How Cameron Crowe’s Memoir Teaches Artists To Keep Going

Cameron Crowe wrote for Rolling Stone as a teenager, rode alongside the biggest bands of the era, and somehow stayed human enough to turn those years into art. We use his memoir The Uncool as a springboard to talk about the real creative process: the awkward beginnings, the brutal winters, and the small daily choices that keep an artist moving when nobody is clapping yet.

We pull quotes and stories that hit hard for working artists. What does “opportunity favors the prepared mind” look like in practice when you’re sending work out, building taste, and stacking reps? How do you protect the “invincible summer” in you when the studio feels cold, the market feels loud, and your mind starts running worst-case scenarios? We also linger on the difference between being discovered and being ready, and why preparation beats panic every time.

Then we get into confidence and evolution. “Act like you belong” isn’t fake swagger, it’s a quiet claim to your seat at the table if you’re doing the work. And Joni Mitchell’s advice cuts straight through the fear of changing your style: stay the same and get crucified, change and get crucified, so you might as well keep it interesting. We close with a challenge we all need: notice the work you’re avoiding, because it might be the work that matters most.

If this conversation lights a fire, subscribe, share it with an artist friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one piece of work you’re going to start or finish this week?

Make sure to follow us on Instagram here:
@justmakeartpodcast   @tynathanclark   @nathanterborg

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Transcript

Why This Memoir Matters

0:03

And we're live. Welcome to today's episode of Just Make Art. I'm your co-host, Nathan Treborg, here with my fellow co-host, Ty Nathan Clark. Ty, how are you? Good. I'm doing good. Making it. Making it. Tell us about today's episode. You brought this to the table, and I want you to get full credit for that. Yeah, so I finished reading a book recently and then and then I listened to it after I read it because the author of the book reads it. And so I wanted to hear his voice actually reading it rather than me through my voice reading it. And it is written by probably one of my top five directors and screenwriters, who also is a very famous music journalist as well. His name is Cameron Crow. And the book is The Uncool a Memoir. Um, and it is absolutely one of my favorite reads I've ever had. So a lot of you have probably seen Almost Famous, the movie that is Cameron Crow's life story kind of boiled down into a small, what, hour and 50-minute film or two-hour film, right? So the book is almost famous on steroids. I mean, there's really no other way to put it. It is literally almost famous on steroids. The amount of stories, the amount of things that were kind of combined in the script of Almost Famous to make it a make it a movie runtime. Yeah. It this just takes it to a whole nother level of wow factor. Yeah. You know, thinking about a writer at 13 years old writing for Rolling Stone, traveling with Zeppelin and the Allman brothers, and hanging out with David Bowie and meeting Emmy Lou Harris before she'd ever recorded anything to befriending Joni Mitchell, to, I mean, the names go on and Leonard Skillard. The Eagles. I mean, you name anybody from the late 60s to 70s rock and roll to even the early 80s, and Cameron Crow was the guy covering, traveling, almost befriending in ways, some of these people, too. Some of the greatest writers and also some of the greatest musicians that ever walked the planet invited him into very sacred spaces. And I just thought, after reading the book, you know, you and I are both music lovers to an umped degree. And I just thought there's so many great things within this book that translates to us as artists, drive, passion, curiosity, wonder, never giving up, like always just trusting what you believe in and passion and where you want to go. And I thought, man, this would be a great thing to just pull some of the quotes that Cameron uses, tell some of the stories maybe that entered our mind that we thought were fun, but also to add a little bit of Cameron's voice to it as well. I just thought it'd be a wonderful book to talk about. So if you haven't read or listened to The Uncool a memoir by Cameron Crow, Nathan and I both highly suggest you do that. It's extraordinary. You had we were talking about what our next episode was gonna be. You had said how much you loved the book, and I said, well, you know, maybe just do a solo episode, you know, on it. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get through it before we're we're set to record next. And I was like, I'll I'll give it a rip, you know, and I started it. And uh, I don't think I've ever gotten through a whatever nine or ten hour audiobook faster. I think it was about two and a two and a half days. Yeah. It was such an awesome listen. I I am gonna get the physical copy and read back to it as well because it's there's just there's so much in there. Probably more relevant for you given how much older you are than me. Those are a lot of artists from Europe. No, that's not true. Uh I mean it's kind of true, but the actually, so before we get into the quotes, I wanted to ask you this. I was thinking about this as I was listening, and I'm I'm curious to hear your your thoughts on this. Which of the bands or musical artists that he discusses in the book surprised you the most to learn about? Bowie. I I hadn't heard the David Bowie story before. So that one, that one the most, but there were these little gotcha moments, right? So when he was, oh gosh, I'm gonna forget who it was that he was interviewing. Shoot, when he met Emily Lou Harris, Graham Parsons. So he was at Graham Parsons' house while he's about to record an album, and Graham Parsons says, Hey, I want you to meet this uh young girl that we just met recently who holds a note better than any female vocalist I've ever heard in my life. She's

