The Long Game: Rafael Nadal and Georg Baselitz: Kind of Part 1

Ty Nathan Clark and Nathan Terborg are back! 

A career that ends because your body says “no” forces a kind of honesty most of us try to avoid. That’s why the Rafael Nadal Netflix documentary hit us so hard and why we couldn’t stop talking about it as artists.

We trace Nadal’s mindset back to the studio: the way victory fades fast, the way difficulty becomes the real teacher, and the way motivation can turn dangerous when it turns into obsession. We also dig into the difference between an athlete’s timeline and an artist’s timeline. Tennis can become a race against time, but art can be a lifelong practice, which means we get to adapt, evolve, and keep making work for decades if we stay present and keep training.

Along the way, we pull quotes from Nadal, his dad, and his coaches to talk about pressure, discipline, community, and perspective. We explore why “control the controllables” is a studio survival tool, how self-made deadlines can sharpen your focus, and what it means to compete with yourself without turning art into a zero-sum game. We also ask the uncomfortable question: what does “suffering more” look like for an artist, and how do we bring joy into the drive so we don’t regret the moments we’re living right now?

In the coming Part 2 we will discuss Georg Baselitz and his life long practice, comparing it to the short period of time Nadal was able to complete.

Subscribe, share this with an artist friend, and leave a review if the conversation helps you show up stronger tomorrow. What’s one controllable you’re focusing on this week?

Make sure to follow us on Instagram here:
@justmakeartpodcast   @tynathanclark   @nathanterborg

Watch the Video Episode on Youtube or Spotify,

https://www.youtube.com/@JustMakeArtPodcast

Transcript

Returning To Yourself

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome to today's episode of Just Make Art Podcast. My name is Nathan Treborg, and I'm here with my co-host, Ty Nathan Clark. We're back. Back to You have had some travels. Uh did an episode without you in your absence while you're in London, but uh let's talk about that first. How was London?

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Well, that was a fantastic episode, by the way. So listen to it. I listened to it the morning that it came out last week on the way to the airport, and it was fabulous. What what a great episode. If you haven't listened to it, listeners, go back an episode and definitely listen to the last one. It was it was wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

What was uh I was gonna ask you this off air, but we're here now. What uh what what stuck out to you? What what caught your attention in particular? Because I know you've done you've done a lot of meditation, you've done breath work before, but I'm curious what about Michael's approach to it was interesting to you.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

I think for me, the things that stood out the most was really recognizing you in the midst of everything. Like taking those moments to recognize that either a, I'm not being me in this moment, like I'm not being my true self. That's my kind of, you know, that narc narcissistic or false self-side is starting to kind of creep in and take precedence. And then taking that moment to just pause, do some breath work, whatever it may be, meditation for anybody, and then kind of recenter yourself and then move forward from that point. Like there were some great things he said about you know, he and his wife, and like how he'd handle situations before and how now, you know, he gets to those moments, whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn't really me that's about to come out. I need to take a second, you know. And I think taking that into the studio, because I we have plenty of those moments where just like those other you's are raging inside, and it can take us on a bad path in the moment, or it can take us down a healthy path by pausing and waiting. But it was 100%. Yeah, and just I loved hearing a story. I'm a story person, so hearing his story was fabulous as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

He's a he's a fascinating guy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

So,

London Art World Crash Course

SPEAKER_00 2:01

London, tell us about it. Man, London was incredible. I went with a group of, let's see, there were 13 of us artists through the studio to gallery program with curator Sonia Burrell from Spain, and it was fantastic. We had a group exhibition at D Contemporary, which is an incredible gallery that's about to open their new location right next door to Zwerner in London. So a fabulous, fabulous location in space. And it was awesome. You know, there were a couple artists that I knew, one that I knew really well, Melissa Ellis from uh Marfa, Texas. She's a become a good friend of mine. She's good friends with Eric Breisch. And so we had a blast hanging out together, and we had this three-day boot camp with our opening where they courted us to galleries around London. So we went in and talked with the director of about, I guess there were 14 or 15 galleries, including Zwerner, Sachi Yates, some other big ones, and got to see work, see openings before they opened, and really just hear about the London art world. So it was really a crash course into the London art world, and it was fabulous. And I stuck around after everybody went home. And I went to every museum and gallery I could find, as well as bookstores and record shops and you know, the thing, my treasure hunts and the things I love, and got to see two incredible exhibitions. One we'll talk about a little bit today, and the other one will be coming in another episode, uh, the fabulous Tracy Emmons show Second Life at the Tate. So we've we've been talking quite a bit, Nathan, after my London experience and seeing these two exhibitions that kind of floored me. And then that randomly that led you down another path where you said, Hey Ty, have you seen the Rafa doc yet? The Rafia Nadal documentary series on Netflix. I was like, No, I haven't. I'm a huge Nadal fan. You said, Okay, we've got to watch this, and we need to talk about the correlations between Nadal art getting old, thinking of Georg Basilitz, who into his 90s was still creating and painting before he passed and left the earth. And so I just spent the last few days diving into the Rafa doc, and I cannot wait to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Yeah, it's gonna be fresher for you than it was for me. I watched it almost immediately when it came out. So I finished watching it probably a month ago now. Okay. But yeah, it's it's so behind the scenes on how we go about

Why Nadal Connects To Art

SPEAKER_02 4:28

putting our episodes together, we've always got this, you know, sort of scatter chart of different things that we're excited about that we're coming across, both uh directly related to art and not, right? But yeah, so we were talking about this, and then you had mentioned um, you know, your experience with seeing that exhibition and how and and how some of his best work, some of the work that of his catalog that I appreciate the most, he made you know later in life.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

