Give Yourself Permission to Be Creative | Ethan Hawke  ## Metadata - Author: [[TED Talks Daily]] - Full Title: Give Yourself Permission to Be Creative | Ethan Hawke - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/2a33a463-3554-4779-84cd-be9c704e8616 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Creativity Is Essential Sustenance** - Human creativity is nature manifest in us and it's essential, not optional. - Art becomes sustenance when life turns painful or ecstatic and helps people make sense of experience. Transcript: Ethan Hawke I was hoping today to talk a little bit about creativity. You know, a lot of people really struggle to give themselves permission to be creative. And reasonably so. I mean, we're all a little suspect of our own talent. And I remember a story I came across in my early 20s that kind of meant a lot to me. I was really into Allen Ginsberg. And I was reading his poetry. And I was reading, he did a lot of interviews. And one time, William F. Buckley had this television program called Firing Line, and Ginsburg went on there and sang a Hare Krishna song while playing the harmonium. And he got back to New York to all his intelligentsia friends, and they all told him, does she know that everybody thinks you're an idiot? I mean, the whole country's making fun of you. And he said, that's my job. You know, I'm a poet and I'm going to play the fool. Most people have to go to work all day long and they come home and they fight with their spouse and they eat and they like turn on the old boob tube and somebody tries to sell them something. And I just screwed all that up. I went on and I sang about Krishna. And now they're sitting in bed and going, who's this stupid poet? And they can't fall asleep, right? And that's his job as a poet. And so I find that very liberating because I think that most of us really want to offer the world something of quality, something that the world will consider good or important. And that's really the enemy, because it's not up to us whether what we do is any good. And if history's taught us anything, the world is an extremely unreliable critic. Right? So you have to ask yourself, do you think human creativity matters? Well, hmm, most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they're not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg's poems or anybody's poems. They go to a funeral, you lose a child. Somebody breaks your heart, they don't love you anymore. And all of a sudden, you're desperate for making sense out of this life. And has anybody ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud? Or the inverse, something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much you can't even see straight. You know, you're dizzy. Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me? And that's when art's not a luxury, it's actually sustenance. ([Time 0:03:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3ad0d6fd-e98e-4516-a45a-46810fedee9e)) - **Ginsberg Embraced Playing The Fool** - Ethan Hawke recounts Allen Ginsberg singing on TV and being mocked by intellectuals. - Ginsberg embraced being called an idiot, saying his job as a poet was to play the fool and disturb complacency. Transcript: Ethan Hawke I was really into Allen Ginsberg. And I was reading his poetry. And I was reading, he did a lot of interviews. And one time, William F. Buckley had this television program called Firing Line, and Ginsburg went on there and sang a Hare Krishna song while playing the harmonium. And he got back to New York to all his intelligentsia friends, and they all told him, does she know that everybody thinks you're an idiot? I mean, the whole country's making fun of you. And he said, that's my job. You know, I'm a poet and I'm going to play the fool. Most people have to go to work all day long and they come home and they fight with their spouse and they eat and they like turn on the old boob tube and somebody tries to sell them something. And I just screwed all that up. I went on and I sang about Krishna. And now they're sitting in bed and going, who's this stupid poet? And they can't fall asleep, right? And that's his job as a poet. ([Time 0:03:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/41d4ee5a-52ee-4fbd-ae7d-f01851c8acf4)) - **Creative Work Reveals Identity** - Knowing what you love reveals who you are and expands your identity. - Long-term creative practice returns value through new perspectives gained by inhabiting many roles. Transcript: Ethan Hawke Okay, well, what is it? Human creativity is nature manifest in us. We look at the, oh, Aurora Borealis, right? I did this movie called White Fang when I was a kid, and we shot up in Alaska, and you go out at night, and the sky was like rippling with purple and pink and white. And it's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. It really looked like the sky was playing. Beautiful. Go to Grand Canyon at sundown. It's beautiful. We know that's beautiful. But Fall in Love, your lover's pretty beautiful. I have four kids watching them play, watching