Takeaways The artist's journey is a hero's journey of the human race. Resistance is a negative force that tries to stop creative endeavors. Feeling resistance is a sign that the project is important and meaningful. Serving the muse and surrendering to the work are essential for creative success. The hero's journey and the artist's journey are two distinct but interconnected journeys that individuals go through in their lives. The artist's journey requires commitment, discipline, and the willingness to overcome resistance and take action. The artist's life can be tedious and challenging, but it is necessary to put in the work and overcome self-doubt and distractions. Starting the next project before finishing the current one helps maintain momentum and prevents the creative process from stalling. The daemon, or inner genius, plays a role in the creative process and can be a source of inspiration and guidance. Accountability and the support of a community are essential for artists to stay on their creative path and unlock their full potential. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Gratitude 01:14 Honoring Stephen Pressfield 05:12 Defining Resistance 06:09 Identifying and Naming Resistance 08:02 Resistance as a Diabolical Force 09:26 Resistance as a Sign of Importance 10:11 Resistance in Podcasting and Writing 11:53 The Journey of Writing a Book 14:37 The Blue-Collar Aspect of the Artist's Journey 19:16 The Superficial Ethic and the Long Road 22:35 Surrendering to the Muse 24:29 The Muse and the Artist's Journey 28:21 Serving the Muse and Surrendering to the Work 31:25 Being a Vessel for the More 34:17 The Hero's Journey and the Artist's Journey 38:11 Commitment and Discipline in the Artist's Journey 39:08 The Tedium of the Artist's Life 43:30 Overcoming Resistance and Taking Action 45:47 Starting the Next Project 47:24 The Daemon and the Creative Process 53:58 The Daily Pressfield and the Power of Accountability 58:12 The Daily Pressfield and Unlocking Creativity 59:24 The Origin of Resistance 01:06:47 The Macro and Micro Themes in an Artist's Body of Work
https://stevenpressfield.com @Steven-pressfield
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00Introduction and Gratitude
01:14Honoring Stephen Pressfield
05:12Defining Resistance
06:09Identifying and Naming Resistance
08:02Resistance as a Diabolical Force
09:26Resistance as a Sign of Importance
10:11Resistance in Podcasting and Writing
11:53The Journey of Writing a Book
14:37The Blue-Collar Aspect of the Artist's Journey
19:16The Superficial Ethic and the Long Road
22:35Surrendering to the Muse
24:29The Muse and the Artist's Journey
28:21Serving the Muse and Surrendering to the Work
31:25Being a Vessel for the More
34:17The Hero's Journey and the Artist's Journey
38:11Commitment and Discipline in the Artist's Journey
39:08The Tedium of the Artist's Life
43:30Overcoming Resistance and Taking Action
45:47Starting the Next Project
47:24The Daemon and the Creative Process
53:58The Daily Pressfield and the Power of Accountability
58:12The Daily Pressfield and Unlocking Creativity
59:24The Origin of Resistance
01:06:47The Macro and Micro Themes in an Artist's Body of Work
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Peak Mind, I'm your host, Michael Trainor, and I am thrilled to launch this conversation with the one and only Steven Pressfield. This is the third conversation I've had the honor of having with Steven.
It was held live and it was an inspiration. Steven is the author of such seminal classics, The War of Art,
The Artist's Journey, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire. He is the author of The War of Art, The Artist's Journey, written, I think now over 30 books and most of them written in the latter half of life.
And as someone who has had a lot of resistance as he calls it in my own creative journey, it's a profound masterclass into how we can break through resistance and step into our creative potential.
How can we birth the creative works that want to be the expression sort of of our soul, if you will? How can we step into and get down to business as it relates to taking care of our creative craft?
And he provides really tangible and actionable steps as well as speaks to sort of his own journey in overcoming resistance, which was a long time fight. I think you'll find tremendous value in this conversation.
If you find value, please share it with a friend. Please go ahead and leave a rating and review. And also, please pick up a copy of the Daily Press Field.
It's Steven's newest book and it's a profound inspiration. We're going to have a quick word from our partners, and then we're going to get into this. live conversation with the one and only Steven Pressfield.
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And without further ado, let's get into this live conversation with the one and only Steven Pressview. - I wanna reiterate Steven's sentiment and saying thank you to everyone for coming.
It means a lot to me. I've spent a lot of time with this man's words in my ears and in front of me on the pages in anticipation of this conversation. I am now honored to call you a friend,
Steven. - Likewise, Michael, and thank you for making this possible tonight. man. It's It's a real honor I was thinking about how I actually introduce you and knowing also that you are which is one of the things I love about you You're very humble and don't like to be massively aggrandized and so I thought that what I would Share is a little bit of a story that to me encapsulates how I feel about you which is I
Like to think about of things musically. I love music. And one of the things that I've noticed is, we all know when we're in the midst of a great song.
I think that's one of the things that's special about music is it cuts through and it's undeniable when something creates that resonance. And for me, there's a very clear difference in life between people who sing.
because they want you to see them sing beautifully and those who sing because they want to lift the collective. And to me, you are the latter. Thank you,
Michael. And not only that. A minute for the money. And while we go musical, I also like that you got the Marines and you also keep it fucking real and your New York about it.
it. So it's a beautiful balance. And yeah, Steven Pressfield, thanks for coming by. Oh, thanks for having me, Michael. So I thought we'd start off by laying some some groundwork.
Who here has read the book, The War of Art? pretty good audience. Okay. Um, that's just one of more than 20 books that you've written. Um,
but what's remarkable for me is that in turning pro, you talk about the fact that you, at least by your own declaration, turn pro at 31. Um,
but that is not when you published your first book. Can you share a little bit about why the distinction of 31 as the demarcation of the time that for you you consider yourself as turning professional,
turning pro? - Well, that's a great question. I think the point that I would make about that was that there was a moment for me, there is I'm sure for probably everybody in this room where you sort of decide,
this is what my calling is, this is what I wanna do. But in a lot of ways, of us sort of expect, oh, well, everything's going to fall into place right now. You know, I made that decision.
I made that change. But for me, it was like another 20 -something years before I actually had a book published and a lot, a lot, a lot of bad stuff along the way. So the point I would make about that is just that it's a long road,
at least for me it was. And from, you know, before that turning point, you're really struggling. But even after that turning point, it still is a long, a long journey,
at least it was for me. Yeah, literally and figuratively, because you talk about driving and I think it's your 65 Chevy van, something like, I don't know if I got the year right. No, you're right. Okay,
got it. Okay, good. Something like 290 ,000 miles. And you and you talk about that as a as a, as an aspect of an embodied aspect of the your resistance that you were,
as I interpreted it, running from the muse that wanted to move through you. Can you, for those listening, share what resistance is?
