8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

Tag: creative explorations

Chapter List

  • Unfrozen Fools

    It is the first day of April and, no fooling, the start of the fourth month of this blog.

    When I started this blog I came up with clever names for each of the months and I called this one Artsy April, because as the snow around my home finally melts and the world thaws I have each year had this notion to get back outside and explore the world—to take pictures, to sketch the sights, and to make little videos of my adventures therein.

    As often crazy and unstable as the world might seem these days, there is creative inspiration to be found everywhere—and hope to be had from discovering it.

    For a month that starts with acts of jokes and trickery, deceit and mockery, no matter how well intentioned, it might be interesting to consider what the other twenty nine days of April should look like. To me a month inspired by the reawakening of the world and emergence of life from the soil and branches, and the wonder that offers to those of us who have just survived a long dark winter can—and should—try to splash some colour and joy back into our shared spaces.

  • Clear Minded

    I spent a whole month last year trying to meditate. 

    I read about it.[1] I downloaded apps. I set up a space in my home and (since it was summer) I found quite places in the park to sit and find focus.

    My conclusion was not that meditation didn’t work, but rather that I had already been meditating: I had been finding mindfulness on the running trail during solo runs. So, I deleted the apps and stashed my pillow and put my sneakers back on.

    The other takeaway lesson was that meditative mindfulness is critical for my creative process. Long runs—which works for me, by the way, and everyone needs to find their own effective source of clarity—emptied my brain and allowed the ideas to come out and play.

    I am not a meditation expert, but I have done both a lot of meditative running and creative ideation. Clearing the mind—whether by sitting quietly listening to chants or going for a long drive or sinking into the warmth of the sun on a beach or putting on a pair of trail shoes and snaking through the woods at speed—seems to be a critical piece of many people’s creative process. Find yours.

  • Inside Outsider

    The first time I ever thought about “outsider” influence on an art was watching that one episode The Simpsons[1]. Homer tries to build a backyard barbecue pit and turns into such a mess that some passing art gallery owner mistakes it for beauty and elevates him into the art scene. It is a parody of the notion of the idea that sometimes creation is accidental… and anyone can do it.

    It’s a farce of course. Comedy.

    But the notion of the novice outsider is not.

    I am definitely an outsider.

    I am not a pro. I am largely self-taught (provided you don’t count the occasional class at the community centre.) And I far too often break the rules simply because I don’t actually know them yet.

    Gatekeepers everywhere will pronounce, thus, that my efforts are null and void.

    And yet others of a more nurturing nature will decide that we are all students and imperfect until the day we die, so all of us are outsiders until then.

    Which is it?

    Being an outsider hardly puts me in a position to suggest what that answer might be, but I would offer that notions of “revitalizing energy”, “fresh blood” and “new talent” are not cliche by accident. I think many people recognize that outsiders can break barriers and unclog stuck patterns, maybe even helping those entrenched on the inside, offering inspiration or change.

    I’m not saying my noodling art will do that by some deliberate design or effort, but I think the possibility of such accidental insight means we shouldn’t simply dismiss outsiders either.

  • Broken Sounds

    I bought another guitar pedal.

    (Note to new readers. I do not actually own a guitar, but I do play either my synth or my violin through my pedals to “wet” the sounds.)

    My new pedal is a multi-effects distortion pedal. This means, putting aside the looper pedal (which has a very specific recording & performance purpose) I now have what I would call a matching set: one pedal that adds and a second pedal that subtracts.

    The new distortion pedal is subtractive. As I understand it, it passes the audio signal through its circuits and scrapes away some of the clarity of the signal by clipping or compressing or otherwise degrading the pristine sound emerging from the instrument before it comes out of the speaker.

    There is beauty in destruction of that sort.

    There is grit. There is abrasion. There is texture.

    In fact, having now acquired a device whose sole purpose is to erode the quality of what comes from another device, it has got me thinking about the role of destruction in a lot of my art, and the aesthetics of grinding away the perfection in favour of something that feels like it has been lived in. Used. Worn away with time and the passing of years. And not just that, but done so with the clash of random indifference only possible through authenticity. 

    How can one hope to recreate the beauty of erosion and the story of a million soft touches with a simple tool in a single day? How do you add grit to fiction? How do you age a photograph at the moment of the click of the shutter? How do you sketch abrasion?

    I can only begin to wonder.

  • 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?