WEBVTT 00:00:01.312 --> 00:00:05.365 I was hoping today to talk a little bit about creativity. 00:00:05.389 --> 00:00:07.359 You know, a lot of people really struggle 00:00:07.383 --> 00:00:09.602 to give themselves permission to be creative. 00:00:09.626 --> 00:00:10.885 And reasonably so. 00:00:10.909 --> 00:00:13.666 I mean, we're all a little suspect of our own talent. 00:00:13.690 --> 00:00:17.670 And I remember a story I came across in my early 20s 00:00:17.694 --> 00:00:19.984 that kind of meant a lot to me. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:20.008 --> 00:00:21.637 I was really into Allen Ginsberg, 00:00:21.661 --> 00:00:23.090 and I was reading his poetry, 00:00:23.114 --> 00:00:25.899 and I was reading -- he did a lot of interviews -- 00:00:25.923 --> 00:00:30.234 and one time, William F. Buckley had this television program 00:00:30.258 --> 00:00:31.798 called "Firing Line," 00:00:31.822 --> 00:00:35.777 and Ginsberg went on there and sang a Hare Krishna song 00:00:35.801 --> 00:00:37.895 while playing the harmonium. 00:00:37.919 --> 00:00:40.833 And he got back to New York to all his intelligentsia friends, 00:00:40.857 --> 00:00:42.008 and they all told him, 00:00:42.032 --> 00:00:44.591 "Don't you know that everybody thinks you're an idiot, 00:00:44.615 --> 00:00:46.726 and the whole country's making fun of you?" 00:00:47.369 --> 00:00:49.590 And he said, "That's my job. 00:00:50.679 --> 00:00:53.310 I'm a poet, and I'm going to play the fool. 00:00:53.334 --> 00:00:55.764 Most people have to go to work all day long, 00:00:55.788 --> 00:00:58.242 and they come home and they fight with their spouse, 00:00:58.266 --> 00:01:00.613 and they eat, and they turn on the old boob tube, 00:01:00.637 --> 00:01:02.608 and somebody tries to sell them something, 00:01:02.632 --> 00:01:04.154 and I just screwed all that up. 00:01:04.178 --> 00:01:06.353 I went on and I sang about Krishna, 00:01:06.377 --> 00:01:10.102 and now they're sitting in bed and going, 'Who is this stupid poet?' 00:01:10.126 --> 00:01:11.839 And they can't fall asleep, right?" 00:01:11.863 --> 00:01:14.091 And that's his job as a poet. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:14.115 --> 00:01:15.947 And so, I find that very liberating, 00:01:15.971 --> 00:01:19.936 because I think that most of us really want to offer the world 00:01:19.960 --> 00:01:21.735 something of quality, 00:01:21.759 --> 00:01:25.219 something that the world will consider good or important. 00:01:25.243 --> 00:01:28.223 And that's really the enemy, 00:01:28.247 --> 00:01:32.845 because it's not up to us whether what we do is any good, 00:01:32.869 --> 00:01:34.931 and if history has taught us anything, 00:01:34.955 --> 00:01:37.702 the world is an extremely unreliable critic. 00:01:38.178 --> 00:01:39.333 Right? NOTE Paragraph 00:01:39.730 --> 00:01:41.177 So you have to ask yourself: 00:01:41.891 --> 00:01:45.544 Do you think human creativity matters? 00:01:46.649 --> 00:01:48.644 Well, hmm. 00:01:48.668 --> 00:01:52.966 Most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about poetry. Right? 00:01:52.990 --> 00:01:54.215 They have a life to live, 00:01:54.239 --> 00:01:57.349 and they're not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg's poems 00:01:57.373 --> 00:01:58.699 or anybody's poems, 00:01:58.723 --> 00:02:01.270 until their father dies, 00:02:01.294 --> 00:02:02.479 they go to a funeral, 00:02:02.503 --> 00:02:04.461 you lose a child, 00:02:04.485 --> 00:02:07.139 somebody breaks your heart, they don't love you anymore, 00:02:07.163 --> 00:02:08.334 and all of a sudden, 00:02:08.358 --> 00:02:12.186 you're desperate for making sense out of this life, 00:02:12.210 --> 00:02:15.629 and, "Has anybody ever felt this bad before? 