Now Who the Type Built to Last?

My good buddy +Jesse Ziegler just introduced me to an awesome interview with Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, sui generis hip-hop impressario and hurricane x-factor behind the inimitable and unstoppable music act The Roots.  Some of you, unfortunately, will only recognize him as Jimmy Fallon's drummer, the guy with the big afro.

Anyway, he had some great thoughts about creating a sustainable life as an artist, a sort of do-your-own-thing-and-just-keep-doing-it-and-don't-worry-so-much-about-it ethos.

If you’re not going to compete with what’s winning, like Rihanna, Drake, or fun., then maybe you should just do what you know how to do best and wait for the guillotine to drop. Then you release it, the guillotine doesn’t drop, and you’re like, phew, let’s do it again!   

I'd call Questlove a genius, but maybe that's just because he's so embodied this way of working that he's become irresistible.   As Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the patriarch of the Ashtanga Yoga, often said, "Do your practice and all is coming."

Not that you're going to become Jimmy Fallon's drummer, or go platinum, or win a Nobel Prize, but if you can apply the spirit that develops from your practice to the rest of your life, you will reap your reward for your steady application.  Dig one deep hole, as they say in Zen.  Could it mean the same thing as "Do your thing, buooyy!"

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