Momentum Part 2 - Wanders in the Countryside With Alex

Transcript

Nobody gave me sympathy That’s reason why I try both If I let go, I can see a thousand times all day Out against mental illness Hello everyone, just a quick note before I get into this episode proper I recorded the first half of this episode before I recorded the second half Which involves me wandering around the countryside and talking to myself This is a fairly normal thing for me to do And I was recording it at a time when a week or so ago Scotland was being pretty heavily blown around by some strong winds And made several attempts to record these outdoor segments And only really was able to derive a certain amount of usable stuff from each And some of it is still pretty noisy You’ll hear the wind blowing things around I don’t have the sort of mic that can cope with being buffeted heavily by wind Although maybe after this experience I’ll invest in one But I’ve done my best to pull the best bits out that are actually listenable But there’s still quite a lot of noise on there So I just wanted to apologise in advance for that But you get very much the raw audio experience of Scotland And maybe it’ll make you feel a bit more like you’re there The other thing I wanted to mention was I have another podcast I know that very few people listening to this will be in the same tech arena Tech and data arena that I am for my day job Because I’m not just a world famous podcasting celebrity I also have to earn money And so I do fun things with data and AI Me and my long time collaborator Pete have a podcast It’s called The Confusion Matrix And it can be found wherever you get your podcast So if you do happen to be listening to this And are also interested in things like data science, AI, generative AI, language models, analysis, statistics, that type of thing Then go give that a listen Tell all your technically minded friends to do the same Anyway, that’s enough from me I’ll be back in just a second with more of me See ya Hello and welcome back everybody This is the long awaited second part of my Momentum series Now originally I envisioned this as being two episodes The first one, which was released a month ago Was really about me procrastinating And digressing and working on things that were not the things I was supposed to be working on I talked a little bit about my life circumstances And how I’ve got a lot less time And the frequency of these podcasts was likely to suffer a bit from that And I explain it and I hope you all understand Don’t care if you don’t, this is my life, my podcast But the second part was supposed to be And still is going to be a lot more practical and a lot less me navel gazing And I thought about it I’m not so sure I can get the rest of what I want to talk about done in one episode In fact, it’s conceivable that there are four more on this Although I don’t think there are going to be long ones I have a list of four steps that I think are important If you want to regain momentum If you need to get restarted again after a bit of a hiatus or a fog Or some time out, be it a holiday or some illness Or whatever it is that stopped you from being creative I want to help you get started again My list is relatively simple But as a process, summing it up in a single episode I just didn’t think I could do it, so I’m not going to try I’m actually going to try a slightly different approach here What I’m going to do is I’m going to go through this process in real time No, I’m not going to go through it real time Because quite frankly you’re going to be listening to this sometime after I record it And also I’m going to record it in bits But what I guess I mean by that I’m going to try and give you a window into my world Talking about and relaying the experiences of going through this process Because I, as far as this podcast goes, at least haven’t regained my momentum As should be clear with the frequency of episodes So I’m going to take you through this And it’s going to take as long as it takes I’m going to go through this one at a time And I’m going to explain a little bit about what I mean by that And then I’m going to go into some aspects of it Here on the microphone And try and give you some real world perspective And experience of what I mean by it All of these are very in the mind So I can talk about it to an extent And I think you’ll be able to follow along And if you can’t, well, it should be an interesting ride I’m just going to plow in Because this is going to be partly me monologuing for a little bit And then partly me doing something else So what do I mean by momentum? Well for those among you who are not physicists You probably think of momentum as a car rolling down a hill Or a ball rolling down a hill Or a snow ball or a landslide Something like that And you would be right What you’re experiencing there is an object Being propelled down a hill In the direction of gravity Under no other power than its own weight And in the most simplistic terms, that’s momentum If you put a ball at the top of a hill Or any type of slope And you just let go of it on the ground It will start off