Overview: In this solo episode (ep 150), Adam Williams takes a look around and reflects on who he is in this moment, with the aid of legendary music producer Rick Rubin. (Released on podcast on July 11, 2023)
Also on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google and other players.
EP 150 SHOW NOTES, LINKS & TRANSCRIPT
Connect with Adam Williams
Humanitou on Instagram: @humanitou
About Adam
Artwork
Podcast cover art and photographs below: Adam Williams
Music
“Old Rope” by Joe Johnson | joejohnsonsings.com
Original Written Version
Rick Rubin, the legendary music producer, says, “The things we make are a reflection of who we are in this moment, and that’s all it is. It’s not more than that. It can go on and mean more than that, but that’s not in our control.”
The other day, I turned my chair away from my desk. I was about to stand up and walk out of my work space/creative space/meditation space … my everything space. And I paused and looked around at what all is filling that space right now.
I made several panoramic photographs with my phone to document the space, the moment. None of the photographs complete the view in 360 degrees or capture from floor to ceiling. The space is full.
It’s boxes of framed artwork from my “Reverence” series, which I will take to the Kinder Padon Gallery in Crested Butte, Colo., next week for the opening of my art show there on March 10.
It’s a meditation space that is not spacious at the moment, because of said boxes. It’s my camera bag on the floor and artwork on the walls, mostly mine but also that of friends, and a few others. It’s art supplies and a drafting table with more of my abstract work lying on it, a table that I also use as a platform for still life photography.
It’s my desk, cloaked in various smatterings of scratch-paper notes and ideas and, I hope, glimmers of brilliance within. Books are stacked in opposite corners of the desk, and between rests my laptop, various cords, a mug of pens, a tooth one of my sons recently pulled out and brought to me, a “words” (swear) jar for which I heartily contribute to the future enjoyment of my sons when one day we will empty it and they’ll be able to buy something fun and not insignificant.
It’s my podcasting equipment that I love to keep nearby, a Zoom H6 recorder, a microphone at the ready, hanging in its stand and plugged into that recorder, and my headphones that hang on the mic stand.
It’s a leather club chair in the corner and an Indian pouf in front of it, for when I sit in the chair and put my feet up and read and think. Three guitars, encased individually, stand together in a corner.
A birthday gift for my wife is concealed in the obvious open, something she’s walked by countless times in recent weeks without thinking it was anything other than one more cluttering something in my everything space.
It’s many things, this space of mine in this moment of mine, in this reflection of me at this time.
When I take the framed Reverence photographs to my upcoming art show in Crested Butte next week, the space will open up; it will change and not be the same again. I will reset my meditation space. I will work at my desk without the sense that the walls are closing in, that I’ve become a hoarder working amongst infinite stacks of newspapers and everything unletgoable.
But in this moment, the me that is reflected in this ephemeral mess is one of multiple talents and interests all simmering simultaneously. Podcasting, writing, photography, abstract artwork. Ideas, expressions, creative flows.
I’m an organized person, in general. Some things I like to be just-so, with their just-right ways of being done or set. Ask my family. Yet in this space, there is a different me, and it’s ever-evolving.
