UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Hello, friends. My name’s Tami Simon and I’m the founder of Sounds True. I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original, premium, transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question and answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us, and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
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Welcome to Insights at the Edge. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is James McCrae. James is an author, poet, and teacher who empowers creators to live with purpose and turn imagination into reality. He’s a meme artist and a creative strategist based in Austin, Texas. In his writing and art, he applies the principles of Eastern philosophy to modern life with humor and candor. He’s the author of the book Shit Your Ego Says, and How to Laugh in Ironic Amusement During Your Existential Crisis, which is a book of poetry and memes about leaving your comfort zone to embrace the unknown. James McCrae is also the author of a new book from Sounds True. It’s gorgeously written and tremendously inspiring. It’s called The Art of You: The Essential Guidebook for Reclaiming Your Creativity. James, welcome.
James McCrae: Tami, thanks for having me. I’m so pleased and honored to be here with you today.
TS: One of the sentences that you write towards the beginning of The Art of You is your authenticity is your currency. And I thought to myself, “This is really interesting.” Here James and I are meeting and I want to be as authentic as possible. James wants to be as authentic as possible. How do humans do that?
JM: That’s a great question. I think authenticity is what comes most naturally to us. There’s a chapter in the book where I talk a lot about Taoism and I talk about the Tao Te Ching. Living according to the Tao means living in accordance with nature. I think that’s both nature, that it’s around us, but it’s also the nature within us. I think that our authenticity is what comes most naturally to us. Now, there are a lot of instances in our society today that distract us from that nature. I think there’s this imposition of the ego in our society, both on an individual and a collective level that obscure our own nature, and we become lost in productivity and the hustle and bustle of everyday life just trying to get ahead. And in doing so we conform our nature to fit in for approval for validation.
Being authentic to me just means really tuning into your own soul, your own intuition and really fact-checking information with your soul like, “Does this ring true with my soul? Does this feel natural to me?” I think authenticity is effortless and it comes natural when we’re in tune with our own nature and have the courage to trust it and to exhibit it in the world around us, which is sometimes easier said than done. But that’s certainly what I try to do. Especially on the internet, showing up as your authentic self. It’s more important than ever, I feel, because you can snuff out inauthentic vibes in a way. Your vibes don’t lie. You can pretend to be someone else with your words and you can try to fake who you are, but your vibes don’t lie. It’s like honoring who you truly are and being brave enough to showcase who you are to the world.
TS: That last section, being brave enough. When I think of your authenticity is your currency, I think of these moments where there are these choice points. I wonder what this is like for you? Where at this choice point, I could either show who I really am and choose vulnerability and really let someone in on what’s… Or I could not. I could cover it over and project something. The bravery is that willingness. I wonder if you can talk about that for you and where you see choice points about bringing your own authenticity forward.
JM: Yeah, I think you’re right in the sense that vulnerability is magnetic. And when you can be vulnerable with yourself, that allows other people to put their guard down and be vulnerable with you as well, which creates an authentic connection. I think vulnerability is key for any authentic connection and even more so it’s so essential to be vulnerable in your art. I know we’ll talk more about art, but what I mean, any creativity that you have, whether you’re a writer, you could be a visual artist, you can make social media content. You could be an entrepreneur or a marketer and pour yourself into that work as a form of art. Even relationships can be a form of art. I just feel when you can be vulnerable in your expression, you’re creating a magnetic connection with the people that are going to resonate with your vulnerability and with who you really are.
I feel like in terms of choice points, I feel like… Well, I feel like we make the choice every day about who [inaudible 00:07:33]. It’s never too late to return to your nature. It’s never too late to start being vulnerable. Even if you’ve been stuck in a corporate job for decades and you haven’t been fulfilled and you feel like you’ve been faking it, you’ve been forcing it perhaps to fit in and for approval. But it’s always surprising to me when you put your guard down, you think you’re going to be maybe more vulnerable, you’re going to be more susceptible to criticism and things like that. But that’s really the only way to find your true passion, your true calling, is to step into that vulnerability. I feel like it’s a choice that we all make every single day.