them like pretend to be a butterfly or run around the house or doing anything. It's so beautiful. Star in space to try to help one another, right? And first we have to survive and then we have to thrive. And to thrive, to express ourselves, all right, well, here's the rub. We have to know ourselves. What do you love? And if you get close to what you love, who you are is revealed to you and it expands. For me, it was really easy. I did my first professional play. I was 12 years old. I was in a play called St. ([Time 0:05:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/69742f27-3773-46d8-8d9a-bcaac3d11385)) - **A Lifetime Shaped By Roles** - Ethan Hawke describes falling in love with acting at age 12 after his first professional play. - Over decades, playing diverse characters showed him how connected people's experiences really are. Transcript: Ethan Hawke I did my first professional play. I was 12 years old. I was in a play called St. Joan by George Bernard Shaw at the McCarter Theater. And boom, I was in love. My world just expanded. And that profession, I'm almost 50 now, that profession has never stopped giving back to me. And it gives back more and more, mostly, strangely, through the characters that I've played. I've played cops. I've played criminals. I've played priests. I've played sinners. ([Time 0:07:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f459fe9a-224c-43c3-a61c-fdfe550b5205)) - **Family Memory Through Making** - Hawke shares his great-grandmother's short biography that focused heavily on making costumes. - He contrasts mundane work details with the lasting power of creative expression like quilts and costumes. Transcript: Ethan Hawke My grandmother, my great grandmother, Della Hall Walker Green, on her deathbed, she wrote this little biography in the hospital. And it was only about 36 pages long. And she spent about five pages on the one time she did costumes for a play. Her first husband got like a paragraph, right? Cotton farming of which she did for 50 years, you know, gets a mention. Five pages on doing these costumes. And I look, my mom gave me one of her quilts that she made, and you can feel it. She was expressing herself. And it has a power that's real. ([Time 0:07:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/239722d6-a6bb-4c1c-b185-ac6777d6a6e2)) - **Different Callings From One Moment** - Hawke and his stepbrother left Top Gun feeling called to different passions: acting and military service. - His stepbrother pursued leadership and bravery in the Green Berets, showing creativity can manifest as service. Transcript: Ethan Hawke And I remember we walked out of the mall, it was like blazing hot. I just looked at him, we both felt that movie just like a calling from God, you know? This film, but completely differently. Like I wanted to be an actor. I was like, I gotta make something that makes people feel. I just wanted to be a part of that. And he wanted to be in the military. You know, that's what all we ever did is play FBI, play army man, play knights, you know, and I'd like pose with my sword. And he would build a working crossbow. You could shoot an arrow into a tree, right? So he joins the army. Well, he just retired, a colonel in the Green Berets. He's a multi-decorated combat veteran of Afghanistan in Iraq. He now teaches a sail camp for children of fallen soldiers. He gave his life to his passion. His creativity was leadership, leading others, his bravery to help others. ([Time 0:08:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c4467760-5fab-44d5-b03a-439ec1c3f62f)) - **Expression Heals Through Shared Stories** - Creative expression initiates dialogue that heals and reveals shared humanity. - When people tell their stories and listen, communities move out of isolation into connection. Transcript: Ethan Hawke It's the way we heal each other. In singing our song, in telling our story, in inviting you to say, hey, listen to me and I'll listen to you, we're starting a dialogue. And when you do that, this healing happens. And we come out of our corners and we start to witness each other's common humanity. We start to assert it. ([Time 0:10:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/89ebca44-6afb-4dee-ba3c-a3a7afa7172e)) - **Follow Your Love And Play The Fool** - Follow what you love and be willing to walk a path that doesn't exist yet. - Play the fool: choose what you genuinely want even if it feels foolish to others. Transcript: Ethan Hawke It's actually super easy. You just have to follow your love, right? There is no path. There's no path till you walk it. And you have to be willing to play the fool. So don't read the book that you should read. Read the book you want to read. Don't listen to the music that you used to like. Take some time to listen to some new music. Take some time to talk to somebody that you don't normally talk to. I guarantee if you do that, you will feel foolish. That's the point. ([Time 0:10:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d5f66c7e-a594-4195-87b5-727866482e78))