Can you define the context of what is resistance? If you sit down in front of a keyboard of any kind, a piano keyboard or a typewriter keyboard or anything like that,
that where you're gonna try to do something creative, right? You're gonna try, I feel at least a negative force radiating off of that keyboard at me, trying to stop me from doing what I wanna do.
And that's what I call resistance with a capital R. And when I, I mean, you know, resistance sort of, kicked my ass for like 10 years or so before I even,
and I didn't even know it existed, you know, this negative force. I just found that I had no, you know, I was wracked with self doubt. I was, I was totally fearful. I was procrastinating.
I was distracting. I do all those things that we all do, right? Before I sort of realized that there is this negative force out there. There is this negative force out there. There is this negative force out there. There is this negative force out there. this demon, there is this dragon, and that just giving it a name,
for me, like I say in the start of the War of Art, if you've ever bought a treadmill and brought it home and let it sit in the attic, you know what resistance is,
right? Or if you've ever sat down and tried to write anything long form or done anything, I'm looking at my friend Victoria here who I know, she had a long, long battle with it. And you know,
you all know what resistance is. So anyway, that was, for me, identifying that and giving it a name was, that was the moment at 31 that I felt like,
okay, now I have a handle on at least what I'm fighting and at least that there is something that I'm fighting. But then like I say, it still was many, many years before the rest of it caught up. Yeah,
you, you say something really. really beautiful, which you says the fear with which a potential new book or startup or enterprise strikes us is directly proportional to how important the enterprise is to the evolution of our soul.
And that really resonated with me. And you also share, at least in my understanding, that the resistance is commensurate with the degree to which that can be an evolution of our soul.
Like in other words, the more significant the dream, the more significant the vision, the more insidious and clever that dance becomes in terms of all the ways resistance will fuck with us.
Is that accurate? And in that, and having danced now in that dance for some time, does it get any easier? Well,
it never gets any easier. for me. In fact, what I found is that we've talked about this, Michael, that resistance is a really diabolical force and I'm convinced that it has its own intelligence.
You know, it's not it's a force of nature like gravity, in my opinion, but it's beyond that. You know, it's it's the devil. You know, I mean, it constantly changes shape. It's a shape -shifting thing.
And what happens for me is that resistance becomes kind of more nuanced as I get farther and deeper into the game. I've been finding my way around it for 30 -something years,
but it still finds new ways to fuck with my head. You know? And so, yeah, going back to what you said before about the level of resistance is commensurate to the importance of the project.
This is kind of one of the principles that I believe in is in the War of Art, that the more important a project, let's say you have an idea for a book or a startup or an album or whatever it is,
the more important that project is to your evolution, to your soul evolution, the more resistance you'll feel to it. If you have some... some shitty little idea that doesn't really matter,
that won't be any resistance at all, you know? But if you've got your white whale, your Moby Dick type of thing, there's going to be massive resistance. So the good news of that, and we've talked about this a bunch of times,
is if you're feeling massive resistance to something, it's a good sign because it shows that there's that dream inside you that resistance is trying to come true.
to stop you from doing. So I always feel like when I'm experiencing those symptoms, you know, it's a good sign. I try to, you know, I have to tell myself that, but,
you know, it encourages me that I'm onto something or I wouldn't be feeling, you know, all this negative energy. - Yeah. I wanna share. - Let me ask you something.
- Please, please. - 'Cause I wanna wish to make a conversation. I know that, you know, know, podcasting and that sort of stuff has been kind of your, your thing. What form has resistance taken for you or what,
and was there a moment for you that like that 31 year old moment for me? Yeah, I would. So I would declare this moment as that in certain ways,
which I'm going to get to in a second. So, so I'll rewind. It's a beautiful question. So So for me, launching the podcast was a massive exercise in resistance.
I don't know if anyone can relate. Whatever that is for you, your book, your show, your podcast. So I started recording my podcast in 2014. Really? I did not launch my podcast until 2019.
And it took me, I don't know if I shared this with you on one of our breakfasts, but it took me actually, I took my on a date to go see Fleetwood Mac here at the forum and there was a tribute to Tom Petty and I love Tom Petty and I wanted to go see him this,
that the year, that year, but I was like, I'll not catch him next year. You know, it's too far to drive east side. It's an hour in traffic. Fuck it. And of course he passed away and so I'm watching this tribute to Tom Petty as I'm on a date by myself with Fleetwood Mac,
which was not actually a depressing thing. It was very beautiful. Steven X is still the jam. Uh, but as I watched Tom Petty in this tribute, it was no,
it was undeniable that he was singing his song. You know, that was a man. And so you talk about like, I love how you write about like, you know, you'll, you'll lay out a body of work,
like Bruce, Bruce, Bruce Springsteen and all his songs or Bob Dylan and all his songs. It's like, it's undeniable that that's a body of work. And when I saw Tom Petty free fall and, you know, on down,
I was like, that's a body of work. And that man, like his music or not, he took a shot. Like he sang his fucking song. And in that moment, I declared tomorrow I'm publishing my podcast. And I was sitting on like,
not, but I had done an event with the dialam. I mean, I had like incredible conversations that were sitting in a drawer for five years. And I was like, I don't care if two. people show up, I am publishing tomorrow.
'Cause in my head, and I don't know if anyone relates to this, I had a huge ego conversation of like, I mean, now podcasting is like ubiquitous, but at the time in 2014, it was like, you know, like it felt like a CB radio club,
you know? It was like, oh, okay. Can't go from like hosting Beyonce on stage with 70 ,000 people, some dude in his living room, that looks like real bad on your career trajectory, you know? But ironically, of course, those who started in 2014,
have seen a precipitous rise because just like investing, the earlier you start, the more compounds. But thank you for the question. For me, this, which is the 250th episode of the podcast,
is now my commitment. And you guys are all here as my commitment to take the show to the next level. So hence the video, hence the desire to host you who who is,
you are one of the people I respect most on the planet. And, and yeah, it's my commitment to going pro in a bigger way, following in coming up. Ah,
all right. But the resistance has been significant. I bet it has. Yeah. Yeah. To take this to the next level. Yeah. 100%. But, but flipped the switch on you again. So to me,
what's interesting is part of the reason I take inspiration and you know, I've taught. about another area where I'm massively in resistance right now is writing my first book, which is five years in the making and no closer to being published.
So that's another kind of shit sandwich that I'm working through. But what you said so beautifully and the reason I always take inspiration is you were how old when you published your first book?