quite slow Depending on the inclination of the hill And the surface that it’s on But it will probably start off quite slow And then slowly build up more and more speed And it’s that process that’s called momentum And I think, you know, if you had an infinitely long hill You can keep gaining momentum And going faster and faster and faster And covering more and more ground Without any extra power But we don’t live in a universe where that’s even possible So there are almost certainly some dips in the road And you might have to go up a hill to come back down one Or there are flat bits, if anyone’s ever been skiing Especially if you’re a snowboarder The flat bits of the slopes can be very, very frustrating Where you lose all your momentum, or most of it And end up having to pop your board off and walk for a while And it’s those periods where the momentum has stopped for some reason And when you’re careering down the hill When the ball’s rolling, when it’s gaining speed It feels like you’re never going to stop It feels like effortless and exhilarating And that there’s nothing else in the world Until, you know, you hit a brick wall You hit a flat bit on the ski slope You find a hill Or life basically gets in the way And getting restarted again can be exhausting And you have to start from the beginning You have to start slowly Because that’s how momentum works You can’t just suddenly burst out at, you know, 50, 70, 80 miles an hour Even downhill skiers, the ones that do the real superb G slaloms and stuff These guys will start off probably, you know, at the starting blocks The acceleration’s relatively slow And they have to put a lot of energy into getting themselves moving Despite the fact that they’re at top of a big snowy slope With very, very smooth skis And will eventually, under nothing but their own weight And the incline of the hill Achieve speeds up to 70, 80 miles an hour Which is mind-blowing, right? But they have to start They have to start at the top They have to have got up there And then they have to push themselves off And really try and gain that speed And it’s hard You’ve got what’s called inertia Which is the natural tendency of a body with weight To want to stand still Unless it’s given some type of nudge I.e. gravity or propelled by something And overcoming inertia And getting moving for any body of any weight is quite difficult It takes a lot of energy to get moving But once you are, and providing there’s nothing Slowing you down or blocking your way Once you’ve got moving, it’s a lot easier And there’s a lot less, in fact, possibly no energy at all Involved in maintaining that It’s the getting started that’s the killer And so I’m going to talk about getting started And I think we can build up a lot of residual guilt And inertia and general sort of procrastination and laziness That prevents us from getting started on whatever it is we feel like we need to do And so that act That act of putting a pen to paper That act of getting your canvas ready Or tuning up your instrument It can feel like the most daunting thing in the world The most scary thing Because you know that that first step isn’t really the point It’s everything that has to come after that And I think this weight that you carry And this tension that you have In terms of feeling the need to start again And feeling like you can’t or you don’t want to Or it all seems too difficult or too much It is the killer I mean it’s the thing that really stops you from moving Which is why my advice is to don’t Don’t do it, right? Actually, the best way to get started on something new Is just to go and clear yourself Clear your head, clear the way as it were So go and piece your slope Or prepare the ground a bit And the way that I do that And there’s quite a few different ways of doing it But the way that I do that is to go out walking And it could be running It could be going to the gym that helps you do this Or meditation But it’s something that has to take you out of your comfort zone Or take you out of the familiar places Where you can always find something else to do And to give you new input, new stimulus And I’m not going to talk too much about this Because the next section of this I’m going to repeat this again to a degree But it’s worth me quickly summarizing Why you’re going to hear what you’re going to hear next Otherwise it probably won’t make a lot of sense So I like to go for a walk I live in the Scottish countryside It’s absolutely stunning here I can walk out my door in any direction and find something beautiful And this time of the year is absolutely insane In terms of nature and the views and stuff And I find it incredibly therapeutic in its own right Just getting out and walking around And the physical aspect I think, although not essential for this part of the process I think it’s such a big force multiplier That you’d be mad to do anything else Than do something that’s got a physical aspect to it I know that’s harder for some people than others And I certainly wouldn’t say it was essential I do think that the act of getting your blood pumping Getting your dolphins going It