We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nick Ferrucci a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nick, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
My creativity is dependent on whether or not I’m actively being a student to something or someone. It’s always been important for me to take myself out of my comfort zone and put myself into a situation or opportunity where I know nothing. It’s especially crucial at times when I think I know everything. With age there is a temptation to assume an “expert” or “master” role at something we’ve spent our life doing, but that can be a dead-end. The older I get, the greater the challenge is to fight against that. Being a student, experiencing continual failure, finding humility, and staying grounded through small victories has helped my creativity grow exponentially. I would also say, my artist peers and friends who generously give me wisdom and insight into the art spirit. Holding space for those kinds of conversations and connections are infinitely valuable to me.
And books.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m an actor and musician. I moved to Los Angeles six months ago. Everything still feels new, but I’m playing drums for an incredibly talented singer-songwriter named Zoë Kilgren. We’ve already played some amazing LA venues like The Viper Room, Molly Malones, and The Mint, and we’ll be recording an album soon.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.” – Chekhov Self-knowledge continues to be one of the most important ongoing lessons for me. Constantly examining and reexamining who I am as a person, past traumas, emotional blindspots, failures, and general mental health. It’s a never-ending journey, and it’s slow work, but vital.
Process over product. I believe that the result is just a byproduct of the process. The making-of something is what’s important to me, and I try not to rely on, celebrate, or condemn the outcome too heavily. If the process is challenging, spirited, executed with hard work and care, I’m usually fulfilled.
Learning how to lose. Slowly but surely we spend our life losing… losing hair, mobility, family, friends, jobs, health, money, love, days, etc. Nobody is immune to it, and it seems to me that putting too much energy or importance on the absurdity of “winning” while ignoring the losing inevitably brings more agony into our lives. Understanding loss and finding the beauty and poetry in being lost or alienated has helped me live. Some might read this as grim, but I take it as a deep striving toward an essential truth which, to me, is positive. What else is self-knowledge but that?
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
Here are the books/essays/plays that have helped me the most: The Art Spirit – by Robert Henri
Letters to a Young Poet – by Rainer Maria Rilke
My Life In Art – by Stanislavsky
Bittersweet – by Susan Cain
The Myth of Sisyphus – by Albert Camus
The Artist’s Task – by Mary Oliver
The Seagull – by Anton Chekhov
Contact Info:
- Website: www.NickFerrucci.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickferrucci?original_referer=
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgfNmc8Ne-NO_sLdASqamRg
Image Credits
David Kinder, Justin Koleszar.