52. 52. And you're on how many now? 20 something. 20. something books. And that honestly, you know, it's like that,
I know, rituals of mutual friends. Like when he did that post was like, I didn't launch my podcast. I was 44. I didn't write my first book till I was 46 or whatever. Like you to me are that are that and more because to me,
it's not only like you did one thing, you're consistently putting out work year on year out, and the journey which which you've embarked on is so profound in terms of how you went about getting there,
right? Like the journeyman adventures. I don't know if you want to share any, but like you did, you had a whole kind of blue collar journeyman adventure that led you to that first book,
which as I understand it, when you turn pro, you went to, I think it was Big Sur, like with your Corona, or your Smith Corona, I think, and a cat or something. Can you tell a little bit about,
because I think that's so powerful in that, that wasn't your first published book, but you put your all into that, am I right? - Yeah, I mean, there was a short version of this sort of odyssey that I was on,
was that as a really young, dumb person in New York, I decided to write a novel. which was like way beyond my capacity in any sense.
I had no clue what it was. And my life sort of blew up at that point. I was married, that ended. And I sort of fell out of the bottom of the middle class. And I was in that kind of state where I couldn't get like a white collar type of job because if I applied for it,
the stink of defeat was so strong on me. me that you know you would have those horrible moments in a you know where they would just obviously were like such a loser that they could and so I wound up but I also didn't have any real blue collar skills I wasn't a mechanic or anything like that so I wound up for years sort of doing the kind of jobs that you only really need a pulse to be hired you know like
working in the oil fields or picking fruit or that kind of thing you know and And all the time, I was running away from, I was so ashamed of myself for fucking up this first novel and blowing everything up that the idea of writing was like the farthest thing from my life.
It was like my concept of torture and hell and the worst, you know, the straightest way, you know, in the hell. So, and finally, you know, there was a moment and then when I was like 31,
where I did actually sit down and start to do that, and to sit down and write, even though it was going nowhere, it was just whatever dumb crap I was banging out. And at that point,
things sort of turned around. And then little by little, I began to get back in, get on a path towards becoming a writer, like I was a screenwriter for about 10 years,
I had a kind of a Z level. level screenwriting career, but it was at least on the path towards towards going where I was going. I don't know if that's answering what you were start,
Michael, but no, I think that was it. I think it's really important because I feel like we especially and you talk about this a bit, you know, like the art is not the tweet, right? The art is putting your ass in the chair.
And I think in the Instagram era that we now find ourselves and you also talk about as I was reading the artists, the kind of this, this artist journey, right, which you equate with the hero's journey,
you talk about this notion of, you know, how it, how it's, it's about, I guess, introducing the concept really of the muse, right? It's about kind of our devotion and you see the most succinct quote that I,
that I pulled from that, that I loved, which was, art is work. work. And to me, that is simple, but so profound. And I love that you came from this kind of working class context.
But I think most resonant with me is you never fucking quit. Like, you know, like even though-- you talked about even when you moved to LA, like I think it was four or five years where you wrote-- I don't know how many screenplays.
Yeah, a lot of them. A lot, right? Well, you don't quit. either, Michael. I don't quit. I'm sure nobody here in this room is going to quit. No. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's inspiring, right?
Because I do think, though, that in the social media era, what we do get presented with is the highlight reel of everyone's journey. And I'm guessing that everyone here is dealing with some kind of resistance in the wherever they want to up -level in their journey,
right? And yet, we look around and, you know, I'm still old enough to where, you know, I lived before the internet kind of came out, but now it's like people's consciousness are being imbued with this notion of it seeming like everyone else is just crushing the game,
you know? It doesn't feel like resistance lives in the social media era, you know what I'm saying? But yet it is alive and well. And also, I think you provide to me, and I'd love your insight.
around this, is like, how can we in this era go back to the tried and true things that work in sort of confronting resistance?
Well, it does seem to me, and my friend Frank here will definitely back this up, that today sort of the ethic is incredibly superficial, right?
It's everything is on the surface. It's it's all about a hack It's all about and people ask me this. Oh, is there a tip? Is there some sort of trick some shortcut? And of course, there isn't I mean the real the real secret to any sort of Significant work is working in depth right I always say that The first hour when you're sitting down at that keyboard you can get to a certain level But by the fourth hour you're
at a whole whole other level. And likewise, the first month, the first six months, you're at a certain depth of something. But at the end of year two,
you're at a whole working on the same thing, right? Your podcast or whatever it is. And that's not an ethic that anybody gets taught these days, you know. Right. Not that it was back in the day either,
you know. And nobody of course, wants to pay that price, um, but that is the price, right? It is the price. And, uh, so,
uh, I always say that, uh, if somebody asks me for, like, for any piece of advice as you're embarking on a career, it's buckle your seat belt for a long fucking ride because that's the reality.
That's, that's, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, It's a marathon. It's a lifetime thing. I had a friend one time who was a gym person.
I'm a gym person. And at some point I fell off the wagon. I didn't go for like three months or four months or something like that. And this was a woman and we were talking and I said,
"Oh, I feel so bad. I've really fallen off the wagon. I'm completely going to hell." hell." You know, and she said to me, "You know, this is a lifetime commitment, Steve. You and I are on a lifetime commitment here. So if you fell off for three months,
no sweat. Get back and do it." And that's sort of the concept of working in depth and of working over a long period of time is the reality of it,
I think, for anybody. You know, maybe not for Neil Young, maybe not for Bob Dylan, you know, or Joni Mitchell, who when they were 18 years old, they were already great, you know, but for the rest of us,
it's a long road. But there's nothing wrong with that. That's fun. That's life, right? 100%. You know, you'll look back on these days with your podcast as like the best days of your life.
I'm sure, Michael, you know, even though you're sweating bullets and you know, waking up in the middle of the night, you know, these are... the best days. No, it is I was thinking about that today Actually, I was like, you know,
I did all I don't know if anyone can relate to this I did a ton of research, you know, you've been in my literally in my years all week Got all the books. I'm doing and I was like today. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go to us did my workout did my sauna And I was sitting there and I was thinking to myself this is this is the juice,
you know, because it's like you're a little bit Nervous you're you got the resistance you're like, what, you know, will everyone get there? People are hitting you up. Can I get, you know, you're doing, you're kind of juggling all these, all these balls.
And I, and I thought to myself, this is, this is it. This is like, this is the stuff that we live for, right? It's like, to be able to share your song with your people, you know what I mean? Like to me,
that's what life is. It's like, how can I create quality shared experiences with people I love? That's, that's well to me. And, and so yeah, this is the juice. And the struggle,
but you did say something to me once or I read this in one of your books where you were like, the muse does strike me every day, but that's 'cause I show up every morning at 9 a .m. with my boots on, you know,
kind of thing. - Well, that was a quote from Somerset Mom. - Okay, beautiful. - Where somebody asked him, do you write on a schedule or only when inspiration strikes you? And he said, I write only when inspiration strikes me.