relaxes you You release serotonin You release dopamine You don’t have to have strenuous exercise But just leisurely strong I tend to power walk everywhere But that’s just me So I’m not This is not an exercise podcast A fitness podcast I’m not here to tell you to get fit I’m just here to give you some tips on being creative And the physical side of this shouldn’t be ignored But I recognise it’s not for everyone So find something that you can do that will take you out Take you away from your studio Away from your computer And away from all the things that are not normal to you Into a place where unusual things can happen Or a place that you find settling And inspiring maybe, I guess The point here is not to Oh no, I have to now drive Everyone has to now drive right up to north of the UK And hang out in Scotland Because this is the place you have to do this It can be anywhere Go find your favourite place to go and walk around Or hang out in your local city or town Or whatever, right It’s what suits you And you should make use of what you’ve got Because the point here is it has to be easy I’m not suggesting here that you go on a country retreat That might be marvellous But you’re better off doing that when you are When you have momentum When you have impetus and enthusiasm Because you’ll make better use of that What I’m talking about here is just doing something That feels low calorie In terms of effort and time and so on That you can just do That’s going to loosen you up a bit And you might have to do it several times And you might have to build it to an degree into your schedule I’m going to talk about this as if you’re going for a walk Because it’s just easier What you do is you go out And you find somewhere that you’re going to walk That you know either go and get lost Or somewhere that you know reasonably well And you’re not going to get disturbed by people a lot That you’re not going to get distracted And go shopping or something like that Somewhere where you can walk That’s largely free of significance In terms of things you might do Just a place where you can be relaxed and open-minded And I’ve got my local woods which I absolutely love And hardly ever see anyone in there And I just let my brain wander And if I find myself wondering Oh fretting about I’ve got to go to the dentist next week Which I do Or you know I hope this job interview goes well or whatever These are just thoughts you need to push away You need to sort of bring yourself back to your surroundings Look at what’s around you Notice things and generally be mindful But let your brain wander Just keep an eye on it To make sure it’s not going into dark places Or weird places Or unhelpful places And just try and relax and don’t overthink it Don’t try and force yourself to think about the things you need to do Don’t try and structure things in your brain Don’t make a plan Just let it brew in your brain Just let it ferment and roll over And bring your mind back to it every now and again Oh what have I got to do I’ve got to do this And you’re in the sort of surroundings That are conducive to you being relaxed And you’re going to start to feel less and less worried or concerned The activity that you’ve got to do is going to take on less of a significant And big and scary aspect And you’re going to start associating it with it being relaxed And feeling a lot sort of easier And if what you’re lacking is inspiration Then just look at what’s around you Just try and find some stuff In the city there’s going to be no ends of things That are going to be stimulating and interesting What I’m going to do now Is to play you a recording of me wandering around the Scottish countryside And sort of talking through my thinking and my thoughts And a little bit of a tour of my local town, Octorada I’m going to call out some sights and sounds and stuff It’s not really about here, this place, this time It’s about how I think and let my mind wander And trying to give you a view into that You can’t really get a view into my brain If I’m talking about stuff and I’m thinking about it in these terms I’m not really letting my brain wander in the way that I’m suggesting here But it’s a close enough analogue that you’ll get my point You might find it boring You might find it interesting and entertaining You might find it soothing You might find it angering There’s probably all sorts of weird noises going to come out It was quite windy So some of the recording might be a bit obscured It was recorded on my headphone mic Which is not great And I was out and about so you’ll hear stuff I’ll clean it up to make it as audible as possible But outside of that, this will be largely as it happened And largely unedited And I hope you enjoy it And have a think about what I’m doing And have a think about my thought processes And how you might find a way to do this yourself And then we can move on to the next step And I’m not going to tell you what that step is Because I don’t want you thinking about it I don’t want you dwelling on that I specifically want you to just Wallow in your ambience and your surroundings And just let the things you