Meadow - Posts tagged with inspiration

Take care not to tread on those apples

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 17:43:49 GMT

One of my favorite authors of all time is Ray Bradbury. I enjoy the way he constructs tales, his frenzied kind of storytelling. I first got to know of him by reading the excellent Zen in the Art of Writing, a recompilation of essays around the art of writing stories. He's one of those authors that's really successful at just letting his own subconscious guide the whole process, and trusting the process enough to not get in the way. The best thing, he says, that a writer can do is to be observant, everything else takes care of itself.

...

While falling asleep yesterday, I found myself thinking of a quote I once read from Bradbury. It's a quote that he gave in an interview¹ about Fahrenheit 451 (great book by the way). I'll let the quote speak by itself:

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

I find this really interesting. The woman was just walking with headphones on, and that was enough to cause such a reaction in Bradbury. I say "just" because for us walking while listening to music or an audiobook is absolutely inconsequential. Actually, it might even be considered to be more in the here-and-now than many of our modern entertainments. To read this quote, in our current technological world, is almost comical. And yet, I think Bradbury hits it right on the head. The anecdote seems to ask: "Why would anyone want to escape such an idyllic afternoon stroll?"

We have a much bigger issue though: our phones. They not only capture the attention of our ears, but also our eyes and ultimately, our thoughts and minds. We've been desensitized to the ordinariness of everyday life. It's become boring. I know it can be so for me, and I imagine it is so for many others. I often find myself taking out my phone just to stare at it, even when there's a perfectly nice thing going on around me. When I'm waiting at a restaurant, or even when I'm playing with my son. The funny thing is that I don't really do anything with it. I just take it out to see if someone has written me anything. This is silly, because very rarely does anyone ever write to me. Then I put the phone back in my pocket for a while, and then the whole scene repeats itself. I sometimes open up Instagram or Reddit to look at things I really don't care much for. Why?

I often wonder what Bradbury would say about the current state of things. We think of our phones as something liberating, something that frees us from the limits of our bodies and allows us to connect with others in ways that wouldn't otherwise be possible. On one hand, that's true, as evidenced by your reading this. However, this freedom also means we're free from two essential limitation of our natural bodies: the world around us and boredom.² I think these two go hand in hand.

This freedom, I think, is way too large for our human minds. Having access to everything we see the details of nothing, we're blind to all but the coarsest shadows and we think that being familiar with them is what being an informed and socially connected human being is all about. But how can we call ourselves "connected" or "realized" if we don't even take time to see the world around us? We take no time to see the beetles scurrying along in our backyard. We're not even familiar with the birds that frequent it! It's like we're living entirely in a world of our own making, which is nothing but a bleak reflection of what's really out there.

Wouldn't it be nice if it weren't so? I know I'm not alone in feeling like this. The hard part is that the path to get there is not clear at all. What are we to do? The truth is that leaving our phones in a drawer is not really the solution, nor are they the entire problem. If we abandoned our phones I'm sure the overall situation would improve, but the basic issue is a problem of habit. Were we to give up our phones we would soon find ourselves being distracted by something else. Sure, maybe it's something healthier that offers less immediate gratification, but wouldn't it be nice if we could be really observant, present with the things around us?

This reminds me of another quote by Bradbury, this one from Zen in the Art of Writing:

[...] ideas lie everywhere, like apples fallen and melting in the grass for lack of wayfaring strangers with an eye and a tongue for beauty, whether absurd, horrific, or genteel.

May we all be on the lookout for fallen apples then. May we all strive not to squash them under our boots as we trample through life.

I tried looking for a link to the interview but wasn't able to find it. If you know which one it is then please do let me know! ↩
There's much to be said about how boredom has basically become to be perceived as one of the greatest evils in our modern world. We should avoid boredom at all costs. Just a couple of weeks ago I heard someone say that "boredom" was a bad word, and she meant it. ↩

LLMs, Infinite Monkeys, and Shakespeare

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 03:31:22 GMT

I've had this idea going around my head for a while that the infinite monkeys writing Shakespeare are not really, in fact, writing Shakespeare. To a reader it may seem so, or even to an external observer, but the monkey has no greater or lesser perception about what it's doing, no difference between the indifferent smashing of keys, and the indifferent smashing that produces poetry.

