#114 - James McCrae - Why Modern Creativity Feels So Empty & How To Create Meaningful Work Again

James McCrae reframes creativity as something felt in the body, not manufactured in the mind. He explores how the internet reshaped modern creativity, why memes became a powerful vehicle for ideas, and why some of the deepest creative breakthroughs come through pain, stillness, and uncertainty. We also explore poetry, intuition, and the hidden tension between creating for expression versus creating for attention.

Timestamps: 
00:00 Art vs. Content
05:11 The Hedonic Treadmill Of Online Creativity
11:49 Feeling Like An Outsider
15:01 Impact Of Your Environment
18:25 Discovering Poetry
25:36 The Next Steps Of James' Creative Journey
31:14 Corporate Creativity vs. Personal Creativity
34:18 Combining Creativity & Ambition In NYC
36:56 The Backstory Behind James' First Book
46:25 The Turning Point
50:26 Richard Dawkins & Memes
56:11 Creativity Is A Purge
1:00:47 The Impact Of Pain On Creativity
1:04:02 Becoming A Father
1:06:21 Turning Creativity Into Language
1:10:11 The Death Of Who You Used To Be
1:13:03 Connect With James McCrae

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Transcript

James McCrae reframes creativity as something felt in the body, not manufactured in the mind. He explores how the internet reshaped modern creativity, why memes became a powerful vehicle for ideas, and why some of the deepest creative breakthroughs come through pain, stillness, and uncertainty. We also explore poetry, intuition, and the hidden tension between creating for expression versus creating for attention.

speaker-0 (00:00.206)

James McCrae, welcome to the show. What do you see is the difference between art and content?

speaker-1 (00:01.88)

Thanks for having me, Tim.

speaker-1 (00:09.27)

Interesting question. So...

Inherently, there's not a lot of difference in a way. You know, I come from, I used to work in digital agencies and content is something that's highly regarded. We sort of use content as a dirty word right now, especially content creators. In the context of digital platforms, content is the gold that drives people to the platforms. Like there's a saying in advertising, content is king.

So it's like, you want content, content is good stuff, content is what people want. But now that there's artists and writers and podcasters who have flooded to these platforms as their own platforms for expression, they sort of bumped up against that word and they sort of take an issue with it.

This isn't content. And it's like, well, no one said content was bad. Content is what people want. So I think there's this weird tension between traditional artistic expression and the world of digital platforms. So I think of content has always been the art that lives in the domain of digital platforms. So a lot of creators resist that. I'm not scared of the digital world.

So I tend to embrace it more. And I think that content is a form of art that lives on a digital platform. And it doesn't have to be cheap. It often is because they're so accessible. But I think you can use social media to make real art. I sort of grew my audience online when I started making memes.

speaker-1 (02:10.39)

And memes can seem like a disposable thing and they are and they can be, but I learned that you can really distill a message into a meme or a piece of short form content that can reach a lot of people at scale. And when I embrace that, it's like, I can be an artist in the world of social media.

That just helped me really come accept the platforms for what they are and realize that the distribution of art has always changed. It's always an evolution. At one point, the medium was cave walls. When cavemen were scrawling animals onto cave walls, that was the distribution method. You had to be in the cave to see it.

And then scrolls were invented. And then suddenly you could preserve words and images onto paper and they could actually be passed down and survive thousands of years. And, know, the printing press was another evolution and fast forward to television and recorded music. So art is a living expression of humanity. Art is.

something that is native to being human. And as the world around us evolves, we find different ways to put it out there and to distribute it. And I think art is always made with the common tools and technology of the time, whether that's books or recorded music or oil paints. And we happen to live in this internet age and that's the reality. And you don't have to play in that.

playground, if you're an artist, can be, I think there's a lot of integrity in being an analog artist, making zines or wanting to have more physical artifacts to share with people where you can hold it and treasure it. And that's great. You know, I definitely respect analog art and want to lean more into that as well. But

speaker-1 (04:36.866)

The reality is people are on social media and for creatives to find an audience, it helps to be where the people are.

speaker-0 (04:45.28)

Yeah. I mean, I definitely, it's never been more accessible to be a creator and for people to see your work. that's incredible. I do think there's a give and a take with that where, because there's no friction there between work and audience now, we lose that excitement of just like,

showing somebody something of like, wow, like look at this thing that I created and sort of like the excitement then comes from the quantifiable factor that then comes from people seeing that. And then, okay, and now I need to top that and you kind of just get on this hedonic treadmill. How have you gone about navigating that?

speaker-1 (05:27.584)

Yeah, I think it's really important not to get caught up in your metrics. I always say focus on your message, not your metrics. Because I mean, we've seen some of the stuff that goes viral and you know, people aren't always checking social media to consume high art. It's quite different than going to an art gallery where you're taking your time. You're letting each piece sort of soak in. You're contemplating it.

while on social media you're just mindlessly scrolling and you might like it and then just keep scrolling. And it's like you only have that a couple seconds that you're sharing with someone. So it's quite different. I mean, it's always been this way. You know, I could imagine at one point to hear music, you needed to go to a live orchestra. You know, there wasn't recorded music. needed to, it was a special event. We're gonna go see Beethoven perform.

Like that was a special event. then fast forward and you've got CDs. And then it's just like, we look at CDs now as being this analog special medium. Like you'd have to go out and buy it, go to the record store, bring it home. You could only had so many CDs. we sort of long for those days, but compare that to going to a, orchestra is the only way you can see live music or hear music.

speaker-0 (06:45.377)

experience.

speaker-1 (06:56.108)

So I think that it's important to recognize that the world is always changing and will continue to change.

I would also say that I don't think that social media should be an artist's only way to connect, because it is sort of shallow in a way. I think of it as like the free samples of your work. So it's not where I invest the most of my creative energy. That would be more books and poetry and things. But...