are doing And the things you have to do wash over you And just observe them Then next episode Which could be in the next three days Or it could be in three weeks or longer I don’t know I’ll talk about the next set of stuff Which is going to feel a little bit more practical But let’s be clear Next episode we’re not going to be doing In fact we’re not going to be doing until the last episode of this series Well the last episode of these four parts Because I’m also not ruling out doing a wash up at the end So lie back folks Relax Maybe go grab a cup of tea Glass of wine Sit in your favourite spot in your house And revel in the bucolic And idyllic Scottish countryside with Alex Loveless Your host today on Wonders Through the Countryside with Alex See you next time people Looking at a field of some meadow Pasture And just tall grasses with brown tips And the wind is tickling the tops And creating this wave like Looking at the surface of a lake or a calm sea And how Spartans and Swallows Zoom around Dive bomb the top of the The grasses and catch Insects and flies They’re just so impressive to watch They’re so agile Always makes me think of X-Wing fighters and TIE fighters in Star Wars They’re quite incredible, I can watch them for hours They’re always a lot like bats We’re in the daytime, it’s about 2 in the afternoon And I’m above the train tracks And I quite like it, this is the juxtaposition And I always like something so geometric The train tracks extend away from me here And I’m almost completely straight line Across another bridge and Vanishing the haze of trees in the distance and It’s just so utterly jarring to have this big Ground metallic industrial stripe Through dense, otherwise dense woodland And nothing’s growing on it And it’s just quite beautiful in its own way And this bridge that I’m stood on And the bridge that’s going over there is some fairly old engineering And all these trees would have been much smaller When this was built It was part of a much bigger rail network than it is now Since the beaching cuts in the 1960s Where they closed down a lot of rural railways And cut off a bunch of rural towns and villages But this is quite beautiful There’s evidence of the previous train system And network all around here The tracks themselves are all long gone The remnants of old bridges and walkways and so on Remains, overpasses, things like that And it’s quite fun It’s really kind of almost bizarre To find them in the middle of what’s otherwise woodland Or farmland or something Where there’s no roads And there’s this bit of a bridge That’s just sort of sat there, derelict And you feel like you’re transported almost back in time And I really quite like finding them They really fascinate me Give me so much pause for thought And the idea that a giant steam train Not really that long ago 70 or so years ago, 60, 70 years ago Would have traversed here And taken people from one place to the other Since I prefer walking to running these days You get more time to take a look at what’s around you When you’re running, you’re out here for the running What’s my time? What’s my pace? What’s my heart rate? So you don’t stop and look at something You should immediately start to warm down and get cold It’s just a distraction I’m getting plenty of exercise And I don’t have to think about all this other crap Until I got rid of my fitness watch And stopped timing or measuring walks and runs Because I always just became about that Rather than what I was actually doing And you just miss stuff And the tracks are just up here It looks to me like it’s bailing hay And these gorgeous cylindrical hay bales That’s a cute little beetle trying to get itself stepped on Yeah, it’s a baler It’s like a forklift truck And then the baler is like It’s like getting shrink wrapped How cool is that? So they wrap the bailing black cellophane Or whatever that is And there’s this giant thing with a Like a turntable with rollers That dishes out Like bin liner material As the thing turns around and gets rolled And it just keeps going round and round Wrapping up these giant cylinders of hay Keeping them dry Until the winter I mean, if you go walk in the countryside There’s so much cool engineering And again, it’s the juxtaposition You come back to time and time again And engineering is beautiful It’s an extension of nature And there’s so much there So much beauty and vibrancy And when it’s not destroying or polluting I’m sure that is a little bit But it’s performing a pretty vital duty I mean, it’s just quite incredible I’d love to see it A bit noisy So I wander round Sometimes I’m in a world where I’m thinking about problems Or conjuring up ideas Sometimes I’m fretting or ruminating But I try and stop myself from doing that And if I do that I’ll put a podcaster or an audiobook on To distract my brain Sometimes I just sort of let the thoughts wash over me And let the sounds and sights and smells come in Conjure up whatever thoughts they want to conjure up Another tractor What that one? What’s that one doing? That’s the one doing the mowing So you’ve got one doing the mowing Which has got the baler