It is true that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Not only beauty but also meaning, emotion, interpretation, and, ultimately, the experience of the whole thing. But there's also experience at the moment of creation, of conception of an idea. Why, it's probably more important what Shakespeare felt when he put words of love and wrath in the mouths of his characters than what bored students feel when they're forced to read his works as part of their high school curriculum. Isn't the boredom of the student (and often the entire lack of attention) akin to the mindless smashing of the monkey? It's just going in the opposite direction.

Same for LLMs then. They're smart (or at least sound smart). They write well (or so it seems to us). But does an LLM really write Shakespeare? Or is it just another monkey smashing out that work email you're too lazy to write yourself?

Not really related to the above, but while writing it I thought how easy it is to become dependent on AI to review what you write. It makes sense; you have someone that's happy and always available to check your work, so you take advantage of it. But feedback starts coming in (hallucinated or otherwise), and it slowly starts adding up. When you realize it, you're now more self-conscious than ever about your work, and the loop keeps feeding itself.

While thinking of this, the following just happened

Be free my love

Heed not the words of the hateful raven that in mimicry of the great ones spews letters of rage and bliss, but no meaning perceives in them

Cold is it's heart, not out of cruelty but out of a complete lack of meaning

Your deepest, most secret words, unable to reach it

Leave it be I tell you

Be your own your self

Be free

You don't need AI to tell you that you're great! You are great, trust me.

The two headed eagle

Sun, 04 May 2025 18:16:37 GMT

The following is an excerpt from The Heart is Noble by Ogyen Trinley Dorje (the 17th Karmapa). I thought it was especially prescient (though perhaps all that have heard this story have thought it applied perfectly to their time).

[...] The first [story] is of a two-headed eagle; lets call it an American bald eagle. This eagle had two heads. We know from biology that each head naturally has its own brain, but this two-headed, two-brained eagle had only one body. (Sorry, this is funny science, I know!) The two heads had different ways of seeing the world, and they didn't much care for each other. In fact, they each really wanted the whole body to themselves. Each head started scheming ways to get rid of the other.

One day, this two-headed bird landed near some poison. Each of the heads leapt at this opportunity to do away with the other.

Each tried to entice the other to eat the poison, describing how delicious it was and courteously inviting the other to treat himself to it. Finally one of the heads—the less persuasive one, I guess— gobbled up the poison. But of course, this act poisoned the whole body that they shared. They were each so focused on their own self-centered aims and their dislike of one another that they forgot that they shared the same body.

Writing distractions

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 03:55:25 GMT

This morning, my niece (11) shared with me her ideas for a story she wants to write. The story is quite complex—perhaps a bit too complex—and heavily centered around family intrigue, which I'm not entirely a fan of. Still, I was awed by the energy she's pouring into it and into her writing in general. She's really great, and the inspiration she planted in me has been simmering all day.

For a moment, I thought, "Wow, where does she find all the time to work on this?" And then it hit me. Of course—she has no phone, no computer, not even a gaming console. She has nothing but herself.

This morning, she asked her mother if she could use her PC to write the story, but her mom told her she couldn't. Originally, I thought it was silly not to let her, as writing on a computer is a lot faster. But now, I think it's for the best. There's just waaay too much distraction to be found on a PC, and it's possible her story would fizzle out as it dilutes itself among other interests¹.

This is what happens to me, I guess. Way too many things calling for my attention, and I give a bit to all of them. Posts to write, projects to work on, games to play, games to make, photos to clean up, a site to improve, people to catch up with, blogs to read, emails to answer, etc. And I'm happy to do these things, as they do give me pleasure and make me feel fulfilled and meaningful, but at the same time... Ah! So much stuff!

Though it's my own fault—I go out looking for things to occupy my time. Perhaps it's out of a fear of boredom, or perhaps it's a risk-avoidance mechanism, where I keep myself busy so I don't have to do the things I really want to do but am too scared to start (or don't know how to).

The other day, I was talking with my wife about something related to this—how much time we spend in our digital lives—and she proposed we do cellphone-free nights. I might take her up on that offer.

