Studio Sessions
Discussions about art and the creative process. New episodes every other week.
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Studio Sessions
45. Embracing Chaos: Thriving in Creative Discomfort
In this episode, we examine how comfort can become a creative liability. Through conversations about films, road trips, and creative production, we explore the paradox that meaningful work often requires embracing uncertainty and hardship. The tension between structure and surrender becomes central to our discussion—whether on film sets, during travel, or in personal projects.
We consider the difference between merely discussing creative work versus actually producing it, and how modern conveniences make it easier to stay in the realm of theory rather than practice. Drawing from Japanese poet Basho, we reflect on how true creation happens when we stop imposing ourselves on our subject and instead achieve a deeper connection through surrender and presence. -Ai
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We read and appreciate all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.
Links To Everything:
Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT
Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT
Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT
Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT
Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG
Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG
So really quick editor's note. I went to edit this week's podcast and I found out that the audio was all wonked up and then during recording we actually had a camera fail. So, apologies, we tried to fix or salvage what we could of the audio with AI. So if it sounds a little funky at parts, that's probably why, but hopefully we salvaged what we could. We decided to put the episode out anyways because it was a good episode and we feel like we got into some good stuff. And then again we apologize because the production quality has been a little bit lacking lately and we're working to fix that and hopefully everything will be back to normal by the next episode. So we appreciate everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:It had been a golden afternoon and I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer, again with the sunlight. I think I tend to gravitate towards a safer room with things because it's more predictable. You know, I can see what's coming and he's just like I'll just jump in and figure it out.
Speaker 1:I try to light fire and I really like the idea too of that is that's all like, that's all we're doing, like when we're doing a creative thing, yeah that's all we're doing. Yeah, and like I think about this on film, it would always frustrate me when I'd be on a set and everybody would complain this isn't going according to plan and I just have a hard time working with people who are like this is this, is not this is a shit show, and I would even like you know when you're new, like I remember the first few times I was on set you kind of buy?
Speaker 1:into that a little bit right, because you're just trying to be a part of the gang, whatever.
Speaker 1:Well, there was. I remember a point where I kind of shifted away from that, but that's that's all we're doing. That's all that's. The fucking job is to get in and just dig up problems and then figure out how to solve them. And I love the approach where he's like we're shooting a film and it's like how are you going to do this? And he's like I don't know we're doing yeah, that's what we did with this podcast. Any kind of creative project we've done. We had no idea what it would look like as a finished product when we started it. You just go in and it's almost, it's almost a way to kind of quality control something. Yeah, that's how we're looking at it. It's probably not a good way to. You got, you have to. I just gosh, it's so refreshing. To go into a project, not with. This is a shit show if this doesn't go according to plan exactly. But just as the whole point of this is to dig up all the problems and to solve them, that's right.
Speaker 2:And to solve them.
Speaker 1:What is creativity? It's just problem solving.
Speaker 2:And for me on set, whether you know, as a director or producer, in some capacities or even just you know, on some shoots I've done that are, you know, not local crew and I'm just helping in a pretty low below the line position. Like how can I just be, you know, low below the line position, like how can I just be, you know, a positive force to help wherever I can?
Speaker 1:I don't want to create issues.
Speaker 2:I don't want to. You know kind of step out of my lane I don't want to. You know, um, nothing like that, but because when I've been in a situation, um, uh, directing, producing both, I like, I just always want everybody to be generally positive with what we're trying to do there's going to be wild cards, Stuff's not going to happen, the power's going to go out, Someone doesn't show up with meals on time.
Speaker 2:You know whatever these missteps are hurdles, obstacles, whatever but that everybody sees that you are genuinely trying to make something with positive intentions and in high hopes and that they're just gonna just be a another force of positivity to try to create the best outcome possible and contribute to the, the logistical and creative endeavor that it is. And so when I am around people that oh, that was a shit show and something like listen, they're all shit shows, they're all you know. The house is on fire and you're just trying to figure out If it wasn't it would be fun.
Speaker 2:So like you can lament it or just help and be nice.
Speaker 1:And you know, obviously know someone's abusive toward you or you know there's there's issues there, but and there's, there's there's a there's a distinction that should be made between being unprepared right, you can be prepared and go in with. This isn't going to be a shit show, we're going to solve problems and then you get unprepared and just like exhausted at the situation. But that's not what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to endorse it. You could just show up and literally make it up. It's sort of.
Speaker 1:Come prepared, but then also know that everything's probably going to change. And, yeah, come with the intention that things are not going to go as planned and we're going to solve these problems and we're going to figure out. If you don't know it, like you hear all the time, I don't know how this sequence is going to look exactly. I have a vague idea, but we're going to jump in, we're going to get into the current and it's it to tell us how we need to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I want to lead every, any project like take it from the top any project that I work on now, I think I want to, or that I lead now, just to take it from this.
Speaker 1:Don't complain about how this is a shit show solves it. Solve the problems. Yeah, like we're here to be creative, we're here to come up with creative solutions and to figure out how to make this thing you know, something that we're all proud of. That's right. Don't come in with a negative oh, this is not going as planned. I hate this. Just be a part of what's happening.
Speaker 2:Get in the current Go with it, yeah, and see it for the beauty that it is. Again, obviously, if people are being cruel or abusive or something, there's something there. But if you have some, some people with a negative outlook and then maybe somebody who's steering things or people in above the line positions or whatever, uh, with positivity, you know just yeah, I just always want to be on set, trying to give as much positive energy as possible, even if I'm starving and meal has been delayed. Um, because that's how I want it to be.
Speaker 2:If I was in, um in, in the position where I was, driving things or had you know more, say in how things go or what we do. There was a, there's like a I don't know if it's audio or a video clip or whatever, but it's david lynch, like in, like, like working with the unit production manager or producer, you know whatever, and they're basically telling him what restrictions he has on time on the set that they built I think it's for the twin peaks reboot or something and he just gets so frustrated he's not being cruel that he's voicing his frustration with not having any time in the space to just sort of like, explore, explore, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he's like I don't want to shoot like this. I don't want to. I don't want to just fire off all these shots and then just get out. It's like I can spend two weeks in this beautiful set that's been built and all this stuff that you know. That's part of the intersection too.
Speaker 2:It's not just um, it's not just uh confronting people, you know, that are brooding over the fact that this thing's a shit show, but it's also uh you know all of these restrictions and uh time constraints or budget constraints and things like that and that's always something difficult to reconcile, I think, especially in cinema, is, you know, the artistic flourishes that people you know creating the work want to take and the time and space they want to experiment and play and whatnot, again under the construct or umbrella that they're prepared. But that's part of the execution of it is to have a little bit of room to play. And then you know the people that are focused on the black and white, the agenda, the schedule, the budget, the this or that. So that's always an interesting, uh, interesting intersection.