I make a comparison to art on social media as being like the equivalent to microdosing art. Like you could take a psychedelic compound, LSD, ayahuasca, whatever you choose, and you would have a deep immersive experience and you're gonna be in that experience for hours. And this is similar to reading a full book, right? You're gonna live with that book for weeks.

You go to an art gallery, you're gonna be there for a couple hours and you're gonna really absorb it. This is like the macro dose of art. I think social media is more like a micro dose. So it's not meant to be the fully immersive experience.

And I would say that microdosing can be just as profound as macrodosing because think about it this way. If you follow someone on social media and they post every day or every other day. So every day you're getting a tiny little hit of their words, their wisdom, their creativity, their expression. And no one single piece of content

speaker-1 (08:54.07)

might be life-changing, you never know it could be, but...

when you have a little hit from their thoughts every single day, over one year, two years, three years, they become a regular part of your life. And I would argue that's more impactful than reading a book where you read a book, some of it you're gonna remember, most of it you'll forget and you'll move on with your life. So I think it's a form of art. I just think it's consumed differently.

speaker-0 (09:29.656)

How do you think memory plays a role in that, especially when making something memorable? Because like you were saying earlier, you know, if you're scrolling through content, like if you were to ask somebody, tell me 10 things that you saw on Instagram today. Somebody would probably be like, I don't, I don't know, because it's just like in and out of their mind. So how do you relate to memory when it comes to creating?

speaker-1 (09:52.246)

I think more in terms of relationship than memory. you know, there are friends that I see, that I've seen recently. And if you ask me to remember 10 specific things that they said when we hung out, that might be hard to do. I mean, I could probably pinpoint a couple. I could probably tell you a general vibe that I'm getting from someone on social media. So I think it's more about the general vibe because memory isn't always

fully conscious, right? There's subconscious memory. There's an energy that's transmitted that you receive. And you might not remember the exact words, but you're gonna remember the vibe that they gave you and you're gonna feel a little bit closer to them. So I think more about the vibe that you're sending out. It's sort of remembered subconsciously and even like in the body in a weird way, similar to what a friendship might be.

So I think more in terms of relationship and the general impression and vibe than remembering certain pieces. At the same time, you know, I do remember memes that I saw years ago once. There's just something about it that I could just name it. Like a song lyric. Like I could still go through and name song lyrics from the 90s effortlessly. And my wife is like, how do you remember that? There's something about a melody that gets kind of caught in your mind. And I think the right...

sort of writing or the right vibe can be similar where it becomes memorable and memetic.

speaker-0 (11:24.622)

that sticks in your body. You have said that you believe that there's something inherent about artists being synonymous with outsider. Where have you seen that within your life?

speaker-1 (11:32.974)

Mmm.

speaker-1 (11:37.452)

Yeah, well, you know, I think there's something synonymous about being an artist with being human, first of all. I think that creativity is human nature. So I think it's something we all have access to, whether you're an outsider or not. But I would say that we live in a culture that's not set up to support creativity.

It is in a way, because I think being an entrepreneur is a form of creativity. But you have to be really good to be accepted. In the art world today, whether you're an entrepreneur or a painter or a writer, there's sort of this hierarchy to it. So you've got to be really good to be accepted. And that's just sort of leaving out a lot of people who maybe don't have the...

time to practice and commit to it and they're not supported by their parents, they're not supported by the schools. So they get sort of pigeonholed into a career path that is not creative and they get sort of stuck. So in that sense, you almost have to be an outsider to carve out a space as a creator because, you know, we live here in Austin, Texas, which is a very creative city. might be...

one of the most creative cities in the world, but not everyone has access to that sort of community or resources or open mic nights or platforms to share. So artists sort of find themselves in this outsider position where they've got to do things against the stream of society. And that's certainly been the case in my life. Even before I was like a published author and speaker,

content creator, I was blessed to have a creative career in advertising, in brand strategy, in graphic design and things like this. But even then I really had to carve out time to dedicate to my own work. So I could eventually move beyond that and find my own voice as a writer. And I often had to keep that somewhat secret. know, like when I was younger, my friends knew I was writing poetry.

speaker-1 (13:59.074)

they might've made fun of me. Or even when I was working in advertising in New York City, you know, if my coworkers knew I was writing this sort of spiritual book about the ego, they would have thought that was strange. So you sort of have to keep your dreams secret in a way to protect them, which sort of carves out this like path as an outsider, even though what you're doing is,

truly part of your nature and there's nothing weird or strange about it. We live in a society that sort of put it in a box where it is strange to pursue as a path.

speaker-0 (14:38.156)

Yeah. When you are in that initial phase of breaking the mold, I feel like you have to see yourself as your own environment, which can be challenging. And you've lived in a lot of different environments. Like you were saying, New York city, you now live in Austin, Texas. He lived in Puerto Rico for a little bit. but your original environment, you're from a small rural town in Minnesota. How do you think.

