In this great clip, the best stand-up comedian of all time — IMHO — tells the story of how he transformed from being a straight, reliable, prime time variety show comedian into a counterculture hero who took up the mantle of Lenny Bruce. Here, George Carlin talks about the ideal career he had planned and how that got derailed when he realized that he was a different person than the one he was trying to be. Carlin realized he was naturally an outsider and a rebel and by embracing his own personal anarchy, using mescaline and acid and other “values changing drugs” to expand his understanding of the world, and completely undoing a decade of work, he created a career that made him and icon. It’s an always-timely reminder that an artist’s first and most important work of art is him/herself, and that the best technique for realizing a masterpiece is often to simply get out of one’s own way.

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