(chuckles) He says, "Fortunately, it strikes me every morning at 9 o 'clock sharp." That's work. That's work. That's being a pro. Yeah, you talk. I remember when our last conversation actually had the good grace to come into your place,
and I remember seeing your desk. And what was cool... Pretty messy, yeah. No, you do work. It's your den,
you know? But what I like... is I had this kind of image of you, like, and I think this is a cover of one of your books, you've got these boots, you know? And you talk about things and you've written books,
obviously, you know, about military conquests and whatnot. And I think it's a beautiful counterbalance to some of the spiritual concepts that I think are embedded in your work,
although you don't talk about them in that way. But you do see them in your work, at one point that when you go to your desk every morning,
that you say a prayer to the muse, I do. And I think I really would love to hear kind of like what what is that to you? Because the other thing that I noted when you started talking about the muses is that none of the 20 books that you wrote were books that before you wrote them,
you knew you were going to write. And I think that that's really striking. striking for everyone here, because we get so fixed on what we think we need to do that we're not listening to what wants to move through us. So I'd love to hear about what your prayer is to the muse and how that works in your process.
Maybe I should talk about the muse. Yeah, probably a good idea. So people know what we're talking about. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of a lot to unpack here, but I'll try. I mean, I definitely think that the artist's life is a two - -level deal,
right? On the one hand, there's the kind of the airy -fairy stuff of, you know, amazing shit comes to you and you don't know where it comes from, right? Like Bob Dylan says he doesn't even remember writing any of his songs,
right? What's coming from... So there's that level. And then there's the blue collar level of, you know, whether it's right brain or left brain, blue collar level of just showing up every day,
you know, and grinding it out and going... through like the middle of the season, in the middle of the football season, when you're hurt and, you know, everybody's got broken bones and you just gotta keep grinding.
So to talk about the muse for a second, and if I blather on, I hope you guys will be patient with it, but the muses were nine sister goddesses,
Greek goddesses, Greek mother goddesses. were nine sisters, the daughters of Zeus and Nimasini, Nimasini means memory. And their job was to inspire artists.
And there was a muse of dance, Terpsichor, and a muse of music, Calliope, and various other muses for various arts. And kind of the classic image of the muse would be Beethoven.
Beethoven at the piano and this sort of hazy figure, female figure kind of whispering in his ear. So the way that sort of concept came to me,
I had never even heard of it or thought about it. I had quit a job, blah blah blah, I was living in a house on savings and I had a mentor named Paul Rink and this is in the War of Art,
who lived up to street from me, and one day he told me that he prayed to the muse every morning. I go, "What the hell is that? I've never heard of that." And he typed out for me the invocation of the muse from the start of the Odyssey,
Homer's Odyssey, the translation by T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And that's actually in the War of Art, the whole quotes of it. And I'd had never uh,
he used to... a real believer in that, that you can't summon the muse, inspiration, the flow, whatever, you can't order it, you can't beg for it,
you can't buy it. The only thing you can do is invoke it, meaning a prayer, you know. And so I say this every morning at the start of work,
and it's sort of like entering a dojo, you know. you know, and you kind of, you take off your shoes and you bow to the sacred space or whatever it is, but you're also expressing your own humility.
You're saying to your, and this is what Homer himself writes in this invocation, that you don't believe you can do this by yourself,
that you recognize there's a force out there that you are trying to summon to help you, you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by
yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, and you don't believe you can do this by yourself, basically saying, "I'm here to serve you. I'm an instrument. I have busted my ass for however many years to train myself to be ready to do whatever you
want me to do. And so kind of please help me." That's kind of what it is. But my also my belief about the muse, I think the muse is kind of like Santa Claus in that she sort of flies overhead and she's looking down to see if we're naughty or nice.
[BLANK _AUDIO] And truly, right, are we fucking off? Or if the muse flies overhead and she sees you there on Monday trying to do your thing, whatever it is,
you score some points with her, you know? And if she flies over and you're there Tuesday, you got some more points for her. And she also likes the work boots thing.
She wants to know that you're ready to do the work for her. her, because she can't do it. She's in another dimension, right? She can't sit at a keyboard and do it. She needs an embodied form,
you know, a physical guy. So if you have that, at least this is my theory, if you have that sort of humble blue collar aspect, you're ready to serve,
you're ready to do the work, you're not, you know, doing it for your ego or anything like that. But sooner or later, she's going to... bless you, you know. Sooner or later, the good stuff is gonna come.
For me, it took 30 years, but sooner or later, it did come. And the muse has never let me down. I must say that,
you know. And in fact, if somebody were to ask me what my vocation is, what my occupation is, I would say, I am a servant of the muse. And I'm...
assignment she gives me, whatever next book, or whatever movie, or whatever it is, I'll do it. And going forward, that's how I look at things.
Sometimes people will say, like as an exercise, project yourself five years or ten years into the future and have that person talk to you. Well, that's bullshit to me.
at least the way I live my life, because I'm a servant of this force that I don't understand. And I can't predict what she's gonna want me to do. So all I know is I'm gonna follow her orders.
And the other thing while I'm blathering on here is you were talking about being surprised by something. This is another thing that sort of, I've just observed about my own process is that that when a new book idea comes to me,
it's always a surprise. You know, this is like an order's packet from the goddess, right? Here's the next one, you know? And I look at it and I go, me? You know? And I think a lot of times it's a subject that I don't know anything about.
I don't feel I'm capable of doing it. But, you know, the goddess knows better. than we do, I think, you know. And so each book for me has surprised me,
you know. Where did that idea come from? Only when I look back on it and I go, "Oh, that makes a lot of sense now." But while I'm doing it, and particularly in the beginning, I'm full of self -doubt and wondering why I was picked to do this particular assignment.
But I think that's part of that's that's the way the universe works. I think, you know, if you're not surprised, something's wrong. That was a microp right there,
but we're going to keep going. That that was beautiful. I feel like this notion of being a vessel. being in service to something,
I think of it like the more, I feel like there's a more that wants to live in all of us. That's more than the ego, right? It's like, and you talk about this concept, it's, and I can't remember the exact words you use,
but it's like everyone has their own unique fingerprint, their own unique work, right? The more that wants to live through you. And in my opinion, sense of it is that the work of our lives is as artists to get out of the way of our,
you know, to stop being servants of our ego and to surrender to that place, for lack of a better term, and show up in all the hard work that that entails.
I think that's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah, to that divine cosmic force. force that wants to move through us, that wants to live through us. Like I think you talk about the oak, the seed of an oak tree wanting to evolve into the oak.
Like it's its essence. And I feel like all of us have that essence and our own unique song that wants to live through us. And the question is to me also,
and this is just being evoked from what you just shared. the book I'm working on, which you already know, but I haven't shared publicly, is around this notion of what is the music that wants to live in the space between people and how do we become instruments for that song?