on the back of it It’s mowing it up and changing it into these cylindrical hay bales Which are just dotted now across this field here It’s got a big sort of dip in it I always love it This time of the earth again it’s that geometry In an undulating, constantly changing landscape That is almost entirely free of geometry And there’s these cylinders I mean they’re not perfect cylinders But they might as well be I’ve got a couple of paintings and stuff of this So I find it so fascinating It’s such a wonderful and modern feature of the countryside And so this one’s battling it up I’ve got another one that’s grabbing four at a time This one’s a huge, you must buy a ton Maybe literally And taking it around the dude with the forklift Who’s sticking them on the shrink wrap machine It’s all rather quite marvellous And so how do you reconcile that The geometry, the engineering The organic nature of butterflies And do you, should you Do you need to reconcile it Is it the juxtapositioning that matters I’ll do this regardless of what time of the year it is And yesterday it was absolutely hammering it down So me and the younger of my two sons Went out for a walk in the pouring rain Because it’s a really novel experience It’s such a fun, wonderful, bizarre thing to do I could go absolutely drenched Luckily it wasn’t that cold So we got home without doing ourselves damage But just walking in the rain and chatting about stuff And soaking up quite literally the atmosphere I was absolutely drenched despite having water proofers on It’s like a brass statue of liberty Facing the wall in this farm It’s like a big It’s made of metal, whatever that is And next to it there’s a statue of liberty Clearly it’s green so it’s whatever that is A brass or copper And facing the wall It’s about five, four, five foot tall It just strikes me as being quite bizarre Thing just there in a farm That’s what I like to see when I’m out That gives you ideas about stuff, doesn’t it? I consider this a vital part of the artistic process And I don’t mean walking in the country Although I might mean that I don’t mean this is going to be great for Artists who do landscapes or whatever But again, not a bad place to be for that I mean the clearing of the mind In whatever way you can And the injection of new stimulus And you can get that by going out to your local high street And just free your mind and clear your mind and pay for watch If you’re a writer that’s going to be absolutely essential If you’re a novelist And this idea that creativity and inspiration Sort of arrives Sort of out of the ether Or as a byproduct of latent genius Or as a flash of divine inspiration I mean it’s just so I mean it’s just how we’re going to hit Occam’s razor here Actually, what happens is if you get out there And you let yourself just Your brain just wander You let things come to you You create new experiences And you see things you’ve never seen before Even if, you know, something you’ve walked past before Many times maybe you never noticed it And maybe that’s the thing that’s going to trigger the next idea Or the next spasm of creativity Um You’ve got a My son a few A year or so ago I think he was bored and looking for, you know, classic ADHD Looking for something interesting He wanted to figure out what projects he could work on to practice his programming And And he was like, you know, so how do you get ideas And I was like I just kept on saying the same thing You have to go out there and get experience You can’t just sit there and think your way into Inspiration Maybe if you’re a mathematician Or Andrew Wiles basically did that With Fermat’s Last Theorem Go back to my episode on I don’t know what it was on Long time ago Um But For most of us, you need to Go out there and Soak in the wild Define inspiration There’s an idea around every corner And I think it’s just as important for someone like me to Go and Wonder about aimlessly around a town or a city Or to Go and meet some people You know, I’ve always found office buildings quite I find them quite haunting They’re like They’re full of people who are probably not really empty But have to empty themselves out You know, that’s a way of life, a big part of life A thing that’s important And It makes office buildings quite Liminal For me, they’re quite Odd, jarring Kind of creepy places Full of people who Full of ghosts Another corporeal body, but it’s Their soul is elsewhere, their spirit Is at home on with their kids You leave your house in Scotland, you take your chances So the woods are particularly dark here It’s just quite a dense piece of the woods, but There’s light coming in from the edges, but it suddenly gets really dark And I love that Especially on a slightly overcast day like today And always has a slightly creepy feel to it Especially this bit, we’ve got lots of little trees winding into each other An old, really ancient wall And this gorgeous Tree stump, it’s a toppled over tree That’s clearly been there for Toppled over for years and years The elements have eroded off all the dirt And it’s been smoothed down and there’s Muscle over it It feels like you can