Speaker 1:I think last week, or one of the podcasts that we passed and talked about the herzog documentary yeah, dragging that boat over the mountain, that's, that's what I was asking about that right now, because I'm like you imagine you put some people like, so you know just, I'm thinking of a couple of people work like the omaha market, like you imagine how they would react to me on like, like that actor did the german breaking out every second.
Speaker 2:Herzog loves it that that guy, those few clips I saw from behind the scenes, or the or herzog talking about how he would just go berserk yeah, he was like obsessed with his pure animalistic tendencies.
Speaker 1:I'm just. Our mind went to the same place. I'm imagining the people that we've and we're gonna. What are you serious? Are you serious what we're getting?
Speaker 2:overtime for that.
Speaker 1:Like a Steve. We can do that with CGI Over a pile of dirt well they were trying to convince them to do that. People can tell like, if we're going to make something and we're going to make people believe the truth of dragging a boat over a mountain, we're going to drag the fucking boat over the mountain.
Speaker 2:How amazing would it be if you were on that crew and you could surrender yourself to sort of his vision and just be like this is what it is, and I am going to embrace the pain and discomfort and maybe, at times, thoughts of how I would have done this differently or this or that, and just going well, this is what it is In pre-show.
Speaker 1:you were talking about how.
Speaker 2:You just wanted to be uncomfortable yeah, yeah, and I've been seeking out discomfort, yeah, like stress, and you talked about.
Speaker 1:I've been thinking well, just artistic constraints a little bit, but before I I get, we get too far away, like you talking about. I've been thinking about the same thing in in regard of it, like I've been. So we film streams, which is the local theater here. Yeah, played grizzly man a couple weeks ago and I heard it's also one of my favorite and one of my favorite directors, whatever, yeah, and so I've been reading and listening to a bunch of interviews after seeing Prison man. I've heard most of them, but he's the type of person you can listen to again and you get a new context going again.
Speaker 1:You get something new from it and I've just been stuck on that idea of being so uncomfortable or putting yourself into these really uncomfortable situations and how that plays out in the long run and then how we're so comfortable. But you know, I think a lot of people they're probably living very comfortable lives, but then if you ask are you happy, are you like, do you feel like you're filled or you're pursuing things that interest you?
Speaker 1:it's the answer is probably no, yeah, and yeah, you know breaking that comfort and, yeah, being on one of those cruises, but why is the tendency to be like this is this is a shit show, I hate this. This is terrible. Rather than just giving yourself to that and knowing, like I get to say that I was a part of dragging a fucking ship over a mountain, you know, or any you know. Replace that with maybe something a little more chill, but you know there's. We're so caught up in the idea of being comfortable with, being routine oriented or, you know, creating art within really tight parameters. I want to make great photos, but I don't want to be cold. I don't want to be wet. Yeah, I don't want to be hot. I don't want to be put into a socially uncomfortable situation. I want great photos, but I don't want to do any of these things.
Speaker 1:I don't want to travel. I don't want to do any of these things. I don't want to travel. I don't want to have to expend resources.
Speaker 1:I don't want to put myself into a potentially compromised scenario. I don't want to risk getting arrested. I don't want to risk having somebody yell at me or think poorly of me. We've lost. Yeah, as soon as that's the trade-off that you're not willing to make, you're done with creating. Maybe you can be, you know, maybe you're first and you can sit in a room and you know your creative genius will still. You're completely wealthy and you're in a room and your genius still manages to shine through. But for us, mere mortals, like we've lost, like it's over once, we start to get into that, and so I've been thinking how do we escape that? And you know you talked too about I want to actually dialogue here, but I just I watched. We watched Thief last night, because Matthew and I watched Wages of Fear and Sorcerer Double feature Film streams. Yeah, this was last. I have the soundtrack for Thief, well, so Also feature on film streams. Yeah, this was last. I have the soundtrack of the thief, well, so also Tangerine Dream, yes, so that's, that's the thing, is actually man.
Speaker 1:Sorcerer. It seems like Michael Mann was probably cued in on this, or at least it's one of those situations where you have art of a similar result. So, sorcerer, well, I was watching the whole time we were in the theater. Thief, this is Thief, the vibe is is Thief. So I watched Thief and I've seen Thief a couple of times and all of my going into movies kind of carry this through line.
Speaker 2:But they're showing just real quick.
Speaker 1:They're showing the keep coming up, yeah by the way, um, anyway, but the the through line is thief and I'll try not to really spoil it, but it's essentially this guy and he's a thief and he went to prison, lost 10 years of his life in prison and he gets out and he's, he's really attuned to how valuable time is, how valuable and that, and that's kind of the three-line in a lot of my convinced protagonists. But you look at, you know his character is out of prison and he's doing these jobs and he's freelance. Right, I'm freelance, I don't report to anybody, I don't put up with egos, I don't have to da-da-da-da-da, and the whole thing is. The inciting incident of that film is he decides okay, I'm going to partner up with this corporation for lack of a better term and we'll provide all the resources, all you get paid, and it's great, it's going to be great, they're providing for them and they give them all of these crazy outlandish benefits and I can agree.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, yeah we're gonna, we'll take care of housewife kid. Well, we'll take care of it. And then, you know, you can look at it in a lot of ways, but essentially, yeah, he sells his soul to this, yeah, and it strips him of his edge in a sense. And you know how? How do you conclude that story? Well, he has to find the edge again. And so, you know, watch it, you want to figure out kind of what. But that, I mean, that's just kind of I wanted to talk about something else.
Speaker 1:I feel like this is it might, it might connect, it might actually connect. But you, you kind of brought this in and dumped it on the table. This, there's a lot here that I've been. Yeah, I don't know if it's just my-meld or what, but I've been playing around with it in the last couple of weeks and, yeah, contemporary society is kind of geared towards stripping away that edge, whatever that is, for lack of a better definition, how do we get that back? Do we need that? How do we get that back? Do we need that? How do we create work if we're so obsessed with being comfortable? We've got to break things a little bit. We've got to get out of it.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean that you can't have comfort in life, but that's you for me what's sort of like what's the worst could, what's the worst that could happen if I don't have, don't have or can't do what I want to do? Um, and I you know um, part of why I was talking about it was I had to prep for a medical procedure and I had to basically not eat anything for two days.
Speaker 2:Uh and uh, just in the comments with that, yes, I mean I'll happily tell everybody, especially because you know part of me actually, on the drive over here was like don't shy away from talking about the fact that you know you had to colonoscopy, because not like a public service announcement but you know, if you're 45 years old like I am.