TS: You offer that creativity could be a non-traditional spiritual path. How do you see it as a spiritual path?
JM: I can speak for me. Personally, in my own life, creativity has been my spiritual path for my entire life, and I consider it such… When I think about where creativity comes from, we talk about art and we talk about creativity, but I really stepped back and thought about where does this come from? Where does this energy and spirit of creation come from? And I realized that, “Okay, it starts in spirit, in the invisible.” What I mean by that is before you make something, before you write a poem, before you write a book, before you make a painting, there’s nothing there. It doesn’t exist. So where is that coming from? I believe that our intuition is a portal into, for lack of better word, other dimensions. And our intuition connects us with these dimensions where we can pick things up through sensation and through feeling and through emotion, and then we channel that spirit through us into our creations.
For me, that is literally bringing heaven to earth. There’s a graphic in my book that says, “Creativity is spiritual.” And there’s a trumpet. I say that the breath going into the trumpet is the invisible. It is spirit. We are the trumpet, we are individual creators, and the spirit moves through us as instruments and then the music is the creative output. We are channels or the divine into the material world. And if that’s not spiritual, then I don’t know what is. My guides along the way have always been artists and my sacred texts have been literature and poetry and pop songs. I’ve gotten so much wisdom. There’s so much wisdom that gets channeled through the artist. I’ve also studied spirituality and studied Eastern philosophy and things like that as well, but my home base has always been art, poetry, and using that as my way to navigate through the world.
TS: Now you mentioned emotion and you write emotion is the underlying energy that fuels creativity. And I thought that was really interesting. I thought, “I wonder if that’s what most people who engage in artistic creation would say.” That it’s emotion. I wanted to understand more what you mean by that.
JM: Not all artists might identify with that. What I would claim is that when your art and creativity and your life, frankly, is driven by emotions, it’s going to be coming from a much deeper place. Okay? I love the mind. I love to think. I love to ponder and reflect. The mind is a great tool, but it’s only a tool. And if you start your creative process in the head… Your head is like your hard drive on a computer. It only has access to the information that’s there. You’re not tapping into the infinite depth that is potentially there. When I say emotion, I don’t even mean sadness or anger, although certainly you can. There’s certainly a place to channel anger into art or grief into art or rage into art. It just being sensitive to the energy to felt sensation. Because for me, what I do, my creative practice is very much a spiritual practice in which I sit with my body and I feel what is trying to come through me.
I’m not trying to figure it out logically. I compare it to a purge. I like to talk about the creative purge. We go within ourselves and we feel our body, we feel our emotions, we feel our energy, and we just sense what’s trying to come out. What’s trying to move through us. That’s why I think that creativity is shadow work or alchemy where we’re looking within, we’re finding where there’s stuck energy or negative emotions or trauma, and we’re shining the light of awareness onto it and then we’re letting it be expressed through us. I think when you do that, it’s cathartic, it’s therapeutic, and you’re going to be pulling from a much deeper well for inspiration than you would be if relying solely on the intellect.
TS: Okay, this notion of purging, I think it’s really interesting. At the same time, The Art of You is beautifully written. It’s a really helpful book. It’s an uplifting elevated book. I didn’t get the feeling that you vomited all over these 200 pages that I read. Sometimes when I do experience somebody’s art and it feels like, “Wow, that was all their vomit. Thank you very much. They could have kept that to themselves. Please, I don’t really need that.” I’m curious what your thoughts are about that.
JM: Well, thank you first of all. There’s two things here that I really see creativity boiling down to two main aspects, and this is the entire framework of the book, The Yin and Yang of Creativity. In a lot of ways, I think… And these are equally important. Whereas cultivating that intuition and being in touch with those emotions and having that relationship with the inner world where nothing is even happening yet, but you’re cultivating the soil for creativity. I really emphasize this point in my work because I feel our society today is so based on productivity. It’s so yang oriented. It’s so ego driven that I emphasize the importance of the yin, and that’s what I like to talk about. But at the same time, I have been writing since I was… Goodness, writing poetry since I was 14.