And I think a lot of times we, I love music for the metaphor, but I think we bang our heads against the wall trying to break it down. recreate a hit song that we've heard,
someone else's song or the song we think we're supposed to sing. But we don't listen to that song that wants to live through us. And I think about like John Paul and Ringo,
they all probably had beautiful, beautiful individual songs. But man, when they came together and they actually listened, I'm sure that the combination of the ways that the muse wanted to move through them collectively.
obviously it's something that's touched many of our lives. So I'm really moved by this notion of that song that wants to live through us and being in devotion to the more.
And the way that you describe it as it relates to the muses, I think is of the most beautiful articulations I've heard. And there's one thing I wanna share that you shared in this video.
in you in talking about the artist's journey which is I think something really beautiful which is you said the artist's journey is the hero's journey of the human race and I'll say that again the artist's journey is the human race you said that you said that I wrote it down in bold I listened to it a couple times to make sure I caught it But I think,
you know, amidst this time, that to me hit a real chord, because I think a lot of people are wondering where the heck the human race is going. But I think one thing we can do is focus on our own journey.
And you do talk about the hero's journey-- well, you take timeless principles from the hero's journey and apply it to the artist's journey. Can you talk just a little bit about the hero's journey? how you see that journey of the artist?
Because I think obviously we've talked a bit about resistance and you've talked about the muse, but I'm curious as to how we stay in the journey of becoming a clear vessel or a clear channel for that that wants to move through us or through us.
Well, this is just sort of my own own, from my own experience, that I think my life at least has been divided into what I would call a hero's journey and any artist's journey that follows it.
Two different things. And to me, the hero's journey is the search for your calling, for your vocation. And on that journey,
you have a lot of adventures and you're going to a lot of... of dead ends and you know run into walls and and at some point you do kind of grasp what your vocation is,
you know. I am a writer, I am a musician, I am whatever the hell this is. And at that point your life changes and now you're on it, you're on a different journey,
you're on the artist journey and what I define that to mean is okay, let's say you decide decide you're a writer, okay? The next, then you have to ask yourself,
what am I going to write? What's my voice? You know, what's my subject matter? What is my theme? And now everything in your life, you know, way becomes boring.
You become like on the hero's journey, you're a drug addict, you're a drunk, you're chasing women, you're doing all kinds of, you know, your life is really exciting and interesting and then when you hit like the artist's journey That's when you kind of stop you find a room You know a safe place and you sort of turn inward and you go okay now what and what am I how am I going to?
Discipline this instrument that I have you know how am I gonna learn my craft? That's when you start to to read a crank and I were talking the other day read read the book listen to the,
go see the movies, absorb the canon of what came before, you know? And then learning those, I call them soft skills, but they're not really soft,
self -discipline, all the things you need to do to overcome the various, you know, freakouts that happen along the way so that you become capable of enacting whatever your vocation is.
is. Now, some people, like Bruce Springsteen, I think, or Bob Dylan or Neil Young, they get that moment young. God bless them, they're lucky, you know, I envy them, you know? And they're,
you know, you can track like Bruce Springsteen's albums, you know, and they're on an absolute course. You see, he's on his artist's journey, right? He's got his theme and he's just refining it, you know? Finding the people that he can work with.
with, Clarence and everybody else, you know, and learning how to go into the studio and produce a sound and how to write and all that kind of stuff. So that's the artist journey.
And I hope that a lot of people in this room are on their artist journey, but if they're not, you will be, you know, just keep plugging for it. But your life then does become much simpler.
And, you know, you're... in the studio now, you're working, you're in the dojo, and that's the artist's journey for me. And I don't think there's another journey after that.
I think that's it. Yeah, what strikes me is that notion of committing, it's like defining the sacred in the mundane. At least a lot of what I feel like your work in bodies is putting in the reps.
like I think especially and we're recording for those listening around the world, we're recording in Venice, California. This is a place that people like to chase the ecstacies, you know,
the ethereal, so to speak. And what I like about what your work in bodies to me is you actually take very profound topics,
but you ground them in reality. You ground them in the day -to -day like, "Ah." know, you put your boots on, you show up, you do the work, and sometimes it doesn't look sexy,
but guess what? Like, that's, that's when the muse moves through you, right? It's providence. It's like, when you, when you commit and you're, and you turn pro and you fully go for it, that's when actually the idea is right.
And you get out of your own way. Let me jump in and just say something. This is something people don't talk about a lot about the artist's life. Is this a term? amount of tedium. You know if you are and it breaks people's spirit because they're not ready for it and they can't handle it but you know if you're thinking about let's say you want to be a concert pianist how many times do you have to play scales you
know or how many times do you have to play rock mononops whatever it is you know until you can do it you know so much of that tedium right or be a dancer you know to be be,
you know, like the gym, right? How many reps do you have to do? And it's, we were talking about working in depth as opposed to working on the surface. That's another thing that they don't teach you right at the start.
They don't tell you. It's going to be boring. It's going to be tedious. You're really going to grind, you know? But that's a big part of the reality. When we see Beyonce or somebody doing their amazing amazing shit on stage,
we don't think about all the hours that they put in to get to that point. Somehow nobody talks about that. I don't know why. I always think it's fascinating. Yeah,
you're in devotion to the things that happen behind the scenes that gets you to that place. I feel like you're not a big pomp and circumstance devotee, which I think culturally, unfortunately,
we become transfixed. by the pomp and the circumstance and lost the, you know, we're transfixed by the sauce, but we've lost the meat. We've lost the meat, potatoes, and that's what I love about your orientation and also the inspiration you've been for me.
For those, and in a moment, I wanna actually maybe take a question or two from the audience. We're gonna get, probably won't have a time for a ton of questions, but we're gonna take a couple of questions. questions. But for those who are amidst,
is anyone going through a creative struggle right now or in a roadblock? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your truth. So for those listening,
a lot of hands were raised. So I think that for those who are in a cute place of let's go. it stuckness, writer's block,
what have you, what's the, obviously you got to do the work and show up, but do you have any thoughts that could be helpful for people who are currently in a place of being stuck or are embattled with the fear of the next step to support them in their creative journey and their artist journey?
And I know there's no magic bullet, but do you have any sort of anecdotes? or thoughts around how people can, can maybe take a hack, Michael, not a hack. Here's what I'm thinking about.
Bust your ass for the next 30 years. Yeah. That's pretty good. But no, but I do think I do think that I think of my work as a practice.
Like if you think about having a yoga practice or a yoga practice. or having a martial arts practice, is something that, or meditation practice, right, is something that,
it's ritualistic, it's something that you make a deal with yourself that you're going to do every day, preferably at the same time in the same place, because energy gathers around that thing.
