When Two Worlds Refuse to Separate: Ali Boustan and the Discipline of Loving the Process

Some episodes of Cozy Corner unfold as interviews. Some become lessons. And then there are rare moments that feel more like long walks through a person’s inner landscape. The conversation with Ali Boustan belongs to that last category. It is not driven by achievements, titles, or turning points. It moves instead through patience, doubt, repetition, and care. Through the quiet decisions that shape a life over decades.

Ali Boustan is known as a graphic designer, a setar and shurangiz player, and one of the most influential multidisciplinary figures in contemporary Iranian music and visual culture. Yet none of these labels fully explain what happens in this conversation. What emerges is not a portrait of a successful artist, but an anatomy of a way of living. A life spent between two worlds without forcing them to compete. A life built on discipline, curiosity, and a stubborn refusal to let fear dictate creative choices.

This corner is ultimately about something many people wrestle with but rarely articulate clearly. How can someone follow a profession seriously while remaining loyal to an artistic love. How can passion survive without becoming either a hobby or a burden. And what happens when structure and freedom stop fighting each other.

Growing Up Inside Sound and Form

Boustan’s relationship with music did not begin as a conscious choice. It was present before intention. He grew up in a family where literature and Iranian music were part of everyday life, not distant cultural objects. Through his father’s circle, he encountered major figures of Iranian music early on. This proximity did not create pressure to perform. It created familiarity. Music was not mythologized. It was lived.

At the same time, another curiosity began to form through a very different doorway. As a teenager, Boustan encountered graphic design through physical tools like Letraset and manual typography. The act of arranging letters by hand, of feeling form through repetition and friction, sparked something immediate. Design entered his life not as theory but as practice. Ink, paper, deadlines, printing presses. The material world mattered.

What is striking in hindsight is that these two worlds never arrived as opposites. Music did not claim emotional ownership while design claimed rational utility. Both were fields of attention. Both required patience. Both demanded humility before craft.

When the time came to choose an academic path, Boustan chose graphic design. Not because music mattered less, but because formal music education simply did not exist in the university system at that moment. That decision, however, was not made lightly. He took it to Hossein Alizadeh, his mentor and one of the most important figures in contemporary Iranian music.

Alizadeh’s response became a foundational moment. He encouraged Boustan to pursue design, believing that entering another artistic domain could expand perception rather than dilute identity. That single act of encouragement removed a deep fear. It legitimized multiplicity. It allowed Boustan to move forward without feeling he was betraying music by choosing another path.

Fear Reduction as Mentorship

Throughout the conversation, Boustan returns to the role of mentors. Not as instructors who prescribe methods, but as figures who reduce fear. Hossein Alizadeh, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohammad Ebrahim Jafari, Morteza Momayez. What connects them in Boustan’s memory is not their authority, but their generosity.

They did not demand loyalty to a single discipline. They did not insist on purity. Instead, they offered trust. They allowed experimentation. They treated curiosity as a responsibility rather than a distraction.

Boustan speaks openly about how this environment gave him the courage to cross boundaries. To experiment with sound, form, photography, and production without constantly asking for permission. Cross disciplinary practice, in his experience, did not weaken artistic identity. It reduced fear. And reduced fear, in turn, increased creative risk taking.

Music as Love, Design as Work

One of the most honest moments in the conversation arrives when Boustan names a distinction that many creatives struggle to admit. Music is his love. Graphic design is his profession. This does not mean one is sacred and the other mechanical. It means they play different roles in sustaining a life.

Design taught Boustan how to work. How to show up. How to respect time. How to manage teams, budgets, and responsibility. Over decades, he worked not only on cultural projects like album covers and posters, but also on large scale commercial campaigns. These experiences trained him in execution. In finishing things. In understanding that ideas without structure collapse under their own weight.

Music, on the other hand, remained a space of devotion. Boustan studied setar seriously, learning from masters such as Mohammad Reza Lotfi, Parviz Meshkatian, and Ahmad Ebadi, before becoming a permanent member of Hossein Alizadeh’s Hamavayan Ensemble. He performed in major national and international concerts and participated in landmark projects like Endless Vision (Watching the White Waters), which later received a Grammy nomination.

Yet music was never forced to carry the burden of livelihood. This separation, rather than diminishing its importance, protected it. Love remained love.

Discipline Does Not Kill Creativity

The idea that discipline destroys creativity is one of the strongest myths Boustan quietly dismantles. Nowhere is this clearer than in his role in one of the most ambitious musical projects of recent decades. Hossein Alizadeh’s thirteen volume reinterpretation of the Iranian radif system.

Boustan served as executive producer, project manager, and performer on this multi year undertaking. Thirteen volumes. Seventeen CDs. Over three hundred tracks. Dozens of musicians. Live ensemble recording. A production structure that demanded absolute precision without sacrificing musical soul.

What made this possible was not speed, but discipline. Sessions were planned carefully. Rehearsals were respected. Time was treated as a shared resource. Creativity was not rushed, but it was protected by structure.

Boustan insists on a crucial distinction. Inspiration cannot be scheduled. Execution must be. Discipline does not interfere with creation. It allows creation to survive long enough to become real.

Remaining an Amateur

One of the most quietly radical ideas Boustan offers is his insistence on remaining an amateur. Not in the sense of lacking skill, but in the original meaning of the word. One who loves.

Professionalism, when disconnected from curiosity, becomes rigidity. Boustan deliberately resists the idea of arriving. He does not seek to finalize his identity. He allows himself to experiment, to play, to enter unfamiliar territory without needing to justify it as a career move.

This attitude shaped many of his collaborations beyond Iranian music. His work with Christophe Rezai on projects like Alba emerged not from strategic planning, but from moments of shared listening. A medieval melody recognized inside an Iranian mode. A spontaneous experiment that later became a recorded work.

These moments mattered because Boustan was not afraid to look foolish. Fear had already been reduced.

Execution as Care

As the conversation deepens, another theme emerges. Execution as an ethical act. Boustan speaks about project management not as bureaucracy, but as care. Carrying logistical weight so others can create freely. Reducing noise so attention can focus where it matters.

In the radif project, this meant shielding Hossein Alizadeh from unnecessary administrative pressure. It meant creating space. Sometimes leadership looked like stepping forward. Sometimes it meant stepping back.

This approach reveals a different definition of contribution. Not visibility. Not authorship. But responsibility.

Love as the Central Axis

Near the end of the conversation, Boustan names what holds everything together. Love. Not sentimentality. Not romanticism. Love as sustained attention.

Love is what allows musicians to wait patiently during power outages. What keeps teams engaged through years of work without immediate reward. What turns repetition into meditation. What makes discipline feel meaningful rather than oppressive.

Without this love, Boustan believes, no amount of talent or planning produces work that endures. Audiences sense it. They feel when something was carried by companionship rather than obligation.

Conclusion

This Cozy Corner conversation with Ali Boustan is not a guide to success. It does not offer shortcuts. It does not promise balance as a static state.

Instead, it offers permission. Permission to live between waves. Permission to refuse false binaries between passion and profession. Permission to build slowly. Permission to stay curious. Permission to love the process more than the outcome.

Boustan’s life reminds us that creativity is not a moment of brilliance. It is a way of moving through time. A discipline of care. A refusal to let fear make decisions on our behalf.

In a world obsessed with speed and specialization, this conversation insists on another rhythm. One that listens. One that waits. One that endures.