~ 🌱

Something like the Zerowriter looks like an awesome alternative, offering the typing ergonomics of a keyboard, but the distraction free environment of a notebook. Though perhaps just pen and paper ain't so bad. ↩

My son only wants to hear stories and I feel like a TV

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 12:30:50 GMT

Lately, my son has been obsessed with asking us to tell him stories. At first, I eagerly jumped on every opportunity to do so, but now I just find it tiresome. At the same time, I can't really say no to him, right? After all, he's not doing anything wrong, and stories are healthy for his brain. Or are they?

Yesterday, I came to the conclusion that, in fact, it is fine for me to tell him no. After all, there can definitely be too much of a good thing. It can, I think, become a destructive behavior. But rather than telling him a plain no, I'll see if I can pivot the request by asking him to play along in coming up with a story. We used to do that a lot before—engaging in play with his toys and acting out a story together. When I'm the one telling a story, he's hardly participating, and his constant requests make me feel like a TV—one that doesn't have much time to rally its imagination and prepare the next tale.

Don't get me wrong. I love telling him stories. Some of the most magical and personal moments we've had together have been during storytelling. His eyes entirely affixed on my expressions (I like to act out characters), his slack jaw, his smile when there is comedy, his surprise and astonishment at the appropriate story beats. Sometimes he enjoys a story so much that he keeps on acting it out and talking about it for days on end! I really like when that happens because it gives me a chance to deepen the story; spin up more tales of the same characters or the same universe.

But, I think, in my current state as a storyteller I have trouble just conjuring one on demand, out of thin air, especially one after the other. I've noticed that, when I'm not inspired, what usually comes out is some slop¹ about a forest animal going to have dinner at another's animal house and forgetting to bring the teapot or some such. He seems to enjoy these as well, but I don't see the same emotion and wonder in his face that he gets with a real story, nor do I enjoy telling them as much.

Something else I've considered — and I think I will do — is stocking up on short tales for kids. Read them, digest them, and then tell them. I imagine most great storytellers² know a bunch of stories that they did not invent themselves, and they become masterful in their telling.

Not so long ago, for some reason I can't remember, I was reading about the path of the bard in Druidry. According to the site linked above³, a huge part of becoming a bard was memorizing and learning to recite stories:

In the first year, the student progressed from Principle Beginner (Ollaire) to Poet’s Attendant (Tamhan) to Apprentice Satirisist (Drisac). During this time they had to learn the basics of the bardic arts: grammar, twenty stories and the Ogham tree-alphabet.

Over the next four years, they learnt a further ten stories each year, a hundred ogham combinations, a dozen philosophy lessons, and an unspecified number of poems. They also studied dipthongal combinations, the Law of Privileges and the uses of grammar.

By their sixth year the student, if they had stayed the course, was called a Pillar (Cli) and would study a further forty-eight poems and twenty more stories. Over the following three years, they were termed a Noble Stream (Anruth) because ‘a stream of pleasing praise issues from him, and a stream of wealth to him’. During this time they learnt a further 95 tales, bringing their repertoire up to 175 stories. They studied prosody, glosses, prophetic invocation, the styles of poetic composition, specific poetic forms, and the place-name stories of Ireland.

The final three years of their training entitled them to become an Ollamh, or Doctor of Poetry. In their tenth year the student had studied further poetic forms and composition, in their eleventh year 100 poems, and in their twelfth year 120 orations and the four arts of poetry. He or she was now the Master or Mistress of 350 stories in all.

~ quoted from Bard | What is a Bard? | Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids

Ten stories a year! That isn't really that much if you think about it. Though I guess it depends on the length of the stories. I like to think a good chunk of this time was dedicated to learning to tell the stories rather than just memorizing their content. After all, the telling is what makes a story great.

Anyway... got off on a tangent there.

I think stories ARE important for both of us. They help create a sort of shared world, ideas, and values. The other day, after I refused to tell another story to my son. He asked me why and I surprised myself by answering something which I intuitively know to be true but have never realized:

Do you know where stories live? Once I tell them to you they go into your heart, and there they put down roots and grow like a tree throughout your whole body. In so doing they change you from within and help you grow. If I tell you too many stories in a row then they will all be pressed together with hardly any room! We need to respect them and give them the space they need to mature and enrich us.

(paraphrased)

I doubt he got the whole meaning of this, and he was probably confused about the idea of stories putting down roots like a tree. But it is true! Stories do change us from within and help us grow, and we need to give them the time and space they need to do this.