I’m a big believer in craftsmanship and skill. If I look back on my life as a writer, I’ve studied so many writers and novelists and poets, and I have gone through periods where I copied their style and integrated their style and their message into my own work. And I’ve written so many bad things throughout my life that I’ve… There’s a great quote by the trumpet player, Miles Davis, and he said, “Sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself.” Malcolm Gladwell says you need 10,000 hours put into anything before you’re good at it. I have put a lot of effort into my craftsmanship. When I do vomit, hopefully it has some coherency to it. Also, I think that the relationship between consciousness and creativity is interesting. One of my creative teachers is the poet, Allen Ginsberg.
He was once asked in an interview, “Do you polish your poems after you write them? Do you polish them? Do you edit them?” And he thought about it and he said, “No, I don’t polish my poetry, but I polish my mind.” In other words, you’re preparing your consciousness to have clarity. I meditate every morning before I write and I try to maintain that open channel. I set up a whole ceremony for my creative practice and I listen so clearly to my consciousness that I’m almost taking dictation as it comes. I am vomiting in a way, but I’m trying to be very precise with the language and I wait until the right phrasing and words come through, so what I’m vomiting is a little more clear and organized and thoughtful.
TS: What’s the ceremony you do?
JM: Well, it’s very simple. I like to start in the morning because I think that’s when the channel is most open. Once I’m in meetings and podcasts and phone calls and running errands, it’s hard for me to go back to that open channel of inspiration. For me, I make a big pot of yerba mate tea. I love coffee, but I wait until the afternoon to have coffee, because what coffee does is it narrows your consciousness and it focuses you. Sometimes that’s great. If I’m going to edit or if I’m doing other busy work or emails, coffee is great. But I find tea to be more of a expansive and it helps my business float around in a little bit more of a flowy way.
I play instrumental music. I’ve got my blank notebook in front of me and I meditate. Then again, I just go into my felt sensation and feel, “Okay, today what’s trying to come through me.” And I might have a question if it’s a… I might just see what comes through me and it could be anything. But if I am writing a book and I have to be more targeted in my creativity that day, I might ask the universe a question like, “Okay, I’m writing about intuition. What do you know about intuition?” And then I just sit with that question until the answer naturally arises.
TS: You mentioned that The Art of You is divided into these two sections, the yin aspects and the yang active aspects and the more receptive. How would someone know in their own creative life if their yin and their yang was out of balance in their creative expression, what would be the signs?
JM: Yeah, it’s a really important question for everyone to ask themselves and to identify because you need them both in equal balance, I feel, to be at your ultimate potential. And I do feel like artists are more… I joke around that artists are by nature non-binary, because they jump between the two. They jump between worlds and they can be comfortable in that intuitive space, but then they take action. Within the art, they dance between worlds. If someone is too much in their yang, and I think most people in our society these days are, and I used to be as well when I was working in advertising and had tight deadlines and a bunch of clients at once, and I needed to go, go, go, go, go.
If you’re too much in your yang, you are going to be productive and you are going to be busy, but your work is going to lack depth and purpose and intention because it’s not grounded in that yin, in that being. If you’re in the yin and you’re in flow and you’re inspired and you have an intention and you’re connecting with your purpose and you’re in flow, you might be very inspired. You might feel connected with your purpose, but you might fail to finish things and launch projects and actually make any progress in your creative career or development. There’s a time and place for both, and it always starts with yin. You have to cultivate the soil and plant the seeds before you can grow the crops and harvest them and turn them into a meal.
TS: In my own life, just briefly, I’ve been, now that I’m past the age of 60, spending more time in the yin space, and I think previously I was much more creatively yang. One of the things I’m noting is I feel strange things like, “I’m not as productive as I used to be. I used to be a doer. I don’t feel as affirmed and confirmed in my work and by the society as a whole.” I just wonder if you have any comments about how in the Western world we live in such a yang rewarding culture. It takes actually a lot of inner conviction to balance our yin energy with the yang nature of our society.
