8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Category: Part 5 – Embracing Nowhere

The inspired self and creativity as a path to connection and purpose in a complex universe. The soul of creativity.

Chapter List

  • Biological Imperative

    Having a kid transition into adulthood in late 2025 and through 2026, this last year as I write this, has put a lot of perspective on my own life—as both a parent and as a creative soul endlessly seeking personal meaning through art and words.

    Kids are, often by a kind of cynical definition, a kind of legacy that demands a legacy.

    We parent for a million different reasons, but not the least among those reasons is the biological imperative to pass along a bit of ourselves.  That’s not selfishness or ego any more than it is the raw organic chemistry of life.

    And the physical passing of genes is the (relatively) easy part: simply having a kid, as difficult as that is for many, is step one in a lifelong process of a notion wrapped up in a word that often fails to do the effort justice: parenting.

    I reflect on these things and notice more and more each day that the Kid, for all her uniqueness, has embraced a kind of creative legacy from me: she dabbles in art, she writes about film, she plays with music, and she looks at the world through the same quirky lens that I tend to find distorts my perceptions of everything I see and do.

    This is modelling, sure. This is biased opportunities, of course. This is parenting, always.  But eighteen years of effort has also led to a kind of creative legacy of self that I have, probably as a side effect of just being open and transparent, have instilled on the next generation.

  • Avant Garde

    For a strange week in April my algorithm feed was full of videos, commentary and analysis about a curious French-Canadian music duo called Angine de poitrine [1] who, it seems, have washed ashore upon the cultural zeitgeist.

    Perhaps it is merely that my endless wanderings through the musicians internet have biased my perception and have only just momentarily shone a light on this thing and I am, as usual, a few steps behind in noticing. And certainly, I am in no good position to comment with meaning on the music itself, a microtonal eruption that has been described by others as noise, dissonance, or unlistenable. 

    I quite like it—and I bought an album and added it to my everyday playlist. I’m listening to it as I write this, in fact…

    Which is all for me to say that what I may be more qualified to comment on is the creative leap that such experimental projects embody. Angine de poitrine is the doing of something that I have merely being writing and thinking about: bending the rules, creating something unique, and experimenting outside of the traditional definition of marketable, sellable, commercial art.

    Succeeding, to boot.

    And while I’ll caveat that some of that aforementioned commentary I’ve seen on the duo has (unfairly, I think) framed the effort as merely a weird marketing gimmick, I would argue that such accusations miss the point entirely: that there is a tension in the heart of every true artist, trying to stand out and do something novel while simultaneously fitting in just enough to survive in a world that values standardization and commercial viability.

    Occasionally someone figures out that balance and it is a glorious cacophony.

  • Yes And

    As I write these words I am contemplating an opportunity.

    I don’t write about it much here but the fact is that I don’t work full time. We saved. We picked hobbies and interests that are relatively inexpensive. We cook at home. We budget. And as a result we can live on a single income, our savings and a pretty modest pay that comes from my sporadic and occasional work. It’s a dash of privilege with a dose of planning. And I’m not apologizing.

    But it does mean that sometimes that occasional work comes in the form of something strange and interesting that throws a wrench into the simple routine. Like: I got a call asking if I would like to go travel for a week to do some contract work.

    Of course I would, I replied. 

    And so as I write this it seems pretty likely I’ll be packing my bags and going on a long trip to do some real work, shake some hands, and bumble around a place I’ve never been before. It would certainly be a change from my usual drudge of local cafes and my home office. 

    One of the rules I gave myself when I scaled back from full time work was to always keep myself in a state of yes. That is, if an opportunity (such as this one) presented itself, to start from the word yes and allow it to take me where it would.  

    Because here’s the the thing: not only would it be easy as a guy spending his days in pursuit of a creative second career to say no a lot, to hunker down and shut out the world while he pounded away on his keyboard as I pushed forward on a project, but it could almost certainly become the default.

    And yet, there is something inspiring, motivating, and genuinely creatively reinvigorating about a change of scenery and meeting new people. 

  • Sacred Flame

    People have often asked me what keeps me motivated to create?

    It never occurred to me until much later in my life that not everyone is driven by this insatiable curiosity to try to make stuff. I long took it for granted that the majority of the world just simply woke up each morning and considered their options to participate. That they looked at the myriad of activities that humanity has invented and honed over the millennia and thought what can I do with that…

    Really. 

    So, it was a bit of an existential shock to me, years ago now, to realize that some people—maybe even most people—are indifferent to such curiosity and likely could not care less if they were left alone and asked to go no further than enjoy the creative outputs of others.

    To that end I sometimes feel as if I have something of a token of humanity which I need to look after. Being one of those who not only can muster the energy and occasional skill to make interesting things, but being among the few who feel the urge to do so—well, that’s not a common thing, apparently.  There are millions of us, sure, but proportionally—it seems more rare than anyone wants to admit. 

    Maybe we can think of it as a kind of sacred flame. And if nothing else motivates me when I wake up in the morning, thinking that creating interesting things might just be my small but important role to play in the grand scheme of the universe is simultaneously a humbling and terrifying notion that brings me right back to my keyboard.

  • Last Make

    What if today was your last day to make something that would define you after you were gone?

    What would you make?

    Would you aim for perfection of quality by making something well that you knew you could make well? Or would you push yourself, not caring about potential imperfection, and want it to express your individuality in it’s flaws by showing people that you were striving to be better? It will say something about you whatever you choose, you know.

    Would you make something of value to others? Or would you make something of value to yourself? Would you stop caring about the marketability of that thing, or if it would get lots of clicks or if it had potential to bring in high sales? No really, I’m asking? I think some people would want their last craft to have a literal payoff even if they weren’t there to enjoy it, while others might feel that was selling out? 

    Would you make something that in the making also made you happy? Or would you seek out a final product that better defined you externally to others regardless of the enjoyment your would get from making it? Or is that the same thing? I think about it myself and I’m not sure if the things I do well for others are what make me the happiest.

    What would you make?