And I was like, there's a really interesting correlation there because we'll talk a lot about this as we get into it, but with Nadal, it's such a if if you haven't watched it yet, even if you're not a fan of tennis or sports at all, it's just a beautiful portrait of somebody coming to terms with the end of their career, someone who's performed and and achieved the the at the highest levels and really just sort of making peace with like, all right, my body can't do this anymore. And so we were just talking about and thinking about how lucky are we, how fortunate are we to be in a pursuit where we get to keep making art until we fall over. Now, how we make it and what we do, we'll talk about this with with Georg and how you know there was a time where he was no longer able to do the sculptures because his body just didn't allow him to do it, especially in the way that he was, you know, attacking wood, for example. But it's something that I think we shouldn't really take for granted. You know, the way we do it may change, but we will never have to just stop because our body says no. And that's a beautiful, beautiful thing. So I'm not sure exactly how we're gonna tie these things together, but we're just gonna dive in and figure it out. So do you want to start talking about uh the doll first?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah, for me, it was a very emotional uh four episodes. Like I think I was texting you throughout, like, this is extremely emotional for me. And I grew up as a tennis nerd. I grew up watching tennis. My family was a tennis family. My dad and my grandfather played, and my uncles, and we grew up playing as kids. And so we watched a lot of tennis as a household. And some of my literary heroes are major tennis fans too, Anne Lamont, uh, David Foster Wallace, two big tennis people. So if you don't like tennis, I'm giving some clout to some people who really love tennis that will draw you in. And I think, you know, this is something that's hard for some of us. When there's things we don't like, like whatever that may be out there in the world, things or genres of things that we just don't like. If we completely stay away from them, we may be missing something we can learn for our art practice. And I think this is one of those things, this series, that really has some meat and gravitas for you in the studio. So we've kind of compiled a lot of quotes that come from Rafael Nadal, his father, and his coach Tony, and his other coach, Moya, who are kind of the main characters throughout the whole thing together. So let's just go ahead and jump in and start like throwing these things

Difficulty, Drive, And The Next Win

SPEAKER_00 7:20

out. Nadal started very young. Like he was competing at like five years old and on, competing. And so by the time he made the Spain team, he was 16 or 15. I think 15. 15 or 16. And then he won at Roland Guerros at 16 years old. The very first French Open for him, and he won it. And now he has the record for the most wins ever at Roland Garros in the French Open. And uh, I don't know, it's just so knowing he's coming from a young age and doing this all the way up until uh he retired recently.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

All right, so the first quote we're gonna discuss this is uh a few of these are from the documentary itself, and I believe this one is as well. All right, so here it is. First ever episode, Ty, where I am Oh, you got the readers. It's time. Yes, joining the club. There isn't only one path to success. You don't need to suffer the stress I suffered to become what I became, but I followed the path Tony laid out for me, and I believe it was the right path. I am not a winner, I am a competitor. Victory lasts only so long, it's momentary. What has always motivated me is the desire to keep fighting because satisfaction comes from difficulty. I'll take first crack at that. I think if we didn't know who said that, if we didn't know that this was said in the context of tennis, for example, this could easily be from any of the amazing artists that we've already discussed, or will in the future. Word for word, right? I mean, maybe we maybe we reframe it a little bit, you know, so victory, so whatever, success, the last show, you know, blah, blah, blah. Whatever, fill in the blank with whatever the win in in one's art career might be, but it only lasts for so long. And so what's so inspiring about this mindset is that that last part, the satisfaction comes from difficulty. And you see that in the in the doc a lot, where he wins yet another major, he wins yet another, you know, what French Open, Wimbledon, you know, etc. And it's on to the next. And there's something about that. This is this is true of a lot of highly successful people that I think you know, when you watch those biographies, when you hear them speak, part of me gets a little bit sad for them because you're like, man, just can you just enjoy the the moment even for a day? I mean, in fill in the blank, there's there's there's countless elite people that have performed at the top of their field for a long time. And that is, it's not true of all of them, but I'm gonna say most. A lot of them have that mindset of like, all right, check what's next. But the benefit of that is the stamina over time to not ride the highs and presumably also not get stuck in the lows, because to his point, this is the difficulty and this is where the satisfaction comes from.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Well, drive can be a very dangerous thing. And I think the last episode speaks really well to drive can get in the way of actually accomplishing things as well. You know, you look at Nadal and the doc, he had he had an injury at a young age that they were not aware of until later. Because he was competing at such a young age, the bones in his feet had not completely been fully developed when he was competing at a young age as a child. And when we're saying competing, we're not just talking about once in a while. We're talking 365 days a year, practicing, competing, tournaments, these things. So over time, the pressure in his foot broke.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

And he was one of the most aggressive players.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

I mean, he never gave up on a point. Never.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

And playing in clay.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

That exacerbated that condition significantly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Well, in playing in clay, if you ever watch tennis, you have clay courts, you have grass courts, and you have a hard court, right? On clay, you slide and you like feet, five, six, seven feet. And he was the king at it. That's why he knew how to control his body weight on that. But the pounding and the sliding and the and then switching from clay then to a hard court and then to grass, you're learning to play on every single surface. Something that he improved on later in life, not initially, but that stress and that physical toll ended up wreaking havoc on his body over the years. You know, and you think of us as artists, like that drive for him was he played in pain. He ignored signs that things were happening, knee, back, foot, different things over time, because that drive was so insatiable. He couldn't quench that thirst. So he wouldn't take the break and he would keep going. So there's those moments where we need to take that step back and listen to ourselves. As artists, you know, I kept thinking about the satisfaction comes from what's challenging, not just the wins, because the wins are momentary. And I'm person number one to go. I come back from the show, right? And we have that post-artum depression and sets in after the show, and I'm never gonna have, and then you're pushing, pushing, pushing so hard right away to try and get to the next one. Because that feeling you had at that opening, you want it again, you want it again. That's that addiction of your drive addicted to your drive, which I am, but I've realized later in life, like in the last episode, I've got to take those moments to sit back and enjoy them, or I'm ruining things that just happened, and I'm turning positives into a negative in my own head by not taking the time to really enjoy what happened.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

I know you well enough and I know us well enough to know that whatever it was last week when I knew you were back to check in. Hey, yeah, how's the post-artum depression?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And what was my answer? It was been really tough. Yeah, working through it.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Yeah, yeah. All right, so this next one I think is it beautifully ties into what we're talking about in terms of the timeline for an athlete versus an artist.