stroke it, it feels like stroking an animal And there’s so many patterns in the Dried, exposed woods It’s just quite beautiful So some stepping stones here through a bit of muddy Bit with a low, like an old river bed, but there’s a river still running Through this little stream and there’s this bridge that goes over the top of it Hear the sound The sound of running water, how lovely is that And it’s just carved this really quite Sheer bed through the river here, clearly The trees have bound The soil together around it It’s quite tightly packed and it’s found a path through And is Blowing happily away, this can get quite deep, but at the moment it’s just a little A little stream, there’s a huge boulder there I love these massive boulders So how did they get there? I don’t know, there’s something really incredible about a massive boulder Especially when it’s sitting there on its own They’re alive in their own way, they’ve got their own sentience And they move around over tens of Thousands of years going from one place to the next Just checking stuff out and chilling If I come back in 50,000 years time, that boulder Will have wandered a few meters Maybe further, probably got a bit smaller Maybe gathered a bit more wear and Moss and lichen I mean patterns are everywhere, all you’re looking for is some inspiration For patterns and textures, we’ve got this bracken here Which is fractal, fractal in nature So it’s self-similar, self-repeat as you zoom in Same as ferns, mostly related Some of the trees here are huge, trees are fractal too I’ve done fractals quite a lot, so I’m not going to thank you about it All the little baby trees, I love them All the little baby trees, and like There’s quite a few of them, some of them I recognise Because they’ve been growing for a few years, some of them are just a foot tall Maybe even a year or two old As a chestnut Looks like it might stand a chance, because it’s got a lot of life, but most of it is going to die It’s a brutal life for a tree A tiny fraction of the seeds will germinate And a tiny fraction of the seedlings will Make it even to something vaguely resembling a tree Trampled or starved of light or nutrients Or eaten by deer One centre managed to make it to some of these ones Which are many tens of metres high Some of these are really, really big The chance of getting to that point is literally running billions And it’s really quite impressive When humans turned up and started sawing down I mean this tree is out of control It’s got one, two, three, four, five, six Trunks, it looks like a beach It’s a beach, really mega tall And the bottom of the trunk is Gotta be six foot across It’s bonkers It’s just so beautiful Sitting up there making oxygen for us I get this feeling in the front of my head, behind my forehead Like the sensory organs At the front of my head, my eyes, my nose, my mouth It’s all been sucking things in From the outside world and forcing it into my brain Really not exactly what happens Physiologically accurate But I always feel this pressure behind my eyes Gets better and worse depending on my overall mental health The certain weight on my chest And I just feel it releasing And if I remember, I sort of flex a bit And loosen myself up physically It’s a good thing There’s no one around I find dealing with humans, I love people But I’ve got relatively short human batteries My brain has to work quite Hard to keep up with human interactions And it can get very stressful There’s such a difference between Drawing your focus back To its maximum, taking in as much of the view as you can And your brain can’t process all of this Detail And it’s in many ways quite uniform Leaves, grass, crops, skies are Fairly uniform white And the sound is like a uniform white noise You could be forgiven It’s quite boring But this is not boring You can then zoom in and just find things A big old boulder sticking out of the ground I wonder where you’ve come from Boulder The walls I love, the walls is old Just piles of bricks that delineate land Bits of the mountains from the north of here Sort of a centimetre plus thick layer of moss On top, it’s all quite dry and just lovely It’s the most amazing colours These walls have been here for centuries, some of them And their habitats are all sorts of animals Little baby animals and insects and stuff And they’re amazing There’s so much here, and there’s a uniformity but a chaos To it, and I think I probably talk about this Quite a lot The fine line between uniformity and chaos Randomness and order, and nature is Quite a good illustration of that Because, I mean it is quite random But from random comes order, comes life, comes life cycles Comes birth and decay And it’s a fascinating concept for me Wow, this is getting quite brutal now And I didn’t come out with waterproof thought Oh my god, there’s a little baby oak tree It’s got beautiful pink leaves on the top It’s just colours, that’s what I mean, I’m always surprised Because this environment here is, there’s so much beauty So much variation here, but actually It’s all very green right now There’s going to be a little smotch of bright