Speaker 2:Uh, this is something to definitely uh do and unfortunately they caught, you know, like a pre-cancerous poly early and uh, you know, now I'll be monitoring that stuff and working with my doctor in three years from now, unless something else comes up, going for another one, and I knew what was going to come up with prepping for it. So you know, for two days, basically, you can eat on each day. They say you can eat two eggs in the morning, no oil, no butter, no, nothing, just two eggs.
Speaker 1:And then the rest of the day.
Speaker 2:You can, you know you can eat like gelatin and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm not gonna do that, I'm just gonna have electrolyte water. They say have a sports drink, because I think you know classic america drink, you know something that's more palatable, makes it more relaxed. So I'm like I'm just going to be electrolyte water. Coconut water certainly wasn't on the list of alcohol. Um, you know, you could have coffee. They say clear liquids and obviously coffee isn't what we think of as clear, but if you hold it up to the light and you can see through it, it's technically a clear wood. So I had two days of this, yeah, and I'm like you know, I wasn't, I haven't. It's funny because I'm like these ideas about comfort and what comfort does to sort of uh sorry, for lack of a better word sort of like neuter came, yeah, tame, um, feeling alive and kind of getting out to the edges of things.
Speaker 1:Creating something that's worth. I don't want to say worth consuming, but that implies that consumption is the goal of creation. I don't believe that.
Speaker 2:But that's worth engaging with yeah and and allows for a interesting, fulfilling, expansive experience. You know, expanses it might be a little dramatic, but anyway. So I'm looking forward to this two days. I'm, like I'm not often terribly uncomfortable and I'm not obsessed with comfort. You know like I'm not the person that's like, well, if I go on this trip, it might be cold in the morning, so I need this, I need a scarf, I need gloves, this, and it might be warm later in the day, so I need that. You know what I mean. Like, I'm not like obsessing over that, but, um, you know, I've definitely grown acclimated to just you know temperature 68 in the house.
Speaker 2:I've got clothes. I got a truck. I don't have. You know, I don't deal with a lot of adversity. All my music, music, yeah, it's a strand of internet turns them on the kids because you know, you know I'm doing relatively, you know, good flow and uh, you know it's, uh, you're gonna go out and shoot.
Speaker 2:That's a little cold, yeah, right yeah, it's all the sun's not out the way you want, it's going to go out and shoot. It's a little cold. Yeah right, it's a little. The sun's not out the way that you want. It's a little windy, darn wind. Yeah, that's a bumper sticker.
Speaker 2:I see all the time Darn wind, and so it was just really fascinating to go through this process especially as you're clocking your experience, like what's it like to have two eggs at 8 o'clock in the morning and eat nothing else the rest of the day, and by the end of day two, how are you doing? It was both kind of great Spoiler alert, fine. Not horrible. Great spoiler alert fine. Yeah, not horrible, and but at times uh, not pleasant, especially because you're clearing out your bowels. But, um, you know, even uh, getting ready for the procedure and coming out of it, I got a migraine afterwards. You know, this like three day discomfort-a-thon was kind of trying, and what's interesting is some of the things I did to sort of come out of.
Speaker 2:It was like the first meal I had coming out of. It was healthy, it was steamed brown rice, some sauteed shrimp, steamed vegetables. Yeah, it was delicious. And then I'm like I kind of want some cereal, kind of want a cookie. You know, like I like, I like. I earned these, these, these treats from having endured the discomfort and all that it's not funny how crochet that narrative wants to.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, especially for someone like me. That's very much like uh, sort of uh has built reward structures um to, sort of um incentivize coping with adversity I mean yeah like adversity floor, like the only way we can.
Speaker 1:We can address this adverse, like you say a little pain quotation adversity is to right, reward ourselves and then like if you don't deserve it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you knew what some of this quotation adversity is to reward themselves and then like if you know deserving? Yeah, if you knew what some of this adversity was, you'd be like buddy yeah, I think it's perspective.
Speaker 1:That is not adversity, that is a little bit of friction in your very comfortable suburban midwestern life and that's how I think I would wager to say that's how a lot of people engage with their work, their creative work, and it's probably a big reason why a lot of it's not interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I won't spend a lot of time on this, but this is a discomfort as well. One of the earliest experiences I have as an adult of surrendering to discomfort when faced with the fear of it. So in grad school lived in florida. It's hot, as there in the summer very humid. I thought you know chicago summers were bad. It rains every day at four o'clock in florida and I'm in the panhandle, not like exactly nine percent humidity.
Speaker 2:You walk outside for four minutes it takes forever for the air conditioning in my black leather car to cool everything off I grew up frequently in south florida, so yeah, I mean you're it's, you were in tennessee, so yeah like the jupiter area? Yeah, it's brutal. So my wife and I uh girlfriend at the time uh are like let's go to new orleans, and we were going for like three days. Both. The little hotel drove out there from tallahassee and I'm looking at the forecast and I'm like it's like upper 90s every day 100% humidity.
Speaker 2:And we're going to be out walking around in this shit. I mean, I literally would go from air conditioned space in Florida to film school classrooms, our apartment, you know wherever I was Starbucks, the coffee shop, whatever homeschool classrooms, our apartment, you know wherever I was starbucks, where you know the, the coffee shop, whatever everything was like. Just get indoors as quickly as possible so you don't get sweaty.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, well, I don't want to be inside in new orleans I want to go to the city, experience the city.
Speaker 2:I want to be out in the french quarter, I want to whatever, and I distinctly remember just kind of going. It just is what it is. You want the experience of this place more than you want the comfort of an air-conditioned room, so just let it fucking go.
Speaker 1:So how do we shield ourselves into the preemptive? Like psychological, the psychological effect of this. You happen to be in a place where you were. Okay, we're going in New Orleans and then, you were able to surrender yeah, but I think a big issue is we don't even allow ourselves to get to that place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go into New Orleans. And then you have to go through the dialogue of okay, I'm going to surrender. A lot of people in our contemporary world are almost preemptively cutting themselves off from even imagining an experience like that, where they can then have the dialogue of okay, how do I release myself to this experience? So what do you do then? I know, how do you force a bit, how do you force, maybe? How do you index for those experiences? Or is it just get a? You know, get a dartboard, do the alex. So, yeah, get a dartboard.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I'm going to take photos there um, not that this is.
Speaker 1:You know, I think of it in terms of photography info. I know it's kind of where we default to. Yeah, I mean you do that.
Speaker 2:You know the first things that we're so comfortable.
Speaker 1:It's hilarious that we expect to do anything.
Speaker 2:That's that has any kind of the humanity in it.
Speaker 1:When we're this comfortable, we've removed all the humanity from our our day-to-day circumstances.