Race Against Time Vs Making Art

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Rafa said, tennis became a race against time for me, always having that doubt in the back of my mind about how long I could last with this foot. I always thought maybe this is the last year, so there's no time to stop. I have to push the limit until the end.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

There were there were a number of moments in this where my heart just like sank because I feel like I could see on Rafa's face, like he was processing possible different decisions, possible different outcomes, what ifs. It felt like to me, this is my own opinion, observing in each time he was on the camera talking about this things. You know, and he's a very stoic, like individual, off the court, incredibly passionate while playing. Completely different person on the court, fiery, screaming, like you know, like so absolutely passionate, off the court, very stoic. I feel like he's had a lot of very deep moments in his life thinking about this race against time. You know, and I think there's something good, but there's also something very bad in that. The good thing is for him as an athlete, he recognizes time is short. Right? Usually mid-30s, even young 30s for a lot of tennis players. The fact that he and Federer and a few other guys went as long as they did is miraculous. Because the amount the body goes through in those in training and practicing and touring and playing, all those things takes a toll. And I think for him, his mentality overcame his physicality more than anything. And I think that's the thing for artists to take into place is our mentality can overcome anything as an artist. And I think the physicality that an athlete has for the artist, it's the studio, it's the materials, it's the res. Like those are the physical attributes of an artist. Those things that you're trying to use as ways that could be a hiccup. Oh, my studio is not big enough. Oh, I don't have a place that I can do what I really want to do in it, those things. But the drive, the mental drive, can overcome those things and go, I don't care what where I'm working, I'm gonna make what's in my head and what I want to make. I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna go outside and just paint in the yard all day because I don't have room inside to paint a big piece. I don't have the ability to sculpt. Well, I'm gonna go figure out a way to do it. Do you understand what I'm saying with that? I do.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Yeah. I'm stuck on this this idea right now of the timeline. And there's a couple things that this particular quote really makes me think about. I think about the the timeline of of the career, which we've already spoken about, but also just when when you're referencing that look on his face, you know, the post-match interview where maybe he barely squeaks through a first round match against somebody he would normally obliterate, you know, in three sets. And just that look on the face, that that acknowledgement and realization, I don't have it today. And in that space, if you don't have it that day, then you're done. Yeah. You're not winning that tournament for sure. You're moving on. You're moving on and you know, pack it up and and suit up for the next one. But again, we have the benefit of when we make that realization, it's not happening today, which I have all the time. All the time. You have all the time. We have all it's just not happening today. Yeah. But the benefit of the stakes in that timeline on that particular day are much, much lower because we get to just go to bed, wake up the next day, and start over and start fresh. Any day can be our day, and it it just takes one for things to really fall into place and for things to really happen. And that is, again, just something to be incredibly grateful for.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, looking at this next quote, kind of packaged on to what we just read about a race against time for him. He says everything has a beginning and an end. And for artists, there can be a much longer in-between of those statements. Right. That's what I was thinking when it says like, gosh, your beginning and end started at really five or six, is when he started playing, but he really didn't start competing on the world level until 16, and then he retired at 37. Was it 37? And so you think about that time in between.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

He was born in 86, so he would have been 39. 39, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

It was it was late 30s, close to 40s, which I think his goal was to play into his forties. But thinking about that time in between when you're talking about timelines, right? That's 23 years. Right? For that's not a very long time. So for us as artists, there is a beginning and an end.

unknown 18:47

Right?

SPEAKER_00 18:47

The beginning's when you started. The end for the artist is when we die. Because our goal should be keep making art the whole time. You know, and there have been plenty of artists who have gotten noticed in their 70s, 80s, and even a pretty big handful in their 90s, even recently. So that's just something I thought about a lot when I was thinking of him saying those words. Like, oh interesting. Comparing that to like a professional athlete, that time in between for an artist can be a whole lot longer and extended.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

That time consciousness I find to be a very beneficial thing to keep, to keep in my in at the forefront of my thinking. It's very, it's very useful to me because I think one of my mantras, part of my personal code, is I want to live each day as though it's my last and as though I'm gonna live to 100. Keeping one foot firmly planted in both of those camps to me is a very healthy mindset. On the one hand, this could be it. I ask myself that question all the time in the studio. If this was the last thing I made, yeah, would I have put everything I have in this moment into it? And also playing the lawn game and understanding that keeping both of those very diametrically opposed ideas, you know, holding one loose, holding them each one loosely in each hand is is extremely useful because that is a reality. TikTok, we don't know. We don't know how much time we have. You know, I I genuinely believe I'm gonna make I'm gonna make a hundred. I'm I'm going for it. Triple digits, let's go. But I don't know. I might not see sunset. And that's also a very, very real possibility, you know? And so that's a that's very healthy because I think back again, back to the studio practice, it's just a useful mentality to have of hey, what if this was it, am I going for it? Am I doing everything I can and am I really going for it? Am I really going? Am I pouring myself into this thing that I'm making right here today? I have this weird thought. This is kind of funny to admit, but I have this weird thought sometimes of whenever that day comes, whether it's tomorrow or whether it is in whatever 60 years from now would be, whenever it happens, someone is gonna have to come into my studio and decide what to do with the 50 to 80 pieces that I didn't complete, right? I think about that a lot, you know? Uh-huh. And so sometimes that's a that's a very useful thing when I when I do get stuck of like, all right, well, what if I was that person? If it happened tomorrow, you would probably be one of those people that Nikki'd be like, hey, I don't know what to do with that. You know, so if I I think about that almost in the third person of like, all right, if I was someone else coming through this and looking through everything, what what's the one thing I'd be like, this is this is the one that was closest. This is the one that that you know is speaking to me, you know, right now.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah. Well, and I think Rafa's Rafa's dad talked about this in the doc that I think goes really well with what you just said about that those two things that you were just talking about balancing. And he said pressure is not when you compete, pressure is what you have to endure in order to get to compete.

