free in the studio and I'm making, and when I'm in that mode I'm experiencing the joy of doing and I do. I glow in a totally different and peaceful way. When I'm not making and I'm away from it and I'm not really in that mode, I'm not the funnest person to be around. It's like there's that that false self starts to kind of reek through and I start to do things that aren't truly me, or I don't act the way I am, and I just love that. He says it's just a funny David Lynch thing and everyone will want to sit next to you and give you money.
Speaker 3:And give you money, right, yeah, yeah, the other part of that, two ties experiencing the joy of doing and remembering that this can be fun. Yeah, no, yeah, I, I, I laughed at my I was, I journaled. I caught myself writing this in my journal um a weeks ago and I just laughed out loud when I saw it on paper because I was like this can still be fun. Is it hard? Is it work? Of course, to me, and how this relates to Lynch's worldview, is that when I'm in my false self, I believe the lie that I only have value because of what I achieve and what I produce. When I'm in my true self, I can be present, I can be in the moment, I can experience the joy of just the process. And oh, by the way, wouldn't you know it, the work that results from those times is always better. It just is. And so, yeah, just that idea of just experiencing the joy of doing, glowing in this peaceful way.
Speaker 2:Sign me up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's one of the notes I had for myself at the beginning of this year, because last year was rough, you know you and I've talked about this at length just me being vulnerable with you, like it was just a rough year for me on a lot of different levels that I felt like really affected my work. I know it did, and so one of the things that I wrote in my journal this year was just have more fun, you know, find the ways to have more fun. And it's not like I don't enjoy my time in the studio. It's not like I don't enjoy, but it's like there's a difference and just realizing you enjoy something and then having fun and freedom and doing it. There's two different things in that, because one is in the moment and one is an overall, just kind of looking, looking over and observing. Oh yeah, I know I enjoy everything I do. That's different than in the moment, in the studio, continually to come in with this complete, uh, just a joy and love and passion for what I'm doing on a daily basis.
Speaker 3:And I I think what I hear you saying is is, I think what he was describing in terms of just freedom, you know, Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And it's funny there's a part of that quote. I had a note and I didn't bring it up when we were there. But I want to ask you now. In that freedom quote he says everyone has this line they won't cross. Yeah, I can think of at least three different ways to interpret that. But how do you, how do you, how do you receive or how do you interpret that specific line in the context of him talking about freedom?
Speaker 2:I look at more this way. There's a line you won't cross. As far as I'm going to work with a big studio on my next film, I'm going to continue to work independently so I can have full control of myself. Now there are plenty of incredible filmmakers. I was thinking about this this morning when I was driving.
Speaker 2:Sofia Coppola is one of my favorite filmmakers. Obviously, she was born into the industry. She grew up watching Francis Ford Coppola and her first film, virgin Suicides, one of my favorite films ever made Indie film but connected to a studio. Right, but she controlled it. It had her feel in it. Depressing but beautiful film. One of my favorite soundtracks Incredible. The acting is phenomenal. The story's heartbreakingly beautiful. So she was still able to have her vision and be her in the filmmaking.
Speaker 2:But you got to make the decision at some point. What are you going to do and can you operate in freedom? In that and I think for him it was I will not go as far anymore as doing it with anybody else. It's mine, I will do it my way. I won't have anybody else with the input of telling me how to do it. That's kind of how I look at it, but also you could say well, you know what?
Speaker 2:I'm an artist. There are a lot of things that upset me with the world, but I do not want to be a political artist. Outside of my art making. I will get involved in political things and make my statements, you know. Show up, do whatever I need to do to get my voice forward write letters to my congressman or my senators, whatever, and push my, the things I believe in, forward, but I'm not going to do that with my artwork. Then there are. So I'm going to be completely political with my artwork. Completely. That's what I'm doing. I'm pissed, I'm angry. I'm going to let everybody know how I feel and I'm going to put it out there. So plenty of ways.
Speaker 3:Well, and that's the whole point, right Is like it's our line yes, that I mean. That that's freedom is getting to decide, like where, where that line is and and what types of rules that we want to set for ourselves. I think a little bit different spin on that, I take it a little bit differently. The line, just because it's within the context of him talking about creative freedom, is the line of oh, I do this and I don't do that. You get the feel, and it's pretty obvious in watching his films that there wasn't any idea that was off the table None Zero. That there wasn't any idea that was off the table None zero, right, like it was all. Like okay, well, maybe right, trusting himself, trusting his intuition, which he talked about a ton.