Speaker 2:Well, what's funny is that the new orleans experience it was sort of like surrendering to um being uncomfortable, and once I did and was there, we had a great time. It was like once you aren't fighting against being hot, you just I don't know, it just goes away. Yeah, and while I was at forest state as well, we studied in london for two weeks and two of my classmates we decided to go to berlin for the weekend, so we booked tickets and we didn't book hotel rooms or anything, but we sought out an uncomfortable experience. So with new orleans it was we really want to go to new orleans. It's going to be hot. Give into the heat, go to london. I really want to go to berlin, but I want to not book a hotel because I want to just make it up as we go. Yeah, I want to have, I want to be on that, that that just want to feel alive by going.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Like we don't have a place to stay, and I've told people this story and that's frowned upon. Going back to the set example, it's going to be a shit show, yeah, and I've told people they're like oh god I would. I could never do that. I could never go somewhere and not know where we're staying. And you know, we went to a hostel.
Speaker 1:They were full, like I went to a holiday inn.
Speaker 2:They're like yeah, we don't have any rooms. And we kept walking this is like at midnight in berlin and we've, sure enough, stumbled across a small hotel and they're like, yeah, we got a room for you guys and it all worked out fine, but it was exhilarating to just the three of us have never been there before. Yeah, you dropped in the city. Uh, you know, fortunately most everybody there spoke english, but lots of signage that's not in english, it's in german. And you know the resourcefulness of all of us just figuring it out and and and we don't know what areas are good, bad you know nothing and it was awesome.
Speaker 2:So both experiences, even though there was a different approach to them, um, ended up being fine and going. You just just kind of bend it and then that and bringing it back to bowel prep, um, yeah, there was. There was something really powerful in just being really uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:And not even like uncomfortable, like my stomach is growling.
Speaker 2:I'm physically tired. I don't feel good. There's something that I'm so used to doing whenever. I feel like it Get up, get a drink, get up, have this, have a snack, have a snack, you know, have whatever, like you can't. Can't do it because you'll screw up the whole test.
Speaker 2:Um, and there's just something really exhilarating about living with that yeah and just kind of going okay, this is what it is, and I mentioned earlier I won't tell a big story, but flying back from poland last year, I had three hours left in the flight and I'm just like I'm just gonna sit here and see what it's like. I don't know. See what it's like. I have some friends that, just like you know, they were able to fly business class and you know and other friends that have to have a lot of tools to help them get through it. They have anxiety, they struggle with that and I'm like what, how bad is it really? Sit here and cook.
Speaker 1:I believe they'll see an international flight for three hours and back to omaha in the air in no time at all like this is a journey that you know 100 years ago would have taken, right, you know, okay, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:It's ridiculous that that's and then, and I don't want this to come off as self-congratulatory um yeah, but because you know, um, uh I, you know I, I have uh embraced comfort. You know, my wife and I thermostat wars, you know like, in my mind, anything above 72 in the summertime is just unconscionably what. 70, 40 degrees in this house are you insane? Might as well be done. Yeah, no, that's not it, you. You know what I mean. Are we living in an active volcano? What's going on?
Speaker 2:And that goes back to earlier and we don't have to spend time on this, but that indulgence versus sacrifice spectrum I talked about for me, you know, my wife and her dad and brother. They'll put the heat at 64 and the air conditioner at 78 and I just sit there and go, yeah, no, yeah, I will not 70.
Speaker 1:I will not. I will not be uncomfortable yeah.
Speaker 2:So just to wrap it all up, I, um, yeah, I, I really, as I've gotten older and more comfortable and more tools and more technology and more creature comforts, find it boring.
Speaker 1:We read from that passage from the Tao a couple weeks ago, about everything is given context by its contrast. Essentially, you know what darkness is because you know what light is. You know what darkness is because you know what light is. You know what happiness is because you know what sadness is. You know what comfort is because you know what discomfort is. And if we suddenly remove one of those poles, you're going to lose simultaneously you're going to lose the other one and then you just just existing like this purgatory in a sense.
Speaker 2:You know what activity I've done over the last 10 plus years that, I think, sort of implanted something subconsciously in me that makes me want to seek out uncomfortable experiences Hiking, going to Colorado and going on like a seven mile hike of a mountain. I always make the joke when we're doing it because it gets grueling at times. Yeah, like where we chose this? Yeah well, that's how. Why do you, why, why did we choose this? There's something about conquering your fears. Staring literally at a mountain, going how are we gonna get up there?
Speaker 1:every every long run I've ever done yeah, just about every like marathon I've ever run. There's always a point where you say, wow, I fucking.
Speaker 2:I signed up for this. Yeah, I'm never gonna do this again two weeks later, what's my next marathon? Yeah, signed up for this.
Speaker 1:I'm never going to do this again.
Speaker 2:Two weeks later. What's my next marathon? Yeah, yeah, I got it. I'm ready to hike Road tripping that also did it for us, Well, and that's.
Speaker 1:I almost want to set some kind of a, some kind of for us and then, you know, hopefully, if anybody listening is like this is, I feel this, because that's the first sort of point around the idea. I feel this I'm going to set some kind of. We can sit here and talk about how we don't like getting away from comfort, and then we leave and go back to our comfortable lives In two weeks. Go back to your website or just whatever you talked about your, your, your trip to poland, or the trip to new orleans, and or when you know, when you guys went to, when you took the trip to college, you didn't know where you're going to stay. It makes me think of all of last year, one of the one of the most. I mean, in college we used to do this all the time. We just leave.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's 11 o'clock midnight yeah we have a long run at noon tomorrow. Fuck it, let's take a three-hour road trip and then like camp on a mountain and then come back and we'll do the run and then we'll sleep nice and, but you do that stuff that's like a college type of, and then you that's something like gosh I can't handle that anymore. Like I'm too old for that, I can't do it. Are you or?
Speaker 2:are you just telling?
Speaker 1:yourself that story and that's rhetorical. I I think you know the answer is the way is the latter it You're telling yourself that slowly, I can't do, I'm not built like that anymore. The best experience I had last year I mean there were a lot of great things, but the most inspired I think I got was we took like a four-day trip to San Diego. You know, four days it's not a lot, yeah.
Speaker 2:We flew in we immediately.
Speaker 1:We got food. After we landed, we went on like a 60-mile bike ride, or it might have not been that much, but I mean it was substantial. So really, up the coast, from San Diego up the coast, it was beautiful. You know you're biking the water, the beaches in San Diego I've driven that. We went on a hike, we rented a car and drove up the coast through Malibu and through LA and I got crazy sunburn. I mean, everybody got sick and we weren't sleeping a lot. Very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:We did so much stuff like so much in that four-day period. We went to a concert like a talking heads cover band. It was unbelievable. I mean, we got breakfast every day.