And that the practice, the the aspiration of the practice is that by doing something physical,
like martial arts or meditation or yoga, you're trying to get to a spiritual place, trying to get out of the ego and into this capitalist self. And so my kind of quote -unquote advice would be to think of your art,
whatever it is, as a practice. a practice, that you're doing it for its own sake every day as a kind of a ritualistic thing and eliminate the concept of did I do good today?
You know, am I getting anywhere? It's just to do the practice each day and no matter if it's tedious, if it's boring, that's part of the deal, you know? But if you keep hammering,
good things happen. There's no way that they, that they happen because the goddess is flying around and she's watching. And if you're grinding, she likes that, you know? And sooner or later, she'll make it pay off.
There's no, there should be no such thing. There is no such thing as writer's block. It's resistance. It's somebody being defeated by their own self doubt or their own tendency to procrastinate or to give in to distraction.
And so, you know, it's... a hardcore thing to say, but you just have to overcome it. That's all there is to it. - Yeah, you said the amateur tweets, the pro works. - Yeah,
true, yeah. - I love that. - Yeah, it's work. - Art is work. - Art is work, and we are in the age of distraction. I mean, I'm sure there are always distractions, but we are now in a algorithmic,
modified distraction universe. And what you're presenting basically is an antidote for distraction. Yeah, I guess. I mean,
I have a rule of thumb that I applied to myself in those and I said, when in doubt, it's resistance. And Frank and I,
we had breakfast today and we were just talking about this that we were asking, he was asking me or I was asking you, I forget, Frank, do are there times when you kind of drop a project? project and you go, and I say,
I never drop a project because I think it's better to go to the end of something and finish it, even if it's no good, than to quit halfway through. I don't know if that's true,
but quitting was always my bit noir. You know, that was, I could never get to the end of something. So I have a kind of a bug -bear thing about that. I've got to fucking finish something,
you know? And then, move on to the next thing. - Yeah, you actually talk about in the artist's journey of this notion of the artist starts, they know how to start, and the artist finishes.
They know how to finish. - Yeah, but of course, we don't know that at the start. Again, nobody teaches you that. You sort of have to fail and fail again until you unless you're lucky.
Some people are lucky. - Some people are lucky, the rest of us work. - Yeah. Yes. I'm curious to hear what you're enjoying reading, but I, you, Michael, just made me think of something that you,
Mr. Pressfield, recently posted about when you're, before you've finished something, you do start the next one so that you don't have that empty space. Yeah. Yeah.
I read that very recently. Yeah. Yeah. And I was curious about how much time do you give yourself when you're still in the midst of a deep. deep project to start the next one? Are you just giving yourself, oh,
10 minutes a day I'm gonna put a note down about that or is that part of your four hour stint? Like how special is your time when you're doing two at once? - I will take an hour or something like that or maybe a third of the time to start the next project before I finish the one,
'cause I'm definitely a believer that there should never be a between books. because you fall into that hellish pit.
The worst thing that people can do, and a lot of people do this, is like they'll finish something, they'll release it, a tape, or whatever it is, and then they'll wait for response.
And it's like, oh God, please let them love this stuff. And of course, the response never comes, or it's negative, you know? And then you're in that terrible hellish pit.
you know, the muse doesn't like that at all, you know, so I'm definitely a believer to start the next one while you're still working on the one before. Sometimes I can be way way into something,
you know, but it helps because then, and by the same token, I sort of feel like on this new project, it sort of the question is would you ever take a vacation? And my answer to that is when,
if the new project that I'm working on, once I've got some momentum, once I sort of feel like I have a beach head, you know, I've got my troops that landed at Normandy and they've moved in, you know, to 50, then I'll stop.
'Cause I know I've got enough momentum. If I take a couple of weeks off, I'll be able to go back to it. But I don't think you ever wanna be in that dip where you've stopped and you don't know what you're gonna do next. - And I don't wanna hold all the questions,
but I do wanna hear about what you love to read. and reread. - I'm actually more of a movie person than a reading person, you know?
And so, and I also will watch movies over and over again. So one that I've just kind of fell in love recently, Diana, my girlfriend is going to be laughing at this, is Moneyball.
I don't know if you've seen that one Brad Pitt movie, you know? (laughing) and but I think, you know, anything like that,
I'm studying, you know, from reading it. You know, I'm not just watching it for fun. I'm I'm studying it. It's like, how did they do that? What? How do you know? And each time you see something more. So I'm working when I'm doing that.
But it's fun. That actually just inspired me. Has anyone here seen the movie River Runs Through It? So there's that beautiful scene. I think we talked about this at our last breakfast,
not this particular scene, but the bridge, which is there's a scene where Brad Pitt is kind of casting his fishing rod and his brother kind of peers around the corner on this Montana River.
And he's created his own technique where the fly doesn't actually hit the ground, the water, excuse me. but it just kind of dances above the water and the fish jumps up to greet it.
And he talks very eloquently about how his brother, in all of his reps, in all of the times that he's shown up to the river, aka his desk equivalent,
the muse created his own unique language, it started to move through him and his brother witnessed him. in his song, you know, his own unique song, the way that he casted that fly rod.
And to me, I love, I love, I think I shared this with you. There's a gentleman whom I studied with named Jerry, who's a DNA, a Navajo man.
And what I love about Jerry was, he was the embodiment of that. He was like Brad Pitt with the fly rod, but for him it was a rattle. rattle. And he moved a rattle in such a way,
and he was a very humble man, but he would just say, "Good morning, relatives." And I was there, it was a sunrise, I was surrounded by some very profound indigenous elders, and he had this rattle.
And the way I described it would be like, "Imagine you're sitting next to Aretha Franklin or like Ella Fitzgerald on the bus, and you have no fucking idea." idea until they start to sing.
That was Jerry. Jerry moves this rattle and he's a big guy, no adornments, t -shirt, truckers hat, you know, but he's like a, he's a road man. He's a deeply like,
deeply wise elder starts to sing. And it was like, it was like he, his song was the key that unlocked your consciousness. It was like his,
his unique song. But to me, I feel like that's, that's the juice. When people, when people are in their unique song, but that song is,
is, is that act of the muse? Is that, is that authentic expression of the muse, which I think we feel when we, when we're in the presence of it, there's nothing,
right? That's what you're, that's what I'm going for. That's what I'm committed to. to that notion of that song, that unique song that I think all of us have,
all of us have a unique song. The question is, do we get to a place, do we get out of our way enough to allow that song to move through us, you know, to really,
truly sing it? And I think some people know their song, but they don't have the courage to sing it. I've definitely been in that place myself. Yes. So I liked how you talked about praying to the muse.
