What it means to truly pay attention (w/ Kevin Townley)

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One thing that people have been asking me a lot these days when they find out that I wrote a book about humor is, how do you find things to laugh at when the world is so dark and so ominous? Where is the funny when we live in such unfunny times? And I think that is actually a very good question. It's one that I have been asking myself a lot. What's the role of art or beauty or joy right now? Today's guest, Kevin Townley, is a person who I think gives a very compelling answer. Kevin is one of the funniest and cleverest people I know, but he is also a long time meditation teacher and he is the author of the book Look, Look, Look, Look again. Buddhist wisdom reflected in 26 artists. Today, Kevin is going to talk to us about some of the deep lessons about life and suffering and survival that we can find in art. He's going to share how looking closely and carefully at works of art and the world around us can allow us to get into some of the deepest existential questions that humans wrestle with in religion. But as you'll see, he is also going to make us laugh a long way. To get us started, here's a clip of Kevin reading an excerpt from his book about why he believes creativity and spiritual discovery are parallel paths. After falling in love with art, I obviously developed an abiding soft spot for tortured artists. You know the poor individuals for whom the protective membrane that buffers the nervous system from the beauty and abrasions of life is frustratingly gloriously absent. They appear saturated by the vibrancy of the world, causing them to overflow into poetry, painting, needle point, pursuits which are largely met with derision by a callous unsophisticated public. This then leads to any number of tragic ends from suicide, Sylvia Plath, to customs inspector Herman Melville. We've all heard stories like that before. Aside from devoting my own free time to feeling misunderstood and a strong predilection for emotional aggrandizement, what is most beguiling to me about this trope is the notion that the very energy which in one iteration can lead to creation and another form can lead to self-destruction. How can the same energy lead to such drastically different results even in the same person? For many artists, what's most torturous is to begin. Meeting space without any idea of what will happen next. We yearn to honor the creative impulse by expressing ourselves and yet many of us when we, when met with the imagined edge of our own inner abyss, slink backward and adding insult to injury feel ashamed by our cringing. We cannot bear the intimacy of our own brilliant minds and so we look away. Looking away can show up in behaviors as myriad as diverting our creative energy into gossip, house cleaning, manicures, masturbation, and volunteer work. Mythologists might grandly refer to this as the refusal of the call, but it is also a completely understandable response to meeting the churnal ground of one's own psyche. There are instances when approaching a blank page or canvas feels more like visiting a crime scene where a dog of vapor rub under the nose would be more appropriate than a dog of paint on the canvas. In his brilliant book from where you dream, Robert Olin Butler describes the creative process as entering one's white hot center. This radioactive unconscious realm feels like hell because for most of us it is hell. Like scaffolding erected around treacherous architecture, our entire personalities are deliberately crafted to avoid descending into the underworld of missed opportunities, traumas, and gears from obsolete machinery. And yet this is precisely what we must do. Whether we are on the creative or spiritual path, and I would hazard that they're the same thing, by keeping that portal open through constant visitation, we may not only find our endurance for entering that zone strengthened, but also come to be quite adept at navigating its sinkholes and topiary, but you don't get to choose what you discover. We are going to discover so much over the course of this episode with Kevin Townley and we are going to get right into discovering things after this quick break. If you're sending money abroad, free fees and competitive rates can mean inflated exchange rates, choose wise and you can send and spend and receive an over 40 currencies with no markups or hidden fees, whether you're sending pounds across the pond, spending rails in Rio, or getting paid in dollars for your sidekick, you'll get the mid market exchange rate every time, plus most transfers arrive in less than 20 seconds. Be smart, get wise, download the wise app today or visit wise.com. Teasnzies Apply. My name is Dr. Rachel Craven. I'm an anaesthetist and trustee of MedSansal Frontier. During my time with MSF, I've worked alongside other doctors, nurses and surgeons to deliver medical care, wherever it is needed most. If we see a problem, we don't stand by, we act. My MSF career began in the wake of the Indonesian tsunami, where I helped deliver emergency surgery in generator powered, makeshift operating theatres. Since then, I have trained staff during the conflict in Yemen and helped teams build hospitals in Syria and Libya. Each emergency is different, but we are always committed to delivering care to those who need it. That is our legacy, but it is not ours alone. I've seen people at their best coming together to provide life saving care, but it's your help we need to continue this work. One in six of our life saving projects are funded by people leaving gifts in their wills. Search MSF will to find out how you can be a part of this legacy. We can't do what we do without you. Thank you. That has to this mother's day go from, oh look down and have you seen my lovely card? They've