That shaped you like having that impression of the world. That's where you started.

speaker-1 (15:09.666)

Yeah, you know, there are pros and cons to anywhere you would grow up. So I guess the cons of growing up in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Southwest Minnesota is that I didn't have resources or mentors as an artist. Like I said, it wasn't really normal to be an artist or a poet. Like I had a random factory job there when I was still in high school.

and I told someone there that I was an artist and they look confused. They were like, you mean like you paint like deer? Like the only conception he had of art would be like a landscape with deer. No, I don't know, rural landscape with deer. know what I mean? Like that's what he thought an artist was. And I'm like, no, I like make like weird abstract pop culture, stream of consciousness paintings. It's like...

speaker-0 (15:52.814)

Exodermis

speaker-1 (16:07.79)

They had no, he couldn't conceive of that. But there's definitely pros as well, like, because I had a lot of space for my imagination to wander. Like I think about growing up in a big city, there would be more pressure to fit into a mold, to be a doctor, to be a lawyer, and to like study for the SATs and to get into

the right kindergarten, let alone the right high school and college. mean, there was only one school in my area, right? So there was no pressure to really like meet expectations beyond my own dreams, frankly. So I had a lot of space to nurture my imagination and to almost keep that childhood alive in my childhood.

wonder and imagination protected longer than some kids might be able to do.

speaker-0 (17:14.488)

tapping more into the poetry, you discovered poetry by accident. You were about, I think, 14 years old when you were homesick one day and you needed something to do to pass the time and you discovered a couple of classic old poetry books by accident. What was that spark that you felt and why do you think it really connected with you?

speaker-1 (17:40.45)

Yeah, you know, I guess I didn't really even really know what poetry was at that time. But my mom had some poetry books in the house that I found. And they were like the classics. Maybe the most modern in there that I've resonated with first was Edgar Allan Poe. I think he's also accessible to a teenager because there's lots of rhymes and it's also like emotionally charged.

So, you know, he connected with me first as a poet. And it was interesting because reading through these poems, I saw that you could say things and feel things and think things that you don't get a chance to feel and think and say in regular life. Like you read Edgar Allan Poe or you read John Donne or Shakespeare or these people that I was reading.

like, yeah, this isn't just like small talk in like, like it was something deeper. was like, it opened up this whole world of thinking. Cause it's like, you can't say something unless you can first think it. Like you sort of need the language and the vocabulary in order to express something. So it sort of gave me this, it opened up this whole world of

and this whole vocabulary to think deeper, to feel deeper and to express myself deeper. Like I felt like there was this conversation that you could have through the written word that transcended space and time. And it's like, I felt like these writers were speaking to me and they just opened me up in a way. And these were people that had been dead for hundreds of years. So just really,

inspired me to think deeper, to feel deeper and to look for ways to extract what was inside of me and articulate it, which was very powerful. Words are very powerful. So it really expanded my ability to use words.

speaker-0 (20:02.552)

How quickly did reading poetry turn into you writing your own?

speaker-1 (20:08.066)

I don't remember, but I don't think it was that long. I remember writing a couple really early on and they were like rhyming couplets. But you know, think the thing with poetry is there's an internal rhythm to it. And that's the most important thing to learn. It's like technique and whatnot. I think the technique often happens subconsciously. I think it's about

internalizing this rhythm. And I think all poetry should have an underlying rhythm to it. So, because I was reading more lyrical poets like Edgar Allan Poe, you know, just poetry used to be a lot more lyrical. And there was like rules around meter and line length and rhymes. And it was a much more structured format.

You know, I love modern poetry, but all of the rules and the rhythm in a lot of ways has been sucked out of it. So I feel like I internalized the rhythm and because I was reading rhythmic poets, yeah, my first poems were, there's something called iambic pentameter that most writers don't even know about. Like most poets don't even know about iambic pentameter, which is very simply just.

the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables. So it's like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And I think that's very important. I don't intentionally use iambic pentameter now or then, but even in my early poems, there was a certain rhythm that followed a bit of an iambic pentameter vibe because it's like you have this internalized rhythm.

So yeah, I started writing not long after I started reading. And by the time I graduated high school, I had a stack of notebooks filled with whatever teenage angst or unrequited love. It's like I couldn't talk to the girls I had crushes on in high school. I would just go home and poems about them.

speaker-0 (22:24.248)

bucks.

speaker-1 (22:27.544)

But it was great because no one saw any of those. No one read any of those. I probably wrote a thousand poems before anyone read one, right? And I think that that's so important for anyone with a craft to have that practice. You gotta put in the hours, you gotta put in the repetition, you got to find your voice, you gotta find your style, you've got to experiment with technique.

speaker-0 (22:53.208)

think that's so fascinating because going back to what I was saying earlier about how there's no friction really between work and audience. So like what year was that that you were in high school writing those? I guess what I'm trying to get at is like it would have been much harder for you to actually share those with people in some way unless it was just in person and showing them the horror.

speaker-1 (23:16.066)

mid 90s. So before, I mean like

speaker-0 (23:19.406)

So it allowed you to really just hone in on the crowd.

speaker-1 (23:21.772)

Yeah, there was no idea how one would go about publishing poetry. That wasn't on my mind. That didn't seem, because I didn't know anyone alive who did that. I thought this was something that was this, you know, archaic thing. So yeah, there was no expectation to, I mean, maybe in the back of my mind, there was probably a dream to, wouldn't it be great to, you know,

speaker-0 (23:23.895)

I had no

speaker-1 (23:51.582)

had people read my poems, but that was barely a thought. It was more like a way to learn more about myself and just, I just loved doing it. It just, was an outlet, you know, just like you go out and play basketball as a kid, which I also did. There's never like, you're not planning for the NBA. You just enjoy it. You're shooting hoops. So for me, like writing poetry was just shooting hoops. It's like you do it for the love of the game.

speaker-0 (24:20.64)

Yeah, exactly. And the iambic pentameter is the game inside the game. That's true. So your creativity, it starts with the written word, but then it transitions into you going to college for design and then you becoming a professional graphic designer. Did graphic design, was that sort of like where you really got your spark or did it just kind of feel like this was a means to stay within the creative space?

speaker-1 (24:50.99)

Well, I was always visual as well. My whole life, including today, I've sort of balanced between writing and visual art. So I think towards the end of high school and then like initially into college, I was really into painting. So I wasn't a great painter, but I had this sort of unique abstract pop art style that I was developing.

I actually went to college, regular university for a semester after high school. And I just felt so stuck. I had no plan. I had no trajectory. I just felt I was doing it because everyone else was doing it. So I dropped out after a semester and I took a year to just wander the country and just fully be a starving artist.