Almost Famous On Steroids

4:30

gonna blow you away. Hey, Emily Lou, come over here. And Emily Lou Harris comes over and nobody had heard of her, nobody knew who she was at this point in time, and he got to spend that intimate moment in the room with Graham Parsons and Emmy Lou recording that album. Like there were those moments, right, where I'm like, crap, I thought I knew everything about Cameron Crow. You know what I mean? Like, there it is, this other sneak thing. And then we'll talk about David Bowie later on in a little bit. But those were the two biggest ones. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I one of the one of my one of the things that really struck me was that, you know, so artists like the Allman Brothers or the Eagles, who, you know, I mean, I I've I've certainly listened as we all have, uh, you know, a number of their songs, but that's just kind of in like that sort of classic rock category, right? Like I've never listened to an entire album, you know, of either of the of those artists all the way through. But to hear about the creative process while they were, you know, just coming of age, when they were just, you know, starting to get traction. Emerging scene, another example, uh, you know, when he talks about you know, young, young Bruce being shy and you know, staring at his shoes in the corner and not not being willing to meet anybody. But it was just really interesting to to put that in context for just, you know, again, something in my mind is, oh, that's classic rock. You know, it's great great listen, you know, when it comes on at a restaurant or, you know, whatever. But just how revolutionary the sound that they were putting together and the the what they were putting out into the world was at that time, you know. Yeah. And I think there were some other little moments in there as I was reading and he's telling us stories, and I'd go, that's Elizabethtown. That's where he got the idea for the film Elizabeth Town, or, oh my gosh, that's Lloyd Dobler. That's where he got the idea for John Cussack's character and say anything, you know, and so and he never really goes into some of the films, yeah, but then he tells a story, and I'm going, Oh my gosh, that's this film. Oh my gosh, that's this film. Oh, that's a little bit of this. This could be brought into We Bought a Zoo from Rant, like all these little different things where you're like, those are all pieces of his life and memory that become creations. And I thought that too was a great, great thing to talk about as artists that we'll kind of unpack as well. And, you know, I think my my very first, my very first Cameron Crow incident in life is Lloyd Dobler, my beloved John Cusack, holding up the boombox outside, playing Peter Gabriel in your eyes outside Dan's window. Yeah. Like that is a scene in my head that has lived on forever since I first saw that in 1989. Did you listen to that uh that one interview that I had sent you? Yes, YouTube interview. Did you go way through it? Okay. I got through most of it, yeah. Okay. So he when he told when he told the story of directing that and how QSAC didn't want to hold it up. And he did it, and he did it really frustrated after he was mentally worn out and exhausted from arguing against doing it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, let's get into these quotes here. Yeah. You put together a great list for us, and I'm gonna let you kind of kind of steer the ship today. You put together a great list of quotes. Let's jump in. I'm gonna read this first one and let you take first pass. Yeah. This is from Albert Camus. In the depth of winter, I finally found that what I lived within me was an invincible summer. It's just an awesome quote, you know, because we all have winners. Every single one of us as an artist has a winner. When the studio is cold, the work stops talking back. In our last podcast, I talked about that's been me for a few months. Like it's just like I'm in the winter. It's a cold spell. Kind of forgot why you started, you know. And I love how in the book Cameron really talks about when he's a small kid, he was always sick, like he struggled with always being sick. He skipped a lot of grades. He always looked like a little teeny kid in a room full of adults who are doing adult things, right? And he was around the people that were making things that meant everything to him, that just kind of made life make sense to him. So he really had every reason along the way to kind of quit, to just to kind of fold the sickness, losing a sister at a young age to suicide, a really overbearing mother, just kind of like he never fit in. You know, he just kind of never fit into things, and he felt kind of out of place except for when he was around music and when he was writing about music, right? So he never quit. There was something inside him that was always lit, right? That thing that you don't earn, that thing that you just have, right? That's the thing that you protect with every ounce of yourself. And I think that us as artists sometimes we really confuse that winner for the final answer. That's our verdict. So we kind of sit in that space of, well, nothing's working, nothing's going right, I just can't do this. So we kind of, oh, so I guess that's where I'm at, you know? And it's really that's the test of whether that summer in you is real. You know, it's like Rilka says, How bad do you want it? Do you lie awake at night and tell yourself that if I were to die, if I'm the last person left on earth, I would still do this. That's the test. Yeah. But can you make it through that winter? And and Camus says, in the depth of that winter, I finally found what lived within me was an invincible summer. Nothing can break what is in me ever. I'm laughing because you and I are on a little bit opposite seasons. Winter for you in Texas is a little bit different than it is for me here in Minnesota. So uh yeah, feeling real bad for you when it gets down to you know 48 degrees in in February versus 20 below zero. But you got to deal with the summertime, uh, and and uh here it's delightful. So it's funny. So when I was reading that, that quote initially, my my first thought was how our internal state supersedes external conditions, you know? So both the weather and our internal state, um, they're cyclical, they have seasons, but we can only influence one of those two things, right? We can't influence how the literal or figurative weather is outside of us, whether that be the actual temperature outside our studios or inside for that matter, or whether it be just the external state of everything that's going on in our world and in the world, you know, at large. But we can not control necessarily, but we can certainly influence our internal state, right? So it goes back to how do we stoke the flame? How do we continue to find ways to really nurture that state of invincible summer within us? Yeah, and I I love there's a quote that that Cameron has in the book. He says that music has the same amount of energy as a plant does. It's growing and it's constantly finding its purpose. And I think that's really him talking about that art is a living thing that is constantly evolving. And so, right for us as artists, like when you think about a plant, and I love that my my one of my mentors, Mako Fujimura, always uses gardening as an example of a complete and almost twin-like atmosphere with art. They're twins, gardening and being an artist because it's always growing and it's constantly finding its purpose. But just because a plant dies in the moment, winter comes, it's still gonna come back when the sun comes out in the summer, right? It's still gonna find its purpose, it's still

Surprise Artist Moments And Film Seeds

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gonna reach, it's still gonna grow and it's gonna evolve and change. Three plants could come from that place where that that one left, or a whole new plant could come up. I just I think we need to have in our heads, right? And this is something I've been dealing with because I've been constantly working in the winter, in my winter. Right. So even though I'm struggling, even though I'm like kind of just trying to figure out what I'm doing next and where things are going, I'm still doing things within it. And I'm just starting to discover again those new parts, that evolution, that living thing that it's not changed, it never left me. It's still there. It just needs some time. If we think about art of all kinds within that metaphor of always growing and always evolving, there's there's two different endpoints that we could sort of identify. And I'm curious which one you attach to more. The first end could be when it actually goes out the door. So thinking about music, right? I mean, there's an infinite number of, you know, mixes and takes and a wide, wide range, you know, of different, different ways to, you know, uh put a shine on the finished product before it gets printed and sent out into the world. With visual art, it's the end date could be considered the the end of the growth, let's say, or hey, it's in its finished complete state when we share it, when it goes out the door, uh, you know, to go live somewhere else. The other interpretation could be that it's literally always growing and evolving. So if you think about music, for example, the way that, you know, some of these songs and some of these albums that we listened to, you know, growing up the way that it affected us at, you know, 15 is definitely the way that it affected us at 30 or 50, right? Which of those definitions do you think is more accurate within this context? I don't know. That's a hard one compared. Sure. You know, so I I don't think you can really put them in the same basket other than being the artist yourself and creating and being true to what right what you want to create, because most of us as fine artists are gonna get a lot less eyeballs on pieces. Finding somebody to actually see or look at is probably the greatest challenge for us as an artist. You know, it it's such a hard analogy for a finished work. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's it's I I've always had trouble with comparing those with even with friends of mine that, you know, are talking about literature and hey, why don't you make prints? You know, books make millions of prints. And I'm like, well, it's different. I'm a fine artist. It's not meant for millions of eyeballs to go ahead and grab and turn all the pages and then throw away. Right. After you're done reading it, you know, or to take to a used bookstore and then you get rid of it. So there's I always have a hard time in those comparisons. As visual artists, we also have the luxury of being able to make changes until someone else owns it or until it's in someone else's hands forever. You can keep doing that. Yeah. Yeah. I just had the the experience today. This actually, this piece that's behind me, I reassembled it for the first time since its first exhibition in preparation to send it off to Spain. And as I had my my studio assistant here helping me put it together, I was like, he's like, what? I was like, oh, I'm gonna change that right there. I had an idea, and I had the luxury of doing that change. Yeah, you know, whereas, you know, as with it with a muta musical, you know, artist or with an album, I mean, once the label's not gonna go back and you know, reprint and redistribute just because you want to make a couple little tweaks, you know, here and there. That's just not an option. Yeah. Yep. Well, and I think part of this goes into as well that the next quote we have here by Louise Passure, and it's opportunity favors the prepared mind. Um, and and I love that. Like, opportunity favors the prepared mind. What is your mind preparing for? And and I think there's this big myth of being discovered. Like, especially today with social media, compared to when uh Cameron was a young lad riding in his room and trying to be discovered as a writer. Like today, we think now we really think, oh, we can be discovered in a minute because of social media. Well, nobody really gets discovered. People get prepared, and then when a door opens, they walk through it like you're born and you're ready for it, right? So you think about Cameron Crow when he was a little kid. He was reading Cream, he was reading Rolling Stone like crazy in junior high. He was already writing about his favorite bands in his bedroom before he went to that meeting at the door and said, Can I review the James Taylor album at the small paper in San Diego? And they said yes, and there's a bunch of records by the door. For every article you write, we'll give you a record. He's like, What? Okay. So then he's doing all these things before he actually finally gets through to the great rock and roll writer Lester Bangs, who picks up the phone that is played wonderfully and almost famous by the late Philip Philip Seymour Hoffman, like just an iconic role. And then when the then editor of Rolling Stone, Ben Fontoris,