Pressure, Deadlines, And Training

SPEAKER_00 22:04

So he's talking about all the days before the tournament, before Wimbledon, before The US Open, before the Aussie Open, before those things, all the days. The pressure is what you have to endure in those moments to get to that tournament. Same thing for the artist. The pressure is what we have to endure to end up making the works that get in the group show. It's the time we have to endure making that body of work that a curator notices and puts in an exhibition. It's not the actual exhibition. It's everything leading up to it that gets you there.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

This is probably a great example of something that we have talked about before, which is the difference between so for Nadal and anybody in a space like that, he had a lot of external pressure. You know, the dynamic between him and Tony, who's also his uncle and his father, you know, that's that's it's a fascinating part of like what made him who he became for sure. And he says that very clearly, too. Absolutely. So there's that external pressure. There's also the natural external pressure from the next tournament's scheduled. You've got responsibilities to, you know, sponsors to any number of things, especially once he achieved a certain level of success. You know, we don't have a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Now, we do occasionally when there's a show coming up, right? Like I'm preparing for a show coming up in Spain. And so there's there's there is something on the calendar, right? And there's there's benefit to that. And I think I don't know about you, but there is something magical about like, all right, I'm finishing work. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Very magical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

But that can also be manufactured on our part when we're intentional about it. Not to the same extent of like, no, this actually needs to be shipped by this day, this day. Right. But there is a lot of benefit, I believe, in creating imaginary deadlines. Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

And so I just think again, just drawing correlations between this and that, that's a very, a very useful thing that that I and I think you as well find to be really useful.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Well, that's our training.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

That that's, you know, in correlation to an athlete, that's our training. All those little things, all those other things that get us to that point, that's our training. And I loved the part of the story when nobody could beat Nidal on clay. Nobody. But he but he could not beat Federer on grass. He just couldn't do it. Like he would get so close and he just couldn't do it. Well, it's because grass is a completely different game. And so Tony, his uncle, said, Hey, I've been watching a lot of video of Djokovic and Federer. And I noticed on their forehands they're jumping to get a little bit more power into the swing. And so they so here comes another part of training. It's it was always changing and evolving. It had to. And then as Nadal got older, everything continued to evolve and change because his body wasn't doing the things that it used to be able to do.

unknown 25:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

And so it's the same thing for us as artists. We have to be changing, evolving, and looking how to adjust things and change things as we go within our practice, whether that's routine, whether that's certain disciplines, you know, and we have to take note of those things to keep pushing ourselves towards our goal. Here's a quote from Rafa. He says, In your career, there are moments that make you grow as a person and a tennis player, but it's how you respond after that. Those moments really make you grow. I love that quote from me as an artist because I was like, yeah, in my career, there are moments that make me grow as a person and as an artist. But it's how I respond after that moment. That's what really makes me grow. Because I think about when I came back from London, I was on such a high from that trip. I just got to show in London for the first time. I got to meet these people. I was in front of people I never thought I'd be in front of. And then I come home. Now, how do I respond to that? There's momentum there. I, as an artist, have to take my training and everything I've learned and feed into that momentum. Right? It's just it's like Rafa. He plays one tournament and then what? He's on the bus just after finishing and heading to the next one. Right. Right? So it's like if he didn't and he went home, and this is what I think Moya said, one of his coaches said if you just came home and stopped, and then you try to go to the tournament after, you're you go downhill.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

You're not ready. The transition between is it Moya?

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Moya, I think it's Moya.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

The transition between coaches is a is an interesting example of that in terms of identifying, and again, how

Leaving The Known To Grow

SPEAKER_02 27:09

this applies to us as artists, what helped me get here may or may not be what I need to get to there, wherever there is. It may not be what I need to progress.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Yeah, that's where I am right now.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Is what I'm hearing you say, right? Yes, the documentary does a really good job of telling the story, but when Rafa switched coaches from Tony, who had been with him since he was a young boy, also his uncle, very hard driving, very disciplined. I mean, he was very, very hard on him. And Nadal makes it very clear in the documentary that he was, hey, I wanted that, I needed that, I benefited from that for a long time. But he got to a point where he realized, all right, I need to do something different. I need to switch things up. And so that transition to Moya and the very interesting overlap where he had sort of two head coaches and that that didn't ultimately work out. But the point of the story for us and the the application point is for us to continue to ask, all right, what got me here may or may not be what's going to get me where I feel like I am led and called to go. So are we willing to leave what's known, what's comfortable? And this could apply to any number of things from you know the work itself, the material, how we're how we're making what we're making, right? But are we willing to leave the known in the pursuit of whatever might be next? Which is scary. There's there's fear attached to that, right? Like, hey, I what what I've been doing has gotten me this far. There's naturally going to be some resistance around, oof, well, what if I let go of that? And we have to. You know, there's there's kind of no this the example of him having two head coaches simultaneously is a great example. That means it's very difficult to lead to to kind of sort of migrate away. It's possible, but slowly migrate away from one thing, yeah, versus just saying, nope, I'm drawing drawing a hard line in the sand. That is no longer something I'm doing. At least for now, I'm going here.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah. And he was listening to his body. Yeah. And that's what really transitioned into bringing Moya as a part of the team was I cannot do what Tony has been asking me of and still compete at the highest level. My body can't take it anymore. You know, and I think for us as artists too, we have to have those moments of self-reflection in our career and go, okay, where am I right now? What's working, what's not working? Do I need to readjust? What is my work telling me? Is my work telling me I need to do something else or I need to move in a different direction? Has my work been taking me more three-dimensional from two-dimensional? Like having those moments of self-reflection and sitting back and looking at your career and looking at the arch of where is it going? Where is it stalled? And really having those moments is extremely important. Because what happened after Rafa did that? He was able to go on and win some more and address his trophy case in ways that just don't happen at that age with a body that broken too.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