Like I was working overnight shifts, like stocking shelves, working at gas stations, stuff like that. And then using all my free time to paint, to write, and just to go all in on my creativity. And I'm really grateful I gave myself that period to explore. But at the same time, it was probably the most depressing year of my life because I was isolated. And again,

the artist is an outsider to a degree. So I was just doing this in isolation. Didn't have a way to share it. This was still before social media. And I was doing a lot of good work, but I was, I had no direction. I had no mentors. I had no plan. But I was getting really into visual design and art. And then I think I might've gotten like an early

or some cheap or free version of Photoshop or something. And I was just like dabbling with that, just like making weird collages or something.

speaker-1 (26:55.85)

And then, yeah, I just realized at a certain point, because I was living in New York and I didn't have any friends, so working overnight and I'm like, I need to get my life on track. So, you know, I had more of a community back in Minnesota. So I Googled art schools, art college, design college, Minneapolis, and I applied at the first search result.

that I found and I packed all my stuff into my old worn down Cadillac and I drove to Minneapolis, crashed on my friend's couch and just started going to design school.

speaker-0 (27:44.012)

So you were in New York and then you go back to Minnesota. That's right. Okay. And then that leads you back to New York. when you go back to New York, that's when your real corporate career starts within brand strategy.

speaker-1 (27:51.342)

eventually.

speaker-1 (28:00.11)

Yeah, you know, I started in Minneapolis because I like to say that I snuck into the business world through the back door as an artist because I developed these skills for graphic design, logos, websites, posters. And I started working in advertising agencies in Minneapolis. And yeah, I just sort of got sick of that. lost my, know, so many...

So many things, like once you start doing them professionally, it sort of sucks the fun out of them. And it became less about creativity and more about, I learned a lot of other skills, like how to work with a team and how to, you know, make my coworkers and clients happy with the work, even if I didn't love it. You know, it's more of like relationship management and things.

So I left graphic design, but once I was in advertising, I could sort of look around and see other roles that I found exciting and new. So the idea of a brand strategist I found interesting. So I sort of pivoted into brand strategy, which was sort of back to writing, because I would write brand messaging, taglines, even naming companies, things like that.

And, but I was also making presentations to share with clients, which is very visual. So that was actually a great combination of using my visual design, as well as my writing mixed with this new sort of understanding of business and branding. So that was a really valuable career for probably a decade. And it brought me to New York City.

where I lived and worked for a decade as a brand strategist.

speaker-0 (30:03.394)

Yeah, what are the biggest differences? You touched on a little there, but what do you see are the biggest differences between corporate creativity and your own personal creative expression?

speaker-1 (30:13.322)

they're entirely different. mean, in a way they're similar in the fact that you are being creative, which requires you to sort of be introspective and go within to sort of look for a solution. But you're almost like putting yourself in a customer's shoes. And you're sort of like, I guess it's not that different. Cause if I'm writing now, it's like I'm writing for an audience to a degree.

Like if I'm writing, I wrote a book about creativity. So I'm writing to people who want to be more creative. So in a way, it's important to consider your audience. I know it's popular to say, you know, don't think about your audience. I think it depends on what you're doing and the type of artist you are. If you're writing a nonfiction book, I think you should care about the audience because you're teaching them something. Poetry, maybe less so.

But yeah, you're trying to help a company sell products or services. So at the end of the day, it's not about your own expression. There are certain problems that you're trying to solve, which is a creative challenge and it's rewarding in its own right. But for me, I just always felt like I had something to say or express. I had like a vision I wanted to bring to life. And I was doing that, but it was like really contained in these little corporate projects.

So I'm really grateful for, I feel like it was a great sandbox for me to learn how to be creative on demand. Cause like so many artists, it's like, I don't feel inspired. And they just sit around waiting for inspiration. It's like, if you work in advertising and you've got clients who have paid a lot of money and they're like, there's a project manager and there's deadlines. It's like, you can't afford to not be inspired. So you're gonna.

find a way to do it. And that might mean bringing in a team for a brainstorm or, you know, doing a customer interviews and to gather data and insights. So you learn all these different tools. And I think it's so important to be, to be a professional creator. You need to be consistent. There's this great quote by the artist Chuck Close, where he's like, inspiration is for amateurs.

speaker-1 (32:37.378)

The rest of us just show up and get to work. And it's like, well, yeah, when you work in advertising, you have to do that. So it was really good conditioning to show up, you know, with dedication on a regular basis and find a way to make it work, to pull something out of your hat in the last minute that you can present to a room of executives. So it was challenging, but a really good, a good challenge.

speaker-0 (33:07.298)

You shared earlier that one of the things you were grateful for, for being from Minnesota is that you didn't grow up in a competitive environment. I'd say New York city is a pretty competitive environment. What was it like living for such a long time in New York city and being exposed to that competitive, high energy, is an ambitious type of life.

speaker-1 (33:31.83)

It's good training, you know? It's a pressure cooker. Like, you need to show up and fight a bit to find your place. You know, just like as a professional, as... I mean, there's so much around you. Like, it could be fighting for jobs. You know I'm saying? It's competitive, like competitive job market. Like, you're not just gonna be given a job. You've gotta sort of go out and fight for it. Or like even like the dating scene.

speaker-0 (33:44.76)

So what do mean by fight?

speaker-1 (34:01.132)

You know, and like, it's, it's, there's a lot happening in the nightlife and the party scene. And there's just, there's a lot of pressure and it's hard, but pressure makes diamonds. Right? So it's like a, it's like a bootcamp. It's like, you're not ready to serve unless you've gone through bootcamp. You know, it's like a training ground.