Mass consuming them⁴ kills their magic.

edit (2025-03-05): As fate would have it, he now asks me to tell him these stories! Yesterday he literally told me "Dad, can you tell me a story about the forest animals drinking tea". I guess what one person thinks is best, is not necessarily so for another. An important thing to keep in mind. ↩
In my head, the greatest of them all is Skarpi from Patrick Rothfuss' The Kingkiller Chronicle. ↩
I can't vouch for the accurateness of that link's content as I have little knowledge about it myself. ↩
For us adults the same thing happens. When you binge watch a show you don't give time for the individual episodes to grow within you. I won't even say anything about social media. ↩

RE: Write like you talk

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 22:10:00 GMT

Earlier today I was reading some new posts by Visa. There’s not much to say about that, except that he uses pretty normal words and writes very well.

This might seem like an odd comment, but it stems from my reading of another post, A Brief Case on Bearblog. The author of that post is clearly a talented and experienced writer who, it must be said, writes very (very) well. However, the words they use are so fancy, and the way they’re woven is so perfect that reading them feels ?strange?¹.

This thought reminded me of an excellent essay by Paul Graham, Write Like You Talk. In it, he argues that if you want people to connect with you, you must write in a way that feels familiar to them. Essentially, the essay rests on the assumption that we all speak similarly but think differently.

I’m the first to acknowledge that language can be beautifully woven and that there’s a definite art to it. However, I agree with Paul Graham’s observation that, when writing to connect, we should use common language, words, and structures. Doing otherwise will only make it harder for your readers to connect with you, as well as for you to connect with your readers. You end up crafting something that’s not really you, creating a barrier between yourself and your audience.

Don’t get me wrong. High-language is definitely appropriate in situations where it’s needed, such as when describing something difficult to express. But unless it flows effortlessly from your soul, crafting something just to sound fancy can make it sound artificial.

I think that, as a society, we’ve come to overvalue colorful stuff, which in turn pushes creators to feel inadequate when their work isn’t vibrant. As readers (and consumers in general), we tend to gravitate toward the colorful, perhaps perceiving it as higher quality or simply more appetizing.

Write like you talk has a deeper meaning than it might initially seem. It not only suggests that we should use common language in an easy-to-understand way, but also that our writing should flow naturally—it should be us on the page, not a mask of ourselves.

I’m reminded of the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Here’s a specific section I’m thinking about:

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

So, don’t let what you write become just a face you use when meeting other faces. Don't make it yet another mask.

I realized after publishing this that it sounds like I don't enjoy their posts, but that's not the case at all. I love reading Emma's posts! What I meant to say here is that they write differently from me and it sometimes feels like we're speaking different dialects. ↩

I wasn't able to sing before having a son

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 16:40:00 GMT

I was never what you would considered a singer or even an outgoing person (not that the two are the same). When singing was involved I would usually remain silent, worrying that I would sound off key, or that I wouldn't know the words and people would notice, or any other myriad of possible scenarios which are common to those who worry endlessly about stuff. In some way, I perceived the act of singing as something very intimate and I never managed to break through that barrier I had imposed upon myself. That is, until I had a son, but it wasn't that easy.

After he was born, my wife used to sing to him all the time. She has beautiful voice, knows lots of songs, and is so confident in her ability that she doesn't really think about it. I, however, shied away from the act, as if a panel of judges would condemn me for my sub-par singing and banish me into the eternal void.

My wife used to get (a little bit) angry at me about this, telling me I should take the opportunity to sing to him now since before I knew it he would grow up and I would regret not having done it. And yet, I couldn't bring myself to do it, or at least not immediately. I, of course, knew of my problem and I wanted to be able to share singing time with him, especially because he seemed to enjoy it so much when my wife (or others) sang to him. So I started small, with what I knew I could comfortably do.

I've always been a musical person. I don't (didn't) sing, but I've always been good at playing instruments and picking up songs by ear. So I picked up a small Kalimba I had lying around, which my wife had gifted me for a past Christmas, and I set out to learn the tunes of some lullabies. I started with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and then moved on to some other ones, my wife would sing and I would accompany her with the tune.

Then I took another step. I ditched the crutch of the kalimba and starting humming the songs while we were getting ready for bed. Now that I think about it, this happened pretty much by itself once I got comfortable with the whole routine. I didn't think much about it at the time.