JM: You’re absolutely right. I feel like it takes courage to rest because everything is conditioning us not to. Mary Oliver was a big influence for me when it came to reconnecting with my yin, because I love her poetry and it’s all about being present in the moment and appreciating what’s in front of you. Her poetry is the definition of stopping to smell the flowers, and there’s no agenda other than being in that moment. The thing is that is counterintuitive in our society when it’s like, “Finish, launch, go, do, make, create, be busy.” But I’ve learned in my own life and what’s given me that conviction to nurture my yin is I know or a fact with certainty that my output is going to be better when I give myself space to cultivate the yin. It’s not being lazy. It can be an excuse to be lazy at times if you want it to be, sure. But generally speaking, you need that counterbalance.
Let’s say that creativity is fishing and you’re trying to catch ideas and bring them into the world. If you’re always in your yang and you’re always going, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, you’re fishing in a very shallow pond. And maybe there’s some goldfish in there, but not much else. But yin, it opens up our consciousness to the ocean of the subconscious so we can fish for much more exotic and beautiful ideas and bring them to life. So it’s worth it. The end result will be better. This is why I always say… People are like, “How to get your ego out of the way when you’re writing?”
And I say that if my ego wants validation, it needs to get out of the way so my intuition and my emotion can cultivate [inaudible 00:25:18] for better ideas, and then the ego will be rewarded in the end and doesn’t have to get in the way and tinker and micromanage every single part of the process. The ego is great for editing. The ego is great for at the end when you’re trying to launch it, for strategizing, but the ego is not the proper place for idea generation and connecting with that intuition where the truly great ideas come from.
TS: Okay, let’s talk about your ego being good at doing something like editing, especially since, James, you’re the guy who wrote Shit Your Ego Says. What about when our ego gets a hold of what we’ve created and we’ve created it with a lot of heart and a lot of love and a lot of flow while we were making whatever it is, and then we review it, I think I’m going to be dramatic now just for the heck of it, we tear up the page because we’re in this place of judging what we did, and we’re saying it’s not good enough. In fact, it’s the shit my ego says, forget it.
JM: Yeah, there’s a lot I have to say about that. It’s so important to make friends with your own mind and to be gentle with yourself. That takes patience. That takes time to cultivate that self-love where your ego is there, your ego is not going anywhere and you don’t want it to go anywhere. The ego is what helps us orient ourselves in the world, and it helps us navigate 3D reality. It’s got an important purpose, and I think it is good at editing and reviewing and analyzing.
I always say like, “I’m going to give my ego a different job.” When I’m in the creation mode, my ego is on the bench. It’s like, “This is not your time to shine.” [inaudible 00:27:28] is this to post online or is this just more like a… It’s an idea. It’s a first draft. Is it something that’s just for me? The ego can help make those decisions. If I’m being honest, sometimes you have to rip up the paper just because you were intuitive and just because an idea did flow out of you, that does not mean it’s going to be your best idea. There’s a time to rip up the paper, but having that balance between the inner world and the outer world, feeling and thinking, is what’s going to give you the best balance in your own art and your own life.
TS: Now, we talked to James about creativity being a non-traditional spiritual path, and I noticed I got excited about that, and I would say yes to that. You have a quote, “It’s not about being good at creativity, it’s about creativity being good for you.” That makes sense to me too. Creativity is really good for us. My question is that person who’s listening right now and says, “But the fact that I’m not good at it. I’ve tried this, I’ve tried that. I’m just not good at it. I’m just not. I wish I could follow this non-traditional spiritual path, but I’m just not good at it. Not good at music. I’m not particularly good at writing.”
JM: Okay. Creativity is a mindset that can be applied to any area of your life. There are infinite numbers of ways you can express yourself creatively. I love music more than anything. I can’t play a note on any instrument. I can’t do it. It doesn’t come naturally to me. Writing I can do. There’s always skills that can be applied to any number of situations. For me, creativity, I feel like we’ve been sold a lie when it comes to creativity, and there’s a lot of imbalance in the world, right? There’s a lot of economic imbalance, for example. A small number of people have most of the wealth in the world, and most people hardly have any.
