Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I think that you'll find that all life, not only human life,

but all life is based on the ability

to be creative, to be able to change

in the face of any situation.

You know, spiders do it, bees do it.

Human beings-- every moment of their life is creative.

Anybody who's had a child knows that that child is continually

taking in and recreating what they see, what they know,

how they think in--

in order to be able to train themselves

to deal with the world.

And I think that much of education,

much of the university much of public education

teaches you not to think, not to be creative,

not to be different, and in doing so,

strangles its own culture.

Your whole life has to be a life of being creative if you're

going to be, like, an artist.

And that's really very difficult because creativity

is defined by how much money it's worth by almost everyone.

And so I-- I just spend my time--

I like being comfortable, and I like having fun.

But I never think about know making

anything beyond that because what use is it, you know?

You know, it's really, actually, physically

impossible to own anything, to, yeah, possess anything.

And when we sometimes manage to do that, it's a crime.

We take over people's country.

We commit genocide across the nation.

We enslave people, make them do our-- our labor for us,

make them raise our children for us, make them suffer for us.

And so yes, I believe that we should be creative.

We should be artists in every moment,

every element of our lives.

But I feel that this is a deep commitment which promises

happiness and heartbreak.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You know, my father and I, yeah, had

such a wonderful relationship.

And he was-- he was so worried that, you know,

my life was going to fall apart because he had-- he'd

had such a hard upbringing.

So many people along the way had died on my father, had-- had--

had been destroyed, you know, by violence, by-- by drugs,

by racism.

And-- so he was he wanted me to be successful.

When I tell him I want to be a writer, my father said, Walter,

you'll never be a writer.

Don't-- don't even think about that.

You should go into prisons.

That's a growing business.

You should work in prisons.

And I said, OK, Dad, but I'm going to write.

And when I-- he said, you'll never be a writer.

And then I wrote, you know, my-- my book.

And I called him.

I said, Dad, I got the book published.

And not only did they want one book, they wanted two books.

And they paid me enough that I can live on it.

And he said, I always knew that would happen.

And I said, Dad, you told me that it would never happen.

He said, I know I told you that, but I always

knew it was going to happen.

And it was like, OK, Dad.

People in the modern world are given advice

by people from the past.

And you have to understand this.

Before the 20th century, knowledge

doubled every 100 years, all the way back.

The number of things people knew kind of doubled in 100 years.

So when a father gave a son advice and the son said,

you're a fool, I'm going to go do it my way,

the son always came back and said,

you know, Dad, you were always right

because nothing had changed.

His father was right.

His father understood the world.

Today, when your mother, your father, your significant other,

whoever it is in the world are telling you,

you don't understand, and you could-- you look back at them

and say, listen.

You don't understand.

Knowledge today doubles every 10 months.

But if you think something five years ago,

it's obsolete by today.

So when somebody says you'll never make it, they don't know.

I mean, it's very well-- is possible you won't make it.

But they don't know that you won't make it

because they don't know what world it's

going to be in five years.

No one does.

And so, you know, do what you want

to do because that's the way the world works.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Being a black man in America is an interesting thing.

And, you know, I could talk about the way I think about it,

but--

and I-- I will because I have an imagination.

I imagine that somebody walks up to Langston Hughes and--

and somebody comes at Langston and says, listen,

how come those white people give us so much grief, man?

And Langston says, because they don't know how beautiful it

is to be colored.

And I-- I that's--

you know, I believe that.

I believe that.

What I've learned from being a black man in America

has given me a leg up on everything.

Listen?

I mean, we started out with the gospel, which moved over

into country music; and the blues, which moves over

to rock and roll; and jazz, which

dominates the imagination of the entire world.

You know, that's-- that's what they don't understand,

you know?

They don't understand that who we've been,

what we've been through, that we've survived

has made a world that's so extraordinarily

beautiful for everyone.

And they don't even know it.

They don't understand it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It is OK to create just for yourself.

As a matter of fact, you will never

be better at creating if you do it just for yourself.

Now, that's-- I'm-- not to say that you shouldn't try to write

a book and sell a book.

You'll make some money and stop, you

know, doing that job at the computer-programming shed.

You know, I understand, there's a-- you know,

there's a real thing to do.