Winter Seasons And Invincible Summer

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says yes, Cameron had already done all the work. Yeah. He was already prepared for the opportunity that came his way, right? The studio teaches us this. We can't wait for the call. We need to become the call that the people are looking for, right? Yeah. I mean, in in musical terms, you know, it's it's been discussed many times by countless artists how your second album is way more difficult to write than your first, especially, well, the the album after the one that you get discovered for, or the one that pops and you know gets you gains you an audience. Yeah. Because now the eyeballs are on you. So to your point about being prepared for whatever attention you may garner from the first thing that gets attention, I think back to that quote, I forget who said it, we've discussed it on the pod before, but be careful what you become known for, you know. In other words, is there something beyond just the first thing that gets you eyeballs? You know, is there depth to it? Is there work behind the work, behind the work, behind the work that's that's the key right there? Yeah. If if you haven't done work before you get the phone call, right? You don't want to have the studio visit, and all they see is that one painting or that one sculpture, and there's nothing else to show for it, right? So it's like you also have to show all the preparation that's gone in before so that person will take a risk on you. You know, Cameron was sending tear sheets and little blurbs and things forever. He was mailing them up to rolling stone and cream and every magazine he wanted to write for. Like he'd go ahead and just write, go to the show with his mom and write an article and then send it off, send it off, send it off, send it off, send it off. So that's a great example of it's not just the work, it's also right, back to the quote, the prepared mind. Yeah. So let's extend that into the habits and disciplines and routines that lead to a consistent developing body of work, right? Yep. So it's not just the work itself, but back to your example with with Cameron Crow, he was he was ready, not just with the work, but he already had the skill, the desire, all of the all of the necessary intangibles internally to continue to do what he wanted to do. And that applies to us as artists as well, right? So how do we, I'll put this back to a question to you, mentor Ty, how do we prepare our mind, literally and figuratively, for that opportunity? Reading about Cameron's story in more detail, it was awesome for me to go talk about being prepared as a junior higher because he was writing about it, but he wrapped himself in, he was listening to it. Each band, each thing, right, that he listened to with his sister or his sister's friends or somebody, he's taking that in and he's thinking about it and he's processing it. And then he's going to the next one. So he was, he'd become a vacuum for what he loved and what his passion was. Number one, writing, number two, listening. And then he became an incredible interviewer because all of those things that he prepared himself for, he now learned how to ask questions. And he listened to all of those that he looked up to in big ways. So he learned from the Lester Banks, he learned from the Ben Fongtors, he learned from the other writers, and even the ones who never really made it that he was around. He listened and he gathered that information. Right? He was that antenna, like we say, from Rick Rubin. He was gathering that was a that was a double entendre laugh. I love how you say antenna. And also, I was just about to reference a Rick Rubin quote, a different one, but that's why that's why I'm smiling. Keep going. But I think that's it, right? It's like we talk about this all the time. Don't just make art, look at art, wrap yourself up in art, read about art, listen to art, go to lectures, go to interview. Like if there's an artist that you love and you can go do a studio visit, ask questions like learn, learn, learn, always be learning. Yeah. Then that call comes, and you can now bring all of that in and out of you when that call comes and you sound like you're prepared. You don't even have to try and be sound prepared. Prepared, you are prepared at that point. Right. Develop your taste by tasting a lot. Yeah. You know, Rick Rubin talks about that. Jerry Saltz talks about that. We we covered that extensively in our our little Jerry Jerry series of podcasts. But it's the best thing we have to develop is our taste of what we like, what we think is good, what moves us. You know, so Cameron Crowe was listening to all the music. He was tasting everything that he could get into his palate to be able to, you know, write intelligently about the work and share it with the world. Yep. Yeah. So Ty our next quote is from Charles Swindall. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react. Man, that that is an awesome quote. That is an incredible quote because, you know, there was a time in my life when things were really, really, really bad. And uh I'd gone through a really, really heavy time, was suicidal, was dealing with a lot of dark, dark things. And a mentor who was my college basketball coach at the time told me after we were talking about all these things, he said, you know, everybody in the world has a whole lot of problems. And there are problems in this world that if we sat back and we were faced with them, we would probably look at them no matter how bad ours were and go, gosh, mine mine aren't really that bad. I'm not discounting the tough things that happened in my life, but there are a whole lot of other times that I reacted in a much bigger way than what was happening in my life could have been or should have been. You know, and I think thinking through this is a this is a great studio mindset thing here. Everything goes wrong in the studio all the time, right? The gallery like kind of ghosts you or throws shade at you in big times. The residency says no, you don't get into the group show, right? 10%. That's 10%. Think about over time. The other 90 is what you do the next morning you wake up. Right? Crow from Rolling Stone, his time was done. And then he started making films. He just kept showing up. And then what happens? Academy awards come. Big things start to happen. I mean, have happened for him. He didn't quit, even in the difficult things, right? Like art is a long game. Nobody out there on your Instagram feed is gonna remember your bad year. Nobody. They're gonna remember what you did year after year after year after year. I think it's probably more relevant now. The just how our darkest times lead to the light, right? So the the example of when Cameron Crow interviewed Bowie in, I think, 1976 during his Thin White Duke era. He was in LA, strung out, using a lot of a lot of drugs, apparently subsisting on exclusively red peppers and whole milk. And in 2012, this is one of the most interesting things about the book to me, is when Crow recounts that time with Bowie when they reconnected in 2012, I believe it was. Yeah. You remember this? Yeah. Yeah. So, and uh and and Crow was, hey, remember, remember this and remember that. And, you know, um, I think Crow later said, I I think he I think he did remember those times. He just didn't want to remember them with me. But to to Crow in that moment, Boe said, Yeah, those are those are dark times. I don't really, you know, remember a lot, you know, from from that period. But the point is that the the dark times give birth to the miracles and they provide a lot more depth for whatever we are going to communicate with and through the work that comes from it. Yeah. Whether it be in that moment or much later. So I have to tell that story because me, you know me, I'm David Bowie is probably my single most favorite musician of all time. And when I got to this point in the book, is this a spoiler alert? No, it's not a spoiler alert. Oh, well, I don't even care. Spoiler alert. If you want to read the book first, you can cut right here. It's a teaser. It's a teaser. So Cameron is, I think he's 18, 18, 19, is what he's kind of guessing, right? In that that part of his life. And he's interviewing the uh Rolling Stones other lead guitarist, which I didn't even know who this guy was, but then I started listening to all of his albums. I'm like, I know a lot of these songs. Holy crap, this dude was talented. Ronnie Wood. And so he's hanging out with him at his hotel room, and in walks David Bowie, and he goes in and they end up just kind of hanging out and they hit it off talking about Motown and RB music that they both loved, and they kind of hit it off in a way. And so then Bowie says, Hey, I gotta go to sound check it over at the show. Why don't you guys meet me afterwards at my after party at my hotel room and bring him and points to Cameron? And so Ronnie tells Cameron, Hey, you want me to get to an interview? And Cameron's like, That's impossible. Bowie doesn't do interviews. Now, at this time in Bowie's career, he does not do interviews, and his manager guards him like a prison guard, no interviews, no nothing. They're trying to completely kind of control the image that he has and not let anybody kind of take from that at this point in time. So, anyways, Cameron goes to that after party with Ronnie and they hang out. Well, I think that turned into two or three nights of Bowie going, You got to come tomorrow night too. Right. So Cameron, you know, gets