pink in amongst it It’s quite shocking and quite exhilarating And I just, I’m obsessed by colour Not in an academic sense, although I spent a little bit of time on that, but I just, I’m not even mixing it I just like it, I like finding colour and making things Be colourful, or, well not even colour, I’m just having a colour And just reveling in that And you just get reminded Of how impactful it is, how Shocking colour can be And Your brain seeks out things like that There’s a reason that we’re getting these TVs More and more, TVs and screens of all sorts, like phones And tablets and computers, we’re getting more and more Vivid What have I taken away from this? Well, in many ways I have nothing I mean, if I came out To To achieve something, I wouldn’t be achieving what I want, oh my god, there’s an absolutely Beautiful lichen on these boulders It’s sort of sitting nestled amongst these brown, old Fern pine needles And it’s quite a shocking Green, almost fluorescent It’s just there, there should be a bunch of people standing around There’s pointing at it again, look at that, how good is that? Maybe the fairies and the sprites Are hiding all crowded back around it when I’m gone I don’t do this do stuff But to achieve anything Other than maintain my mental health and Physical health and to give my brain Some space to expand and Relax and find its way Back to something resembling a normal State But you’d be surprised how many times I hit on something Really cool I’m really really excited by it, it just sort of Pops out of a stream of Thought and I can spend the rest of My walk hyper focusing on that And sometimes I’ll get home and I’ll just start Doing it, just pull out a canvas Grab my computer, whatever type of problem it is I’ve solved Or idea that I’ve conjured up and just start working on it Other times, I’ll sit on it a bit And then revisit it and go, ah no that was nonsense I was just having a moment But I value it all because of the experience That excitement and that freedom that comes From not being able to act on it To just let it expand in your brain and You know, explode like a nuclear Bomb of ideas And irradiate that bright light And I don’t know about everyone else but that’s sort of why I do this I love the process of finding Discovering, creating It’s a process of communing with me and I sort of see it Less and less about the outcome and the output and more and more Just about An inevitable and Somewhat more desirable state of being Spend as much of my time Being a part of it all And being I don’t know, I feel like being creative is The most reverent thing you can do It’s the most godly thing We can do The most honest and authentic thing And the reason you know that’s the case is because deeply dishonest and deeply Inauthentic people hate it They hate art, they hate Anything that reeks of ideas and Nonconformity But I don’t want to think about that I don’t, I don’t I’m not much of a spiritualist I’m not religious in any meaningful sense but I see the act of this process that I’m engaging in right now That will Result in me going to my Studio and whatever I’m going to do and Continuing whatever I’m doing or starting something new, it’s all a continuum Did this walk directly lead to A painting that I’ll finish in a week Probably not but then did the paintbrush that was Made in China or whatever that I use Did that create the painting? No it did But it was a part of it There’s no such thing as a standalone work of art Which is why a lot of the rhetoric around creativity Especially in the context of language models Astounds me at the moment because it fundamentally misunderstands The role of culture and creativity And culture This is all just a thing It’s just a part of my life, my existence and it’s the way that I connect with everything else And the way that everything else connects with me Not the only way but it’s my way of It’s my form of prayer, it’s my form of church It’s my form of worship And other people have this Some people worship deity Some people worship human interactions Some people worship attention We’ve all got our part to play I think most of us find our own Medium of communing And worship Of really just being, part of the human race Part of culture but part of just everything And if that sounds esoteric Well it’s not It’s not esoteric at all It feels the most natural normal thing in the world I don’t need to conjure up deities To know that There’s no meaningful Distance between me and these trees There’s no distinction between me and the ground and me and the sky Other than the ones that we create For ourselves We are just part of a bigger organism And we’re affected by that organism and we affect it And no part of it is unimportant And I do my better Is that useful or helpful or not? I’m not sure it matters Which in a strange way is quite a comforting thought It matters as much as what anyone else is doing In its own way Maybe I’m wrong about that Right I’m done Enjoy the things that make you and the people around you Happy Don’t feel guilty See you later All is gold, I can see a thousand times of it All’s against mental illness