As he grew up more he started playing at singing songs, coming up with random words that followed the same melody. To my own surprise, I found myself inescapably drawn to his game, and before I knew it I was singing at the top of my lungs with him, coming up with silly songs, making him laugh, and in general having a good time. I think at this time my crutch was that specific melody, one I knew very well by this point and was comfortable riffing on.

Fast forward some months and now I don't feel any hesitation singing to my son, be it in public or in private. Actually, it's one of our favorite games, and we're even starting to introduce new melodies, new words, and even dancing (another thing which I've always considered myself incapable of doing)!

Why am I writing all of this you might ask? Well, this is a reflection on the fact that all creative endeavors, all activities that require you to make something, will call for you to put a piece of yourself out there for all to see, and that can be uncomfortable. The trick, when you feel self-conscious about starting, is to start small.

You often hear people say "take baby steps", but seldom we take this advise. Instead we think that starting small is not a good way to improve, so we bite out too much and invariably end up dropping whatever it is we're doing. In the process end up demotivated and thinking we're just incapable of doing it. Instead, it's better to start doing small things which are slightly uncomfortable, but that you trust you can do, and over time you'll see your own confidence, and capabilities grow.

I imagine it a bit like starting to wear glasses. If you've ever gone from no-glasses to glasses (and you're not one of those rare people great self-esteem) then you know how the first few days (or weeks) can be a little uncomfortable, being self-conscious. But then you get used to it, you just stop thinking about it. It's a little bit like that.

~ 🌿

Rambling about inspiration and dreams

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 02:13:00 GMT

I recently published a post where I raised the question of how to recover inspiration about an idea after some time has passed. I didn't really conclude anything and my mind has been thinking about it ever since, feeling as if somehow I left a loose end, itching to explore other possible avenues.

So, here we are!

I've been specifically thinking about where inspiration comes from, and where does it go to once it's gone. Inspiration as a phenomena is hardly logical, manifesting itself as a fever to do something. In my mind both inspiration and dreams have a similar flavor, so we'll start there.

There was a time when I was very disciplined about keeping a dream journal. I learned early that to properly recall a dream one needs not try to remember the whole thing directly, instead one needs to identify and hold on to what I call a set of hooks that serve as fishing lines for the actual dream. These hooks can be anything from the dream that you feel it's important (sounds, sights, feelings, etc).

When we wake up, our conscious mind tends to take our memories of the dream and reason about them, it masticates them into a reductive representation. But if instead we stop and try to individuate the hooks early on then we can later pull on those and have larger parts of the dream(s) unfold.

I could talk more about dreaming and dream journaling (and might actually make a post about it in the future since it's a fun topic), but I don't want to get distracted from what's important here: the hooks.

I feel the relationship between creating and inspiration is very similar to pulling on a hook and have the memory of a dream simply spill into your mind. When you're inspired things just flow, a torrent of ideas fighting to get out. In both cases you're opening a door into a part of your mind that's just full to the brim with stuff and, most importantly, that part is not directly accessible to your conscious/analytical mind, instead information flow just sort of happens by itself.

Once inspiration is gone it is very hard to get it back (or at least it is for me). I wonder if there are also a set of hooks one can use to link creator and muse?

As an example: I'm a developer by profession, and I love to make programs. I also think there's a deeply creative aspect to it, ranging from how you structure everything to the solutions you apply to the problems that arise on your way. When programming, I know there's inspiration involved. However, there's an important difference with respect to writing: I'm able to leave a programming project and then come back to it many weeks later and quickly recover the inspiration. Why is that?

I think that for one there are a lot of things in programming on which the conscious analytical mind can munch on, which will invariably attract the attention of the intuitive subconscious (both will end up focused on the same task). There're also a lot of props involved, which work as channelers of attention. For example, each person has its own set of tools they like to use, code editors, and even their color schemes, keyboard layouts and shortcuts (and a myriad other things), all of which can be seen as artifacts whose goal is that of helping to focus the inner eye. We experience a sort of pleasure when working with them, and through pleasure we pull the focus of the whole mind unto the problem at hand.

I think one can find parallels to this in many other areas of human activity.