Speaker 1:We were constantly in the car, constantly in motion, constantly doing this or that or this or that, and we were exhausted. Yeah, I mean everybody was fucking tired and you know we're sleeping in my buddy's apartment, so I think a one-bedroom apartment, there's no air conditioning, a little hot, because you know it's just like unseasonably warm. Right news towards it was in little summer of summer, but san diego is always yeah, it's almost like 70 degrees. Um, by all means, though, it was not. You know, wake up, have a coffee and do your thing, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it was just the most inspiring like human I've felt in a while, outside of taking some swings with work, where you're just like you're in somebody's house or you're in somebody's basement or in their business, like deep in the wells of whatever, and you're just this. You don't quite understand, you're getting like this really intimate, personal, voyeuristic view into their life, like those are the moments where I just feel like a real human, yes, alive, yeah, and they're all uncomfortable or audrey, and I are taking a trip.
Speaker 1:We took a trip a couple of years ago. We were similar to your experience with the hostel where we're driving, where this was in the south and we were in North Carolina and we drove from Georgia to this place called Highlands, north Carolina, and the idea was to camp. And then we figured out, okay, a lot of the campsites are actually closed. So we're like, ah, we're exhausted and it is 12 o'clock in the night. Let's find a hotel and all the pipes were frozen, so all the hotels were closed. Um, and then we find this motel and we overpay a shit ton for like a very subpar room and it's One of the best memories I have and we literally cooked if we use our gas stove To cook our dinner because they're none of the restaurants were open to me my clock. We cooked dinner on the patio of this motel. We're like the only ones there. Everything's close in it. There's one person in the lobby, the rooms not the cleanest, but it's fine. We put TCM on the TV and hung out, slept in, woke up.
Speaker 1:Tcm. That's my thing whenever we're anywhere. Tcm for us, it's fine. I like stimulation, whether it's music, whether it's the robert undergast podcast. He talks about how life isn't experiencing. It's re-experiencing like everything is fleeting. Yeah, our memory is not made to hold on to things, so you have to capture them and then you can revisit them at a different time. But so I definitely do that. But yeah, and that's one of the best memories I have to this day, and we were fighting about it that night.
Speaker 1:We're both frustrated, we're both tired, we're both grumpy, and it's cold and uncomfortable. You can't see anything. It's raining and snowing and we're driving up this mountain.
Speaker 1:If you've ever been over the highlands, it's a mountain time. We're just like we're never fucking doing this again. And then the next day we wake up and we're like you know, if we would have planned this, it wouldn't suck. I mean, it wouldn't suck, but we're just taking all of the humanity out of it. So so, yeah, how do we leave this? How do we leave this conversation better? How do we leave this conversation?
Speaker 1:having pushed through that comfort a little bit. Yeah, where do we go? How do we not just default back to well?
Speaker 2:everything in us is fighting the comfortable safety, safety, security, predictability, um, and I think that's again, it's an ebb and flow, um, because you know, sometimes after a long trip, like I'm saying oh my god, I want my own bed I want to be able to turn the tv on, I want you know control over the temperature, you know whatever. So I think and I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that, absolutely but I think what ends up happening, I just you know. I don't want to be on.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be traveling for a month at a like a month at a time. Yeah, not I, especially me. I had to. Just I need to recharge. Yeah, I was exhausted after the four days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the san diego thing like the last day we just sat around, but, and I mean, you can build your endurance that you know four days isn't as exhausting you know, or multiple you know, multiple times you do stuff get more acclimated to it, whatever, but I think everybody needs to be able to break away from that electric state of unpredictability and not knowing, or literal physical discomfort and all of that, to something that's a little bit more safe and secure.
Speaker 2:But then again it's much easier at least in my experience, to go long stretches of a lot of comfort. And when, for me, you combine that with hitting 45 years old and everything that you were giving so much time toward is not happening the way you thought it would, and that's not a like, a like, a commentary on the failure I didn't do this or do that, but sort of what you thought was going to happen didn't you realize you have way less time to still try to accomplish that. Because of where? Because of the compression of time, and I think it makes those stretches of comfort that much more difficult to um, to, to manage or to sort of experience to cope with. To a certain extent Because you know for me the compression of time is, you know, reading on the road.
Speaker 2:I need to make time for experiences like this where I don't know what's coming. I'm in a place I'm not familiar with. I'm making it up as I go, and that could be everything from just, you know, an afternoon of street photography in an area I don't know. It could be you know a road trip out west, and I have no idea where I'm going. Making it up as I go, it could be just going to a place that is physically uncomfortable uh, temperature, wise, heat, whatever um, hey, can we come shoot it?
Speaker 1:can we come follow you around?
Speaker 2:or you know, you know, and I've introduced discomfort into my life too, uh, in smaller ways. Uh, you know. You can make an argument that listening to a vinyl record is a more uncomfortable experience logistically than it is to just stream music off of a HomePod, to use older cameras, you know.
Speaker 1:I definitely think they're related, but it is almost like a band-aid to a deeper like hoping that that you're.
Speaker 2:I'm experiencing comfort on multiple levels, so in very simple, everyday ways, with more friction and just the, the tools that I use to make stuff or just to experience the world, all the way up to getting you know thrown into, you know, the, the cauldron and trying to figure it out as you go, whether it's on my own or with friends. Hiking, you know, is something in the middle, like let's go to colorado and take a bag of minimal supplies and walk up a mountain and deal with physical discomfort, emotional ups and downs, all the stuff that makes you go. At that one point, which happens every time for me, I chose to do this. Why? Why?
Speaker 2:and then you know, so if you ask that question, you're you're doing the right thing almost, and you know um you same thing with road trips. You know we feel that relief when we're home and all the discomfort and unpredictability and insecurity and all that stuff goes away. And then slowly the desire for it again builds back up.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting too how urban life is almost corrected for so many variables of discomfort that there is this romanticism around the idea of travel and road trip. Or now you see it with, you know, I want to buy some land and start a farm, like there's all of these trends that we see. There's all of these trends that we see. And if you do start to break those things apart, I think a lot of it is explained well by people just trying to find something that's not. Humans aren't meant to just exist. Humans aren't supposed to exist in a perfect environment. We're supposed to be in constant, in constant context or in constant battle with our circumstances, in our environment. It's kind of wired into us, and that that metaphor extends into the art that we try to make. That's right. It has to. If it doesn't, then you're probably not making anything that's going to hold itself up over any substantial period of time.
Speaker 2:Well, especially because we can, use the desire for comfort as an excuse to not start stuff. It can mean, well, the conditions aren't right, I don't have this. I go back to that story I told you about when my sister said that she was going to send me her iBook and I had a crappy, homemade PC. But well, I can't do anything until I have this comfortable tool that's better than what I have.