Preparation Beats Being Discovered

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on the phone and tells his mom, I'll be here another night, you know, type of thing. And so then he and Bowie hang out, and I guess Ronnie talked to him about, hey, you should get let this kid do an interview. And so Bowie tells young Cameron, hey, write down your phone number. I'm about to take a train to New York. I'm gonna fire my manager and I'm about to start a whole new thing. And I want I want you to interview me. So Cameron says he wrote down his phone number and he said, That's usually the end. Yeah. When you write down your phone number and they say, I'll call you, that's it. Well, I think it was two weeks later, he's sitting in his room in San Diego, and the phone rings, and it's hello, is this Cameron? And it's David Bowie, and he hears a train in the background, and he's like, Hey, I did what I told you I was gonna do. I'm on a train back from New York to LA. I fired my manager, meet me at this address and interview me. So he shows up, some little house that Bowie's staying in, and they sit on the bed, and Bowie basically says, I want you to hold a mirror up to me and tell me what you see. Ask anything. Well, that one moment turned into 18 months of traveling around LA in a little VW bug with David Bowie, going from studio to house to location to location while he recorded the station to station album. And you get to spend 18 months with David Bowie, which, like you said, was Bowie's worst like mental period as a human being in his life. And you recalled that story of them catching up later on. And there were moments where Charles Cameron was reading from his interview notes, and Bowie kept saying, I don't remember that, Cameron. I'm sorry, I don't remember. I said that. Why would I say that? Oh, wow, interesting. I'm kind of glad I don't remember. That was not a good time for me. Yeah. But I'm glad you were there. I'm glad you were there. But, anyways, like what a marvel. I couldn't imagine David Bowie going, Come on, man, keep coming up. I like, I like you. Let's hang out for 18 months together. Anyways. No shade against your English accent. Solid. Uh as somebody who, you know, does it work? Oh, I didn't really try, but but I will say that's one of the real joys of listening to the audio version is that Cameron Crow reads the book itself. And he does voices for everybody. And I wasn't familiar with the speaking voice of everyone, you know, that he imitated. But the ones that I was, I was like, that's pretty bang on, you know. So I like this Chris Christofferson, the rugged, smoky, was yeah, so good. The almonds. Yeah. Okay. Here I want to read this quote by camera that kind of goes with what we were talking about there. And he says, never forget the joyful experience of following your dream and finding your fucking voice in the world. Like, artists, never forget that joyful experience of following your dream. Now he's not saying like you're at the dream. It's like right now, you're following your dream to be an artist. You've found your voice and where you're going. Never forget the joyful experience of being able to do that. No matter what your life looks like around it all, that should be where you really find that joy and everything else in that experience. Don't let those layers of leather that built up dole the experience. Well, and as we talk about all the time, the best people to listen to are the ones who are living, living it, right? Yeah. Yep. Both in terms of example, but in terms of the way they carry themselves and how they navigate life. And one of the things I really appreciate about Cameron is that he has very clearly retained his sense of joy that he talks about, you know, in this quote. So his writing style, his speaking style, it's just there's no wasted words. It's clean, it's elegant, and he just has this sense of openness about him that he has retained throughout his life. The one interview that I referenced earlier that I listened to was recorded maybe a year or so ago. He was, I think, 68 at the time. And uh, I don't know if you got to this part or not, but the the interviewer asks him a pretty, you know, bold and and very direct question, something to the effect of, hey, have you ever thought about why, you know, your earlier films were so successful and most of your recent ones in the last decade and a half haven't been? I'm paraphrasing. It wasn't quite that terse, but it was pretty close. You know, right? I was like, oof. All right. And the way that Cameron Crow answered it was was just so gentle and open and like, yeah, you know, I've actually thought about that, that sort of childlike wonderment and and willingness to, you know, absorb and receive the world in a way that is, yeah, I get the openness is the best, is the best word that I can think of to really describe it, as opposed to what often happens, you know, for a lot of adults, as we become more weathered and leather, leather skinned, as he puts it, we just become more averse to that. We come, we become more, more hardened, more crusty, you know, not as receptive to whatever life is putting in front of us. So I just that's one of the things I just want to comment on was just how much I really appreciate his sense of joy and his communication style, which is, you know, uh very evident throughout the book. So the more acclaimed or the more known you become, the more the more voices get involved in what you're making and creating, right? So it's like, you know, plenty of artists out there historically, painters, sculptors, who created phenomenal work at one point and then it just falls off and it's weak for a long time. Yeah. Right. So it's not just it happens to every filmmaker, it happens to all musicians, right? Some of the greatest bands in the world have created very poor albums. Sure. Right. And you look at people like David Lynch, right? He took the step back after Dune. Yeah. And he was like, I lost all control of me in that moment. And I will never do that again. I will not, I will be the one who makes the decisions on everything from here on out. I won't let all the other people so those are those things to navigate as an artist in the art world too. Like, everybody wants to be famous, everybody wants to make it. But I also recognize because I read and study so much, that the more I go along and get into those things where you're making it, the more voices and the more people that are going to be involved. Yeah. Then you have to navigate all that too, and that becomes difficult. But all right. So our next quote comes from Goethe. Only begin and the mind grows heated. Yes. Beginning. We all know that's the most difficult part sometimes is just getting started, right? That blank canvas, that big pile of clay, the empty journal, the unanswered email to the gallery that we're scared to reaching out to or the show we want to apply to. You know, we all know that heat comes once we start, once we get going, right? The brush moves and suddenly three, four, five hours is gone. We never ate, and we're starting now. Right. Cameron Crow talks about that quite a bit about sitting down to write and the music turning on inside him. The second he sits down to write, the music's there. Right? The mind gets heated. The trick is just actually starting. The first mark, the first sentence, that the first words on the email, whatever that may be. Everything good downstream depends on that small act of just starting. I I've had to work myself into that over the last few months. You know, in the moments where I'll come in and I'm just like, I just don't know where I want to go yet. I just do something. And some days it's just a little bit, but some days that heat grows and then I just do a bunch. And then I go, shoot, so glad I started to do that because man, four hours just passed and I got quite a bit in. Yeah. Another of many beautiful reframes of The Inspiration has to find us working. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. How many times do we hear that? How many times do we say that on this very podcast? I was thinking about an example from the from the book he was talking about uh when he wrote his was it his first cover story? It was the first cover story for Led Zeppelin on Rolling Stone. In Rolling Stone. Well, it wasn't. Yeah, and it was af it was after the they said they will never ever do anything with Rolling Stone again because the writer ripped him a new one on an album. Right. But he he talked about, he wrote about in the book sitting down to write the to begin the article and putting on physical graffiti and literally using you know the music of as the soundtrack for his his writing session. It was yeah, just a really cool story. The um the follow-up quote that you had included in here from Cameron Crow himself: the right path is to capture a feeling, to know the feeling that you're after. That man, that is me in the studio. If I have to locate the feeling that I'm after, I have to know it, or I don't feel my work at all. Like I have to be capturing a specific emotional truth within everything that I'm doing. And so lately, as I'm trying to figure out where to go next, I music has always been a theme with everything I do. And I do give a lot of that credit to Cameron Crow because his films and things are so music-centric that they inspired me in very creative