Speaker 3:But I think that the freedom comes from moving the line, having fun and saying like, oh, I thought the line was here. As far as this is what I do and how I do things. But what if I moved a little bit? What if the line was? Maybe you were here? What if the line was? What if there was no line over here and I just kept going until I just ran out of real estate or fell off the edge of the who knows. That to me, is fun. That's just what got me thinking about that. When you're talking about having fun in the studio, being free, um is deciding like maybe it's time to move the line a little bit, maybe it's time to just try something. I know you got a new toy that you're excited to use, and I don't want to blow the surprise for people. But but yeah, that's, that's it Right. It's like, oh, I was doing this, but now in this too, and boy, maybe I'll even blend them together. And then what?
Speaker 2:Well, and that's taking, and that's part of that freedom of taking all those ideas, and we're going to jump into this now in our next segment capturing them so that we don't forget them right, small ideas to big ideas, lots of ideas to a few ideas, capturing them, gathering them somewhere and then revisiting them over time and watching them grow into actuality, from kind of ideation to actually doing it.
Speaker 2:And for me, where I'm going with my work I won't really talk about it because I'm still in that nurturing, gardening phase of getting those seeds watered and trying to work on it was things in my work that continued to happen that were very important to me, but wanting to take them to a much larger, much more physical feel than smaller and minute and trying to figure out the ways I could do that. How can I take these ideas? Because something was telling me you got to go here, you got to go here, you got to go here. So then, moving forward on that and David has a great, great quote to kind of intro us, jumping into that, let's play it.
Speaker 1:We don't know what to do without an idea. I love the idea of catching ideas. And they're out there, millions and millions of ideas, and we don't know them until they enter the conscious mind. And then we know them and we we see them and hear them and feel them, we know the mood of them, even if it's just a small fragment of what could be a whole film or a painting or whatever. We fall in love with it for some reason, something inside of us says this is a great idea for me. And then you write that idea down on a piece of paper in such a way that when you read what you wrote, the idea comes back in full. Super important to write down your ideas so you don't forget them. I think I've forgotten three incredible ideas in my life. So write down your ideas and save them, because it's very important.
Speaker 2:I think I've forgotten a lot of ideas in my life. Him only forgetting three is magnificent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's your baton Pert. Near a thousand at that point yeah seriously.
Speaker 2:This is something that you and I, obviously, we have harped on this constantly in different episodes, and this is something that you and I I we have harped on this constantly in different episodes, and this is something that you and I I think we're professionals in that aspect of. We write things down constantly in journal and I think, for me, I do it because there was a period of time where I wasn't doing it, and then I would wake up one morning and go, oh, I know, yesterday I had this grand idea of something and it's gone, yeah, never to be recovered again. Could that have been the next great painting? Could that have been the next screenplay or the next novel, you know, whatever that looks like for any of us. The next great idea for dance choreography?
Speaker 2:First, like, if you're an artist in any genre of the arts right, we're not just talking about painters or visual artists here, we're talking about all arts. You are an idea generator, you are constantly. You can't not be, you're in it, you're involved, you're watching something, you're creating, you're visualizing. If you're not writing these things down or keeping track of them, somehow you're starving us of something that you could contribute to the arts, to people outside of the arts right that can influence, inspire and do those things. And I know we're going to really get into into documenting these and kind of what we do and ideas for it. But man oh.
Speaker 3:We're kind of transitioning into tactical, you know, tips here and just things that that can be done with some of the great ideas that that that we've been discussing. From Lynch, I think writing things down just just kind of popped in my head as you were, as you were talking, Not a big fish, a little fish, just came in my head. But there's capturing the ideas that have come. If you're actually fishing boats have these things called live wells, nice boats anyway, where you put the fish and that's where you we got that fish, we know it's going to be there when we get out and whatever. But there's also, I think, in terms of writing things down, ideas come, you know, fish jump in the freaking boat in the. For me anyway, in the process of writing, In other words, I'll start to capture an idea or write it and then, when you know it, something just just mystical, magical, happens, where just the pen keeps moving and that idea becomes more fully formed. Like he talks about other fish, because they like being around their own kind, they jump on, they jump on, and now all of a sudden you've got, because you sat down, invested the time to capture the one, it then becomes many and it then becomes a bigger fish, it becomes more fully developed, and that that, to me, is just like. I mean, I don't know, I just I cannot imagine being a working artist or a creative of any kind without having some type of way of of logging and capturing ideas. I mean, I just think about, I said this is somebody recently I said if, if all I do is execute on the ideas that I've got written in my, in my journals, it would still take me, you know, five more lifetimes. Yeah, which means they're not all good, they're mostly not good ideas. Let's be clear, Like these are not all, but some of them are, you know, and so at a certain point it does come down to, you know, discernment in determining, like all right, which of these am I really going to put into practice, but just knowing, it just feels so good to know like I got it, I have it and maybe I don't revisit it for years to come.