really captured my face, especially my three eyes. To something she's going to really love, with a box of 24 for Rero Roshay for only £6.50 and a bottle of Louis Vell Fontaine champagne, rolled back from £22 to just £10. That's really spoiling mum, that's as the price. Selected stores subject to availability, champagne 75 CL offers end 15th March, makesclood azdrexpress and small stores see azda.com slash small stores. And we are back. We are talking about looking closely about the power of noticing and about the connection between spirituality and art with Kevin Townley. Hi everybody, my name is Kevin Townley. I'm a writer and actor, a comedy dabbler. I'm a meditation teacher and a filmmaker and I wrote a book called Look Look Look Look Look Again Buddhist Wisdom reflected in 26 artists. So Kevin, you and I have known each other for years and I've always really admired the way that you blend all the different things that you do, right? You have such a funny on-stage presence, you're a really brilliant writer, you make really amazing films, but you also are a very serious practitioner of meditation, you teach Buddhist meditation and you have brought it into some unexpected places, which is kind of the core of what the book that you wrote is about. So for people who aren't familiar with Look Look Look Look Look Look Again, what is the like premise of the book? So this book is based on a collection of 9th century Tibetan Buddhist teachings that are called the five Buddha families or the five wisdom energies. And they're kind of like a 9th century personality test that show how human beings are swayed and formed by, you could say like five main difficult emotions. And those are called ignorance, anger, pride, craving, and jealousy. So to some degree every person experiences these things, sometimes several times in a minute, but in the, in kind of like Western culture, those five things are like to be avoided and gotten rid of with all possible alacrity and are considered like bad personality traits and embarrassing, particularly jealousy. And so the Buddhist view being a philosophical tradition that is based on what's called non-duality is saying actually those those things that we experience as negative emotions are have real intelligence in them. There's actually wisdom in them. If you take the time to investigate them, they have something to tell you about where you are and what might be next. And so that's the kind of like philosophy behind the book. But what I've done is I've I was thinking about how that's basically like what all artists do all the time anyway, even, you know, comedians. You are looking at the difficulty in your life as a not just as a something to overcome, but actually as your creative inheritance quite some of the greatest stuff that we ever experience as consumers of art, whatever the form comes from real pain and confusion and difficulty. Even my cat who's screaming in the background has some notes like there are some things that could be better in the cow world at any human world. So, so artists are always transforming this energy of negativity into something else that doesn't mean necessarily they become wonderful people in the process. The list of not wonderful great artists is a long one. But what they've made kind of transcends both their personality and their emotion into some other new thing that the viewer or the listener or the taster experiences in an intimate and direct way on their own. And then in a way, it transforms again, becomes about that relationship between the art and the person who's perceiving it. So, that's kind of what the book's about. You know, even before I knew that you were writing this book and trying to figure out a way to connect these deep philosophical ideas with art, you were leading tours in museums and you've led tours, you've led hundreds of tours in museums all across the United States. Yeah. And I think the idea, just even the idea that there would be like a comedic tour in a museum is such a different and exciting idea, right? Like that no one else is doing comedy in the Metropolitan Museum of Art while also engaging with the artwork. Yeah. I mean, Dave Hill did, but he also just made stuff up. This is actually facts about the art. Yeah, it was actually facts about the artist. And like, I think it's a it's always a good way. And of course, because you know, people are scared, I think, to go to museums. I still work in museums and people are entering in feeling like they don't belong there and that they should know something that they don't and that they're going to be made fools of somehow if they don't have the right kind of experience. And so my tours were kind of predicated on the notion that like the people who made this stuff didn't know anything either. I mean, they may have been skilled crafts people, but they had their heads up their cans and didn't couldn't make their relationships work and were just a wreck, you know? And so by kind of infusing factual biographical details into and the strange stories of how these things got made, it kind of breaks open the stuffiness and creates an inroad for people to like see art as a human inheritance and that the people who made it were really just like them more or less. So it gives a sense of permission and accessibility, which is what good comedy does in the best of times. As I was doing research and thinking about humor and laughter, I came across in Boston the Museum of Bad Art and they are a museum that deliberately exhibits only the worst works of art. Things that are either donated or found on the street and they have something so like glaringly awful about them that they are really genuinely hilarious often when you go and they they have these quite serious like exactly in the style of a regular museum. They say like the dates, the