Setbacks, Reaction, And The Bowie Years

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artistic ways because there's an extra character in all of his films and it's the music. Right. And to there are very few directors that do that the way that Cameron Crow does. He's one of the main ones that there's an extra character and it's the soundtrack. Yeah. And so I have been creating a soundtrack going back to the first song I remember ever hearing in 1979. And I've gone from 1979 all the way to the year 2000, and I've gone by year with all of the songs I would have listened to, heard, or would have had an impact on me. So I'm already made it to 1989, and I have 49 hours of music compiled in a playlist going from 79 through, and I've been listening to those songs while I'm working on ideas, while I'm writing out ideas for things, because I want to capture something. So I've I've got some pretty wild ideas for the architecture of songwriting that I want to try to bring out in the work and the inspiration that it had for me in my youth. So I'm really working hard to capture that feeling right now in the work. So a little tangent here, but I think it's it's interesting to me. So hopefully it will be to our audience as well. But do you do you Hey, I mean, at this moment, it's just you and I talking, right? You don't have to share this with anybody. Yeah. Has it always been that way? And is it always that way for you in that you are you go into the work with an emotional quality that you're attempting to capture before you start? It it's always been that way. Even when the work was very different, I think that was just part of my DNA. Like it's always been that way, and I had to like almost in an OCD way, right? Find that before everything makes sense. Right. You know, it and so even as I'm just working through ideas currently, like I feel it moving that way, and so I'm symbiotically working on all of the music and my own soundtrack, so to speak. Sure. On one hand, so hours of the day sitting and going through top of the pops, billboard top 100, you know, all the things from all those years and finding those lists and then but then, you know, having to weed out songs that no, I would not have heard that in 1981. I think I ended up liking that in college, even though it might have been released in 1981. Sure. It didn't have an effect on me until 1998. And I do my mind is set that way. It's almost like high fidelity, right? Is record player wall. Where he's like, is it alphabetical or is it by year, right? My head is it no, it's actually by memory. Each album is by person and memory and who I date. You know what I mean? So my mind works very categorically that way with music. So I've been doing that while I'm sewing, while I'm working with fiber, while I'm painting on pieces, and then kind of going back and forth and and also journaling and writing quite a bit about it. Yeah. That's interesting. I think we I'd love to talk to you about this, could be an entire episode, but I I think uh maybe it will be. The the idea of just sort of that chicken and egg relationship in terms of you know which comes first. I know that earlier on I was definitely in that same camp, you know, as you. And I think that this was, of course, not a conscious choice at any point, but I realized I was reflecting and journaling about this recently, that at some point I sort of have changed or switched to just attempting to go into every piece, every series, every body of work completely open and letting the work itself reveal what it's about. I don't know if that's right or wrong. I don't think there is a right or wrong way, you know, to do it. But I have just found that in the last year or so, maybe more, that that has been a more effective way for me to capture something that and I think you're more emotionally mature than I am. If we can go really deep, partially just because you're so much older than me. Yeah, that's that's what it is. Let's let let's let that be the theme of today's episode. Um, but no, I I genuinely think so there there is some emotional immaturity on my part where I don't always have the the words or the access to, you know, what it is that I'm feeling. And that's one of the beautiful gifts that art has given and continues to give me is the ability to sort of put something down, you know, and and add layers and add remove and right, but for the piece to reveal what it's about, and then by extension, where I'm at, you know, at that particular period. But it's really interesting. Yeah, I think, you know, it's all based on, you know, our own experiences. And I I think for me, you know, I was always that way, but music was such a big part always for me as a kid, and I always wrote about it. Yeah. You know, I'd just write my feeling. I always wrote poetry because my grandfather would teach me how to write poetry. So I was always writing poetry and expressing those feelings in ways that weren't just holding them. Right. It was I was writing, I was drawing, I was creating art at a young age, but I was also writing the lyrics to all my favorite songs down, right? I'd sit there with the little tape recorder, right? And I'd hit play for five seconds, stop, write them down, hit play, you know, and I'd record off the radio. Yeah, and then I'd write all the lyrics so I could memorize the lyrics to the songs because I didn't have the tape or I didn't have the record. So I was listening to them on the radio, and then I was recording them next to had the little teeny tape recorder next to the radio. After the DJ was done, hit record. But you also knew what song would come on at what hour because the new songs would come on at 9 p.m. or they'd always play this song at 9 30, right? Because you didn't really realize that's how the music world works. They're telling you what you like. But so then I would, why is this guy so sad? Why is she so heartbroken? Why is he so happy? You know, and so those feelings in the art, I was really processing at a young age, and I think that probably had some of the influence into why I do what I do now. Because really, if you think about it, by what I'm doing with the music, I'm kind of creating the lyrical emotion behind what it did for me on canvas. You triggered a memory that I hadn't revisited for quite some time. I I also wrote a lot of poetry in adolescence and and and through my you know early to mid twenties and have resumed doing so in the last you know four or five years here. But whether it's poetry or or journaling, I actually have the same experience as I do with making art, in that I'm not connected to necessarily what it is that I'm thinking. Or feeling until I see the words that I've just written. I'm like, and that's that's one of the just from a whatever best practice therapeutic um, you know, benefit for me is I benefit tremendously from doing that in whether it be making art, write something down. Huh. Interesting. And then taking that third-party, you know, perspective. That's what Nathan's got going on right now. You know? When you're thinking about writing writing down lyrics too, I think um that was one of the the really positive benefits of the advent of the compact disc as we transitioned from tapes, cassette tapes, was that there was way more real estate for the little, you know, CD pamphlet to include for artists that chose to do so, the lyrics to the songs. Whereas a cassette tape, it's just, you know, a truncated version of the album art, and that was it. Right. I can think about some albums in particular that I was you just remembered sitting there with the lyrics right in front of your face. Yep. Right. It's basically like karaoke, it's just you know, scrolls right along. I know. I love it though. Which which I also love, yeah, for sure. Way percent. Yeah. Man. Okay. I want to skip down here because this is this might be my favorite quote from Almost Famous, but also favorite quote from something that was taught to Cameron at a young age, and it is Act Like You Belong from the promoter Larry Valiant. Cameron was young, and he was going into a room for one of his first times with a big band. I can't remember if this was Allman Brothers or not. I can't remember who it was with. And the promoter said, Hey, act like you belong. He, I mean, such a great hint of advice for a kid who would probably be scared to death, stuttering, not sure what to do, stand in the corner, avoid everybody. But just having somebody give you that advice, hey, act like you belong. This is gold for you artists out there. This is absolute gold. Cameron was a child walking into backstage rooms with Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Allman Brothers, I mean, the biggest musicians of the time. He didn't belong by any normal measure. He's 14 years old, for God's sakes. Right. But he acted like he did. He wasn't arrogant, he wasn't performing, he was present and curious, asking real questions, right? Think about this. When you walk into Freeze Art Fair, you walk into any gallery or any room, any artist studio that you admire, you belong because you're making the work too. Don't go in shy and scared and nervous. Go in like you, you're an artist. You belong. The belonging isn't granted, it's claimed quietly. The room will adjust to you. The belonging isn't granted, it's claimed quietly. Tiny Nathan Clark. I mean, I I could have grabbed that from Cameron by reading it. I don't know. But those are those are in my notes. I I want you all to be confident out there. Like this is one of the most difficult things to learn. If you are an artist and you are making work, you belong. So don't go in timid. Go in confident. You may not be there yet. You may be walking into Zwerner, right? And your work's not there yet. That doesn't mean you don't belong someday. So act like you belong now. Well, you think about back to that previous quote: preparing the mind. That's one of the things that I try to do every time I'm in spaces like that is to visualize my work there. Yeah. To visualize my name on the wall. Yep. Now that's ambitious. But we have to have a level of self-delusion that propels the dream, that that keeps us thinking. Because without even considering that as a possibility, you know, the likelihood of it happening doesn't, it's not guaranteed, but it does increase when we begin to act as if and when we begin we begin to think as if as well. I always go back to this. One of my mentors uh coming up when I was younger would always remind me, no one knows what the hell they're doing. Anytime that that he could kind of pick up on that I was, you know, a little sheepish, a little nervous about being in a room or whatever the context was. But, you know, he would just say, everyone's making it up as they go. Everyone. The difference between the people that have actually been there before is that they just have more repetitions. They've just got more reps in those spaces, or their name is already on the wall, which of course makes it way easier. Sure. What we're going to get down to is the essence of the human condition, which is I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. I have a question for you. So, based on this quote here and what we're talking about, when you walked into Benjaminette gallery for the first time, how did you feel? Well, I'm going to answer the two different ways. I think so. I'm actually going to go back to the first. So when we were first in communication, and I was doing my research and I looked at the list of other artists on his roster, that was the moment where I was like, I don't know if I belong. You know, I had a tremendous amount of whatever, that that imposter syndrome phrase gets gets overused, but it's the best word that I have in this moment. It's it was that. Are they reaching out to the right guy? You know? Yeah. But I will say in moments like that, that's where the sort of visualization and mental preparation really comes in handy. So by the time I actually got to the gallery for the show, I had already sort of emotionally and mentally processed, like, yeah, I belong here. You know, my name is actually on the wall, you know? Yep. But it does go back to acting like you belong. And in those situations, like I'm thinking back to my first solo exhibition, which happened probably before my work was even ready for it. But it was, it was that sort of, all right, I I must belong here. Well, so acting as though I know how to navigate those spaces. Now, this also comes back to the value