Speaker 3:And you mentioned Witten earlier and we talked about, you know, his journals, from Notes from the Woodshed, how ideas would sort of resurface. You know, over decades of working, and that's what's so great about that book, which is like you see how they evolve and how things that started, as little seeds that maybe he just sort of wrote down as an aside in a moment and was working on something else, you know, in the studio, actually came to life over time. But the chances of actually being able to execute on some of those and having them sort of, like, you know, ferment and and and and and grow over time is is super, super valuable. Like you have to do this. Like we're talking here, here's the, here's the action steps. If, if you're somebody who wants to do something with, with these ideas, like if you're not in a journaling practice and if you don't have a way of catching those fish, of capturing those ideas, like start now, because it will fundamentally change the way that you make art.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they come in fragments.
Speaker 2:They're not always a full idea flushed out, right. They're bits and pieces, right? Like he talked about the puzzle. We talked about, like you did, catching all the little fish to get to the big fish. Right, you got to learn, you got to gather, gather, gather, and then you learn, oh, this is how I catch that big fish, or this is how, okay, the puzzle is now finished. This is the big idea that came from all these little ones.
Speaker 2:And I think for me we've talked about this before I've got multiple journals. I've got one for art. I've got one for sculpture ideas I have to keep them segmented, or else I get too scatterbrained and then I've got one for writing that has outlines for novels or scripts for screenwriting. Or then I have one that's just poetry, where I write poetry. And then I've got one that is for video art and it's ideas for video pieces, because I'll be in the studio working and then, all of a sudden, something will click, I'll have an idea.
Speaker 2:I've got one for memories, where I constantly am writing memories that come forward. There was this quote that I shared the other day, that I saw on Instagram, and it was a picture of all the kids from Sandlot. And the quote said something about there's a time in life when it's the last time you ever played with a certain group of friends. Yeah Right, and it's kind of a pretty sad like. It's like not just single tier, it's like, oh my gosh, that's right. There was a moment in my life where, all of a sudden, it was the last day that so-and-so and I rode our bikes to school or went to the river or played at the lake, and so that quote hit me. So I instantly I started writing, I started locating as many of those memories of those last moments that I could in my head and I was going through childhood to elementary school, to middle school, to high school, to college, to after college too, and I started writing all the people, all the places, all the memories, and I was doing it.
Speaker 2:And then I went there's a body of work, that's going to be a body of work. I don't know when I'll get to it, but that's going to be a body of work. And then it also made me go huh, I haven't done anything figurative in probably 25 years, maybe 20 years. Does this body of work need to be figurative? You know, and that's fragments. It's little bits and pieces, I don't know, but I'm writing it down because I can tell you right now, in four years, I would have forgot about that meme that I shared on Instagram, that emotionally hit me, that brought something forward. No way I'm remembering. I probably wouldn't even have remembered it today. Right Screenshotted it, I wrote it down and I started writing. So it's important. We have to respect those when they come. We're artists, people, we're creators. We have to respect those when they come. What's artists, people, we're creators. We have to respect those when they come. What's the best way to respect it? Capture?
Speaker 3:it and that's honoring the idea. That is also sort of it reinforces that wiring for more ideas to come. And, as you're talking too, I'm thinking about how much it actually frees up a lot of our hard drive, so to speak. Right, it makes it for me anyway. It makes it way more just simple to get back to work on the thing that I'm actually doing at the time, as opposed to if I don't write it down or if we don't capture it, then it's just kind of like there, you know, it's kind of like interrupting the frequency of you know what we're actually intending to work on at the time. Once we capture it, once, it's cool. Now we can go back to you know what we were doing at the moment, without that nagging feeling of like, oh, I don't want to forget this. Let's wrap up tie with some sort of tips and takeaways and things that people might want to do.