00:02:15.653 --> 00:02:17.457 How did they come out of this cloud?" NOTE Paragraph 00:02:17.481 --> 00:02:19.258 Or the inverse -- something great. 00:02:19.282 --> 00:02:21.321 You meet somebody and your heart explodes. 00:02:21.345 --> 00:02:24.166 You love them so much, you can't even see straight. 00:02:24.190 --> 00:02:25.363 You know, you're dizzy. 00:02:25.387 --> 00:02:28.364 "Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?" 00:02:28.388 --> 00:02:32.937 And that's when art's not a luxury, it's actually sustenance. 00:02:32.961 --> 00:02:34.151 We need it. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:34.175 --> 00:02:36.299 OK. Well, what is it? 00:02:36.323 --> 00:02:41.548 Human creativity is nature manifest in us. 00:02:41.572 --> 00:02:44.416 We look at the, oh ... 00:02:45.563 --> 00:02:46.990 the aurora borealis. Right? 00:02:47.014 --> 00:02:49.579 I did this movie called "White Fang" when I was a kid, 00:02:49.603 --> 00:02:50.813 and we shot up in Alaska, 00:02:50.837 --> 00:02:51.991 and you go out at night 00:02:52.015 --> 00:02:55.455 and the sky was like rippling with purple and pink and white, 00:02:55.479 --> 00:02:57.607 and it's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. 00:02:57.631 --> 00:02:59.871 It really looked like the sky was playing. 00:02:59.895 --> 00:03:01.046 Beautiful. 00:03:01.070 --> 00:03:02.699 You go to Grand Canyon at sundown. 00:03:02.723 --> 00:03:03.874 It's beautiful. 00:03:03.898 --> 00:03:05.123 We know that's beautiful. 00:03:05.147 --> 00:03:06.652 But fall in love? 00:03:06.676 --> 00:03:08.140 Your lover's pretty beautiful. 00:03:08.164 --> 00:03:09.851 I have four kids. 00:03:09.875 --> 00:03:11.399 Watching them play? 00:03:11.423 --> 00:03:13.691 Watching them pretend to be a butterfly 00:03:13.715 --> 00:03:15.888 or run around the house and doing anything, 00:03:15.912 --> 00:03:18.248 it's so beautiful. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:18.272 --> 00:03:22.411 And I believe that we are here on this star in space 00:03:22.435 --> 00:03:25.015 to try to help one another. Right? 00:03:25.039 --> 00:03:27.461 And first we have to survive, 00:03:27.485 --> 00:03:28.848 and then we have to thrive. 00:03:28.872 --> 00:03:32.206 And to thrive, to express ourselves, 00:03:32.230 --> 00:03:35.113 alright, well, here's the rub: we have to know ourselves. 00:03:35.137 --> 00:03:36.500 What do you love? 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.156 And if you get close to what you love, 00:03:39.180 --> 00:03:40.892 who you are is revealed to you, 00:03:40.916 --> 00:03:42.669 and it expands. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:42.693 --> 00:03:44.416 For me, it was really easy. 00:03:44.440 --> 00:03:47.024 I did my first professional play. I was 12 years old. 00:03:47.048 --> 00:03:49.881 I was in a play called "Saint Joan" by George Bernard Shaw 00:03:49.905 --> 00:03:51.261 at the McCarter Theatre, 00:03:51.285 --> 00:03:53.193 and -- boom! -- I was in love. 00:03:53.908 --> 00:03:55.923 My world just expanded. 00:03:56.345 --> 00:03:58.491 And that profession -- I'm almost 50 now -- 00:03:58.515 --> 00:04:01.293 that profession has never stopped giving back to me, 00:04:01.317 --> 00:04:03.349 and it gives back more and more, 00:04:03.373 --> 00:04:05.966 mostly, strangely, 00:04:05.990 --> 00:04:07.943 through the characters that I've played. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:07.967 --> 00:04:10.997 I've played cops, I've played criminals, 00:04:11.021 --> 00:04:13.645 I've played priests, I've played sinners, 00:04:13.669 --> 00:04:18.396 and the magic of this over a lifetime, over 30 years of doing this, 00:04:18.420 --> 00:04:21.285 is that you start to see that my experiences, 00:04:21.309 --> 00:04:24.685 me, Ethan, is not nearly as unique 00:04:24.709 --> 00:04:25.860 as I thought. 00:04:25.884 --> 00:04:28.923 I have so much in common with all these people. 00:04:28.947 --> 00:04:31.763 And so they have something in common with me. 00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:36.506 You start to see how connected we all are. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:36.530 --> 00:04:40.255 My great-grandmother, Della Hall Walker Green, 00:04:40.279 --> 00:04:42.105 on her deathbed, 00:04:42.129 --> 00:04:45.844 she wrote this little biography in the hospital, 00:04:45.868 --> 00:04:48.655 and it was only about 36 pages long, 00:04:48.679 --> 00:04:52.034 and she spent about five pages 00:04:52.058 --> 00:04:55.167 on the one time she did costumes for a play. 00:04:55.191 --> 00:04:58.337 Her first husband got, like, a paragraph. 00:04:58.361 --> 00:05:03.355 Cotton farming, of which she did for 50 years, gets a mention. 00:05:03.379 --> 00:05:06.366 Five pages on doing these costumes. 00:05:06.390 --> 00:05:09.829 And I look -- my mom gave me one of her quilts that she made, 00:05:09.853 --> 00:05:11.034 and you can feel it. 00:05:11.058 --> 00:05:12.937 She was expressing herself, 00:05:12.961 --> 00:05:14.961 and it has a power that's real. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:14.985 --> 00:05:18.721 I remember my stepbrother and I went to go see "Top Gun," 00:05:18.745 --> 00:05:20.336 whatever year that came out. 00:05:20.360 --> 00:05:23.587 And I remember we walked out of the mall, it was, like, blazing hot, 00:05:23.611 --> 00:05:24.806 I just looked at him, 00:05:24.830 --> 00:05:28.622 and we both felt that movie just like a calling from God. 00:05:28.646 --> 00:05:30.437 You know? Just ... 00:05:30.521 --> 00:05:31.826 But completely differently. 00:05:31.860 --> 00:05:33.299 Like, I wanted to be an actor. 00:05:33.299 --> 00:05:36.210 I was like, I've got to make something that makes people feel. 00:05:36.210 --> 00:05:37.881 I just want to be a part of that. 00:05:37.881 --> 00:05:39.605 And he wanted to be in the military. 00:05:39.605 --> 00:05:42.027 That's all we ever did was play FBI, play army man, 00:05:42.027 --> 00:05:44.718 play knights, you know, and I'd like, pose with my sword, 00:05:44.718 --> 00:05:46.496 and he would build a working crossbow 00:05:46.496 --> 00:05:48.509 that you could shoot an arrow into a tree. 00:05:48.629 --> 00:05:49.780 So he joins the army. 00:05:49.780 --> 00:05:52.430 Well, he just retired a colonel in the Green Berets. 00:05:52.864 --> 00:05:56.713 He's a multidecorated combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. 00:05:56.737 --> 00:06:00.239 He now teaches a sail camp for children of fallen soldiers. 00:06:00.263 --> 00:06:01.940 He gave his life to his passion. 00:06:01.964 --> 00:06:04.505 His creativity was leadership, 00:06:04.529 --> 00:06:05.708 leading others, 00:06:05.732 --> 00:06:07.075 his bravery, to help others. 00:06:07.099 --> 00:06:09.483 That was something he felt called to do, 00:06:09.507 --> 00:06:11.634 and it gave back to him. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:11.658 --> 00:06:14.215 We know this -- the time of our life is so short, 00:06:14.239 --> 00:06:15.420 and how we spend it -- 00:06:15.444 --> 00:06:18.817 are we spending it doing what's important to us? 00:06:18.841 --> 00:06:20.422 Most of us not. 00:06:20.446 --> 00:06:22.028 I mean, it's hard. 00:06:22.052 --> 00:06:24.512 The pull of habit is so huge, 00:06:24.536 --> 00:06:27.115 and that's what makes kids so beautifully creative, 00:06:27.139 --> 00:06:29.087 is that they don't have any habits, 00:06:29.111 --> 00:06:31.676 and they don't care if they're any good or not, right? 