Start The Work And Find The Feeling

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of having art mentors and peers who have been where you're at or where you're aspiring to go. This is where our friendship has been tremendously valuable because I absolutely talked to you about that. And you helped paint a picture for me about what it was going to be like so that I could actually spend some mental and emotional time preparing for that experience. So that when that moment came, I had already lived it in my mind multiple times. Opportunity favors the prepared mind. The quote we read earlier. Yeah. Because I I I remember back to that, and there was nothing. I wish I was there. There was nothing out of anything I saw from your talk to your interview to the way you held yourself that didn't show me you didn't belong. Does that make sense? Like I saw confidence, it felt it was you belong, and it's you did. You did belong. Right? It's just like, yes, did Cameron Crow belong in that room? Yeah, he actually did. Right. You know what I mean? But sometimes, like you said, we just need that person or those people around us to just remind us. Yeah. You're supposed to be here. Right. You were built for this. So knock it out, kid. You know? Thanks, and that that scene is an almost famous, by the way. That scene is an almost famous when the promoter tells a Mac like you belong. I want to go back actually before we move on. You skipped over this quote, and I was excited to talk about it. Yes. So Alice Crow, Cameron's mother, who he quotes more than anyone in this book. More than anyone. Yeah, absolutely. She said, Sometimes the thing you worry about most doesn't come about. So I read that. The reason I was excited, again, something that we've we've discussed many times before, but I think back to what happened. Yep. I've got a lot of worries in my life, most of which have never happened. Mark Twain. So realizing just the reality that our mind is not often on our team. Our mind is oftentimes not our friend. Yeah. It is playing out tapes of imagined scenarios, most of which will never happen. Of course. Guilty. Yeah. And everyone listening to us talk right now is guilty because we're all human beings and that's part of the human condition. You know, it's something where we are, we are literally, you know, wired to assess and look for potential threats to our safety. But the reality is that there are very few that actually exist. Most of them are imagined. Yeah. You know, and it the energy that it steals from our work is massive. Yeah. Right. You know, um, worry is a poor substitute for preparation. Yeah. This is something I have to work on because I'm it's really easy for me to go to fall into that dread at times, that anticipatory dread. And it's like, I have to just go quit worrying about that. Let's just go prepare, let's go read some more. Let's go study some more. Let's go work some more, right? Fill that worry with preparation. And I think too, it's like usually those things that we're worrying about is more will I ever get in this show? Yeah. Will I ever get that gallery? Will I ever be able to sell this piece? Like, those are the things we worry about more as artists than anything. And it's like, no, let's let's flip that to when I get this show, when I get this dealer, when I get this collector. It's an inside job. Yeah. Back to that, I think it was the first quote that we discussed. Yep. We can't control the weather. Nope. But we can influence our internal state. It's an inside job. Absolutely. It's an inside job. All right. I want to change direction here because I love this story of one of his long moments with uh one of my favorite musicians, Joni Mitchell, which I've been listening to the blue album like crazy the last few months. And here they are sitting in an interview. And by the way, Cameron Crow is currently working on the Joni Mitchell biopic, which I cannot wait for, with her helping create it with him and write it there. Dear friends, so, anyways, they're sitting and talking, and here's what she says. Here's the thing. She said forcefully, you have two options. You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success. They're going to crucify you for staying the same. And if you change, they're going to crucify you for changing. But staying the same is boring. And change is interesting. So of the two options, she concluded, I'd rather be crucified for changing. Wow. Joni's telling Cameron this is one of the great artist-to-artist moments in print, this conversation, I think. Like, I don't, this is just amazing that she's sharing this with him. And it's like every artist who has a body of work that works knows the trap. You sell them all, you get into a show, something happens. The market always wants the things that sell. I was I was listening to a few interviews recently from some big artists that were discussing this. And they were just saying all the market wants is what's sold. They don't want anything new. Collectors want the thing that people will keep on their wall and people will keep appreciating, right? Your muscle memory wants to kind of create that same formula all the time. And change is terrifying. And we've talked about this a lot because change is admitting that you don't know yet. When you start changing those things, and I'm not saying just totally new, right? But evolving in your work, doing different things. We've talked about this with Nick Cave often in the podcast a lot. That vulnerability to change, you know, but staying the same is a slow death. Joni knows that. We've talked about how Bob Dylan knew this. David Bowie knew this. Think of the times Bowie switched and changed things. As a Bowie lover, he's got RB, he has pop, he has glam. I mean, he's like all over the board. And he also changed his person each time, too. So you've got all these different characters, right, wrapped up around Bowie as well. Gustin knew this when he completely burned his abstract reputation, and he started painting the Klansmen and the shoes and the light bulbs based on Jewish friends of his and friends of color who intimidated by the KKK in LA started doing these paintings politically. The market catches up or it doesn't. But how do we how do we keep our soul? I think that's the hard part, and that's something I'm really like channeling too, as the last few years my work has taken drastic, drastic changes and trying to find things that work in it, but refusing to kind of stay in one lane. It's difficult. It's tough. Well, you think about the artists of all types who have that legendary status, who have been most prodigious in their output over time. And they have almost all had radical shifts and changes, and to your point from earlier periods that weren't well received by anybody. We weren't the audience wasn't ready yet. Sometimes ever, you know. Yeah. You know, you talk about uh Dylan, Prince would be a great example of that. I watched the uh the PJ20, the Pearl Jam documentary that Cameron Crowe had produced back in 2011. I'd never watched it, and that was Pearjam was one of my one of my bands. That might be the first 10 might have been the first cassette tape that I ever owned, little 11 or 12-year-old me. But uh Eddie Vedder talks about that in in the in that documentary about how, and this was like in the late 90s, early 2000s, after they had, you know, ridden the wave of their really early success, as they were, you know, doing different things, but kind of said a version of the same you know, Joni Mitchell quote where he's like, and ultimately it really does come down to, hey, if you're gonna get crucified, back to the Joni Mitchell quote, um, might as well get crucified for changing as opposed to staying the same. Yeah. When she talks about innovation and she says on innovation that she tests her work by asking, Have I done anything like this before? And if the answer is yes, she moves on, refusing to stay in a successful, safe place. Now, it's easy to do that when you've had success. Much easier to say those things when you've had success and you're still gonna sell records even if you change. But it brings new I want to challenge you on that. Sure. Is it though? Is it is it actually is it actually easier to change once you found success? I would argue that it would be that it is easier to change and evolve before you've got all the eyeballs because they're vertical pressure. Let me rephrase. I thought we're gonna have one of the rare moments where disagree. This is what the people tune in for, Ty. I think it's easier to to say yes to the change. Yeah. When you found some success, because if you do fail after the success, you you're probably not gonna completely fail. Sure. If you haven't found it yet, you're still trying to find something that works. I'm gonna have to freaking think about that all night long. Yes. That's a good thing. I want to. We'll we'll bring that up again another time. But maybe that maybe there is a question in there for you out there to just ask yourself those questions like that sometimes when you're stuck and you're working on things. Hey, have I done this before? Have I been doing these same things before? And maybe that opens you up to some new ideas. Well, this characteristic that I think we're trying that we're kind of circling around to put a fine point on it is that the greats have the ability to insulate what they make from external influences. So you mentioned Philip Gussen earlier, the quote of his that I always rattles around in my brain for the good. And I'm gonna paraphrase this another great artist that we're gonna do an episode on at some point. Um but my memory of how he said this was you know, when I when I come into the studio, I've got all the voices of the critics, the dealers, the galleries, the collectors, et cetera. And after a while, they leave. And when it's really flowing, when it's really working, I leave as well. Yep. And so it's that ability to disconnect