Speaker 3:We just talked about the first one, which is you know, carry a sketchbook, a voice recorder, you know photos, screenshots, videos. There's never been a better time in history to capture things very easily with the device that, for better and for worse, you probably have in your pocket. You know, most of the time, and so this is where, again, like the art life that Lynch talks about, where we have hooks in the water all the time, we're receiving ideas, hopefully, you know, throughout our day, throughout our waking hours, not just when we're in the studio. So have a system. It doesn't matter what it is, but just have a way to make sure you capture them and preferably sort of keep them in one place. I have a number of different, you know, albums on my whatever iPhone that are just art ideas. It's mostly pictures of cracks in the street and things that are falling apart. That's whatever. That's what I love, but it's all types of things. It's a screenshot from something that I'll see online. It's a technique that I'll see walking by a construction site. I could actually whatever capture it, find a way of making sure that you log those.
Speaker 3:We talked about meditation. I am not quite the level of proponent that you, that you log those. You know we talked about meditation. I am not quite the level of proponent that that that Lynch was, but I'm a, I'm a fan, I, I, I can't. It's one of my, my core. You know handful of things that I know that if I do them on a consistent basis, my life is better and I just show up better in life period. You know the end, so it doesn't have to be TM where you're, you know could be, um, this, actually it's funny listening to all these and and and and hearing him talk. A lot of these videos are from the David Lynch foundation and, uh, it kind of got me curious about some. Maybe, I will, you know, go all in, but it could just be, uh, you know, five minutes. There's so many free apps or free guided meditations on YouTube that are just something like that, where breath work is a whole other world that has tremendous applications and possibilities as well, but something, some type of a meditation. And then the last thing that we had talked about was having a setup. This is actually something that I've mentioned in previous podcasts when I mentioned this book. This is the thing that I probably talk about the most. So this is the last thing we'll read from the book here before we close with another audio of Lynch. But this is from page 125 of the book Having a setup.
Speaker 3:You need what I call a setup. For example, you may need a workshop or a working shop or a working paint studio. You may need a working music studio or a computer room where you can write something. It's crucial to have a setup so that at any given moment when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen. If you don't have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together and the idea just sits there and festers over time. It will go away. You didn't fulfill it and that's just a heartache.
Speaker 3:So having a setup when this has come up in previous episodes, it's mostly been within the context of understanding that not everyone has the luxury of having a studio and a space where everything exists. But the setup can be anything. It can be a little whatever Tupperware bin where all the things that you have are there and you pull it out and, boom, you can. If you haven't there it is, you can. You can get to work, but just knowing like, when the idea comes and when you have the time and space you know to actually spend time in in your thing, to be able to do it and to not have. Oh well, I got something I kind of want to do, but I got to pull everything out and I think my thing's over there and the other thing's over here and have a setup and have it be organized. I was going to drop this quote and it's okay that I didn't, I suppose.
Speaker 3:But he talks a lot about being organized, having a clean space, having things be just so, and I've been told that I have some version of OCD because of how, like before we record, I know exactly how everything's got to be just so. But there's value in that, because I always joke when you've got a messy mind. Having a clean, organized space is really, really important. It's super useful because you know where things are and an idea comes and I know I can walk to exactly the tool and the material of which I have hundreds of all of the above back there. I can walk to exactly where everything is because I've got it literally mapped out and labeled. But there's nothing worse than, oh, what if I tried this when I'm working on something? And oh, where is that? And then 20 minutes later, like the momentum, it's my setup, that place for cultivating when it pops in.
Speaker 2:I can just leave what I'm doing, go sit for a minute, be in a space where it is meditative and it is my little space where I can sit and kind of cultivate those things. So I'm excited for that. Okay, I think best way to end this is just a parting goodbye to David Lynch and just playing a video clip and let David's words kind of lead us out of this episode. What do you think, Nathan?
Speaker 3:I love it. Yeah, we'll wrap up. Thanks for joining us. Follow whatever, subscribe, share, blah, blah, blah or don't. I mean, it's your world, you're free to do what you want. Thanks for joining us. Let's close with the immortal words of Mr Munch the meaning of life is the meaning of life?
Speaker 1:So cool. The meaning of life is totality, everything More than the most, smaller than the smallest, larger than the largest. Totality. The human being is an exquisite being and we have a potential, and that potential is called enlightenment, fulfillment, total fulfillment, liberation, salvation, fulfillment, total fulfillment, liberation, salvation, and it's huge, supreme enlightenment. That's the meaning of life, the meaning Know it by being it.
