Name: Joe Rogan Experience #405 - Steven Pressfield, Aubrey Marcus
Uploaded: 2013-10-16T02:45:03.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #405 - Steven Pressfield, Aubrey Marcus' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2013-10-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #405 - Steven Pressfield, Aubrey Marcus' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2013-10-16. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #405 - Steven Pressfield, Aubrey Marcus

I like doing it this way. We should do it this way more often, where we get the
commercials out of the way before the guests arrive.
Otherwise, it's annoying.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
We've already been busy without you people, ladies and gentlemen. We're here,
we're live.
Aubrey Marcus is here. Oh, look at that. That's my laptop.
Old school.
Making noise. Again, not old school. It's this week. I've done it three times.
Aubrey Marcus is here, my brother, and Mr. Pressfield.
Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for being here. It's very exciting for me.
We've tried to do this a few times.
I have been giving out your book for years.
I found, you know that sexy beast John Mayer, you know who that singer is?
You know who that guy is?
John Mayer?
Mayer, whatever the fuck his name is.
Handsome bastard.
I was reading his Twitter, and he said a long time ago something about,
if you're really into, for creative types, there's a great book called The War
of Art.
And then somebody else brought it up, too.
So I said, all right, let me check out this book and see what the fuck is going
on.
And it's so good, I bought a stack of them, and I kept it in my office.
And when podcast guests would come over, I would go, come here, you lazy bitch.
Take this and go write.
Go get something done, man.
Get something done.
Make it happen.
And the inspiration of that book, it really works, man.
Your book inspires me to get more shit done.
Like, you have unwittingly or wittingly, knowingly or unknowingly, you've set
an avalanche of creativity loose with your book.
Well, like I say, I brought you a half a dozen of these jokes so you can give
them out to deserving, worthy recipients.
Yeah, I was one of those recipients from the early days.
Yeah, I gave Aubrey one.
Free on it days.
Yeah, it was before on it I gave Aubrey one.
Ah, coincidence?
I don't know, man.
Yeah, probably not.
How long ago was that?
How long ago?
About three years ago.
Ah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I gave it to every comedian I know that doesn't write new jokes.
Everyone that I know.
I bought it for my family for Christmas after you gave it to me last Christmas.
Well, you know what?
It's applicable even to non-artists.
I think there's a lot of lessons in that about what you talk about, the term
resistance is a great way of describing it because it sort of names this fog
that a lot of people have gone through.
This weird thing that people have where sometimes I wake up in the morning and
I'll just, I'll get online and I'll say, well, what do I have to do today?
I got to work out eventually.
So from between now and when I work out, what should I do?
Should I go watch TV?
I know the remote is right there and I know I really should get something done.
I should just sit in my fucking office, close the door and start writing.
But there's this weird thing that happens where all these other options come up
and it's just so easy to just fuck off.
Let me ask you, Joe, because I don't really know about how comedians work.
What is the thing that you, that resistance stops you from doing?
Writing jokes, sitting down and writing jokes?
I would say writing material is the big one because it doesn't stop you from
performing.
Performing is really fun, you know?
Performing as a stand-up is something that we all look forward to and it's a
great exchange with the audience.
This is a great time.
So that's not something that anybody resists, but they do resist the writing.
The solitary sitting by yourself with your thoughts, you know, the going over
the ideas and trying to make them work and trying to restructure stuff to make
it quicker or have more impact.
Sometimes you have to, sometimes you go over a bit and you'll practice it on
stage and you'll try to work it out on stage and you'll eventually get there.
But really what you need to do is do the real work.
Sit by yourself in front of a computer or a notepad, whatever you prefer, and
actually write.
You know, it's interesting to me as just an audience member because when you
watch a comic that's really rolling, you figure they're just winging it.
It's just coming out of them, you know, not in the moment, but it's not true,
is it?
I mean, it's really hard work behind the scenes doing it.
There's actually both.
There's definitely a lot of hard work behind the scenes, but there's also a lot
of winging it.
And when you get good at winging it, it sort of comes from already having put
in the work and also having your mind free.
If your mind is troubled, like that's another thing that I found as I matured
as a man, especially over the last like 10, 15 years,
I realized the less clutter I have in my life, the better my mind works.
Like, there's a very valuable thing to keep your mind free of bullshit.
So whether it's people or things you do that you don't like that you do or
habits that you can't break,
if you can get rid of those, your whole thing will work better.
Like, your mind will actually function better.
It'll function without the regret of not being able to take care of whatever it
is, whether it's a gambling issue.
I think I've heard you describe, too, when you're in the zone and doing your
best comedy, it's like the comedy goes through you.
You're just a passenger.
And that's very much how you describe the muse in many of your books.
Yeah, that's a very important.
Stepping outside of the, getting out of the way, basically.
Yeah, that's a very important thing that you brought up in that book.
And you said it in sort of a matter-of-fact way about what's this ethereal,
sort of whimsical topic, the topic of a muse.
But my best stuff, I have no idea where it came from.
Everything that I've ever written, every time I've ever been on stage, I've
been at my best, I'm like a passenger.
It's like the muse takes you over when you're actually on stage.
Do you find, Joe, over time, when you look back on what you did, a set here or
a set a year ago, that you're discovering who you are as you go along?
