8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Category: Part 1 – Setting out to Nowhere

The creative self from the one you left behind to the one you are looking to become. The basics of creativity.

Chapter List

  • Voice Work

    I broke and I bought a new action camera.

    I’ll spare too many details, but the short version is that I’ve been meaning to upgrade for a while and we have three travel adventures planned over the next year, not to mention a long list of local walking and running adventures, and I’ve been craving having a (reliable) camera back in my hands for action videography. Long story short, I splurged and… well… new toy.

    One of the upgrades from my decade-old model tho piqued my curiosity: the new one has a front facing screen intended, as I am given to understand, for video blogging selfie-style recording.

    Ugh—was my first thought. I’m not very good at that.

    Hmmm—was my second thought: maybe that’s actuall a skill I should try to learn.

    New camera, new approach, new skill. And oh look! I have this place where I write and post about just that sort of thing: honing creative skills.

    Not everyone has a voice for video. Not everyone has a confidence for turning the camera on oneself and hitting record. And heck, I would be the poster model for those two hesitations and probably a long list of others I haven’t even considered.

    Maybe it’s time to remedy that.

    Maybe. 

    Or maybe I’ll just take some good running videos.

  • Insta Warrior 

    I just opened up the app and counted: as of this writing I have eight active accounts on Instagram.

    Each of them is unique.

    Each of them is maintained.

    None of them are popular.

    Look, I am not some kind of dabbling influencer wannabe, just so we’re clear on that point.

    I just see it as a tool for expression. It is a blank wall upon which to scrawl the products of my art, as tempting as a passing train car might be to a graffiti artist with a backpack full of fresh spray paint.

    It is there, so I use it.

    My most recent work on the platform has been me posting monochromatic photos: I only upload black and white pics that I’ve captured, from textures and abstract shadowy artsy-fartsy illusions to simple monotone landscape shots from my wandering adventures.

    It is not meant to build a following or create a brand or generate an audience or—forbid—become a revenue source. It is nothing more than a creative outlet that caught my inspiration one rainy spring day and has grown the barest semblance of metaphorical legs that has kept it going for a couple months (so far).

    Art is expression.

    Art is filling blank spaces with humanity.

    Art is using the tools that are right in front of you to spread a bit of joy, drive a taste of curiosity, and cast a feeling out into the universe without knowing what the result might be—if any at all.

    It is the silent warrior.

  • Tools Troubles

    Fellow Canadian Marshall McLuhan told the world that the medium is the message[1], and I have long taken that to mean that it is as valuable to study the tools and techniques as the final product if we are ever to understand the whole.

    The artist can easily get lost in the tools, though. Photographers can bang on about their camera specs. Writers can wax poetic about their favourite keyboards. And musicians these days it seems are just as apt to post content about the subtle tonality differences between brands of violin strings as share their music.

    Yet, creativity is and always will be an intimacy with the tools and techniques. The art and the mechanisms that enable it are inseparable and interwoven as two things can be. 

    Maybe that’s why we get hung up on the medium and the message and often confuse the effort to concentrate on them both with the attention they deserve. 

    Or maybe I just like writing about my toys and I am going to devote some space on this blog to share my thoughts about keyboards, cameras and violin strings. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

    Under the category of Tools & Troubles, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Oughta Should

    When did we force play to become learning?

    And I’m not just talking about the kids. I mean, all of us? Why can’t we just play?

    Oh, I admit, this is probably a personal observational bias, but it seems more and more from what I read, and talking to other people—parents, friends and creative contemporaries—over the years the idea that anyone can just play for the raw enjoyment of something has turned into a pariah. 

    All too often I fall into the trap myself. 

    I feel like I can’t just sketch, but rather I need to be making something for my online portfolio.

    I shouldn’t be playing music, instead I ought to be practicing repertoire or logging my progress.

    Even just sitting here at a keyboard writing I am thinking not about the joy and fun that I get out of typing words, but rather my mind is always drifting over to content and audience and something bigger that I should be seeking from this act.

    Of course, these invasive thoughts are at my own control, and maybe—lucky you—you are able to ignore them and just enjoy doing things for the sake of it. But then if you are the type of person to be reading a blog post that started with such a question maybe you too are like me and feel guilt from directionless creativity.

    So I ask again: When did we force play to become learning? And how can we snap out of it?

  • Eyes Ears

    If you were to ask me about the most basic requirements of creativity, I may suggest that observation and awareness of the universe are about as fundamental of a skill as there is.

    We are in the middle of a weird space and time in the timeline of creative pursuit. At no other point in history has the average person been able to have access to so much inspiration, feedback and educational content. Simultaneously, society has fostered these massive generative content engines we often call artificial intelligence and are using them to churn all of that into an output that ranges from the curious and interesting to the negligent and slop-laden. 

    I doubt that there has been a time in history that equals this for the opening of eyes and ears to the complexity of what it means to create.

    And yet I also think that there is very little new—and where new does squeak through the cracks of Xeroxed regurgitation of commercialization and generative language models and social media influence it squeaks through when a person notices something interesting the piques the ineffable nuances of our brains. We observe and think and churn and ponder. And what comes out the other end may be interesting and beautiful. It may be creative. 

    At the heart of all those other things is knowing that what the ghost in the machine can accomplish is now no longer distinguishable from human skill, but that seeing and listening and feeling are a core skill yet uncaptured by an algorithm. 

    Under the category of Eyes & Ears, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.