So it's hard. I'm grateful I don't live there anymore. is a very, yeah, it's a lot of energy, but it's a very, first of all, it's very mental versus heart. Like there are some places that are more heart-centric and some people that are more ego mind-centric and New York is very much an ego-centric place. That's why I wrote a book about the ego while I was living there.

because I was dealing with my own ego and all the egos around me. So yeah, it's a challenge, but again, it sort of sharpens your sword and refines your own. If it doesn't crush you, it will refine you. we all, whether we're artists or just humans or partners or parents, it's so important to refine just who you are.

So it's like, will sharpen your blade so you can show up with just more power and intention if it doesn't destroy you or you don't get too, know, swept away by the momentum of the competitive energy that's there.

speaker-0 (35:45.806)

getting into that relationship between head and ego versus heart and tying it into your book, you've shared that you felt like the writing of that book was kind of grounded in ego energy a little bit. But what I find so fascinating is that it was really divine even how that book came to be in the first place and how it got published by Hay House. How did your friend Jake play such a pivotal role in that?

speaker-1 (36:15.384)

That's so funny, because I just saw Jake yesterday for the first time in a long time.

speaker-0 (36:20.28)

Well, divide. I asked that then.

speaker-1 (36:22.03)

Right, so you know most people who just moved to New York there's some kind of a horror story about you know getting acclimated there. I moved there without a plan. First of all, I didn't have a job. I didn't have any very little money saved up. I just went there with you know a dream in my heart and you know

a song in my mouth. And I had barely arrived in New York when Hurricane Sandy hit and this was 2012. So I was already struggling. I was applying for ton of jobs and no one was hiring me. I was running out of the little savings I had. I was crashing at this band's house when they were on tour in like...

literally the dirtiest room I've ever seen in my life. You couldn't see the floor, because it was just like crap everywhere, right? And I'm just like trying to get a job and no one's hiring me. And then Hurricane Sandy hits. I, Jake and I had just signed a lease to live together in this, in this house that's like in the bottom of Queens in Jamaica Bay.

So was like New York City, but it's like literally like on the water. So it seemed like, wow, I mean, it's a ways out. It was like an hour subway ride to get into the city, but it seemed fun. Hurricane Sandy destroyed the house. So the place I was about to move into was underwater. So we had no place to go, didn't have much money.

Jake was like, I have a friend who has this empty cottage on this little island in the Caribbean called Culebra. And I'm like, I've never heard of Culebra, but sounds good. So we like spent like the last of my money to get like a one-way jet blue flight to Puerto Rico. And then we transferred to this little rinky dink plane to take us to Culebra. And I pretty much proceeded to have a nervous breakdown.

speaker-1 (38:41.474)

because I just felt like a complete failure. I thought, I had just read the alchemist by Pablo Coelho before moving to New York. And there's this line I remembered where he said, if you truly want something and go after it, the universe will conspire to make it happen. So that's the sort of faith that I moved to New York with. And I'm like, didn't happen. The universe is not conspiring.

In fact, it did quite the opposite because now I'm homeless on this deserted island in the Caribbean with no job or money. And I had all my insecurities and fears rose to the surface. was like, why did I move to New York? Why did I quit my job? I'm such an idiot. You know, this, this was a stupid idea. It's never going to work out. And I felt like a failure. And then I just, but I, just, I had nowhere to go.

So I couldn't run away from these thoughts and I couldn't distract myself. So I had to sit with it and be there with it. And the longer I did that, I just watched the ocean tide come in and out almost like this meditation. And I came to realize that these thoughts were just my ego talking.

And I made this big distinction that I didn't know at the time, which is just because you think something doesn't make it true. And the mind is capable of brilliant and beautiful ideas, but the mind is also capable of incredible worry and anxiety and self-doubt and misinformation. You need to be very careful which thoughts that you actually believe and listen to. And then I came to...

realize that there was another voice inside of me that was much quieter, but it was much more comforting. And this was what I came to recognize as my intuition. And it's harder to listen to your intuition because the ego is loud and it yells at you. It's like an alarm going off. And your intuition is more like a quiet whisper. And you've really got to slow down and stop thinking and sink into your body and feel it.

speaker-1 (41:03.064)

and it's sort of this inner knowing. And that inner knowing was telling me that this is all part of the plan and I'm here for a reason and this is all part of my story. And in that moment, I had this idea for a book called, Shit Your Ego Says. And I sort of knew that this was the first book that I would actually write and finish and put out there. And...

I started writing it and I ended up back in New York. A friend let me crash on his couch. So I ended up back in New York, gradually found stability with a career, got hired at an agency, kept writing the book. And I still had no idea how I would get it published.

because I didn't have an audience, I didn't know the publishing world, I didn't have any connections. But I sort of made a deal with the universe and I'm like, it's my job to write this book and I have a lot going on and I don't know how to publish it. So I'm gonna write the book and I need you, universe, to help me get it out there. And that's what happened. And at a certain point I had enough material to put together a proposal.

And I sent it out to every single email address that I could find online related to book publishing, agents, editors, whoever I could find. And I barely even got a rejection back. It was just silence. And I'm like, okay, this isn't working. And then my friend Jake, who I was in Calabria with, he actually had a copy of my proposal that I had sent him.

was, had another friend who was pitching her book to Hay House in the UK. So without telling me, Jake sent her my proposal and they loved it. They sent it to the New York office. And then one random day I'm like at work and I get an email from Hay House and they're saying, Hey, we love your proposal. Can you come in for.

speaker-0 (43:20.824)

The universe started to

speaker-1 (43:22.384)

Tomorrow. I'm like, what? How did this happen?

Anyway, the next day went to the Hay House office and they told me like, love your proposal. We love this. If you had an audience at all, you we would publish this tomorrow, but you don't have an audience. You don't have a platform. You know, you don't need to have like a big social media following, but you do need to have some proof of concept that you have readers, you have, you've demonstrated.

a certain expertise as a public figure to a degree, right? And I had none of that.