Yeah, sort of, you know, and sometimes I'm like, where the fuck is that even
coming from?
You know, there's definitely a where did that come from element that can creep
in.
But yeah, if you pay attention, but a lot of comedians don't like to listen to
themselves, me included.
Don't like to.
But that's also a part of the job, though.
You feel embarrassed when you see your stuff?
It's weird.
First of all, you're weird if you like it.
You're some weirdo, like, listening to yourself.
You know, some guy who, like, gets off and hearing his own voice, yeah, I'm
awesome.
And then it's also, it's like, if you're self-critical, which I'm very self-critical,
it can be agonizing.
You know, there's parts of it that you don't like that just, like, drive you
fucking crazy.
But it's a good way to, for creative, for, like, structuring acts, it's a
really good way to realize what bits are working and what bits aren't working.
It's to listen to them without having to do them, so you can actually hear them
and hear them take place in front of an audience.
It's actually an invaluable resource that a lot of comedians don't take
advantage of for just the reasons I stated.
They get embarrassed or they get weirded out.
But there's that thing that you talked about in your book.
It's the muse, and the muse exists on stage.
The muse exists in front of your keyboard or notepad or whatever.
The muse is some, it's some real shit, whatever it is.
Well, I'm from the school of it being, of trying to keep it, trying to demystify
it, you know.
And because it's, it is as everyday as where do you get an idea from, you know.
When you're in the shower, you're driving on the freeway, where does it come
from?
And the point is, you know, to just get out of the way and let those things
come.
Yeah.
And not forget them when they do come.
Well, what was interesting about the way you wrote about it as well is it was
very easily digestible to people.
Because there's some people that talk about the muse, and I just want to smack
them.
I just want to throw them off cliffs.
Just shut up.
Like, you're killing me with your nonsense talk.
Because there's people that, obviously I'm joking, but there's people that go
so far into the whimsical that it becomes this self-indulgent artistic
expression dance.
You know, it's like this, you know, their whole thing about the muse, she comes
to me in the night.
I leave the window open.
Shall she, shall she graze me with her presence in front of my keyboard?
I await her arrival.
Shut the fuck up.
You know, Jesus Christ.
But what you were being honest about is, I believe, a psychological or a mental
state that you're in when creativity, whatever that is, works at its best.
And by putting it in your no-nonsense terms and putting it in this really, like,
very honest term, like the way you, or honest description, the way you describe
it is, that's what it is.
Like, he nailed it.
And I think that's what John Mayer, that's how you say it?
Mayer?
That's what John Mayer saw.
I'm all of a sudden a John Mayer expert.
Well, you, like him, are dreamy, so you might as well be.
Oh, shucks.
So, you know, whatever it is that creative people, when they read your book,
they go, that's it.
This guy nailed it.
You know, that's very important.
What you did was very awesome.
I haven't even read your fiction.
I've been privileged to watch some of your movies that people have turned into
your fiction, but I'm just a big fan of your non-fiction.
I'm going to have to start reading your fiction now.
Well, I brought a couple here that I think that you'll like these.
One is Gates of Fire, and the other is Tides of War.
That sounds like some manly shit.
Yeah, I read Tides of War.
Tom, Tom, Tom.
What is it about?
Yeah.
What is it about?
Gates of Fire is about the Battle of Thermopylae.
It's not 300.
It's not that movie.
Right.
But it's like a good version of that.
Oh, okay.
And Tides of War is also said in that era.
It's a different story about...
Alcibiades, Socrates.
Oh, wow.
A bunch of really cool, powerful figures from history.
It sounds daunting, Joe, but it's not.
Trust me.
No, it sounds awesome.
I'm a huge fan of history over the last few years, especially.
But I'm a big fan of history podcasts now.
And we had Greg Proops here yesterday that schooled us on Columbus.
Proops is a huge history buff, especially when it comes to Columbus.
And he's a brilliant guy.
So he's rattling off the history of what an asshole Columbus was.
It's really embarrassing that there's still a Columbus Day.
Who knew?
I didn't know.
What a bad guy.
He was really a bad guy.
But I'm a huge, huge fan of that stuff.
It's so fascinating to me that there was only a few hundred years ago that
people were living this outrageously.
Yeah.
And you've got to read some more of his nonfiction, too.
I just finished The Authentic Swing.
Really cool book, especially for writers, I think.
Because it really goes through his process of writing The Legend of Bagger Vance
and talking about that.
Really cool to see you kind of refine some of those same concepts.
And for me, as you were talking about the muse and getting really ethereal, for
me, one thing that you kind of drove home here is that the muse can be that
higher part of ourself that we're just tapping into.
And for me, that's been one of the key things in my life is finding the ways to
tap into that.
And I have a bunch of tricks and tools like crazy psychedelic medicine in the
jungles of South America.
Things like that that help me get there.
But really, the muse can be finding that highest part of yourself, that part of
yourself that's tapped into everything else around you.
And that kind of quantum soup, as you call it, the magic, the source of the
universe itself.
And I thought that was a really kind of cool way to draw that in.
Well, maybe we'll get Joe to read that and they'll still get it.
I'm sure he will.
Yeah, I would love to.
The idea of getting out of your own way, that's a big one.
How'd you f