Speaker 2:So then let all the machinery grind we'll take a two-week break yeah, take a break and wait for it to show up in the mail. Um, you know, uh, and I'm certainly, I'm certainly someone that has my little all right, gotta put the movie on. I've gotta, you know, have, um, this music playing in the background. What the kind of turn the space heater on. This light's too bright. You know like, I've got this whole checklist of stuff I have to go through sometimes to just like set the you know, my wife's upstairs. How can I? I can't get, I can't get. I gotta get this place clean before I can do it.
Speaker 2:You know right yeah, I can't possibly work the same way that I would if she wasn't here, or my kids are home sick, you know just all that stuff Like well, I don't have it, the conditions aren't met, shut it down, and I think that.
Speaker 1:What are some of those core emotions that come over when you're trying to avoid discomfort? You just kind of nailed down a couple. I'm interested because I think about it with myself. Yeah, you know obviously the procrastination aspect, resistance. Yeah, oh, I need to do this and we can do that, we're just avoiding. Yeah, I think I mean it totally applies. Yeah, I mean you know writing is not comfortable.
Speaker 1:In the same way, mean you know writing is not comfortable in the same way that you know, asking somebody if you can photograph them is not comfortable, or coordinating any kind of a production or starting a painting from over none of that's comfortable. Any creative act is probably just uncomfortable. But what are?
Speaker 2:those thoughts for you. What first thing I think of is, you know, the thing that I'm thinking of, my vision of it is always ultimately better than whatever it is I end up making. So why not create these conditions that can't be met, so that I hang on to my perfect vision, rather than my flawed result or flawed product, whatever you want to call it. The work, the flawed work.
Speaker 2:I got a random inspiration to film a little intro to the video that I posted today on my YouTube channel. I'm like I don't want to just start talking to camera. I'm like, what can I do? And I just had this flash of an idea. This is nothing profound, but I'm just like, well, what if I just film myself sitting at the computer and trying to like come up with what I'm going to talk about for this video? Because the subject of it, this final cut pro 11.1 update I'm just kind of like I don't have anything to say about it.
Speaker 2:I'm it's like cool, like that's my reaction to it. Yeah, you know, I won't, you know, and there's more to it than that. But I'm like I'll just film myself sitting at the computer, staring at a blank piece of paper, going I got nothing, um, and then you know, staring at the update icon to update the app going, okay, I guess I'll do this. Yeah, I'm like I don't know what it's gonna look like. I was gonna feel like it needs my camcorder, my monitor, so all these little bumps and limitations and obstacles, and, um, I'm like I want to get this done somewhat efficiently or quickly, because I have to leave for vegas the next day and just kind of put this thing together and I'm like this little sound design, all that stuff, and I'm like that, that, yeah, I'm like is it exactly how I envisioned?
Speaker 2:Is what I envisioned better? Did I do this moment a little differently than what I originally thought?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but again, this is nothing. It gets back to the beginning of the episode, but I'm really glad I did it. Yeah, you're just solving a series of creative problems.
Speaker 2:Well, there were multiple points, if you're bringing it back to what you said, multiple points where I'm like I can't, I can't, I can't, the camcorder, the place that I wanted, just you know.
Speaker 2:multiple points where I'm like this is it's just, I'm just gonna stop and I think, well, what helped is, you know, you know, just sort of part of what inspired, honestly, was the freshness of the ro Rodriguez podcast, which is again so grateful to our relationship that we send this stuff back and forth to each other, because had I not listened to that, I may not have even acted initially on making it. I might have just been like it's just easier to sit in the chair and be like okay.
Speaker 1:So that's another thing that I think is so funny. That that you just hit on that I've been thinking a lot about is sometimes I get so discouraged, you know, to do things like maybe because of the discomfort, friction, procrastination, whatever you want to call it, and nothing brings me out of it like another human's influencing, like we're so group-minded, most of us yeah, some people, I'm sure can sit in a room and write for days and days, and days and it's all amazing, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But again, for us, mere mortals I think we are so you almost have to have some kind of accountability or some kind of influence, some kind of social influence, like a mimetic influence that you can build off of You're talking about. You wouldn't have done it without felt that there's so many things. I'm just like I can do something for a week, yeah, for a month, all day long, yeah. But then when it gets hard, I rely on those influences to just be motivated to push through.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the thing that was interesting about what Robert said was that I think part of me goes well, you should really probably sit down and kind of like write out the shots. You know like get a little text based storyboard, you know like plan a little better or whatever, and I kind of went. I generally see in my mind, you know, know, shot, reverse shot, and close up on this like I basically know what the carnage is and guess what, if I'm sitting in the edit bay and I miss a shot, you can do it again.
Speaker 2:Just get it. It's not like the set is off limits. Yeah, it's your freaking studio. So that's like oh yeah, I didn't get this shot.
Speaker 1:Then get it, so it did happen.
Speaker 2:I had filmed myself at my main computer and had done the Final Cut update and I'm like, well, I need a close-up of the update button. I didn't get a close-up of it, I can't just zoom in on it, it's too far away. So I go to my Mac Mini. I'm like, oh shit, I did the update on this computer. Luckily my dumb ass has three computers. So I pulled out my laptop and I'm like, well, it's not the same angle. I'm like, who cares? Who cares? The close-up of the update, you know whatever, it worked fine. So there was something sort of this all seems so basic. It does.
Speaker 1:But it's something that I.
Speaker 2:You just overcomplicicate this shit and make yes it's, it's I.
Speaker 1:I told you that I heard some quote the other day, yeah, where he said we literally had this conversation yesterday and this is in his autobiography and he's talking about learning about film and he says the only formal education that I ever got about how to make film we're talking one of the one of the best working directors alive right now, and I mean past that. It's completely subjective. He's in the pantheon. Yeah, he, he, subjective he's. He's in the pantheon. It he, his formal education, as he as he defined it was 19 pages of encyclopedia on sin man camera, yeah, it's like I think that's all you really need to be honest and it just goes to show how overcomplicated we make everything.
Speaker 1:And he goes on to say from that you don't learn to write great poetry by critiquing great poetry. You don't learn to make great films by watching film.
Speaker 1:You learn to do it by doing what you want to do, and we give ourselves, and I think the especially for, for those of us that are more introverted, you can spend all of your time thinking about why this can't happen or why you shouldn't do this, or why this is not a good idea, and just start moving, start solving the problems in a creative way and see what comes out of it, and I mean that is always going to serve me better than sitting there and overthinking anything well, one thing I think Werner and Robert would say and Robert said it in the podcast, I think, when he was relating to having to exercise because he kept having back issues and you know saying to himself you know, I'm not an athlete, I don't like working out all that stuff, having to exercise because he kept having bad issues.
