Nowhere To Go And Nothing To Do

Nuclear proliferation of creative energy via unstructured time and long-ass walks.

Do you remember what it feels like to just hang out with someone for ages with no real plans? Do you remember the sense of creativity that comes from long walks and talks? Do you feel a nostalgia for the idea of being able to simply go out into the world and discover something new?

Over the last few months I’ve had a couple of friends come and stay at my place in Kamakura on different occasions. It’s not a big house by any means and they find themselves on a futon upon a large stitched rug of Hawkes Bay romney sheepskins. Among the jungle of plants in the living room there is a small but comfortable place to lay down their heads for a few days.

This has been part of a kind of “open house” policy where I’ve been trying to convince people to come and get away from it all. For some reason in my old life back in Tokyo the simple idea of having someone come around to our house was just something that didn’t work.

Looking back, we had the space but clearly the energy was all wrong. In Tokyo there are so many people always around you that the capacity for getting close to someone is all used up by about 10 o’clock in the morning.

The city is huge but dense and there is always some busybody in your face buzzing around like a blue-ass fly.

The thing that is tiring about it is not that individual people are getting in your way, but instead that they are collectively like a thick sludge of strangers who are necessarily unknowable. There is little to no capacity to get emotionally close even if you are in each other’s armpits on the subway. It’s almost an offence to try and attempt such a manoeuvre.

In many co-working cafes, maker spaces, and even creative studios in Tokyo instead of the deep warble of intimate conversation that you would expect there is only the clacking of keyboards and the occasional frustrated grunt.

It is as if the trajectory of life is determined, knowable, a mere process.

This is not a complete creative loss. I knew what I was getting into when I signed the contract. The appeal, I guess, is that among this performed loneliness is the pathos of existence AKA mono no aware which is the load-bearing frame of Japanese creativity.

I have built part of my own practice from the unique material of the city of strangers but I’ve always longed for a synthesis with the small-town New Zealand custom of dropping in on a bro unannounced and scaffolding stuff together.

Growing up in provincial New Zealand there was nothing to do and nowhere to be. All we had were long days spent with nothing better to do than literally just existing for hours and days at a time.

Even after all these years I’ve still not cottoned on to the simple concept of actively seeking out things to do and places to visit. It sounds silly but I struggle to look up events, meetups, new cafes, film screenings or the like. Of course I go and do things sometimes, but the only way I find out is from what people tell me and what I discover or conjure up on my own. I outsource my thinking to fuzzy reality or chance dreams instead of the curated internet.

What this amounts to in practice is a kind of mode of aimless wandering that is basically large swathes of unstructured time outside the business hours of commuter trains, places to be, crowds and trends.

In this stream of being I am swimming wayy out off the coast. I give first dibs to creative intimacy with reality. Thus when it comes to making stuff with people it is a perquisite for me that we can share this kind of way of existing before we can do any good work.

There is something about unstructured time with friends that is incredibly powerful but for some reason we often stop short of meeting this.

In language learning there is the concept of plateaus where our rate of learning and progress appears to taper off. I think something similar applies to our creative practices. We can get to a certain level and hover there for a long time. It can often require the spark of a new encounter to propel us to the next level. Sometimes that spark is a late night working on some Good Shit with a friend, or a long and meandering conversation.

If I had to point my finger as to why this kind of long-format engagement is not embraced I would say it is something to do with comfort zones. It can be overwhelming. I know I can be pushy sometimes and it can be too much for people. But in the tension of approaching these kind of comfort zones new discovery can be made, I think.

“Why don’t we just walk until dawn? What is stopping us? Do you have your passport with you? Let’s fly to Hong Kong tonight. So what about work? Fuck ‘em. Call in a sick day. Postpone that thing. Send your family a text message and tell them you will be back later.”

Fundamentally I think the ability to at least entertain these kind of semi-irresponsible ideas is a critical raw material in the creative process. The learned reaction of course is to say no, to step aside, to make an excuse, to freeze, to be responsible.

I understand. The instinct is to run away from the provocation. We have real commitments and places to be. People depend on us. But assigning these commitments an unwavering blind respect is its own kind of cage. With unstructured time and looseness a balance can be found that negotiates the intellectual reaction in equal measure with The Calling.

Of course in all honesty we are not going to simply escape the country tonight to go to Yau Ma Tei or Fukuoka but with unstructured time together we can do a mini version of that. Maybe we go for a big walk? Maybe we have some kind of adventure to crack open the rust on those old bolts?

Acts 16

9: Now a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man from Macedonia was standing and pleading with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!”

10: As soon as he had seen the vision, immediately we tried to go to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the Good News to them.

11: So we put out to sea from Troas and made a straight course for Samothrace, the next day on to Neapolis.

It is the idea that we could go out and do something profound that has changed my life on many occasions now with the act of asking the question:

“What if I just moved to Japan?” “What if we climbed that building?” “What if we did the thing?” “What if we lingered on this idea?”

In a sense having friends around, of jamming with no plan is a ritualisation of this energy. Maybe our parents will let us stay up past midnight even!

Obviously we cannot do this with just anyone. There is a certain energy, a certain type of kindred spirit with whom this is possible. Maybe I am just lucky to have known a few people like that?

For us artists I wonder if we will all someday look back and identify those crazy kinds of moments where we threw ourselves at each other and reality in a controlled but chaotic manner as having made all the difference?

Some Quickfire Ideas:

• Leave Phone At Home (LPAH).

• Make a start time with no end time.

• Go out with a camera and take your first photo, and then keep going until the memory card is full.

• Show someone around your town and introduce them to others by way of a reminder of what it is they really do.

• Walk until you cannot walk any further.

• If you had nothing but your wits, a sketchpad, and a wallet. What would you do?

– Cody Ellingham