materials, the artist if it's known and then in their description they'll say something like you know when you look at this at first it looks just like a regular hand and then you notice there are an extra set of knuckles on every finger and also like why is it that color and the artworks are hilarious. But the thing that I thought was really fascinating is I talked to the woman who runs the museum. Luis Sacco is her name and she told me that one of the things they really recommend is they try and get school groups to come and they really recommend that school groups pair the Museum of Bad Art with a traditional art museum because what happens is when you go to the Museum of Bad Art you're of course allowed to have an opinion you're allowed to say that's terrible or here's how they could have done it better and she feels like it lets people engage with the excellent art in a different way that isn't so like well they obviously know and I don't know and what could I possibly I couldn't have an opinion about their art. So I thought this is exactly in line with what you're saying. Totally and like statistically they did a study I think in 2001 and the average person spends 17 seconds looking at an artwork and in that moment there might be like a flash judgment you like you don't like it which is totally legitimate it's totally fine to have opinions and there's some clunky you know van goes out there there's a ridiculous if I may say the day god painting at the Frick Collection which looks like a cabbage patch doll doing a pirouette and I like to look at it because it's so silly but quite often I think like what's interesting about looking at art in particular is that if you're only looking at something for 17 seconds then all you're really going to see is your opinion anyway and if you spend more time looking at something kind of to the point maybe of even like boredom you start to actually see what is there and even though like at the museum of battered I mean the composition might be a little sluggish or the skill level is somewhat you know pedestrian or whatever someone might say about it but if you actually start to really really really look at it you might find something that's actually quite delightful or pleasing about it or you might not but just the notion that one of the fascinating things for me in this whole process of looking at art and rating about it is seeing the degree to which we actually don't ever see anything we can look at something but we're not really seeing it what we're seeing is our idea about what we're looking at and then we are moving on and so if you can give it a little bit of extra time you start to see what the thing actually is and an indication that that is occurring is you cease to know what you're looking at interestingly tell me more about that when we go to an museum we might like spend time looking at something that we find aesthetically pleasing or we've heard of metisse or we've heard of you know Joan Mitchell or something and so we'll go and look at the hits and we'll feel like we're somehow checking off a box in our mind like that we have to see X or you have a personal association with like a Monet painting because it was on a journal that you had when you were in middle school and so you kind of like like that and you know that it's telling you something about you but if you actually start to look at something for a long time the story about your journal or having seen like the art that you're supposed to have seen at the museum starts to fall away and you even stop thinking about maybe like who the artist was or what the narrative of the image is if indeed it's even like figurative and then you start to just sort of see like color and form and structure and you realize that you're not actually looking at a woman in a park at all you're actually looking at gestures that were created by somebody long dead in some cases sometimes they're alive and they're assembled colorful shapes that are also kind of abstract in a way even if they're depicting something and sometimes when there's an abstract you start to see images in it that aren't maybe there and like a what were they called the magic guy oh yeah magic images we're at at the mall so I think that we'd start to like not really know what we're looking at in the sense that like the structure of our narrative can start to like break down or receive somewhat from what's primary in the mind which is just visual the visual the sense faculties don't know what anything is you know the eyeball doesn't know what a lady in a dress in the park is it's just perceiving color and light and texture and and so on and then a friend of mine once said as an experiment it's good to go to the museum and spend time looking at stuff that you think is horrible because it's actually showing you something about your mind it's actually showing something about you your preferences your discomfort your aversion that feeling inside of your like oh look at do that's just a light bulb on a rope what the that's not art but that voice isn't contained in the artwork it's actually in your mind and somehow some person put a light bulb on a rope and I put it in a corner at a museum and it called forward this voice in you it's something about you that you're giving being given the opportunity to see by the artist who you may never meet I'm so happy I'm getting to talk to you I'm like you stumbling on my words because I'm so excited about all of this stuff that that is part of just observing art is so exciting to me because I think it's it's also something that like is accessible to almost everyone right like we can engage with art whether you have an incredible museum in your city or town you still can find art and engage with art wherever you are yeah like what interesting one of the the tenets