Act Like You Belong

1:00:50

our creative process, our what we are making and how we're making it in the moment from any imagined worry about how others are going to receive it. In that PJ 20 documentary, you know, Neil Young was a huge, huge influence on those guys as almost father figure creatively. And he's another great example of he's done whatever the hell he wanted to do during his career. And I I would I would guess, that's all I can do is guess on this, but I would guess that even the most hard, hardcore of Neo Young fans certainly have an album or two that they probably don't listen to as much as the rest. Sure. And that's okay. Yep. That's all right. So he, amongst the others that we've listed already, have cultivated that ability to just not give a fuck about what anybody else says or thinks, or again, imagine what we imagine in the moment, how it might be received. How the hell do we know? Right? Yeah. How do we know? And would they have been able to make that other great album? Yeah. If they had to take the risks on the two or three that maybe weren't as good, but because they took the risk, it opens something up to get them to that next really strong album. That's where I think it all kind of comes together. Is if you're not going to change and you're going to stay boring, what is out there outside of that recipe that you're stuck on that could take you to the next level? Yeah. For not willing to take those risks sometimes, maybe we'll never find out. Which I think leads into our next quote really well by David Ben Gurion. He says, anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist. And I love that because it's pushing back on the cynicism that passes for sophistication in the art world. The realist isn't the one who tells you it's impossible. The realist is the one who has watched it happen enough times to know it does. Right? Cameron Crowe was living his living his exact dream as a miracle. Like it really is. That's miraculous. Like my mentorship program itself, having artists from 21 countries, that's miraculous. Like that really is. Like every painting that I've got to from some random place in my head that I can't even name, like that's miraculous. Right? Realism in our life as artists includes the irrational. It absolutely has to. I don't know if this is pushback or not, but I do just want to acknowledge that what you're describing is easier once the first miracle has happened. Sure. So if we ever got a chance to ask, you know, Cameron this, for example, I would guess, that's all I can do, but I would guess that he would say that imagining that he could write and produce and direct, you know, films after his nat the natural ending point with Rolling Stone had taken place, I would imagine that that was easier for him to wrap his mind around. So I want you to to channel your past self. Think about before the first big thing happened for you. Let's let's try to make this tactical for our listeners who maybe haven't had a miracle with their their art, whatever that may be yet. I think, you know, the thing for me that's different to most artists is that I had an uncle who was a renowned artist, right? So I saw what he did. I saw his show posters, I saw his work, I saw his kiln in the backyard, I saw his studio, saw work in a museum, right? So in my head, even that's where I wanted to go and be, but I was able to witness it in a close enough arena to make it realizable. Right. But it wasn't until right, I had my very first solo show in art school, my senior show, to go, this is what it feels like. Right. Like I showed work in high school, right? At the in the gym when we had the big art show and in the small little gallery in the basement and those things, but they didn't feel they didn't feel tangible, right? They didn't feel, they were like an idea. But it was the in the gallery senior show. Yeah. That I really walking around that room, looking at that, I was just like, that was a first miracle. That was that first thing that made this is realizable. Yeah, I want this. So thinking about Cameron back then, right? To take this story full circle, the miracles were all over the place. I mean, they just happened. It just randomly happened to him, like insane. But then what am I gonna do now? Right. He he had that moment. My time's up. I got passed by another young me, is what happened, right, at Rolling Stone. And so He had this idea of I wonder what he never really got high school. He never got that experience because he was riding and traveling with bands and stuff during high school. And he graduated two years early or three years early. Can't remember. And he said, Well, what do high schoolers think? How do they process music? What is so he went undercover because his mom knew a principal of a high school who happened to be a Chris Christofferson fan. He went undercover for a year at 21 years old and spent a whole year in high school. Right. And that high school, right? But he needed that whole year after the miracles to figure out what that next thing was, which he thought was just going to be writing about that. He had no idea that that high school was going to become Fast Times at Ridgemont High, his first script. Yeah. Which changed the entire script for Hollywood on teen movies. Didn't exist before that point. Yeah. They said nobody will ever watch a movie about teenagers with teenagers as the main character. Well, guess what happened after that? It took those things to get to that point. Last quote from William Shakespeare: doubts are traitors and make us lose the good, we oft might win by fearing to attempt. I'm gonna read that again. Doubts are traitors and make us lose the good, we oft might win by fearing to attempt. Man. We all have a graveyard of work that we didn't make because doubt got there first. There's lots of ideas that got crumpled up and thrown away or stored in the journal or wherever in the mental notebook because we never started it. Right. There's that something, right? There's the song you didn't write, the photographs you didn't take, the short film you really wanted to create. I'm speaking of myself here with lost ideas, honestly. The failed documentary that a friend and I tried and we just didn't finish, right? There are those things, though, that doubts. I don't really know how to do that yet. Feels like it's protection, but so many times it's just stealing doubt. And our our the resistance in us likes to think that it's protection. It likes to play that card. You're protecting yourself. You're not going to get hurt, you're not going to get wounded by this. But no, it's really stealing the freedom from you. Yeah. You know, and it's like Crow pitched fast times. He never even really graduated high school and he just pitched a film about high school. Right. Right? Say anything almost famous, which was his story. Like a lot of these things were laughed out of rooms. And then he kept going and kept going, right? That's the whole secret.