I thought that was like in my head was very a holistic approach. I almost thought of like Eastern medicine. And I guess what I'm going to ask you is, what is your Western medicine approach? So like the praying is preventative action,
like pray to the muse to cultivate everything you need. for your art. But say you wake up one morning and like you said, like your art is your practice, you know you're supposed to do it, but you just can't get out of bed or you can't do it.
Do you have like a mantra or like a method or something that's like going to snap you out of it, like a Western medicine approach. Like I'm already sick, but like help me do my art. I mean,
I think it's, you know, sort of the just do it concept, you know, there really is no substitute. for taking action when you don't want to.
I mean, people have said this before, but I certainly believe this, that a lot of times someone will think, "Well, I don't really feel like it right now. I don't really feel it.
I don't have the mood. I don't feel like I'm ready to do it. That is complete bullshit." Nobody cares you know, what you feel, you know, you have to, at least for me,
I have to completely dismiss that, you know, and say that to myself, "Steve, I don't care how you feel, you know, do something, you know? Maybe you can't do everything,
but do something." Yeah, it's a hardcore thing, but it's the only way as near as I can tell. And that's an antidote to life in LA, by the way, where people are based on a lot of feelings.
So it's nice to-- I mean, I live for years kind of following my feelings. I thought that was the way to-- but no. [LAUGHTER] It's like a New Yorker in me.
I feel like in LA-- thank you guys, by the way, for all showing up. We actually have a full room. But in New York, what I love is it'll be like, hey, you want to get a coffee two weeks from Tuesday at 8 AM? Yes. And that's like you, 7 AM breakfast.
Yes. yes. I don't have to check in, you'll be there, right? 10 minutes before 7 a .m. L .A. is kind of like, I call it a soft yes. (audience laughs) - Yeah.
- Love to. (audience laughs) Let me check my horoscope, let me check traffic, let me see if I get a better option, and then I'm a maybe.
- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. (audience laughs) Okay. Okay. We got time for maybe one or two more. And then I'm actually going to ask, because the other thing that we have not yet talked about,
which, which a lot of my, the quotes that I just shared are from a book, which is your newest book. And I read this book and loved it.
I called the daily press field. And what I loved about this book is that it's a book that I've been reading for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a
long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading it for a long time. And I've been reading
it for a it was, and I think because I'm guessing based on the forward, but our mutual friend Ryan Holiday was part of the inspiration and catalyst for this.
If anyone here reads Daily Stoic, great, great thing. I definitely recommend tapping in. But what I love was that that kind of structure applied with your unique insights from 20 plus plus books,
worth of goodness, and then applied over the course of a year, which I think is a really unique format. Did this come from a conversation with Ryan?
What was the genesis for this book? - He was just saying to me that the daily stoic that he wrote, which is a 365 day thing,
was, was one of his most popular books. And he said, "You should do this, too." He says, "You've got so much stuff. "You should put it together in a cohesive form, "and people will like it,
you know? "It'll do good for people." So I thought, you know, this is, it is, the 365 -day format is kind of a great way to kind of, like if anybody is about to start on a long -term project,
a one -year, two -year project, you know, a book, screen, screenplay, a long -form fiction, anything you're doing with podcasting, that a 365 -day format is a great way to take somebody or to sort of mentor someone from day one all the way through to completion,
you know. A little bit like the Yi Qing, where you can also open it to pick a day, you know, day 151 and to see what it says, you know. So anyway, it was fun to do and I hope it helps.
I hope it helps me. I hope it's something you can put beside your laptop or beside your keyboard or whatever it is and open day one, day two, day three. - Yeah, so I'll say just from my own personal perspective.
So I've got War of Art, Turning Pro, nobody wants to read your shit, the artist journey, all on my audio. I mean, I actually have physical copies as well, but I have audio because when I need a swift kick in the ass instead of annoying you with that.
a phone call, I just put on the book. And I find it works marvelously. But now actually what I've done is, is I have this on my desk, and I'll do it as a as a as a as a daily catalyst.
So I'm actually applying the lessons. And it's been, it's been actually amazingly helpful. It also inspired me, which I'm just gonna announce now, and I don't exactly know the entirety of what it's going to to entail,
but I wanted to Actually, and I don't know if Steven really doesn't know this yet, but I'm actually I want to kick off 2024 as my best year ever and I would love it for you guys to have your best year ever and So I actually asked just before this Oliver Our host at the kin I was like,
hey, can we host a dinner here on the 12? 12th of January?" And he said, "Yes, so I'm going to invite you guys all. And then I'm going to do a creative workshop around how to unlock your creativity.
And for anyone who buys a book, I'm going to auction off a spot for that gratis for those who get the book, because I think this is going to be one of the biggest catalysts for my great year ahead.
And I would love to be on that journey with all of you, because in my opinion, which we haven't necessarily talked about, for me, accountability is everything. So like I can declare I'm going to do a project,
but if I don't have someone to whom I'm accountable, like I'm going to get up at 5am. If you hadn't at like, you gave me this book at 5am or maybe it wasn't five, but it was early. - It was pretty early, yeah. - Let's just say if I didn't,
if I wasn't showing up for you, I would not have been up here, shall we say. So I think it's really beautiful to have a community. community and I'd love to be on that journey and we'll figure out what that looks like together.
But in essence, I really wanna encourage you guys to pick this up. I think it's amazing. I'm gonna take one or two more questions. And then I think Stephen actually, is down to do some, if you, 'cause a bunch of people have already bought books.
Are you down to do some signing of some books and whatnot afterwards? Okay, great. So let's do, I just wanna be mindful and respectful of everyone's time. Let's do this. do a couple more questions, then I have a couple last questions for Steven,
and then we'll close out and you'll have an opportunity to connect one on one, and you guys can connect with each other. Okay,
thank you so much for having this conversation as an expert on resistance that you are. Thank you so much for normalizing what and reframing it actually as an indicator for beings about for something big.
I was wondering if you have some wisdom to share about the origin of resistance because you could equally say, would the Buddha have resistance?
Why does the muse like it when we are grinding? Just one thought on that. Stanislav Grof, the founder of Transpersonal Psychology,
who has done a lot of research around the birth process, compares the creative process with the birth process, which is a painful death and life battle.
And potentially, the creative process is coming as almost like a trauma response from being engaged in a deeply meaningful creative endeavor. What are your thoughts on that? the origin of resistance?
Why is it so innately part of the creative process? - It's a great question, and I don't really have any fantastic wisdom on it. But it does seem that there is a devil.
There is a negative death force out there. You know? And it seems to me that we live on the material plane here, flesh and blood,
and above us is a higher plane that we're trying to get to. And the insight for me is that there's something in between those two that's trying to block us. That's trying to block what's coming from above to us and trying to block our prayers going up toward us.