They're like, work on growing your platform and then get back to us. I'm like, okay, well, I'm sort of back to the drawing board now. And then the next day they emailed me back and they said, listen, we have this conference in Chicago later this month and it's for aspiring authors. And one person at the conference will be awarded with a book contract. And it's like a $5,000

conference, but we're going to send you there for free. So they sent me to the conference. I proceeded to win the contest and got my first book deal with Hay House.

speaker-0 (44:47.508)

I mean, like I said, the universe started to conspire for you.

speaker-1 (44:51.928)

That's the thing, being stranded on that island, I thought it was the worst thing that could have happened to me. And in fact, it ended up being the best thing that could have happened for me. It was just uncomfortable in the moment. And our biggest breakthroughs in learning experiences are always uncomfortable in the moment.

speaker-0 (45:14.286)

So you initially were going to continue your path as a non-fiction writer. You were gonna write another book, Monday Mantras, optimizing your career and bringing mindfulness into your professional life. another big event that impacted everyone, COVID sidetracks you. What was it about COVID that really redirected the path you were gonna take with your work?

speaker-1 (45:40.672)

Yeah, good question. You know, I think it starts with being in New York and feeling stuck again. Like I feel like I was there for eight years and I was, you know, growing in my career. I was taking on more responsibility. By now I'm like managing multiple departments, right? And

But then sort of the double-edged sword with growing professionally is like you reach a point where there's nowhere left to grow and then you feel stuck. And I started to get really depressed again and stuck in my career. And we ended up moving to LA, my girlfriend at the time, my wife now.

she wanted to move to California, so we moved to Topanga. So I was, your environment has such a big impact on your creativity because instead of being in this hyper competitive New York City environment, I am in this like scenic wildlife of Topanga Canyon.

and I had the ocean 10 minutes away and I'd hiking trails. So I feel like my whole body could exhale and I could relax.

And then COVID hit. And like, yeah, like you said, I was working on a follow-up. was a nonfiction self-help book to optimize your career with mindfulness. That felt like the lane that I was in. And well, first of all, that book didn't get picked up by any publishers. So that's part one. And then part two was...

speaker-1 (47:33.016)

COVID happened and suddenly the world was thrown upside down and we were living in this, and still are to a degree, is this sort of absurd version of reality. And it just seemed like optimizing your career with mindfulness was not what people needed because people were losing their jobs, people were losing their businesses.

I was like, people need a deeper medicine for these challenging times that we're in. And then I sort of went deeper within myself. And this was when I returned to writing poetry after, you know, 10, 15 years of not writing poetry. I sort of returned to doing that and just the floodgates opened up my expression.

And I was just writing poetry and I was actually making, started making memes then as well. So I was just like, I was expressing deeper thoughts, weirder thoughts, more vulnerable thoughts and sharing them in a way that like a self-help book wouldn't do. So I had to go deeper within myself to sort of find my medicine for these times.

And that led to my second book, which is actually poetry and meme collection. I think it was the first book of published memes along with poetry. And it was called, How to Laugh in Ironic Amusement During Your Existential Crisis.

speaker-0 (49:13.922)

Beautiful. Can you talk more actually on the importance and the birth of memes, especially when it comes to Richard Dawkins? Because that's something that I didn't know much about. And especially you mentioned a little bit earlier. I think we have a much different perception of memes based off of just like how they live within our culture today. But I find the foundational story of what memes truly are fascinating.

speaker-1 (49:42.99)

So at the time I was doing lots of like YouTube rabbit holes and like, you know, getting into not even psychedelic substances, but like psychedelic thinking, like expansive psychedelic thinking. Specifically people like Terrence McKenna, who is I consider him to be like a psychedelic philosopher and has a lot of great talks on YouTube.

He passed away in the year 2000. But I heard some talks where he was talking about memes. This is back in the 80s. And I'm like, that's so interesting. He's talking about memes in like the 80s. And it's like, okay, help me understand the origin of this word and the concept of mimetics. So the word meme was actually introduced.

by this evolutionary biologist named Richard Dawkins. He had his book come out in the late 70s called The Selfish Gene. And he invented this idea of a meme to describe how genes work in a biological system. So in biology, a gene is sort of the smallest unit of biology. We all...

are full of genes and then they replicate and they spread. And the whole idea of evolution is based on a gene mutation, because genes mutate in a biological system. And if a mutation is advantageous to that being, that will over time become the predominant variation of that gene. So it's sort of like,

survival of the fittest at the micro level. And he said that memes are the same thing in the world of culture and ideas. So Terrence McKenna described a meme as the smallest unit of an idea. So it's anything that gets copied in culture.

speaker-1 (51:58.348)

And that could be a slogan. It could be an ideology. You know, it's like color trends, you know, there's like suddenly a certain color gets really popular for a year in fashion and interior design. It becomes like a meme unto itself and people copy it. And yeah, it spreads. And I think that that's how culture evolves is through memes.

You could say the 60s, the hippie revolution was a revolution of memes in a way, because they didn't fight with guns, they fought with ideas. And you would have a slogan like, make love, not war. And you put that on a bumper sticker, you put that on a sign and it plants a seed in the collective consciousness. And if it's a good seed, it'll take root and spread. So this is how ideas spread in the culture.

And then with the introduction of the internet, that's when memes really took off because the internet...

allowed for global connectivity at scale. So suddenly you could plant an idea or even something that's absurd. Like the first internet meme is sort of this dancing baby gif. Like there was this gif of a dancing baby and it's just ridiculous. But when people saw that in the mid nineties, they're like, this is crazy. This is so funny. This is absurd.