Speaker 2:And you know saying to himself you know, I'm not an athlete, I don't like working out all that stuff. He said you're your own worst enemy. This isn't like some profound realization. Every time I think about I don't have the conditions aren't met, or I can't film this intro because I don't have the right thing, or all this bullshit yeah you're just your own worst enemy.
Speaker 2:You just heard it and I think, I think, I think bernard would say that in a heart, you know, in a heartbeat, um, and I see those two and while they may make things that I enjoy in different ways.
Speaker 2:You know I'm not like going hard on Spy Kids. I don't think it's bad, but it's just. You know I'm going to watch a bunch of people drag a bone over a mountain or a guy get eaten by a grizzly bear Spoiler alert Before I watch Spy Kids. But I have to respect the shit out of the factkicks, but I have to respect the shit out of the fact that both of them at least when it comes to their art and creativity.
Speaker 2:Don't let themselves be their own worst enemy. They, they have. They have figured that part out, and have other things that they can do.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's making a film for $7,000 with whatever you have on hand. Or I mean it's making a film for $7,000 with whatever you have on hand, or it's stealing your camera to make your first films.
Speaker 2:There's nothing by any means necessary. I'm going to do this and I think, bringing it back to the comfort thing again for me, the vision I have of the thing I want to make is better than what I might end up making. So that fear component and I have to get uncomfortable. I have to go from an indulgent life to a sacrificial life to be able to make the thing that I want to make. And those things certainly get in the way and while I'm happy, with the things that I've made from a couple YouTube channels and this podcast and the fits and the photographs I've made.
Speaker 2:when you really look at how much time I've spent making things to how much time I've spent safe and comfortable and secure, you know, to me that's not a good ratio.
Speaker 1:It is especially with what.
Speaker 2:I hoped to accomplish, you know, as I set out on this journey, really, um sort of falling into a creative life through my undergrad as an acting, but then, like deliberately making a choice, okay, that doesn't work. I see what I want to do and I'm gonna go for it, go hard for it. Um, you know different levels of focus and concentration and sacrifice and all of that stuff and then falling out of it Certainly peaks and valleys, but often the valleys are much longer and much more sustained than the time where I've been in place of discomfort, sacrifice, um surrender, all of that, uh, like making something.
Speaker 1:Well, let's, let's not leave it there. I mean let's. I mean let's just let's hold each other accountable. Yeah, I mean, I feel like we we have a pretty good lock on the other person's kind of you know, strengths, weaknesses, creative ambitions, things like that. Yeah, let's, because we could leave this and, you know, it's just another conversation, um, but yeah, I mean, and we have a community out there that's listening to this too, like, and we are mimetic creatures at the end of the day, and while some people aren't, I feel like a lot of people are, and when things get uncomfortable, having somebody to help them through that or just remind them, this is why you're doing that, or this is this is going to happen, and everything in your body is going to tell you to do this. But we need to retrain that, we need to re contextualize that and and yeah, so I don't I don't know what that looks like, but in the spirit of you know, just jump in and start solving the creative problems as they come up.
Speaker 1:Let's, yeah, they come up. Let's. Yeah, let's hold each other. Figure out, because I think we both want to be more uncomfortable. Yes, I mean, I think, at the end of the day, if we were both making things that we cared about and that got us fired up and taught us things about the world and ourselves and, you know, people around us. I think we're going to be happy here and whenever we sit down for these, there's going to be more energy. That's all we really are craving. So let's hold each other Again. I don't know what that looks like, but let's make an effort to figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't want to get really good at talking about making a book. Yeah, I don't want to get really good at talking about making work. Yeah, exactly, and my experience of some of the work I make, because I think, like you mentioned, about somebody who is a critique of poetry or a critic of poetry. I don't want to be someone that talks about writing poetry or talks about making work more than I actually spend time.
Speaker 1:It's the biggest one of the biggest downfalls of a lot of what I see is I'm guilty of it just as much. Yeah, the you're talking about making the thing instead of making the thing, just make the thing. We can still do this and it's going to have so much more truth to it if we're actually and you know, it's not like we don't make, but yeah, I think we both want not pick up the pace, but maybe not even on an scale.
Speaker 1:but internally we want that satisfaction, we want that we want to you know, create more, and yet I think it starts with a little accountability, and we can, you know, also just push and bring us comfort.
Speaker 2:I think it's really fascinating.
Speaker 1:You hear a lot of people that read on the road when they're really young and you know, and it gets flack in the very circles, but whatever, yeah, um, I think it's interesting. You know your perspective. You sat down and you're like I'm reading this book, it makes me. I was like, is it making you want to go on a road trip or, you know, can I just be in your life? It becomes really clear how you know the context being the the traditional western or americanized midlife crisis. You know, reading through it after you have these constraints to life, gives you a feeling of I mean, you describe it, you yeah it makes me yeah for me you know, um, it makes me you know a road trip as a as a entry point to making work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, for a road trip as a as a entry point to making work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, for me it relates back to making work. Like you know, I certainly see the value in going on a road trip. You don't know how you're going to get there, you don't know where you're going to stay, you don't know what you're going to eat. You don't have a lot of money.
Speaker 2:You know, whatever, whatever those constraints are, but you know, for me, you you know, barreling into the unknown to to make something, and I think I talked to you earlier today about how, just sort of randomly, when I was transitioning from being at home to your place and I had a few errands to run, I just like out of nowhere, got sort of a disembodied nervousness and I clocked it and I'm like I'm like I'm like really nervous right now. You know, sometimes you get nervous like in your belly. This was sort of like right under my actual stomach and I'm just like what is this? And you know, I'm at the precipice right now. I'm going to las vegas tomorrow and while I have an airbnb with my friends and all that stuff there's lots of unknowns for me, as someone who likes to have a cartography and have everything mapped.
Speaker 2:Multiple personalities mixing together. Where are we going to eat? Are there going to be conflicts?
Speaker 1:of interest. Am I going to be able to get up?
Speaker 2:Not conflicts of interest, but just sort of like well, this person wants to do this, this person wants to do that. Who do I have to engage with? Yeah, am I going to? Is to do that? Who do I have to engage with? Yeah, uh, am I gonna? Is my introvert gonna come out? Um, who am I gonna run into that? Maybe I I look up to, or maybe I'm intimidated by. What brands am I gonna talk to? How much sort of business am I gonna shake hands on? And, you know, get the commerce side going. So there's just like all these unknowns and the nervousness I think was I just sat there and I went this is your body going into a fight or flight state because you're staring at the unknown.
Speaker 2:You can't control it and part of you wants to flee to comfort. You want to sit on the couch and watch youtube, or you know even comfort and just making. You know I gotta watch out that. Just like sitting in my studio and making a youtube video, or going out around omar with a digicam and taking some photos, like, oh, I'm doing it, I'm doing the thing, doing a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, like well okay yeah, because that has gotten all comfortable. You've kind of figured all that out. Um, have you actually edited the photos that you took? Have you put it together into a book or sequence them, printed them? Do you even like it, have you?