Fortune tellers have their canonical misty ambiance, with a crystal ball or other similarly mystical object. In a meditation room decorations are usually pretty minimalistic, with a small altar or incense burner as the only focus of attention. Even writers have access to a plethora of rich papers, notebooks, pens, and even word processors. All of these have the goal of kindling a sense of awe in the person that's inhabiting these spaces, and our conscious analytical mind reacts to awe in the same way a moth to a candle: it can't help being drawn to it.

Besides awe there's also the sensorial pleasure that these things bring. Both conspire to create the same effect: make the analytical mind focus on the shiny things, whilst at the same time creating a space for the now unencumbered subconscious to bubble up through the cracks. In other words: it inspires us (literally makes inspiration happen).

I think with writing, inspiration (aka excitement) is more fickle for me (than it is with say, programming) because things are usually more complex and I'm way less comfortable with my abilities (which is probably why I perceive it as more complex).

I frequently don't know where an idea will take me or what it is that I want to say until I write it down on the page. But "the idea" is often a very loose thing, it's more of a feeling actually. With programming I have code to work as a hook into excitement / inspiration. But how do you make hooks into a feeling?

Maybe you cannot. Maybe it's all just magic and one needs to take the opportunity when the flame burns. Still, I've found that by doing, and taking the opportunity as it arises, inspiration seems to be getting more and more frequent in my life.

Maybe it's also a matter of not getting in one's own way and trusting the process without a though for one's abilities or outcomes. After all, if I stop to think about it, that's exactly what I do when I jump into an old programming project I haven't worked with in a while.

I think a perhaps tentative conclusion is that hooks are there, and work exactly the same as when recalling a dream. The difference is that, with writing, they're all over the place and the trick is to learn to allow (and trust) oneself to see them.

It is possible to create out of a place of sadness

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 23:54:00 GMT

I've always had this notion that you need to be happy in order to create beautiful things. I sometimes admonish myself for not feeling joyful. Sometimes I also don't create if I'm feeling down because I feel like whatever comes out won't be as good¹. Here I'm mainly thinking in the context of writing.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, lately I've been watching the 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki documentary. I think we can all agree that his stories are genius, inspiring, and all-around wonderful. He's possibly one of the best storytellers in our modern world, and definitely one of the ones I like most.

Prior to watching the documentary I always assumed he was a happy person. I thought he must be in order to be able to create such wondrous worlds, such moving stories.

Well, it turns out I was mistaken. He's not miserable-always-depressed, but in the documentary we definitely see him having some ups and downs. He's mostly a grumpy person, and many times in the documentary he states that he has a hard time being happy in his daily life.

How then can he create with such beauty? I thought. My original assumption that sublime creation can only occur when one is happy was mistaken, of course. I think that all his bad experiences, and his general sadness about the world, are themselves his most important qualities. They're the things from which he draws forth the need to prove to others (and maybe to himself) that being alive is beautiful. What I would consider to be his bad parts (such an inappropriate word, bad) are his compost heap with which he nurtures his ideas and dreams, and then shares them for all to partake in.

"Yet, even amidst the hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist" he says in one of the episodes while talking about why he makes movies. Another was "I would like to make a film to tell children "it's good to be alive".

This idea of having a wholesome kind of entertainments is something that he keeps going back to again and again throughout the documentary (perhaps this is strongly related to what he says about there being no sense in creating something without a soul?).

Anyway, while the above is all pure conjecture, this way of looking at one of my favorite storytellers is definitely positive for me. If he can use his sadness to create, then so can I, so can we all. There's no need to beat myself up about how I feel, there is wisdom to be found everywhere if one allows oneself to look for it. And more importantly: it is ok to be sad sometimes.

I don't know why but I've always had this feeling that if I work hard there might eventually come a day when I will no longer experience sadness, when my days will be full of joy and happiness. It's sobering to think that this is most likely never going to happen. Of course, I can deal with my insecurities, fears, and whatnot, and in general grow and become a better person, but I'll never live in a stream of constant happiness. I would venture to say that no human ever will. And that's ok.

Funny writing this down. I feel like I'm seeing something that has been in front of me for a long time. So close that I didn't see it in fact.

Accepting this is liberating. It means that the feeling I have that I need to first attain this state of everlasting-happiness to be able to live my best life, to do the things I want to do, that feeling is not to be listened to. Instead, I can do everything right now, accepting who I am right now, and also accepting that things are in constant change / growth.