It's funny. So we uh my wife and I, we were in Paris in 2018 and saw all of the promotional signs from the moment we landed and come on, the gull. There it is. And I was like, the French Open's happening right now. That was this wasn't on our itinerary, but while we were there doing the other things that we were planning on doing, I'm like looking at tickets and like trying to find, you know, and one day it just opened up, worked out, so we went, and this was so amazing because because there had been a rain delay the previous day, we got to watch Serena Williams play and then Nadal the very following match, which is incredibly uncommon, you know, especially in the earlier rounds. Like they're they're definitely distributing the A-list, of course, you know, because they want to have you know an even number of spectators for each match. But so that was just an amazing day to be able to see both of those legends play you know back to back. He went on to win that tournament, and that was 2018. And I remember saying to Nikki, I was like, this this we might have seen him win his last Grand Slam. We might have seen him win his last French Open. Nope, he went on to win five more Grand Slams and three more French Opens, 2019, 2020, and uh whatever it was, 2022. I mean, it's it's it's wild that the duration that he was that good. But uh yeah, that was uh I I I highly recommend I mean I'm not a tennis nerd. I I I enjoy you know high-level sports, and I I I try to go to different events just because it's just cool to see. Like I would have loved seeing a World Cup soccer game, even though I don't follow you know soccer super closely. But that was if you get a chance to go to a tennis match, in fact, I remember saying to you when you were in London, like, hey, Wimbledon's going on, any chance you can get over to a match because it's just it's such a spectator friendly sport, even if you're in the cheap seats, like you can absolutely which is very different from most sports. If you're in the cheap, cheap seats, you're better off just watching it on TV. If you can just get in the building for a tennis match, it's amazing. Does not matter.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Yeah. No. Unfortunately, when I was in London, it was already in the semis, and so prices were yeah, not in my uh my wallet. If it was early rounds, I would have been, I would have taken the train in a heartbeat. My uh my artist buddy Jason DeMayo in Nashville, we both show together at Mont Art House in Houston. We bumped into each other in London, and he uh he and his family were going to Wimbledon, so they're they're a big Texas family. He played, he competed for a long time. So I know he's gonna love this episode for sure. Yeah, so let's talk about like those comebacks as you talk about seeing him in 2018 at the French Open. He he had a comment after a comeback after an injury where he lost in the second round of the Australian Open.

Failure Floors And Real Support

SPEAKER_00 32:48

And he says, in the basement of failures, there's always one more floor. And I thought, yeah, you can't always create good art. You can't always create a good show. You can't always create big momentum for you as an artist. Like there's always gonna be, and this is something I learned early on from a basketball coach of mine that said, no matter, and I think I shared this on the podcast before, no matter how bad your life is, there are people that have it way worse. Just keep that into perspective, Ty. He told me that a long time ago when I was going through some rough stuff. And I just thought about that, yeah, that's right. In the basement of failures, there's always another floor down. But it's easy for us to get really locked into I didn't sell any work at that opening. My work just really hasn't been going anywhere in the last five or six months. Like it's trust me, you could be another floor below. Things could be a whole lot worse. So keep that self-introspection that we talk about all the time and that you talk about in the last podcast as well with our with our guests. Like, we need it. And I think we need the community too. Like, I think that's one thing that Rafa had family, his family unit. He lived at home until he was 31, right? 31 or 32 with his mom and his dad. I mean, they had like a three-story, you know, home in Mallorca, so he was probably on one of the floors, but still it was a nice place. Yeah, he had his own spot for sure. But thinking about the community he had around him, with his coaches, his agent, they were with him, everybody on his team has been with him since the beginning. And even Moya, who became a coach later, was always an idol and a hero to Rafa. They played together for Spain. He was the bigger brother that looked after him. He was the guy that was always there to pick up the phone when he needed advice throughout his career. And he said, he's the one guy in the world that never looked at me any other way than as who I was. Nobody never wanted anything from him. Never needed. He was that guy that was always there. And just thinking about having those people in your life as an artist, it's so needed because you're gonna hit the basement at some point and then you're gonna go another floor down. And you may go another floor down. Having those people to rely on, to talk to, to bring you back up a floor is massive. So needed. And obviously, he needed those people, including his wife. They knew each other since they were six. And but he had those people around him so that when those injuries took their toll and his basement hit multiple floor levels down at times for him, he was able to rebound.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

I hope.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

It seems as though he has. Yeah, I was I was doing some some preparation for this. I listened to it's actually a really, a really interesting interview that he did with Andy Roddick on on his uh podcast. Who's a great, who's a great, he's a great interviewer, actually. He's he's a um Roddick is a an interesting personality. But that was a fascinating conversation. It's it's funny because every time he uh Roddick interviews somebody like Nadal or Jokic or it was Roddick that he beat in his very first French Open. Right. Yeah, they talk about that. 16 years old. Yeah. Yeah. But he's very self-deprecating. Yeah. Here's when you kick my ass.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:11