And I have no idea why it's there, but it is there. And I look at it in a very sort of a simple way. It's just something that we have to get through.
I don't have anything more theoretical than that. Thank you. I will say just from the listening to your question,
and also have you heard, and maybe Steven, you can talk about this, I'd never heard of this, I think, forgive me if I'm mispronouncing it, but the daemon or the, so at first when I heard I was like,
I thought he said daemon, but then I was like, oh, daemon, and, and the, and the, the essence of it was this notion of, of our inner genius. And when you talked about birthing and,
and breaking through resistance, it route, reminded me a little bit of that concept of the, of the daemon, can you talk a little bit about that? Cause I think it's a really fast, fascinating idea. Yeah, it's another thing that I really don't,
I'm no expert on. I don't have a real handle on it. But daemon is a Greek word that, and the concept that the ancient Greeks had was that we are born with this thing,
this daemon in us. And it's, and the Latin word for that was genius. So it was... you know, that gift,
that calling, or whatever it is. But I think it also has a demonic element to it. There's a certain, like,
I wrote a book about Alexander the Great called The Virtues of War. And one of the themes of that, and it was told in the first person by Alexander. One of the themes in the book was that (audio cuts out) felt he was in a duel all his life with his daemon.
And his daemon was Alexander, but it wasn't the person that he was. It was this other thing. And he felt that it was crueler than he was,
stronger than he was, smarter than he was, much more depth. It tapped into powers that he didn't have. And he felt that that it could kill him and that people did take their own lives because their daemon had possessed him.
So again, I'm not really sure what that is, but I do think that artists in one way or another tap into that sometimes. And I think when you see great actors doing their thing,
you know, or an Aretha Franklin or anybody that goes through that incredible level, that there's somehow tapping into some other entity that is them,
but is really not them. And again, I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it's big medicine. Genius. I mean, Leonardo, where did all that come from? They had that,
again, it's sort of the oak, what's in the acorn, that daemon, that genius is in there. It's all right down at every level. leaf that's gonna come up What resonates with me about that is I think oftentimes there's this I think Potentially fallacious notion but but also rooted in some truth where it's there's this this notion of the tortured artist right like we almost have to be in our darkness to produce our best
work and To me that doesn't that doesn't resonate as true like I think a lot of people for example who have gotten sober That's what you know Bradley Cooper talks about that, like, he never would have produced the works he produced if he hadn't gotten sober.
But I do think others, like I just watched this incredible Mac Miller performance. I didn't even know much about Mac Miller. And I watched his tiny desk performance. Guys watched that his last song.
It's called 1992. It's with strings. I was like, this is someone who's truly in his genius. And yet he passed away from addiction like a few months later.
later. And I feel like it is kind of, and to me, and I don't know necessarily the origins of your title of the War of Art, but I do think that there is this kind of battle within us of like,
are we, you know, which wolf we're going to feed? And do we feed that, like, you know, that more, I'm coming for you hungry ghost, or do we actually stand as an offering to the the muse?
Which are we going for? Yeah, I'm on the muse side of that one. I am as well. Do we have another question? I think we had one over here. Thank you.
I'm curious, have you gotten to a point where you've come to become friends with resistance where it's not so so antagonistic? A little bit,
a little bit, but it's always there and it always has to be dealt with. I don't know if you can really come to terms with it because it's it's merciless,
it has no pity, and it's out to destroy you as much as it possibly can. So you can't really, I've never become, I'm a little friendly with it just that I've done this.
dance so many times, but it's never anything to be taken less than with deadly seriousness if you ask me. And on this, just I want to say a sidebar thing on the subject of books.
I want to recommend two books to you guys. I have nothing to do with me. One is David Mamet's Three Uses of the Knife. If you, it's a really great book about the creative process.
and another one is Roseanne Cash's book, Composed. So I put that out there as two works, I think, are really, really terrific.
Beautiful. And I recommend them to you too, Michael. I'm on it. I'm on it for sure. You had a question. I feel like you must have encountered some pretty amazing stories of people encountering their muse.
I feel like in my life, there seems to be a genesis of that. It starts somewhere. And I would love to just hear any reflections or stories that you have on that moment or time.
I don't know if I do. have stories like that. Yeah Nobody's confided them to me. Anyway You mean other people's stories yours or other people's or things you've come across in your research God I'm drawing a blank on that.
Sorry We do talk about Elite and I don't know if this exactly hits on the nose of what you're talking about but one of the things I loved in the book was when you go through prolific artists,
and I referenced this a bit earlier, and their body of work. To me, you talk about this notion, like ready or not, you are called. It's a calling.
If you actually stay in the call long enough, then even though, as I understand it, you don't know what's going to come. come next, like just as you didn't know which book was going to come next.
Yet there's this through line through the calling, like you read out, for example, Bruce Springsteen's songs, and then you read out Bob Dylan's songs, then you wrote out actually your books, and it feels like to me there's a micro and a macro,
and there seems to be some kind of a cadence to them, as in like you don't necessarily know why you're being called to. that, but there's a fingerprint that is imbued through it.
Like you talk about Bruce Springsteen, it's like the blue collar struggle, but yet there's a redemption, you know, like there's, there's, that's his kind of, that's his kind of thing. I don't know if this resonates with you,
but it does feel like there's also, there's a macro on the body of work that is, that is also emergent to those who stay in, in in the calling and their boots in the work Yeah,
there's definitely a theme of anybody that produces many many works over their life There's definitely a theme if you look for it, and I would encourage anybody that's at the beginning of their artistic career to imagine The body of work that you've got that you will produce,
you know if it's music imagine all of the albums or shows or whatever it is, if it's books, imagine the bookshelf that's there because it's there, it's there.
And we're all called to do that, you know, it's an underground river that's flowing through us,
you know, films that would be on a shelf. And I would just say believe, believe in that if you can. Because a lot of times you think oh if I can just, this is me too.
Oh if I can just do the first one. You know just the first one or maybe the second one. But really there can be 40 or 50 of them you know and we're all living longer these days.
We hope we are. So there's a lot of stuff out there that we all have that body of work in potential. If we could see it, if we had you know the right instrument.
we could see it floating in the air right now. Maybe we should end on that note. Michael, what do you think? I think that sounds perfect. I think that sounds perfect. Thank you, Stephen, for...
Thank you, Michael. Yeah, man, it's a pleasure. I can't wait to read your book when you really get that stuff about what's in the music between people, you know? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, just to be authentic with it,
what's beautiful is I know that there's moments of song. in there. But what I've found in the writing process, and you've actually been very inspirational, is it's getting out of our own way,
or getting out of my own way, make it personal. So it's been a beautiful journey, and you've been very, very helpful. So let's give a hand to Steven Pressfield. (audience applauding) Thank you guys.
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