Change, Risk, And Innovation

1:08:45

Attempt, attempt it, attempt it. Try, try, try. You know, we talk about that all the time. Rejection slips. Right? I got to see JD Down Salinger's rejection slips and his little rejection slip box, right? One of the most storied authors of all time, critically acclaimed authors of all time. One of the top five greatest American writers of all time. Rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected. Tell it gets accepted, accepted, accepted. So don't let doubt be the traitor that steals those things from you. Did you cry? When? How many times? I was I was gonna talk about feelings. Yeah. That was a that was a callback to previous episode. I mean, I cried multiple times in this book, multiple times, but I I cried at the celebrations as much as I did the heartache. Yeah. I cried at the Bowie moment. I was like, what? Think of the doubt though. Okay? You're we'll go back to Zeppelin. You are 14 years old. And you know that this band does not do interviews for Rolling Stone and will never write for Rolling Stone ever. And then he got the interview. Yeah. Same thing with Bowie, right? Why why even try? And he kind of made that comment to Ronnie Wood. Oh, it's not, I'm not even gonna be able to get it. Well, it's not gonna happen. And I forget the words that Ronnie Wood told him, but he kind of gave the word, we're gonna get this. Yeah. He's like, okay, let's try. It'd be easy for him to just go, nope, never gonna happen, and what leave the room. But no, he stayed in the rooms. Even when it was uncomfortable, he stayed in the rooms and things happened. I wonder how much I'd be interested to ask, ask Cameron this. I I wonder how much his youth benefited him and his inexperience benefited him in those ways. I'll that in an interview. Uh it was Jimmy Kimmel or Colbert who asked him, Do you think your youth, your age got you in the room and made everybody more attentive to want to give you their time over everybody else? He said, absolutely 100%. He didn't deny it at all. Yeah. He's like 100%. If he was another adult in the room, it probably wouldn't have happened. Let me ask a question to the audience. What work are you avoiding right now? Because whatever work you're avoiding right now might be the work that matters the most. Think about that when you log off this episode. Think about that. Is there work that you're avoiding right now? Is there an idea that you're just staying away from because you're scared or you don't think you have enough to do it? What is it? Something to really, really think about. Yeah, I think one of the things that we we talked about earlier that I wanted to circle back on was just the idea of, and I again, I don't know if I'm unique in this regard. I I doubt it, but for me, starting has never been a problem. It's the finishing, for sure. I've got it's not a graveyard. Okay. They haven't been put to rest by any stretch of the mat. They're just incubating. They're just marinating, they're hanging out, waiting for their time. Yep. And it works for me. It's worked enough for me to just be okay with setting something aside indefinitely and coming back to it. But I just wanted to add that for someone or someone's who might be listening, that that that may also be the case. It may not necessarily be a matter of starting something new that you feel compelled to put out into the world, but to finish something that's been hanging out in the background for too long that you've been avoiding. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love Cameron Crow always stayed a fan. Yeah. Like he always stayed a fan. That was his whole thing. And I think, you know, the thing ignored Lester Bang's advice. Yeah, he did. He really did. When Lester Bang said, don't become friends with these guys. Keep a distance, right? He kind of went the other way. When you got a 50-year-old or 40-something year old man and you got a 14-year-old kid, it's kind of hard for the 14-year-old kid to keep a distance. Sure. You know. And I think, you know, the fame, the films, the rooms, Bowie, Pearl Jam, like, I mean, Joni Mitchell, Emmy Liu, all these people, like, never made him cool. He stayed uncool on purpose. That's the reason the book

Miracles, Doubt, And Staying Uncool

1:13:20

is titled The Uncool, right? The uncool kid is the one who still hears that song for the first time. Yeah. The uncool kid still wants the autograph, still believes that a record can save your life, right? Still believes that next painting can change something. That next sculpture can move a community, right? Like artists that lose that, you're done. Artists who keep that and can hold on to that can work till the day they drop. And what we're talking about really is authenticity. Yeah. Trying to be cool always reads as artificial. I mean, sent you a post this week, right? Won't name any names, but I sent you a specific post this week that really kind of hit that for me. Yes, that's a great example. That's a perfect example. It just came to me. But he can't so that that's back to my my my point from earlier about how he retained that on uncoolness throughout his life as he as he profiled all of these different musicians over time. Is that, and this is true of anybody who we would say today is cool as an adult, with very few exceptions, were definitely not cool as a kid. There's a point where they weren't cool. Yeah. Were you cool growing up, Ty? It's pretty cool for the most part. Of course you were. Of course you were. Yeah, you would say that. At least I really tried to be. But it's the authentic right because, you know, trying to be cool is never cool. Right. Ever. At best, it's going to read as just simply fitting in. Right. Genuine coolness, however you would define it, you know, comes from a place of this is actually who I am. Yeah. You know, right. And not attempting to, you know, uh put on the the the cloak of what others are doing in an attempt to just, you know, fit in. That's not cool. Yeah. Being you is cool, you know, and that applies to our work, right? The more genuine we can be, the more authentic we can be to our voice, as opposed to just doing our best impersonation of, you know, whatever the handful of artists that we love the most, that's what's really going to gain traction. Yep. Well, I'm going to leave everybody with a little bit, little advice here from Cameron Crow that I've kind of packaged though. He's really advising young artists to stick with your journey even when it isn't easy. If an artist you love makes an album or creates art that doesn't thrill you anymore, you shouldn't bail on them. And he says, stick with it, man. They'll be back. The big journey that you take is how to be a fan. And he finally reminds everybody that life is the best artist. Sometimes you have to step back and let your own experiences show you what the next chapter should be. So take that to hard artist and uh go make some art. We'll see you later.