I feel like this is where we’ve gotten to with creativity where there’s this privilege class of professional artists and published authors, and they’re the ones who have been given permission to be creative. And everyone else just either suppresses it or at best maybe records ideas and insights and poetry in their journal that no one ever sees. I think that we do ourselves a disservice when we suppress our creativity. It is cathartic and it is healing to release it, whether you’re good at it or not, right? Whether you’re good at it or not [inaudible 00:30:59] beside the point because I think that it is our nature to be creative.
What is the spirit that’s animating our bodies? Every person, every living being, there’s a spirit animating their body. This is the energy of source creation that moves through us. It’s about honoring that energy and letting it flow through you, not about judging it by the ideals of capitalism. How much money did it make? Was it a great achievement? No, it is cathartic just to get it out of you. That’s why I host events called Sunflower Club, which is about the democratization of creativity. There are some people that come and perform and they’re amazing, and some people are reading in public for the first time and they’re terrified. But we embrace them all the same because I feel like creativity is a human right, and it’s a human need that has been in a lot of ways taken away from us. Reclaiming that creativity is not only about being a great artist, but it’s about reconnecting with your nature and finding your authentic voice no matter what form that takes.
TS: You said you call it the Sunflower Club, and I read a little bit about the reason behind naming it that. Share that with our listeners.
JM: Oh goodness. I’ll tell you this. It was completely intuitive, popped into my head as the best ideas tend to do. And then I looked back and like, “Why did I call it that?” There’s a long tradition in art and poetry of the sunflower as a symbol. I know Oscar Wilde would write about sunflowers. William Blake has a famous poem called Ah! Sun-flower. In fact, Allen Ginsberg, when he had his big spiritual awakening that helped him arrive at his path as a mystical artist and poet. He was in his Columbia dorm room in New York City, and he had an auditory hallucination of William Blake reading his poem, Ah! Sun-flower. That is what oriented Ginsberg on his path as a poet. Vincent van Gogh famously painted many sunflowers.
Also, what I love about sunflowers is they will literally turn their faces to face the sunlight. They will turn around to face the sunlight. I feel that’s a great metaphor for artists because artists, no matter what their circumstances are, there are some artists that live in dire circumstances, but being an artist means turning your face towards the sunlight, towards love, towards beauty, towards art, wherever you can find it, and then you transmute your circumstances into creative expression. For me, the sunflower is symbolic of artists of creativity, and Sunflower Club is about helping creatives bloom and spread so we can have a sunflower field across the world of artists who are bringing their vision and emotions and expressions to the public without judgment.
TS: It’s interesting that you said to me that at first it didn’t come to you because you had the meaning of the metaphor. It just came. How do you explain that as a poet?
JM: This goes back to what Ginsberg said about he doesn’t polish his poems, he polishes his mind. I’ve been on a path of meditation, of Kundalini yoga, of mindfulness, of Eastern philosophy. I try my best. I’m not perfect, but I try my best to maintain a meditative mindset throughout the day and be open to unexpected ideas. One thing I say in the book is that a mind that’s too full of information has no room for inspiration. I’m always listening, and I think listening is the first stage of creativity, not thinking, because again, the mind, it’s very useful, but the mind is not as smart as we might think it is. I think that when we listen, our intuition and our emotions and our energy have access to much more subtle information, then the mind is capable of perceiving itself. I really try to just maintain that openness and listen and let myself be a vessel for whatever’s trying to move through me.
TS: Now, James, you’ve talked about fishing for the deep ideas, cultivating our yin nature to do so. I know a lot of people who are on a spiritual path of one kind or another, and also who are creators and want to contribute to the world. They loathe social media. They loathe spending time on these various platforms, and it’s just like, “Oh God, I would never do it. It’s like entering the hellhole or something.” And here you are, you’ve talked about drawing on Eastern… You’re a meme artist, you’ve been able to take your depth and bring it into an unusual format. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that, how you made that bridge.
JM: Yes. Well, the first thing I’ll say is that you look back on history and the art and the literature, it’s always made with the tools and technology of its time. Art is not one thing. It adapts from culture to culture. At one point, poetry was about oral recitation and memorization. It was a way to capture historical myth and stories so they could be passed on from generation to generation through memorization and oral recitation. That’s very different from what poetry is today. The printing press changed everything where you could actually… First there were scrolls and then there was a printing press where you could actually write things and record them and document them. Then it became a much different art form. Even with art, you look at… One of my favorite artists of the 20th century is Andy Warhol. I think he’s such an innovator and character.