Putting your life on hold while waiting to be a better version of yourself is limiting to your present self, and directly prevents you from being that better self you want to be.

Whew. Sorry for the digression there.

I was looking a bit online and found many people have posted screenshots of the 10 Year with Hayao Miyazaki documentary, many of which highlight how sometimes he's unhappy and that's ok.

I'm sharing some of them here (taken from this Reddit post). I want to stress that these might bias you into thinking he's a chronically depressed person, I don't think he is. Instead, I think he's a well balanced person.

~ Take care, and remember to be kind to yourself 🌈

To be fair, I do create other kinds of things, like monologues, but these are more conversations with myself than actual creations. ↩

There is no sense in making something without a soul

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:54:00 GMT

I've been listening to Joe Hisaishi's music for Studio Ghibli and I have to say it's quite inspiring! Even if I can't place many of the songs, they're still a nice thing to listen to while working.

Yesterday I noticed there's been an idea floating around my mind ever since I saw the third (or maybe the second) episode of 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki, and is something that really comes to life in Hisaishi's music.

The episode in question covers the creation of From Up on Poppy Hill, a movie that Miyazaki's own son (Goro Miyazaki) was directing, something to which the elder Miyazaki was opposed, saying his son didn't have the determination to be a movie director.

Anyway, at one point he was reviewing some concept art that one of the animators was doing for his son and, after starting at the drawing for a bit, declared that it had no soul, no vigor, no life. He said (paraphrasing because I couldn't find the quote online and I'm too lazy to rewatch the episode):

There is no reason in making something without a soul, you might as well not do it.

The poor animator, of course, didn't know where to hide. But it wasn't really his fault, the movie's character had no soul at that point, it's true. It's only after this scathing comment that Goro re-envisioned the character to become it's final form.

This short critique has been pretty impactful to me as I'm thinking about what to do, where to head to if I were to live a more creative life. There is no sense in making anything that doesn't have a soul, not if you aspire to inspire others, to bring them joy and entertain.

The lesson is, I think, to dig deep, and then dig deeper. Characters / stories should have dreams of their own, sometimes unbeknownst to the writer. Still, they have the responsibility of giving them space to come forth and guide their pen.

Thinking back on Miyazaki's films, I can see this idea permeating everything from the characters to the environments. It's so pervasive that it's hard to point out, but it is definitely one (if not THE one) quality that sets it apart from every other kind of film. It's this that makes his stories feel so alive, so relatable, so easy to get lost into, no matter how magical and impossible are the things they portray.

With all of this I don't mean to criticize my past work, nor my future one, nor any other person's creative work. I think that one needs to take care to not do the inverse, of worrying so much about things having a soul that we end up not creating anything. It's better to create, freely, and in so doing we shed light on those dark corners, and get ever closer and closer to being able to create with a soul.

Whenever someone creates something with all of their heart, then that creation is given a soul. — Hayao Miyazaki

Talent feeds on persistence

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 00:11:00 GMT

Yesterday I started watching a wonderful documentary produced by Japan's NHK called 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki. In it we follow Miyazaki-san in a pretty intimate way as he goes through his creative process and I was completely floored by the fact that he spends so much time not really knowing what to do.

We think of him (and of many other famous creators) as just this fountain of interminable ideas with perfect execution, but the truth shown in the documentary is that this is not the whole story. We only every see their final output, but we miss the huge amount of work they put into creating their marvels.

In the documentary we see Miyazaki spending whole days just driving around, or not doing much (as far as production goes), just trying to get some inspiration about what to do next. He then spends days just struggling through the creative process, ditching sketch after sketch into the waste basket.

As someone who doesn't really understand creative processes and is considerably intimidated by the great ones, I found this part of the documentary extremely inspiring and eye-opening. Sure, these people are talented, but it's the sweat and persistence they put in that makes them truly special. The thing they have in common is that they don't give up, as Visa says in his essay when the vision isn’t manifesting (which is where I got the link to Miyazaki's documentary in the first place).

I just finished the first of the four 45 min episodes, where he has already gotten some steam and is steadily producing stuff for one of his movies (Ponyo), with the occasional hiccup here and there. But still, it's clear how much effort it takes him to go forward, even if he is a creative genius.

I'm looking forward to finish watching the whole documentary. If any other interesting things comes up I'll be sure to write about them here!

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