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I was hoping today to talk
a little bit about creativity.

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You know, a lot of people really struggle

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to give themselves
permission to be creative.

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And reasonably so.

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I mean, we're all a little suspect
of our own talent.

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And I remember a story
I came across in my early 20s

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that kind of meant a lot to me.

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I was really into Allen Ginsberg,

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and I was reading his poetry,

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and I was reading --
he did a lot of interviews --

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and one time, William F. Buckley
had this television program

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called "Firing Line,"

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and Ginsberg went on there
and sang a Hare Krishna song

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while playing the harmonium.

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And he got back to New York
to all his intelligentsia friends,

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and they all told him,

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"Don't you know that everybody
thinks you're an idiot,

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and the whole country's
making fun of you?"

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And he said, "That's my job.

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I'm a poet, and I'm going
to play the fool.

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Most people have to go
to work all day long,

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and they come home
and they fight with their spouse,

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and they eat, and they turn on
the old boob tube,

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and somebody tries
to sell them something,

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and I just screwed all that up.

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I went on and I sang about Krishna,

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and now they're sitting in bed
and going, 'Who is this stupid poet?'

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And they can't fall asleep, right?"

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And that's his job as a poet.

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And so, I find that very liberating,

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because I think that most of us
really want to offer the world

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something of quality,

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something that the world
will consider good or important.

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And that's really the enemy,

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because it's not up to us
whether what we do is any good,

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and if history has taught us anything,

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the world is an extremely
unreliable critic.

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Right?

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So you have to ask yourself:

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Do you think human creativity matters?

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Well, hmm.

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Most people don't spend a lot of time
thinking about poetry. Right?

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They have a life to live,

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and they're not really that concerned
with Allen Ginsberg's poems

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or anybody's poems,

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until their father dies,

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they go to a funeral,

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you lose a child,

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somebody breaks your heart,
they don't love you anymore,

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and all of a sudden,

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you're desperate for making sense
out of this life,

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and, "Has anybody ever
felt this bad before?

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How did they come out of this cloud?"

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Or the inverse -- something great.

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You meet somebody and your heart explodes.

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You love them so much,
you can't even see straight.

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You know, you're dizzy.

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"Did anybody feel like this before?
What is happening to me?"

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And that's when art's not a luxury,
it's actually sustenance.

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We need it.

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OK. Well, what is it?

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Human creativity
is nature manifest in us.

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We look at the, oh ...

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the aurora borealis. Right?

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I did this movie called
"White Fang" when I was a kid,

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and we shot up in Alaska,

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and you go out at night

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and the sky was like rippling
with purple and pink and white,

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and it's the most beautiful
thing I ever saw.

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It really looked like the sky was playing.

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Beautiful.

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You go to Grand Canyon at sundown.

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It's beautiful.

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We know that's beautiful.

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But fall in love?

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Your lover's pretty beautiful.

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I have four kids.

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Watching them play?

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Watching them pretend to be a butterfly

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or run around the house
and doing anything,

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it's so beautiful.

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And I believe that we are here
on this star in space

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to try to help one another. Right?

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And first we have to survive,

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and then we have to thrive.

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And to thrive, to express ourselves,

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alright, well, here's the rub:
we have to know ourselves.

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What do you love?

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And if you get close to what you love,

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who you are is revealed to you,

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and it expands.

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For me, it was really easy.

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I did my first professional play.
I was 12 years old.

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I was in a play called "Saint Joan"
by George Bernard Shaw

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at the McCarter Theatre,

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and -- boom! -- I was in love.

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My world just expanded.

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And that profession --
I'm almost 50 now --

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that profession has never stopped
giving back to me,

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and it gives back more and more,

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mostly, strangely,

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through the characters that I've played.

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I've played cops, I've played criminals,

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I've played priests, I've played sinners,

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and the magic of this over a lifetime,
over 30 years of doing this,

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is that you start to see
that my experiences,

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me, Ethan, is not nearly as unique

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as I thought.

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I have so much in common
with all these people.

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And so they have something
in common with me.

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You start to see
how connected we all are.

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My great-grandmother,
Della Hall Walker Green,

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on her deathbed,

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she wrote this little biography
in the hospital,

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and it was only about 36 pages long,

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and she spent about five pages

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on the one time
she did costumes for a play.

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Her first husband got, like, a paragraph.

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Cotton farming, of which
she did for 50 years, gets a mention.

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Five pages on doing these costumes.

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And I look -- my mom gave me
one of her quilts that she made,

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and you can feel it.

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She was expressing herself,

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and it has a power that's real.

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I remember my stepbrother and I
went to go see "Top Gun,"

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whatever year that came out.

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And I remember we walked out of the mall,
it was, like, blazing hot,

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I just looked at him,

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and we both felt that movie
just like a calling from God.

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You know? Just ...

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But completely differently.

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Like, I wanted to be an actor.

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I was like, I've got to make something
that makes people feel.

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I just want to be a part of that.

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And he wanted to be in the military.

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That's all we ever did
was play FBI, play army man,

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play knights, you know,
and I'd like, pose with my sword,

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and he would build a working crossbow

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that you could shoot an arrow into a tree.

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So he joins the army.

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Well, he just retired
a colonel in the Green Berets.

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He's a multidecorated combat veteran
of Afghanistan and Iraq.

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He now teaches a sail camp
for children of fallen soldiers.

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He gave his life to his passion.

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His creativity was leadership,

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leading others,

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his bravery, to help others.

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That was something he felt called to do,

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and it gave back to him.

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We know this -- the time
of our life is so short,

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and how we spend it --

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are we spending it
doing what's important to us?

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Most of us not.

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I mean, it's hard.

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The pull of habit is so huge,

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and that's what makes kids
so beautifully creative,

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is that they don't have any habits,

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and they don't care
if they're any good or not, right?

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They're not building a sandcastle going,

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"I think I'm going to be
a really good sandcastle builder."

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They just throw themselves at whatever
project you put in front of them --

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dancing, doing a painting,

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building something:

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any opportunity they have,

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they try to use it to impress upon you
their individuality.

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It's so beautiful.

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It's a thing that worries me sometimes
whenever you talk about creativity,

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because it can have this kind of feel
that it's just nice,

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you know, or it's warm
or it's something pleasant.

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It's not.

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It's vital.

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It's the way we heal each other.

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In singing our song,

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in telling our story,

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in inviting you to say,

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"Hey, listen to me,
and I'll listen to you,"

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we're starting a dialogue.

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And when you do that,
this healing happens,

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and we come out of our corners,

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and we start to witness
each other's common humanity.

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We start to assert it.

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And when we do that,
really good things happen.

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So, if you want to help your community,
if you want to help your family,

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if you want to help your friends,

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you have to express yourself.

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And to express yourself,
you have to know yourself.

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It's actually super easy.

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You just have to follow your love.

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There is no path.

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There's no path till you walk it,

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and you have to be willing
to play the fool.

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So don't read the book
that you should read,

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read the book you want to read.

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Don't listen to the music
that you used to like.

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Take some time to listen
to some new music.

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Take some time to talk to somebody
that you don't normally talk to.

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I guarantee, if you do that,

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you will feel foolish.

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That's the point.

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Play the fool.

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(Plays guitar)

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(Sings) Well, I want to go Austin,
and I wanna stay home.

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Invite our friends over
but still be alone.

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Live for danger.

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Play it cool.

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Have everyone respect me
for being a fool.