And how you did it. But that that word is so that word perspective. That that's so, so important. And and from a couple of different angles. There's the perspective of, to your point, it's so easy to fall in the trap of what's right in front of our face is the only thing. What's happening right now is all there is. So, to your example of a show not selling or whatever it is, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, in spite of any number of previous successes, that holistically, when viewed from the macro, it's like, you're fine. We have this the human nature is like what's happening right here in front of me is all there is. And so having the ability individually to zoom out and realize, okay, what's real? You know, Michael and I talked about that in the last episode. What's actually real here? Right. How much of what I'm believing and how much of my internal dialogue is a story that I'm inventing, right? And how much of it is actually factual, you know. As artists, we're really good inventors. We're very creative. Yeah. We can we can invent any number of potential outcomes, most of them negative that we can, you know, spiral about. But it's being able to have that ability within ourselves to do that, you know, in the moment when we are in the studio, usually by ourselves. And then to your point about community, continuing to surround ourselves with people who have our best interests at heart, who really know our hearts, who really know who we are, and people that have actually been there, right? So, like to your example of Moya, who had been there, done that, hadn't hadn't had quite the career that Nadal has, no one has, but knew exactly what it was like to have been down that path and to have the perspective of, hey, I've already been here. I've already I'm already, whatever it was, 10, 12 years ahead of you on this path. Let me give you some perspective about where this is going, which is actually a great segue into one of the quotes that you had highlighted. So when Moya says it's one was one of his last training sessions, he tells him, Stop being frustrated. You need to enjoy

Enjoy It Before It’s Gone

SPEAKER_02 38:16

this. Five or six years down the road, when you're not here anymore, you're going to want to look back at that moment and remember it being enjoyable, not being frustrated and difficult.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

That was a great scene because here he is knowing he's probably gonna end the career and retire in the next tournament. And he's in one of the final training sessions before heading to the tournament, and he just nothing's working. He's frustrated, he can't hit, and even you hear the other coaches saying, Yeah, he's favoring that side, he's uh he's not hitting it, it's the it's the foot, you know. They can see from his body because they know him so well what's bothering him. And the frustration on Rafa is just it it looks like he's about to go 10 floors below the basement mentally. Right. And he sits down and you can see it. It's it's dejection, it's this failure is overcoming his body, that uh the mask of failure. And that's when Moya walks over and says that to him. And I thought in that moment, I was like, Yeah, I never really thought about it that way because five or six years down the road, he's gonna sit back and think of those last moments and go, man, I should have had a little more fun. I should have tried to be bring a little more joy into those moments because I never would have seen any of those people again that were around the training center or the coaches aren't as close, right, in that relationship dynamic anymore as they were five years ago. And I think about, man, I want to, I need to make sure that when I'm really having a rough time, I need to enjoy my moments with the artists that I mentor and work with. I need to enjoy the artists I know locally here in Waco, the artists that I see on trips. I need to make sure I'm really investing in those moments because there may be a day when those moments rarely exist anymore. Yeah. Or they change. Right. So it's like find the ways to bring joy into your fierce drive. It's okay to have the fierce drive, but we gotta find ways to bring the joy into it.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

I'm thinking about a moment that I had. I've had a version of this moment many, many times, and and the the the broad description of this moment is being frustrated, feeling overwhelmed or down in the moment, and having that perspective to realize dude, any version of your past self one, five, ten, twenty years ago, if they knew that this was your reality today, would be like, let's go. Yeah, they would be so excited and so thankful to have the problems, to have the challenges that I am experiencing in this moment. So the moment I could I could I could list off dozens of examples, but the moment that's coming to mind for me right now was when I was preparing for my show in Munich with Benjamin Eck, and I had a very ambitious large-scale triptych that I shipped incomplete. I had an idea how I wanted to finish it, but I didn't really know exactly how it was gonna. It definitely was not show ready when I put it in the crate. And I remember, and and Benjamin was was gracious enough to just give me a key to the gallery we put up. He said, however much time you need. I had four days.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

But I remember it was the night before well, no, two nights before the show. So I had a little bit of time, but it was like it was we're coming to the end. I didn't have much more time. And it's whatever it was, three in the morning, which actually worked for me because I was on, you know, different time zone anyway. But I'm just I I fell over, I'm so frustrated, it wasn't working. I'm like, what am I doing? You know, like this is and just in that moment I was like, man, any version of your past self would be like 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

I would have been like, uh, you're complaining right now. Yeah. So perspective. Well, and I think like I said earlier, when I was talking about people in the world having it worse off than you are, I always look and go, gosh, there are millions of artists out there that would jump at this opportunity with far more fervor and joy than I'm having right now, being frustrated. Let's, you know, let's do a little self-ass kicking real quick and uh some breath work and get back into a mode of joy and uh preparation. I think there's a quote here from Uncle Tony, I think is great, and it says, What you can't fail at is concentration and motivation. And he's telling Rafa that in a moment after he lost a tournament or something he wanted when he said, Listen, what you can't fail at is concentration and motivation, your focus, your drive. You can't fail at that. If you're in the studio and the time that you have and you are focused and you're concentrated and you're motivated, you can't fail at that. And honestly, failure in art is a is a very different thing as well than on the athletic court. There's two different things. We're not going to get into that, but just think that like when you're in the studio and you're motivated, this is what I want to do with my work. Even if that piece turns out so horribly shitty, you didn't fail. It's still taking you somewhere, right? And it's the same with Roth on the court in training. He's focused, he's concentrated, he's motivated. Even if he lost that tournament, that focus and motivation is still taking him somewhere else. And he's improving every day that he's there.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

There's a saying from my previous professional life that I have repeated to myself and others thousands of times that correlates

Control The Controllables

SPEAKER_02 44:00

to this directly, and it's control the controllables. So there are a lot of things that cannot be controlled. Any version of outcome, whether it be how One performs in a tournament, or whether it be how a piece, a show, et cetera, what we've already discussed, how those things turn out. But if we can control the controllables, and that begins by being able to identify, all right, what can I actually control or influence in this moment? Yeah. So when we're in the studio, it's not this is going to be the best thing I've made ever. Right. It's not everyone's going to love this. And it's, you know, but it is I can continue to put one foot in front of the other, I can make another mark, I can do another step, or when all else fails, I can organize my space, I can touch what I'm working on and just show up. Whether I feel like it's working or not, that's a controllable in terms of the actual physical activity, in terms of the mindset, the concentration, the motivation, those are also things that we have the ability to. I'm not going to go so far as to say that I can control my concentration, but I can influence it.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