of Buddhism there's said to be three marks of existence and that is suffering so like if you're born you have nerve endings and at some point you're gonna get versitis or close your hand in the door and worse and eventually you're going to die and they're you're gonna lose the things that you love and you're gonna get crap you don't want another one is impermanence so things just don't last and then the third one is said to be no self which doesn't mean that you don't have a body and don't pay the rent and that you don't have a personality but that what that self is is constantly in flux and in negotiation and open to refinement and complete detonation and reassembly and I think another aspect of the the Buddha families is it's showing you like okay there are these five emotions that we have these five main and they are intense they're no joke stultifying ignorance the heat of being completely enraged feeling completely full of yourself an arrogant or the flip side of that is feeling like a complete dormant and pathetic and nobody likes me both of them are said to be reflections of self-centeredness interestingly feeling that whatever you have isn't the right thing and you need to innovate just for the sake of innovating or you know you're in a relationship and it's you start thinking you're in the wrong one or you live going going to the wrong school it's always something else something else that you could be grasping at craving for and then competitiveness and jealousy and all of that so all of those are like intense and people like kill each other over them and so if you start to slightly shift your perspective a little bit which is the same kind of art appreciation experience if you take a kind of curatorial or aesthetic approach to what you're feeling then suddenly they're like not necessarily like hallmarks of your eternal liver die self but they are aspects of a shifting ground of selfhood that we experience and if we can take a kind of more curious interested point of view or experience them in with a little more distance then like the intensity with which we felt like shut down or our feelings were hurt or we got dumped or whatever it does kind of become hilarious there's a kind of like funniness to it in fact like the Dalai Lama I think said a real sign of spiritual growth is a sense of humor not that you're like slapping your knee at the atrocities of the world going oh he'd be he but there's a sense of like spaciousness and possibility I mean humor you know in the middle ages there were said to be four humors that were you know blood and black bile and yellow bile and something I don't remember something else that flam oh yeah flam and these were like the four elements that made up the human being but basically what they're talking about I think is like that there's a fluidity like humor literally means like a fluidity so in contemporary parlance when we see a great comedian what they're doing is showing us something that we take for granted pulling the rug out from under us and showing us that what we thought was one thing or the we'd been trained to look at something in a particular solid way can be seen from another point of view and what's opening up is a sudden like big wow of space and it's that kind of spaciousness which makes us laugh I think that what I see in it is and this goes back to what you were talking about about some like profound Buddhist wisdom and truths is the desire to be at the center to make it so that it is you are the self at the center and I think that like art in humor and that knowledge right all of these things have have a real power and they have a real social power and you can get people to pay attention to you and to respect you and in some cases to pay you money or whatever but I think that when you use them in my view correctly it builds connections it makes you closer to other people it makes you less sure of yourself in a good way like a good way of not being like I'm this perfect person not like I'm insecure and I think that when you use them the other way it's about like you shut up and you pay attention to me because I think there's such a misguided idea that like to have a good sense of humor means you're the person in the center and everyone is laughing at you as opposed to you're the person laughing really hard and making people feel good and that to me is the good sense of humor not the attention person. Totally and you bring up an interesting image which in Buddhism is called a mandala but this is an ancient image that shows up in every culture since time immemorial and it's a circle but that there's a center to this circle and everyone is the center of their own mandala so to speak but given the the reminders these three reminders okay like okay so they're suffering in the world are I'm going to make more of it am I going to try to alleviate it in some way am I going to like shill in some way to trick people out of remembering that things are fleeting and impermanent that we only have some maybe only moments left in this particular arrangement of cells and are you really going to spend it like crapping on people and thirdly that there isn't a solid identity here and that the attempt to codify and maintain a branded identity is an act of violence it requires a kind of aggressiveness that is detrimental to you and I would venture to say others as well and it makes me always wonder like the artist Lori Anderson says like why does art have to be self expression like if I want to understand what a bird is doing when it makes a particular sound and I start to make a sound or write a poem based on the birds what the bird song in my mind that's not expressing me it's expressing some third thing that arises between the perception of the bird song and my curiosity about it and wanting to engage with that so