When Andy Warhol began silkscreening Campbell’s Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe, people didn’t think it was real art. People thought like, “He’s manufacturing images. It’s not real art. It’s commercialism.” But it was real art. He was just using tools and technology that were not yet accepted by the establishment as being the materials of real art. I think that art and writing are always changing, and they’re being modified by the tools and technology of the time. And what are the tools and technology of our time other than the internet and social media?
I’ve learned to embrace them. For me, it’s so exciting because there’s never been a more powerful platform for art communication than social media. And I say that social media is sacred, and people are like, “What do you mean social media is sacred?” Well, people are checking Instagram, right? Other apps as well, but people are actively checking Instagram, and if they choose to follow you, which is such an honor for someone to follow you because they are giving you permission to their consciousness. They’re opening up a portal where you can directly transmit your thoughts onto their phone screen that enters their mind willingly throughout the day, every day.
You post every day, you are little by little transmitting messages into people’s consciousness, and you become a part of their regular life because you don’t have to go to an art museum to see it. You don’t have to go to a bookstore and buy a book and then sit down to read it. No, you’re carrying it around with you. You’re accessing it every day, and that’s such a powerful portal. Just learning to use social media with intention is so important and to know what you have to say, and also learning how to speak the language of the internet, right? Because a lot of people struggle with social media because they don’t know how to speak the language of the internet.
I’m a nerd in this sense. I know a lot about internet culture and meme culture and how memes originated and how they spread. In fact, I was shocked when I learned… I was watching a Terence McKenna lecture on YouTube, and he was talking about memes back in the ’80s and ’90s. And I’m like, “Why is he talking about memes in the ’80s and ’90s?” Then I did some more research and I learned that the word meme actually originated in 1976 from Richard Dawkins who was an evolutionary biologist. He came up with the word meme to identify a viral idea. The same way that a gene will mutate and spread and replicate on a biological level, memes are the same thing on the level of culture and ideas. When you can create a meme, so to speak, which is like a viral idea, and you’re casting it out into the ethers of the internet, and then with these tools of social media gives us the power to reshare, repost. And then suddenly it amplifies that message. You can spread an idea through culture faster than ever.
And this is the nature of what memes are. For me, learning to speak the language of memes and to craft my message in such a way that makes it shareable and that makes it resonating on the internet has been such an important part of my creative practice. And the last thing I’ll say is that it’s similar to writing haikus, because it’s a certain art form to write for social media. And I compare a little bit to haikus where there’s a really strict character count. The first line is five syllables. Second line is seven syllables. Third line is five syllables. The writer of a haiku has to be very intentional about every word and every syllable so that it is this concise thing. And I feel like writing for social media is similar where you’re trying to distill a big idea down to its essence, which takes a lot of craftsmanship and practice to be able to get to that point as a writer. But when you do, I feel like it’s the most effective way to share ideas in the age that we’re living in today.
TS: Would you challenge someone who says… I hear what you’re saying, James. Social media is sacred for you and that’s wonderful, but I’m still just allergic to it. Would you challenge this person to try to find a way into this art form because of its potential power?
JM: I certainly do. I teach classes around how to write for social media. I work with clients one-on-one and helping them find their voice on social media. I definitely think it is something that people can get past. I think it’s learning a new skill, or it’s learning a new type of writing, which people can do that. If you take a poetry class, you can learn how to write poetry. I think people can learn how to communicate on social media. I’ve seen it. I’ve worked with clients to do it, but I would also say that that’s just one thing to do. You don’t have to write on social media. There are other venues to explore. I think even Substack email newsletters are powerful. Social media also has a lot of downsides. Don’t get me wrong, super addictive. It can be bad for your mental health. If someone wants to avoid that, they certainly can. There are other ways to express yourself. I think the internet provides a lot of alternative pathways that people could explore and experiment with.