That's influenceable. There are things that I can do that we can do that can help us to regain concentration, focus, motivation, but they require proactive work on our part. We can't just wait to get in a better mood. We can't just wait to get more motivated or in God forbid we use the word inspired, but we can do things like remind ourselves of why we're doing this in the first place. We can do things, well, we've speaking about it before, meditation, breath work. We can take a walk, you know. We can call somebody in our network and in our coven, as Jerry puts it, and just relate or do a quick little emotional dump. Hey, thanks for listening. That's all I needed. Off I go. But those are the types of things that we can control. But again, it begins with realizing I'm not where I want or need to be in this moment internally.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:09

Yeah. And that just comes back to awareness. Yeah. Am I aware of how I'm actually showing up? Am I aware of what is motivating me right now? Because we're always made up motivated by something. We talk about motivation as though it's only a positive. I don't know. There are there's a high percentage of time that I'll just speak in the first person, I spend in some version of fear-based motivation, which is effective when you're, you know, running away from a grizzly bear who's chasing you. But in most real-world situations, it's not fight or flight. It's not actually life or death. And so having that perspective to step back and say, okay, I need to reset here.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

I need to control what I can control so that I can show up for my best self, whatever that looks like today.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Yep. Well, there's one of my favorite moments in the entire doc is the 2008 Wimbledon final against Feder.

Suffering, Stamina, And Competing With Yourself

SPEAKER_00 47:00

I remember I've watched every minute of that match with my with my mom and my dad. I think it was a seven-hour, six-hour match because there was a rain delay. And I I texted you while I was watching. I was like, I I've probably seen every single one of Rafa's finals since he'd Andy Roddick because I watched the big tournaments all the time. And this one, this is probably one of the most memorable. Because there's some Djokovic Nadal finals that are definitely memorable, but this might be the most memorable match I've ever watched. And it's it's in the dark now because there was a rain delay. They call it the Rainmaker match. And they're at match point, it went to a fifth set. It's tied up 2-2. So it went to a fifth set. And Feder had one. He was one up. And then two straight matches after, Rafa's up two. Then there's the rain delay. Okay, this is what takes it to the rain. When they come back, Rafa says, I might beat me, but I'm not gonna lose. Or I may beat me, but I'm not gonna lose. I'm not gonna lose. Mentally, I'll be 100% in every point. I cannot allow myself a single moment of weakness. I was willing to suffer more than him. Because when you watch the end of that match, they can barely move. Like they are just pulling teeth going at it. And I kept thinking, like, am I willing to suffer more than others? Am I willing to do that to get where I want to go?

SPEAKER_02 48:34

I want for you, I think I know what you mean, but I want for you to define suffering in this context.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

Yeah, so Rafa is saying, I'm willing to suffer more than him. I'm willing to fight my legs hurting more than he is. So he's willing himself, the fiber in his soul, to push just a little bit more, no matter how bad his calves are cramping or his shoulder hurts, right? And I'm thinking, what is suffering for an artist? What does that look like in that? Because I'm not in competition. I'm not trying to outpaint every painter or out sculpt every sculptor. Now I want to make work that's better, but I'm not going, look at these three people. Okay, I gotta paint a better painting than them. I just don't think that way. But am I willing to spend a little more time in the studio than everybody else? Am I willing to put myself out there more than everybody else? Am I willing to have a few less friends in my life because I want to spend more time in the studio? What does that suffering look like, right? To me. And am I willing to go the extra mile, even if I don't get the show? Because he's saying I'm gonna be the one that beats me.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

I don't know. I've been thinking about it ever since.

SPEAKER_02 49:50

There's like four different directions I wanna I wanna I want to take from I want to take from here. Let's start with competition.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

I don't know if we have discussed this before, but it doesn't matter. You are a competitive person.

SPEAKER_00 50:05

Absolutely, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

So talk more about how you apply that competitive energy to your art practice.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Well, I think for me, because of playing sports for so long and at an extremely high level, that discipline is one thing that came from that that I know I have to have discipline in order to improve. That's physical and mental, both. Right? If I want to if I want to continue to grow mentally, then I need to study, study, study, study art and art things regularly. And that will grow my mental capacity in a physical sense. But when it comes to competition, like art is very different than being on a tennis court one verse one, one v one, and trying to beat the other person and outthink them. And that's what I love about tennis. Tennis isn't just a physical game. The top there have been plenty of physical tennis players on the tour who are serving the ball at 180 miles an hour, but they cannot win. Right. Because it's not about strength, it's just as much about mental capacity as it is physical, which is why I'm such a massive John McEnroe fan. He should have been a mathematician in real life. Like honestly, the way that he saw tennis court is he divided it up into percentages. And as he's playing, he is memorizing where that other player is going, moving, hitting, and then he's doing the math in his head on where he has the best percentage chance to get a winning shot. Like it's insane.