there's nothing wrong obviously with like stand-ups who create funny points of you and a personality and whatever it's great but it's not necessary so certainly there's like a resource of like personal experience and emotion and whatever that comes into any act of expression in the arts but there's an imagination it's a liberation from the self art is a liberation from being a self you can do anything speaking of doing things we are going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be right back don't go anywhere at new balance we believe if you run you're a runner however you choose to do it because when you're not worried about doing things the right way you're free to discover your way and that's what running's all about run your way at newbalance.com slash running that's as to this mother's day even though this may be on the menu oh thanks kids scramble eggs with sprinkles and a pickled onion oh my favorite you can still serve up something she'll really buy cooking up a feast with our easy extra tasty roast in the bag large chicken was six pound twenty two now only five pounds that's really spoiling mum that's as the price selected stores subject to availability offer ends eighteenth of March makes glued as to express and small stores the as the dot com slash small stores my name is dr. Rachel Craven I'm an anesthetist and trustee of Medsancle Frontier during my time with MSF I've worked alongside other doctors nurses and surgeons to deliver medical care wherever it is needed most if we see a problem we don't stand by we act my MSF career began in the wake of the Indonesian tsunami where I helped deliver emergency surgery in generator powered makeshift operating theatres since then I've trained staff during the conflict in Yemen and help teams build hospitals in Syria and Libya each emergency is different but we're always committed to delivering care to those who need it that is our legacy but it is not a loan I've seen people at their best coming together to provide life saving care but it's your help we need to continue this work one in six of our life saving projects are funded by people leaving gifts in their will search MSF will to find out how you can be a part of this legacy we can't do what we do without you thank you and we are back you're saying such profound things and you are are saying really like important things that I'm going to think about for years and also you are a person who played a role in men in black three and also you have been part of flashy brooch that my grandma won on the praises right wow a praises right brooch and wisdom but I guess what I'm saying is part of I love the idea of like laughing at yourself and is is that it is a way of acknowledging the impermanence of who you are but also it's a way of getting out of the like I'm so great and perfect and instead like I have contained all sorts of contradictions and imperfections and and that isn't something that I have to feel ashamed of it's instead like that's part of being human and that's why we can laugh about it yeah it's not about being like meek and just wearing you know earth tones and hiding behind a paper bag every once in a while you got to put the brooch on of course well that's one of another interesting Buddhist teaching is it's called emptiness and luminosity so one of the core tenets of Buddhism is that everything that you think about something is empty of that like you might not like eggplant parmesan but the eggplant doesn't contain your loathing you just don't like it which is fine or you might have been culturally brainwashed into disliking a particular type of person but that person doesn't contain your ignorance the ignorance is in your mind and to the juxtaposition of you and that person is calling forward your own ignorance so everything is empty of what you think of it everything is empty of some solid inherent thing like it's constantly in flux so that's one side of it but the other side of it is called luminosity so everything is empty but it is luminous as it is so the eggplant doesn't contain your loathing or your approbation but it has its own you know funny shape that's gotten some traction in texting circles so I said but it's the eggplant itself doesn't you know contain your perient jokes it's just a plant you know that's purple and whatever so it is what it is it has its qualities but it's also empty of what you think about it which is to me fascinating because like you can still be a person with no essential solid self and still like where ridiculous outfit or you know hop around on a pogo stick and you know juggle devil sticks on the high school lawn if you're in high school don't do that I have a couple of like just practical questions for I guess which is if someone's listening and they're really moved to try and do this how should you start like observing art and thinking about things in these these deeper ways how can what's an exercise that you can do that will actually get you to step forward in this so fundamentally whether you're doing like a simple meditation practice like mindfulness of breath or just kind of like an open awareness practice where you hold the body still and notice what shows up during the interval of your practice time what's being strengthened is your awareness and in a museum setting or in an art appreciation setting what's being strengthened is awareness so awareness is really the the queen of the whole project not to bring the monarchy into it but you know it's like the apex of why we do this because when we're not aware when we're not aware that our opinions are just our opinions or that our particular upbringing gave us some maybe not nice thoughts about different kinds of people then we start to believe what we think about crap and then start to be led by the nose through the impulses associated