TS: Let me check this out. It seems to me that you have an operating view, if you will, that an artist, a creative person, someone who’s opening and listening could find potentially any media. They could work in all kinds of formats and constrictions if they were drawn to it, that it’s not like, “Oh, well, I do this one thing and that’s that.” They could switch the framing and still bring, as you said, the mindset of the artist to whatever it might be.
JM: That’s been my entire life and my life experience. I think that being an artist… If I had to even distill it down to one word, I might choose curiosity, right? An artist has to be infinitely curious and always exploring. I think that creative thinking can be applied to any number of situations. I remember I went to college for graphic design and I was a graphic designer and I didn’t want to do that anymore. Then I heard about this role in the advertising industry called a brand strategist, which is more high-level conceptual thinking. I’m like, “How do I make the jump from graphic designer to brand strategist?”
And the same curiosity that allowed you to master one art form, you can apply that same creativity to another. I’ve been a poet, painter, graphic designer, brand strategist, meme artist, author, and I feel like it’s all an extension of my own artistic curiosity, and I’m just following different threads and seeing where they lead me. And some aren’t for me. I’ve tried writing fiction, not for me. I’ve tried music, it’s not for me. It’s about having a playground and a sandbox to play in. I think the only way your comfort zone in life or in art, the only way your comfort zone can grow bigger is by stepping outside of it and trying different things and throwing paint on every wall and seeing what sticks and finding your own voice in whatever way, shape or form that comes through.
TS: Okay. There’s a one big final area I want to talk to you about, which is the role of the artist today. But before we get there, I have one question about what I think stops a lot of people, stops a lot of us from really finding our voice and moving into that area of discomfort, which is as we start creating we compare ourselves to others and we find that we’re falling short. What would you say about that?
JM: Yeah, first of all, I’m not going to lie. And if a lot of artists tell you otherwise they might be being dishonest. I think it’s natural even to continue comparing yourself to people. I think that’s human nature, and it’s not something to overcome. It’s something to focus your attention away from. It’s so easy to contrast and compare. There’s always someone more successful than you. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you do, there’s always someone more successful. It’s really about how are you measuring your own success, right? Is it just by likes on the internet? Is it book sales? Is it your job title? These can be very superficial and arbitrary around… I’ve seen social media posts that are complete garbage, frankly, with a million likes and things that are actually very thought-provoking and interesting and original with 100 likes.
Metrics are not always the measure of success. It’s so important to listen to your own inner voice and how much is that being expressed. Measuring your success by inner fulfillment rather than external validation. And the irony is that the more you listen to that inner voice and measure success according to the fulfillment within, the more likelihood you have of finding external success, because it’s going to be rooted in, like we said earlier, authenticity. You can be yourself better than you can be anyone else. If you are copying other people, other artists, you are going to be a facsimile of someone else. And who wants to be a facsimile of someone else? I’d rather be authentically imperfect than faking this image of perfection that is not based in authenticity.
TS: There’s a quote that I wrote down from The Art of You. You’ve sprinkled throughout the book some really terrific quotes from other artists. I would go so far as to say social change, revolutionaries, some terrific quotes. This one’s from Thelonious Monk, “A genius is the one most like themself.”
JM: Absolutely. The genius is… Listen, there is no individual genius that triumphs over. I think that’s also… You mentioned with the role of the artist today, I’m going to preview that because I think that historically there’s been this very capitalistic idea of what art is. We have Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway who are these geniuses that tower above the crowds with their great work. I just think that that is so unhelpful and boring and it sends the wrong message, because it’s not about how great you are, right? It’s about how true you are to your own inner genius and how clearly you can express that to the world. And frankly, how you can be of service to others through your work. Artists shouldn’t be striving for some ego validation. There’s been enough of that. You see where that’s gotten us, whether that’s in politics or wherever, business. Striving for this ego validation, I think artists have a role to play in moving us away from that as a society and returning to that authenticity and truly being of service to others and letting that be your guiding principle.
TS: You write the role of the artist is to help restore the sovereign consciousness of humanity. What do you mean by the sovereign consciousness?