SPEAKER_01 51:42

So but I'm not trying to do that in art.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

Competition for me with art, like I just I don't feel it at all myself like I would when I was playing sports. I'm competing against me is who I'm competing against more than anything. I'm not competing against Nathan, not competing against Moxa or Allison or V or Eric. Like I never hope for those I'm going up against to win when I'm playing a sport. Sure. Right. Right? In art, we're all on the same field at different levels. But I'm not I'm not hoping for me to be better than Nathan, to beat you at everything you're doing. Like, I want you to be better than me. I want V to have more than me. I want you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 52:28

That is a very important distinction between athletics and art, in that sports are very much a zero-sum game. There's going to be a winner and a loser. And I'd prefer to be the former versus the latter. But that that is something, you know, I thought about that a lot after witnessing the French Open scene, uh, you know, Serena and and the doll both back to back. I reflect on this a lot, journaled about it. And I think there's a difference between this is and how this applies to art, there's a big difference between having the mindset of must be nice, where that's envy, right? That's that's oh, must be nice to have fill in the blank. You know, we see whatever it is, somebody getting opportunities, somebody selling at a high level, somebody with an amazing studio space, whatever it is that we might look at and say, oh, sure, sure wish I had that. And an alternative perspective, which I would advocate for, which is that's for me.

SPEAKER_01 53:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 53:25

Someone else has done that. Someone else is doing that. Why not me? Now, there is occasionally an element of intentional self-delusion that may be required to wrap your mind around that, but it's useful. There's utility in that.

SPEAKER_00 53:43

You better have it.

SPEAKER_02 53:45

Why not me?

SPEAKER_01 53:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:46

You know, so on the competitive level, I was interested how you're going to answer that. We've talked about this before, you know, just in life too. But I think about, you know, a six or seven hour match, and I think about stamina, the stamina, not just the physical stamina to your point, but also the mental and emotional stamina to be able to continue to be able to focus and give your best to every single point. So that is one thing that I really I think about a lot. You know, when you when you talk about competing with yourself, that's something that I spend a lot of time and energy really focusing on is did I did I give my my best today? The the old you know, person in the mirror. Can you look yourself in the mirror and say, I I did my best today? Yeah. Because that that stamina is required. Back to my whole little whatever mindset of, hey, what if this was the last thing I made? What what if this was the last day I had to make art? Do I have the stamina on days when it's possible to be in the studio for 16 hours?

SPEAKER_01 54:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

The answer is yes. Yep. I do. I do have that. And I've developed that and I continue to try and push myself more and more, not at the peril of sleeping and spending time with my family. But apart from taking care of my physical health and spending time with the people that I love, everything else is on the chopping block. Everything else. My brother is moving back from LA. He's coming back to Minneapolis and he's gonna stay with us. And so he is somebody who is extremely talented and has a lot of extraordinary creative gifts and ambitions. And he is also very much inclined to pick up new hobbies at the drop of a hat. So his latest one, I think I may have shared this on a previous episode, he got obsessed with bowling for a while. He bought a bow living in downtown LA where there's no place to shoot a bow. So his latest obsession is uh is cycling. He's getting ready for a triathlon. And so he's got not one, but I think two, maybe even three bikes. He's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna get you into cycling. And I said, No, you're not. No, you're not. I I mean, I I I'll go for a ride with you, but I'm not gonna go. And I and I know that because I can it it's easy now running things, running everything through the filter of does this serve

Protecting Priorities And Part Two Tease

SPEAKER_02 56:09

my highest purpose? Yep. And if the answer is no, I gotta be very because I am very much inclined. It's really easy for me to get obsessed with pretty much anything. You put any, you lock me in the room with any hobby or anything, yeah, I'll I'll go crazy with it, you know. So it's being willing to remove things from our life or not add things to our life that don't serve our highest priorities.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

Well, and that goes back to our last episode. That's knowing yourself well and deeply, and spending the time asking yourself those those questions and doing those deep dives into you because man, I love to read. I could read more than I did anything. I could just sit outside on my couch and I could read all day long and never go into the studio. So for me, that can become a crutch. You know, I have to be able to kind of hold myself back, even though that's something that is healthy for me. But I have to measure, like you said, right? I can't go start a new thing that I know I'm really gonna enjoy because I know who I am, because then there goes hours.

SPEAKER_02 57:10

Hours to sit down. That's a really interesting point. It's not, it's not, these aren't things that are inherently bad.

SPEAKER_00 57:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:17

It's not like, oh, I gotta quit smoking because I want to make it to 100. No, no, no. These are things that are that are that are benign or generally positive things.

SPEAKER_00 57:25

No one's gonna say, Oh, I gotta read so much. How does it fit into your art motivation, your drive, where you're wanting to go? We have to be able to measure those things. Otherwise, it's five years down the road and you might have missed something. You know, and I love after that Wimbledon tournament, Uncle Tony said, great champions endure one more ball. So when you're talking about stamina, right, he's saying that great champion has trained so much, they focus so much, they're ready to play that extra point more than the other guy or the other woman. And so as an artist, like what are we willing to endure in that stamina, right? To keep things going another day, another day, another day. Because for us, it's it is it's another day, it's about another day making.

SPEAKER_02 58:18

This beautiful image just came to mind. We talk all the time about the conversation that we have with the work, but since we're talking about tennis today, I'm thinking about that volley that we have with the work.

SPEAKER_00 58:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:32

And how often I figuratively smash one down the line. I'm like, that's a point.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Yeah, you're like a 30, you're like a 20-minute Djokovic Nadal like match point. It's a just right.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

I know I think no, I I think it's a walk-off. I think it's a walk-off. Okay. And then I and then I step back, I'm like, uh, the work returned that. Send it back and said, nope, need more from you.

SPEAKER_00 58:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

And we don't know, just much like a tennis match. We don't know, is this gonna be a you know, hour 45 in and out, or is this gonna be an absolute marathon? And we have to be willing to continue to keep keep hitting it back over the net as long as it's required to do what the work is asking of us. All right, Ty. So I was right. I'm gonna claim that um we we aren't gonna get through both Nadal and Bosalitz in the same episode. So this will conclude today's episode. And join us for our very next episode for kind of part two of this, yeah, where we yeah, you know, tie connect the dots, tie everything together, and uh, it will absolutely be about New York Bosalit. So thanks for joining us today, and make sure and tune in next time.