with our thoughts but if in meditation practice we can just follow the breath for a little while doesn't have to be long or just keep kind of an open panoramic awareness then we become aware of all of that stuff and we aren't compelled into activity by those thoughts anymore like if you do have a museum nearby or in our gallery or you could even like go to the TJ Maxx and look at the pre-framed photos that they have on sale or say weird art piece it could be anything you could even do it with a bit of tree bark if you wanted to but the most helpful tools are a little bit of time and somewhere to sit which is what my favorite art and un sister Wendy used to say on PBS just you just need some time and a place to sit so if you can find an artwork that has a bench in front of it that's a good way to choose one and what you can do is sit in front of it you can stand to and you could kind of imagine like a big X going through the canvas and try to find a central point more or less it could be like a little shape or something that you can rest the eyeball on and you just kind of look at that central point in the canvas but see if you can't actually move your visual awareness which is separate from the moving eyeball and and see if you can for example just decide okay I'm going to pull all the triangle shapes in this vast canvas forward in my visual awareness without moving my eye and just see what happens right up might be all circles you know I might be looking at a kandinsky and laughs on you but then just do the circles or just say pull forward all of the the black shapes or all of the red shapes and you alternate through you know it just make a big deal out of it but you just like alternate triangle shapes blues greens place your attention on the back of your neck as you're looking at this image and see what happens and then you can take a break and then just like sort of move your eye around the image looking at stuff as you normally would and then and then like plant the eye and and not move it and then try to move a visual awareness in some way around the canvas because what starts to happen is we start to actually see what's there you're stepping into the mind stream of the person who made this thing you're mixing minds with another person and the same way as when you read a novel you're mixing minds this person has put strangely colored black shapes on a page that you've assembled into a mental image you're co-creating this and so the same stands for when you're looking at a painting like a great painter like Philip Gustin who I love you would just stand and look at this and at first it looks like some idiot painted it it's like clunky shapes and cartoony and dumb but if you leave the eye still but allow the image to come toward you suddenly you start to see like the brush strokes the composition the color choices and these things can start to have emotional resonances which are liberated from like narrative and then you can step back and be like what what story is this read the placard next to it which is sometimes helpful and sometimes trying to protect us from having our own personal experience of the art so I think that's a way of doing it find an object plant your eye in the middle of it and then just call different shapes and colors forward individual awareness and see how that starts to transform your relationship to what you're looking at how it makes you become what you're looking at I have a question about this exercise that's also a question about meditation in general which is yeah is this an exercise that builds the muscle so that we can then use this skill in other places are we at the gym training for the performance the athletic competition or is this the athletic competition it's training you to be able to apply this in your life and what's interesting in the gym metaphor like obviously you want to have like good form and if you keep throwing your back out and you strengthen your core you know like when you're picking up the you know cat food box to live from your knees there might be a little like positioning going on but like the reminder of good positioning isn't giving you the stronger muscles the stronger muscles have been gained from having done the exercise so parallel to this in like the art experience an art image is like a similacrum of the world but it's frozen it's like still unless it's like a film but that's another matter but anyway like if it's a painting or a sculpture or something it's like a similacrum of some aspect of the world but it's still and yet as you look at it the awareness finds a kind of like dynamism and movement in the work and you just begin to be able to perceive that more clearly so that when you go into your life if it's in the office if it's at home with your partner or partners Chris I'm not here to judge anybody it's a new age then what starts to lead naturally is awareness it is not going to expunge jealousy it's not going to make you not mad it's not going to make you not you know a lustful person or self-important or whatever it's not going to make you not have like knee jerk ignorant prejudice thoughts but if we're playing whack-a-mole with all of that we're just completely into the weeds here we're believing these echoes of past actions that show up as thoughts as somehow problems to solve rather than moving through our experience led by the awareness itself and we don't have to think about it it happens naturally it's natural to human beings but it does take practice because our entire world seems to be structured in such a way to like congratulate us and monetize hot takes and mean spiritedness and other unpleasant qualities is there something different about engaging with a masterpiece or you know I quote unquote timeless work of art versus you know the the thing that your aunt painted in