JM: Well, I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that society is in a bit of a crisis at the moment. We’ve been a bit hypnotized by so many things, by the media, by politics, by the economy. We’ve been forced into roles that aren’t natural. You even look at the school system that we currently have and that we’ve had for 100 years or more. It’s designed to teach people to follow rules and to be obedient factory workers. That’s just not the society that we live in anymore. I think that we’re facing a crisis point because the old ways of working and living are no longer sustainable. I think that creativity is more important than ever because only new ideas can solve old problems. I feel like the role of creativity right now is one that every individual needs to assume, because what creativity is is the ability to think independently and problem solve in new ways, which I feel like is really what we need.
I make the comparison to where we are today with where we were in the dark ages. The dark ages were another time in the history of humanity that was very much a crisis point. There was this dogmatic rule of the Catholic Church, and there were burning witches, and there was famine, and there was all kinds of problems in the world. And in Europe, it was the artists who actually look back through history to discover the last time in history that made some coherent sense. For them, it was the ancient Greece, and they restored the principles of ancient Greece into their modern times, and that was called the Renaissance. It was pointing a new way forward and providing a new framework for thinking that could move society ahead. I feel like we are on the verge of a new Renaissance where looking back to even more in ancient history to the hunter-gatherers when people lived in communal environments and supported each other as a community, and how can we apply those principles to the world today.
And I feel like this is a role of creativity of artists to really conjure a more sustainable, fair, and balanced society. Because all change begins in the imagination. All change throughout history, whether it’s a scientific breakthrough or anything, a business idea, it begins in the imagination. I think that the artist and the poets and the writers are the image setters that can provide a vision that people can follow through on. Like an artist doesn’t need to change the world themselves, but they can plant the seeds and plant the visions that can inspire change in the future.
TS: When you envision the new Renaissance, when you hold that vision in your heart, what do you see?
JM: Well, I can speak for me personally because I mentioned Sunflower Club. I’ll plant this vision here on this podcast because Sunflower Club is a monthly event that I host here in Austin, Texas. But what I’ve done on my website is I have published how to start your own Sunflower Club. I feel like this is a great place to start, because just getting that creative expression… I think the first thing we need to do is like we were saying the purge. People need to just start purging. We have so much pent-up. We have so much trauma and emotions that have been suppressed. The first thing we need to do is just get it out. For me, that looks like having Sunflower Clubs in every town and city in the world where people can host their own. It’s like AA.
One person started AA, but you don’t need to have any credentials to start your own. You just hold your own AA meeting and people come and it helps them. Sunflower Club is the AA for creativity. I live in a place where there’s a lot of creative expression, Austin, Texas. I think of all the small towns in the Midwest. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest. There weren’t open mic nights. There were no venues and platforms to express your creative vision, were none. Bringing that to places where creativity is not, is my personal vision for how to bring the new Renaissance to the world.
TS: I’ve been speaking with James McCrae. He’s the author of a really fun book to read, really fun. I almost licked some of the pages. I liked them so much. It’s called The Art of You: The Essential Guidebook for Reclaiming Your Creativity. Here as we end, James, what’s up with the hat that says L Lovers? What’s going on there?
JM: I’m wearing a hat that says lovers. This is a hat that I’ve started to wear a lot recently, especially on podcasts because I’ve really been reflecting on the role of the artist in the world. I think that there’s a lot of overlap between an artist and a lover. I think that there is an emotion that drives us to make art or to make love, and I think that it’s the drive of the life force of creation moving through us. In the case of being a lover, the drive to romance and the drive for sexual intercourse. This is our biological desire to create new life. I think that making art is so similar where it’s that life force of creation moving through us that drives us to create new life in the form of our artistic visions. I think the artist is the lover.
TS: Artist is the lover, The Art of You: The Essential Guidebook for Reclaiming Your Creativity, taking on not just the mindset of the creative artist being a creative, but the full presence and inhabitation and embodiment, and being from that place an architect of change in the world. James, thank you so much for being with us and for your new book. It’s beautiful.
JM: Thank you much, Tami. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today.
TS: I love The Art of You. Thanks friends. And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in the after-show Q&A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations, and more with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code PODCAST to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds True, waking up the world.
