05: Wasting time

"I prefer the fractal nature of chance, and its roiling path, to any notion of inevitability." - Paul Graham

*

Dear friends. Hello from almost nowhere! I'm in Futo right now. A small, quiet, tucked-away bit of the map, wrapped around its side by the Pacific Ocean, serviced by the cutest train station and made up of steep roads and silence. Lots and lots of it. It's so silent here I can hear the Pacific Ocean rumble in its sleep. The place I'm staying at is a family-run place called FUTO House. Cheap, humble and the perfect place to hide.

I’ll be in Japan for three weeks. Accompanied by two luggages, one backpack and a laptop, and all these silence and space, I will be attempting to write. My stomach is still spasming from a sudden and horrendous episode of food poisoning that happened the very day I was supposed to fly, as if some entity (or my evil subconscious) was conspiring to keep me at home, but I'm here. I made it.

I’m ready to work. To write. To think. To walk. To waste time.

*

Working, writing, thinking, walking – these are relatively easy. It’s wasting time that’s difficult.

*

Can creating ever be pain-free?

I finally saw Perfect Days. I think it's a perfect little film. Tender and boring in the best ways, beautifully visualised, emotionally layered. I still can't get some of the scenes out of my head, even though they are the simplest of scenes. Watching the film felt like I had stepped into someone else's dream. Wim Wender’s dream, for sure, but also the main character’s. A dream with good music, but still a dream… (Sorry if you don't know what I'm talking about. I don't want to give anything away for those who haven't seen it. But do watch it. It is such a special film and one of my favourites now.)

In interviews, Wim Wenders said the film started out as an invite to make just a short film about The Tokyo Toilet Project, an initiative where world-famous architects have come together to renovate 17 of Shibuya’s toilets. After he saw the toilets, Wenders was so moved he decided he had to make a feature-length film. The idea was green-lit and he ‘searched for shooting locations, wrote the script in two weeks, and shot the film in three weeks in October 2022’.

This is as pain-free as it gets. 

Script written in two weeks, film shot in three weeks. A direct, relatively obstacle-less line from creative spark to actual combustion. Wim Wenders even knew for sure which actor he wanted to cast. There was no wavering or second-guessing. Everything happened as if it were ordained.

As a young person, I always saw the finished products of other creators as painful miracles. Books are a painful miracle because a writer has to finish writing the book (to me this will always be a heroic act); an editor, a publisher, a book-designer, and who knows who else – they all have to come on board and make the book happen. A film is on another level of painful miraculousness. So much energy has to be expended in order for a film to become real. That moment when we walk into a cinema and there is sound and picture and coherence and cinematic epiphany – that is not a moment to be taken for granted.

What I want to say is, creating is painful. But there will always be a moment when creating is easy. It is easiest in that moment when you would rather create than do anything else, when it is more painful to not create. And sometimes, when we’re lucky, things come together in a matter of weeks or days. Something new is made. We are now a creator – it's so painful - but we have created.

So it's never pain-free. But it's always blissful.

*

When I meet my friends, they always want me to explain to them what this book/project is about. Or give them a summary. My first reaction is always, ‘I can’t do it’ with an exclamation mark. Then I go on to explain that this book isn’t really a photobook. Or maybe it's a photobook but also a diary/journal/notebook/essay collection. A little Frankenstein of a book, existing for its own sake. What on earth would I be writing about though? Photography, of course, but not just photography.

The truth is that the book keeps morphing as I work on it. I can't guarantee that the book is going to end up being what I told you it would be on day one. That's part of the fun.

But I wrote the beginning of an introduction (which is usually written at the end), which goes something like this:

"On my 11th year as a photographer, I decided to take a long break. I went traveling and started writing, bringing my camera with me. I wanted to think about the ten years that had passed. I wanted to think about time, photography, creativity, life, about the people I had met. I wanted to dream new dreams, walk new paths. I wanted solitude and quiet and wide-open fields in which I could be free. The journey brought me to a few places. It was a mostly solo journey, but occasionally a few friends joined. I wrote in real time, trying to capture within my words glimpses of something that I cannot name."

*

"I find no interest in coming up with a plan and seeing it through. I never plan anything. If someone has come up with an idea, nurtured it and saw it come to life, I see it as a failure. But if someone has been walking towards a goal, stumbled and suddenly saw something new, that's more interesting to me." - Gueorgui Pinkhassov

*

Thank you for supporting the making of this not-a-photobook. I'll be back next week with more words and photographs and updates. Till then!