her spare time and she's even she doesn't think it's her best work sure I think there is an obviously masterpieces relative and whatever but I do think there is some other aspect at play here when an art maker and this is something that a lot of artists now are talking about in contrast to AI the writer Robert Olin Butler talks about how creativity is hard it's really hard to do and quite often we avoid doing it because to delve down into the unconscious realm where the creative impulse seems to simmer is literally hell for a lot of people for most people it's hellish even if you're trying to write a joke it's torture so the idea is like if you're looking at a masterpiece then you are engaging with a work made by somebody who is doing this all the time and it's not necessarily a self-improvement technique I mean while reports seem to indicate that Picasso was an ass-hat but like there's some interesting shapes and good work you did you know you made some good things so like if you are looking at something that went through this kind of rigorous practice it's a practice of not knowing of transforming negativity into something colorful something with shape something with tone somebody who is able to handle the heat the white hot heat of the creative process and bend it or tap dance it into some other medium and there's a certain skill that's involved that seems to like be honed when you keep at it there's a book I was reading by this writer called Brenda Euland who wrote this book in the 30s called If You Want To Write I think it's called she said I would tell my students just write 10 really bad stories just write the 10 worst stories you can possibly write eventually they start to kind of improve because you're doing it so when we engage with a masterpiece we're looking at a form or a experiencing sound or some kind of thing that went through this human process this human process of investigating the inner world the collective unconscious whatever you want to call it and then transmuted it into something else a painting a song a sculpture a dance a novel and and somebody who is like doing that as a path David Lynch called it the art life he made like what 11 films but he was working every single day of his life he was like no one wants to give me the money for a film I'm going to make a painting and if that doesn't work I'm going to make an album maybe no one wants to listen to crazy clown time but I'm going to do it so anyway I so I think there is something to that and it's nourishing it's nourishing to look at something that was given such consideration that person who brought the full force of their emotional life their training their experience their neurosis their wisdom to this particular thing and now you're getting to like share in that and if nothing else maybe be inspired to do that yourself as well you know you select 26 artists in here who means something to you and you're talking about Buddhist wisdom as reflected through their work is there one of these 26 artists who feels like they're particularly speaking to you right now and who and why yeah I've been thinking a lot about Agnes Martin recently the five wisdom energies I'll have names so like the ignorance one is called Buddha the anger one is called Vajra which is like a diamond thunderbolt a the prideful one is called rotna which means like jewel so it kind of has like a blink quality the lusty grabby greedy one is called Padma which is like a lotus that looks like it's on fire but the fifth one is called karma which is the competitive activity one so as somebody who's like trying to make work I've just made like two films I've like shot two films let's not get carried away because apparently you also have to edit them well somebody disagree all right that's true that is true so I'm in a stage now where I'm like I don't know how to move forward with this and my nervousness at not knowing is like well I'm gonna force it I'm gonna bully somebody yet I'm gonna sweet talk somebody I'm just gonna give up I hate myself know I'm the best you know like you just ping pong through all of these like crazy things but what Agnes Martin did she said you just sit down and wait for the inspiration if you don't know what to do don't fill the space with a lot of flailing and splashing around if it's if the mind is like a surface of a pond that is maybe going to give you some sense of depth splashing on the surface is not gonna help you get clarity so she said she would just sit in a chair and say okay well what are we gonna do next and she would sit there and until the inspiration came in her mind and then she would say okay that's the inspiration I'm gonna do that and so she would try as best she could to extrapolate the image that came to her what she said was like the size of a postage stamp out into a six by six foot canvas and if she started like riffing or fudzing around too much she would just destroy the canvas and start again this is the central problem of the human being it seems that whatever we want to say about it whatever our faith or our philosophy or our schemes or our morning routine happens to be we don't know what the f is gonna happen next we just don't know and when we panic and try to like double down on what we think we know based on what has happened before and blah blah blah that space becomes concrete it becomes completely immovable like what Agnes Martin reminds me of is we don't have to fill the space just because we don't know because ignorance is the self-centered fearful and covered interpretation of space but the open space is called all accommodating awareness and then the other thing she said which I love she was babysitting her galorists granddaughter and she had a rose on her table and the grand daughter loved this flower and Agnes Martin said do you think the rose is