And then it just spread and like, don't even know, like people would put it on websites or put it in emails. And it was like this early form of this meme spreading, you know, and there are other examples. And then you fast forward to LOLcats or, you know, some of these early internet memes. it just continued to sort of, memes became the meme where memes were replicating like memes.

speaker-1 (54:06.028)

And it almost became like the self-referential movement. So then, yeah, at a certain point I was like, this is so fascinating. And it's like, what if I use the delivery mechanism of the meme to share my own philosophy, spirituality, poetry? And can I phrase things in a way that it becomes mimetic where you merge it with that picture?

And then like, it becomes something greater than the sum of its parts and then it can spread. So that's really how my social media audience grew is from making memes and

speaker-0 (54:49.326)

It's incredibly fascinating.

speaker-1 (54:50.402)

Yeah, and I ended up launching a class called Meme School, which I still teach and it's the art and science of memetics and making memes.

speaker-0 (55:00.078)

It's incredibly fascinating. What I also love about the way that you express your creativity and articulate it is that you share it's more so living within your body than it is your head. And I love that you see this deeply physical nature to it. With that in mind, can you explain your whole philosophy behind creativity being a purge?

speaker-1 (55:25.432)

Yeah, certainly. I mean, I learned this in New York when, again, I was just in my own head all the time. And at a certain point, I'd never really done a lot of meditation or yoga or anything like that. And I stumbled into a yoga studio. Not only a yoga studio, it was a Kundalini yoga studio, which is, it's almost like this even more esoteric

advanced like form of yoga with breath work and weird postures. Sometimes you're holding a posture for like 11 minutes, chanting, things like that, meditation. And whenever I would leave class, I was just full of inspiration. It was like I had opened a channel and I was like, just like everything was clear and I was just downloading information.

And I don't think I could have written my first book without a consistent yoga practice, especially in New York. Because if you live in a chaotic environment, you need to really cultivate inner stillness. So that's what yoga did for me. And I just learned that, you know, our bodies and our emotions and our energy, our energy fields have access to a subtle intelligence.

that's beyond the reach of the conscious mind. And when you can quiet the busy ego mind and tune into the wisdom of stillness and the wisdom of the body, you can pull from that and extract from that much richer ideas. So it's almost like a purge. And I see creativity often as you're going within yourself

You're excavating your inner world to see where there might be stuck emotions or energy and you bring the light of awareness to it. And then you purge it onto the page or onto the canvas or into musical notes, into the air. And there's often more wisdom

speaker-1 (57:52.312)

to this sort of like almost somatic creative expression, then there would be if you're creating from the intellect alone.

speaker-0 (58:02.094)

which is, I would probably assume is more so on that corporate sort of business side.

speaker-1 (58:06.67)

100%, yeah, mean, I think the ego is like fishing for ideas in a very shallow pond. You know what I mean? Like if you're only thinking about solutions and you're scanning your brain, or it's like the computer's hard drive, right? The computer's hard drive only has access to the files that are stored on that computer. Or like the pond only has a few small fish, if that.

but when then you can go from the ego to your intuition or, cause I think intuition is an expression of, it's a subtle intelligence that's connected to the body more than a mental construct. And when you tune into that.

subtle intelligence of the body and intuition. That's like fishing in a deep ocean or it's like logging onto the internet. Cause now suddenly you're not limited to the files on the hard drive. You can download new files, new ideas, and you become a channel. So moving from

the head to the heart, to the body, to your energy, to your emotions, and being present in your body, it's gonna open up better ideas than you solve by overthinking and analysis alone.

speaker-0 (59:36.3)

You've talked a lot about how being a creator is about being a receiver and to be a receiver, need to expose yourself to a degree. need to open yourself up. And I think this is from my own personal experiences. I think there's no greater thing to open you up than pain, especially physical pain from my experiences where

An unwilling pain can give you gifts that you never knew existed or you would have never been able to tap into willingly with your conscious mind. Have you seen that show up in your work at all when it comes to pain?

speaker-1 (01:00:19.554)

Yes, for sure. I mean, I haven't had a lot of, you know, like physical problems, luckily, but certainly, you know, emotional pain and that sort of thing. And what I've learned from that is that I say contrast is a teacher. So...

There's a dark and light. We live in a world of polarity and there's darkness and light. There's pain and pleasure. There's movement and stillness. And you can't fully know something without also knowing its opposite. So if there was no such thing as heat, how would you know what cold was? You couldn't. It's defined by its opposite. And it's like,

The deeper you know grief, the deeper you can know love. So I see contrast as being a teacher and just like being homeless on Culebra, it's not a fun experience. Going through bootcamp is never fun. It's challenging you, it's forging you. And so I'm like,

I've had enough experiences in my life where I'm going through a hard time, where I know now that there's always light at the end of the tunnel. And not only is there light at the end of the tunnel, it's a new, more radiant light than I could even perceive before. It's probably the same light, but like having gone through that experience, you see the light in a new way and you're more grateful for it.

Rock bottom will teach you lessons that mountaintops never will.

speaker-0 (01:02:17.262)

The line I say is, the hole you think you're being buried into is the mountain that you're actually climbing.

speaker-1 (01:02:27.662)

100%. Or I also like, it's roadblocks are stepping stones. Yeah. Cause you reach a roadblock and you're like, I'm stuck. And it's like, it's actually inviting you to step up. You just have to turn it into a stepping stone rather than perceiving it as a roadblock. that mental switch is the most important part.

speaker-0 (01:02:51.662)

How do you think becoming a father has impacted you and your creativity?

speaker-1 (01:02:56.89)

Ooh, I mean, becoming a father will just soften you in every way. I mean, it's just like your heart is cracked open and there's no going back, you know? Every day is just cracking your heart open. And even like, man, a couple weeks ago, she's so good right now. She's much better. She's great, but she had to have a heart surgery.

speaker-0 (01:03:24.846)

times.

speaker-1 (01:03:25.294)

Yeah, she was born with like a little hole in her heart that required her to be like heart taken out and stitched up. And she's like, not even two years old. And it's like, that is just, will put you in this place of surrender. And it's like, you just call upon divine support. yeah, every day just seeing her, just totally reorients your priorities.