And there's-- and there's great possibility in, you know,

working, and making money doing writing, or painting,

or sculpture, or whatever you do.

But-- but-- but the truth is, in the end,

you have to be doing the work, and you have to love the work.

If you no longer love the work or if the work no longer loves

you, then you're in a problem, and you're--

might need to switch up.

I have a friend who is a pretty close relation to one

of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century, who

has worked his entire life in a fairly creative place.

He wasn't creating, but he was archiving

a certain kind of art.

And it came to a moment where he was going to retire.

And he told me, he says, you know, I'm--

I'm retiring.

It's over.

I said, well, that's OK.

You know, you won't be working, so-- but, you

know, maybe one of the many hobbies or interests

that you've had over the years, you can start to do that now,

and it'll be great.

And he said, you know, Walter, I've never had any interest

ever except my job.

It was so sad to hear, incredibly so.

But I think if you--

you know, you do what Tennessee Ernie Ford says,

and you sell your soul to the company store,

then what's going to happen is they're going to own your soul,

and you'll be there with nothing.

And I think a lot of people in America experience that.

And because of that, I think everybody in America

should have an art, should have an interest,

they should have something that's just about them

and then nobody can take away from them.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I've never thought of myself as an artist.

I just always thought of myself as a person who really

likes art and likes to draw.

I also never thought of myself as a graphomaniac

for that matter, but when I go back

to when I was 10, 11 years old, my father used to work,

you know, at-- at public schools in Los Angeles.

And he used to bring home dozens and dozens

of pads of blank paper.

I don't know why because he never used them, but I guess

he got them for me, though I never asked for them.

And I would just take them, and I would draw one picture

after another, after another, after another, after another.

I would just draw and draw.

And I kept on, you know, for the last know 55-plus years.

And I began to understand.

I said, oh, right, this is what I thought

when I was a kid, that when I went to school,

I was going to be able to create these fantastic images

and stories, writing them slash drawing them on paper.

And then I realized that I was completely

stymied when I was a kid.

I couldn't do it.

Nobody wanted me to do it.

Nobody was interested in my drawings.

Nobody understood they were drawings.

And slowly, I kind of developed a voice

that actually says something, that actually represents me,

is unique, at least in-- in as much as it represents me.

I think my drawing is an abstract form of writing.

And so in as much as it is that, yes, my drawing and my writing

are deeply connected.

But if you look at my drawing, it's nothing like what I write.

And I think that's great.

You know, it's wonderful to be able to do, you know,

different kinds of things.

And in many ways, on a personal level, that-- that's the best

you can ask for.

If you have a voice, that's--

that's really amazing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Failure is the heart of all art.

We fail 10,000 times more than we succeed.

We fail again, and again, and again.

One of the great things about starting writing, for me,

at the age of 34, was that I was already a failure in life.

I hadn't gotten a PhD in political theory.

I hadn't taught at Harvard.

I hadn't made a million dollars a year.

I hadn't-- I was just a regular, you know, working-class person,

like most people are in America.

You know, I was a failure.

And in being a failure, I didn't have

to face the hubris of being a writer.

I said, well, I'm already, you know--

I'm already-- and once you're a failure,

you're always a failure.

You never, like, succeed.

It's like if you're a boxer.

When you lose a fight, you've lost the fight.

You can't go back and win that fight.

It's over.

You lost it.

And I think that that it's--

it's-- it's so much better to have failed because in failing,

you can find out the right way of doing things.

All those really talented people in their 20s who quit writing--

they never failed until they once did,

and then they gave up.

And that's the thing that you have to do.

You write, and it doesn't work, and you write,

and it doesn't work, and you write, and it doesn't work,

and you write, and it doesn't work.

It's OK.

You will always fail.

But inside of doing that, you will advance, and advance,

and advance, and advance.

The Russian army fought the Germans.

They lost every battle, but they still won the war.

That's-- that's-- that's courage.

That's bravery right there.

You know, I-- I watched a fight once.

A guy lost 14 rounds in a row and knocked the guy out

in the 15th round.

I mean, like, that takes heart.

That takes hard to--

that's, I'm going to keep on.

I'm going to keep pushing until I make it.