beautiful and the girl said yes it is beautiful and she took the rose and hit it behind her back and she said do you still think the rose is beautiful and the girl said yes the rose is still beautiful she said that's because the beauty is not in the rose it's in your own mind so if I can like just hang with being uncomfortable with not knowing how this film is going to get finished with not knowing what my next creative endeavor is going to be not knowing if anyone's ever going to watch it or care then what does arise I will be able to see clearly and I can take that inspiration and work with that rather than having to like rely on all of my fustile defense mechanisms to seem like I'm not scared of dying or something you know we've talked about being willing to laugh at yourself and to see some of the absurdity of your own existence and what you cling to what is something in yourself that you're laughing about right now or able to find some absurdity in well the first thing that comes to mind is I work at a museum right now and I work in the visitor services department and so some of my co-workers are 17 years old and some of them are 82 years old and so like whenever I'm like why am I doing this sort of work it just makes me laugh so hard I was like well you always wanted to be a retiree and now you're doing it so like just catching myself importance and then like being like what other what other job could I have where I would actually get to like talk to such a wide age range of people it's kind of like amazing so that's a big L.O.L. Kevin I cannot thank you enough for making time to be on the show you are such a delight it was such an interesting conversation this is truly it has given me so much to think about and it was a perfect fit for this month of thinking about the self and humor and paying attention and laughing oh it's so beautiful to see you and I'm so happy that we got to connect again and congratulations on your book which I can appreciate thank you wait to read and kiss your baby and high five your wife and you can kiss her too no pressure high fives of kisses all around that is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human thank you so much to our guest Kevin Townley you can find more about his films his writing and his book look look look look look again Buddhist wisdom reflected in 26 artists on his website kevintownley.nyc I'm your host Chris Duffy and this episode is part of a month long series on How to laugh more that is inspired by my new nonfiction book humor me which just came out you can find the book wherever you get books or at christuffy comedy dot com thank you to Apple for featuring how to be a better human in their living well collection for 2026 go check it out on Apple how to be a better human is put together by a team of monks working with a team of expert artists on the Ted side we've got the fully enlightened Danielle Balorezo Van Van Chang Michelle Quint Chloe Shasha Brooks Valentina Bohanini Laney Lot Tonsikasun Manibong Antonio Lay and Joseph DeBrine this episode was fact checked by Mateus Salas who transcends falsehoods to arrive at pure and noble truth on the PRX side we've got the Picasso's of podcasts and I mean that in the excellent art way and not the terrible person way I am talking about Morgan Flannery nor Gil Patrick Grant and Jocelyn Gonzalez thanks again to you for listening we may never know what is going to happen next but I'm pretty sure that you can count on another episode of How to be a better human coming out next Monday in the meantime share this episode with someone who you want to go to a museum or just someone who you like thanks again for listening and take care the world moves fast you work day even faster pitching products drafting reports analyzing data Microsoft 365 co-pilot is your AI assistant for work built into word excel powerpoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use helping you quickly right analyze create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear path to your best work learn more at Microsoft calm slash M365 co-pilot seconds that's the difference between life and death I've seen it firsthand I'm Javid Abdomanem a doctor with mid-sense on fontier as conflicts continue to spread across the world it's crucial we can act fast as an MSF doctor I may need to stop life threatening bleeding treat gunshot wounds or care for blast victims all in a matter of seconds that's why at mid-sense on fontier we don't waste any time we're working in more conflict zones than you may be aware of giving everything to give people a chance just 30 pounds will keep our life saving work going please help us save more because with trauma care every second counts you can buy us vital time please give just 30 pounds search MSF doctor or call 0800 O557979 that's 0800 O557979 thank you that's after this mother's day go from oh look down and if you see my lovely card they've really captured my face especially my three eyes to something she's gonna really love with a box of 24 for rarer rush a for only six pound fifty and a bottle of Lou Vell Fontaine champagne rolled back from 22 pounds to just 10 pounds that's really spoiling mum that's as the price selected stores subject to availability champagne 75cl offers n 15th of March makes clear as their express and small stores see as the dot com slash small stores who has the power to settle unresolved disputes between consumers and financial providers the financial ombudsman service how much does it cost nothing is free and do they take sides no it's fair can their decisions be ignored by financial providers no they're binding it's final so when can they help they can offer support when the financial provider is given a final response but you still don't agree get an answer with a financial ombudsman service free fair final