00:06:31.700 --> 00:06:33.687 They're not building a sandcastle going, 00:06:33.711 --> 00:06:37.286 "I think I'm going to be a really good sandcastle builder." 00:06:37.310 --> 00:06:41.218 They just throw themselves at whatever project you put in front of them -- 00:06:41.242 --> 00:06:43.015 dancing, doing a painting, 00:06:43.039 --> 00:06:44.450 building something: 00:06:44.474 --> 00:06:45.988 any opportunity they have, 00:06:46.012 --> 00:06:50.615 they try to use it to impress upon you their individuality. 00:06:51.107 --> 00:06:52.465 It's so beautiful. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:53.107 --> 00:06:56.642 It's a thing that worries me sometimes whenever you talk about creativity, 00:06:56.666 --> 00:06:59.710 because it can have this kind of feel that it's just nice, 00:06:59.734 --> 00:07:03.158 you know, or it's warm or it's something pleasant. 00:07:03.182 --> 00:07:04.341 It's not. 00:07:04.365 --> 00:07:05.682 It's vital. 00:07:05.706 --> 00:07:08.514 It's the way we heal each other. 00:07:08.538 --> 00:07:10.632 In singing our song, 00:07:10.656 --> 00:07:12.271 in telling our story, 00:07:12.295 --> 00:07:13.677 in inviting you to say, 00:07:13.701 --> 00:07:16.404 "Hey, listen to me, and I'll listen to you," 00:07:16.428 --> 00:07:18.796 we're starting a dialogue. 00:07:18.820 --> 00:07:21.629 And when you do that, this healing happens, 00:07:21.653 --> 00:07:23.463 and we come out of our corners, 00:07:23.487 --> 00:07:26.434 and we start to witness each other's common humanity. 00:07:26.458 --> 00:07:27.902 We start to assert it. 00:07:27.926 --> 00:07:31.258 And when we do that, really good things happen. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:31.282 --> 00:07:34.705 So, if you want to help your community, if you want to help your family, 00:07:34.729 --> 00:07:36.340 if you want to help your friends, 00:07:36.364 --> 00:07:38.385 you have to express yourself. 00:07:38.409 --> 00:07:40.992 And to express yourself, you have to know yourself. 00:07:41.619 --> 00:07:43.333 It's actually super easy. 00:07:43.796 --> 00:07:46.193 You just have to follow your love. 00:07:46.217 --> 00:07:48.352 There is no path. 00:07:48.975 --> 00:07:51.569 There's no path till you walk it, 00:07:51.593 --> 00:07:54.226 and you have to be willing to play the fool. 00:07:54.250 --> 00:07:57.552 So don't read the book that you should read, 00:07:57.576 --> 00:07:59.389 read the book you want to read. 00:07:59.413 --> 00:08:02.796 Don't listen to the music that you used to like. 00:08:02.820 --> 00:08:05.110 Take some time to listen to some new music. 00:08:05.134 --> 00:08:08.651 Take some time to talk to somebody that you don't normally talk to. 00:08:08.675 --> 00:08:10.606 I guarantee, if you do that, 00:08:10.630 --> 00:08:12.298 you will feel foolish. 00:08:12.973 --> 00:08:14.475 That's the point. 00:08:14.499 --> 00:08:15.960 Play the fool. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:37.701 --> 00:08:40.760 (Plays guitar) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:42.585 --> 00:08:46.499 (Sings) Well, I want to go Austin, and I wanna stay home. 00:08:46.523 --> 00:08:49.737 Invite our friends over but still be alone. 00:08:49.761 --> 00:08:51.408 Live for danger. 00:08:51.432 --> 00:08:52.950 Play it cool. 00:08:52.974 --> 00:08:57.114 Have everyone respect me for being a fool.