So it's softened me, it's helped me to show up daily. You know, we can do things like you can go to a mushroom ceremony and have your heart opened or you can fall in love and have your heart open. And these are like...

the risk is that they become temporary. It's like to grow as a person, to make progress in whatever you want to make progress in, consistency is so important. So having a child there, it's daily, it's consistent, opening my heart again and again and again. And it's like, I can't have a closed heart around her.

or a closed mind, it's like I need to emulate how to be a person to her and I need to support her on her journey. So it helps me bring a level of presence and care and gentleness to my daily life that really wouldn't have been possible without her.

speaker-0 (01:05:10.412)

You're very articulate speaker. And I mean, it's one thing to create for yourself, you know, tap into your craft and take something out of you and your body and put it into the world. And then I feel like it's a, it's completely other thing to then be able to have a conscious understanding of that process of how you go about that. And then to be able to take it another step further and be able to articulate it.

to other people in language that makes sense. What do you think has allowed you to sort of create that mapping, especially when it comes to sharing it with other people?

speaker-1 (01:05:49.966)

That's an interesting question.

I think words are how I navigate reality. I mean, if you want to get into it also, it's like, I don't know how much you're into astrology, but like my Mercury is in Gemini. And Gemini is, Mercury is the planet of communication and Gemini is like the planet of.

like writing and communication. Like all my favorite songwriters and poets and writers are all Geminis. It's crazy. I was just like, like I wasn't even into astrology. Then I ended up like finding this list and I'm like, holy crap, they're all Geminis. And then my like sign that governs communication is in Gemini. was like, just, it was like weird.

speaker-1 (01:06:46.434)

Gosh, I mean, I guess those are the tools of my trade, words, you know? Like that's what I do. I bring words into the world and help us string them together. I just think you can't, you can't even sometimes feel something or know something unless you have the words to articulate it. So I just think that I've been writing and studying language, studying songwriters, poets. I even like reading books about the evolution of language.

or like the history of poetry to see how language evolves. You know, I don't use AI a lot, but I'm always asking chat GPT questions about etymology. Where does this word come from? What does it mean? Like how did it evolve? And like, I'm just fascinated by language.

speaker-0 (01:07:29.134)

That's way to use it.

speaker-0 (01:07:40.27)

Is there anything you think you struggle to bring language to?

speaker-1 (01:07:44.028)

probably like, hmm. Yeah, I mean, probably, mean, it's funny because a lot of writers probably feel this way where we can pour our words out onto the paper and be really vulnerable and sensitive, but it's a different practice to bring those words into relationships.

speaker-0 (01:08:13.048)

Mm.

speaker-1 (01:08:13.806)

and having the same level of intentionality in one-on-one relationships, whether that's with your parents or like even your closest friends or your partner. It's like, that's a different level. So I will admit that I do feel really comfortable just like expressing myself on paper. I don't think I am always bringing that same level of clarity and...

an intention to all of my relationships because my focus is on the paper rather than like this. So that is probably an area that I could improve at.

speaker-0 (01:08:56.214)

you articulated that very well, that language. It only feels right to end up with a few lines of poetry from you. That's where we started with, know, your creativity starting out with poetry. So we'd love to share a few lines here. This is from a poem of yours, 1000 funerals. Death is a portal to transformation. The true and lingering death is staying the same.

stuck in a prison of who you used to be. What's something about yourself today that you think you're in the process of putting to rest?

speaker-1 (01:09:36.204)

Hmm.

speaker-1 (01:09:42.067)

of us trying to respect your question and give you a specific answer and not just like go into generalities because, know, in a way every day is a blank slate and we have to start anew, but we carry this baggage of the past with us, right? And it's like the baggage in the past isn't always going to serve us in the future. So I think it's so important to not hold on to who you are and have been.

too tightly, but to treat every, not only every day, but every moment like a blank slate where I can start here fresh and not carry the baggage of who I used to be. So I think there's lots of things I used to be.

speaker-1 (01:10:34.68)

You know, insecurities or anxieties. I can still revert to thinking too much and not being in my body as much, even though I write about that, that's still something that I, it's a daily practice, right? You're never there. You're always becoming. There's no there to reach. Cause as soon as you're there, you think you have it all figured out, you're not growing anymore and you're not seeing all of your blind spots.

I'm trying my best to not try to be anyone, but to be nobody, to be blank and to show up with an open mind and open heart to whatever the moment calls me to be. But again, it's a daily practice and that's more of a, you know, something that it's a, again,

The consistency of who you are and showing up in that way is more important than I had a great insight and I have it all figured out now. But living with that humility and openness on a daily basis.

speaker-0 (01:11:46.904)

tell myself stop trying to get there and start being here.

speaker-1 (01:11:51.246)

BOOM

speaker-0 (01:11:52.014)

James or Cray, absolutely awesome talking with you. Where can people go to learn more about you? Anything else you'd like to share?

speaker-1 (01:12:02.722)

Yeah, my Instagram is wordsarevibrations. My website is jamesmcray.com. one thing we didn't talk about is I have a community called Sunflower Club. do it open mics here in Austin. And I also have a virtual community because what I'm really in love with now is cultivating creativity and community in others.

You know, giving people a platform to...

speaker-1 (01:12:36.169)

express the inner artist and to do that in a supportive community. I think we need more community and we need more creativity. So Sunflower Club is a place where I try to nurture that. So you can find information about all this on my website.

speaker-0 (01:12:53.026)

Awesome. Great time with you today.

speaker-1 (01:12:54.69)

You too, thanks.