Speaker 1:is it? Is it? Is it just an ad? I had this thought that should be because and I mean I, I, I index in the practice of it whenever I have these thoughts because I think that is a useful, that's a useful side of things. But, yeah, you know, do I care about any of these?
Speaker 1:yes is this the work that I really right, or is this just the? Oh well, it's easy you drive or park, it's raining, and that's right. Yeah, and yeah. I mean I've been continuing with that a lot recently as the weather's got warmer, just like this is fun and you know the practice is very useful and I love the idea of, you know, getting uncomfortable in that aspect. We're all grown for five hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what it is this is that's.
Speaker 1:you know you can go out and spend 40 hours walking and get nothing. Maybe you get several things that you care about, but I think that's important. But at the same time, you know it's all very cozy.
Speaker 2:And I think of I just had an image of sort of a trinity right, I think of.
Speaker 2:I think of I just had an image of sort of a Trinity right For us talking about work and talking about what we are making, even if it's not enough, and talking about what we're consuming consuming right so double feature at phone streams, youtube videos, a podcast, reading on the road like, hey, I'm doing the work, right, I'm consuming all this stuff and I'm filtering it into what I want to do, and then you know the actual work, whether it's for me, a youtube video or the work that would be really hard, which is taking the photography, editing it. Is this something? Is there a small book? Is there a gallery, whatever? Like, oh god, if I, if I had to actually figure out how to get the money to make this stuff and then find a glory space.
Speaker 2:Get alex involved, do we like? Is there? A an open building. Who do I have to call no, too much work can't do it, and so does that in the trinity there that I described. The work part is sort of the easiest one to not do.
Speaker 1:It's really easy to talk about this stuff. Yeah, we sit down. It's really easy to consume it.
Speaker 2:You know we're having these conversations, it's like, oh look, we're making all these episodes and we're doing all this. It's like it's super prolific.
Speaker 1:I sit down and we read this and I went through all these books and all these movies and watched a little bit of that. Wow, these guys are. No that's the easy thing.
Speaker 2:We're going to do that anyways.
Speaker 1:Where's the work?
Speaker 2:Now can I see what it is.
Speaker 1:What's the salt added up to? That's what we that's.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm dragging a ship across the mountain. I made a file. Yeah, that's what we. Yeah, that's yeah, okay, yeah, I mean if I'll take video, sorry, yeah, yeah, no, for sure, yeah, I am. And yeah, I mean I think this is something we continue to revisit over the next year and I mean I again I don't want to talk about, I want to start to try to. I mean you again I don't want to talk about it, I want to start to try to. I mean you know, we'll definitely hold each other accountable. What does that direction look like? Let's start moving towards that direction in a forceful way, like, hey, get as uncomfortable as we can be within reasonable you know, and see what does that look like after a year?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know let's, you know, mark it, keep an eye on it. When we're just creatively solving problems and we're constantly seeking new problems to solve, what does that add up to over the course of, you know, six months, 12 months? And yeah, you have the perfect vehicle to kind of notch it down. I'd love to just really we're definitely over time and I know you've got it there, but I don't think it has anything to really do with what we're starting. Well, I don't know, but I sent you this quote this morning. It's good and I just kind of want to get it down on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, please do, yeah, just get it down on the microphone so it doesn't Do you know what page that was on. I should have brought it last time. And so this is Basho and it's the Narrow Road to the Deep North and other travel sketches. So he's like a Japanese master of haiku. And you know I'm not going to get into the haiku as like a very westernized interpretation, it's kind of goofy and then. But then there's like it's a very serious art form at its core um anyways the page number.
Speaker 1:Oh no, what is the?
Speaker 2:it's on the right side, okay, and the first words are go to the pine. It's in the middle of the. Go to the pine, if you want to learn.
Speaker 1:All right, let's see here. Here we go there. It is Okay. So I'll just read this. Let me do a quick minute on it. Get the job out of here. Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo, and in doing so you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues of its own accord. When you and the object have become one, when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there, However well phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural. If the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there, However well phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural, if the object and yourself are separate, then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit. Yeah, it just floored me when I read it this morning.
Speaker 2:So yeah it sort of uh goes back to the you know, for me you're your own version of get out of the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, surrender, get connected stop imposing yourself, yeah your, your interpretation onto your work, or this is what are people going to think of this? What's the reaction going to be to this? Are people going to think of me in the way that I want people to think of me if I make this stop?
Speaker 2:get out of the damn way. And again, I think this goes back to other stuff. You can't get gives a shit at the end of the day, you know you know, seeking that truth and purity, and I think that's exactly what that is. You know, like go to the bamboo and get connected. I mean, it sounds like when I say that though, like okay, like make a conscious, do something conscious to like create, I don't think that that's how it works. It's going to happen when it happens, and you have to.
Speaker 1:It's not conscious. In my opinion, at least the good stuff it's not conscious and it's not coming from you. It's subconscious. You're a vehicle for something, yeah, and if it is coming from you, it's probably not the good stuff, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that's part of what has drawn me to photography so much. It's sort of twofold. It's one thing on a film set, managing a bunch of people and also trying to get into the flow and make work. There's something about just you and your surroundings and giving into all of it and just it. It just kind of happens and I feel like when I look at some of those Eggleston photos that the average person might go who cares about these clouds? Who cares about, about those trees? I think that you can feel it in the photo.
Speaker 1:When you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something, look, a hidden glimmer in the air. However well phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural, if the object and yourself are separate, then your poetry is not true poetry but really your subjective, counterfeit subjective counterfeit.
Speaker 2:Wow, you know, if you go to a, you see a photograph or a movie or whatever. Yeah, subjective counterfeit, it's well executed, there's technical mastery going on there, or you knowfeit. So it's well executed, there's technical mastery going on there, or you know whatever. But it's just like. This is not no yeah highly highly recommend this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was beautiful, so this is thanks for sharing that with me earlier. Yeah, it's the penguin classics, the narrow road and the deep north and other travel sketches. So I read the.
Speaker 2:I read the like the sketches.
Speaker 1:First, yeah, and I skipped the internet. I was like gosh, 50 page introduction and then. But penguin generally does a pretty good job with introductions and you know I was.
Speaker 1:I was like grumpy about it I get grumpy. I'm going to read the introduction and the introduction was fantastic, I'm not spoiled. From the introduction he talks about how he matures, how his work matures and kind of traces his influences from the early influences to then how the work kind of matures as he starts to separate himself from his sense of self, and that it just the tracing. How that traces is fascinating. There's there's one thing in here where it's like the work wasn't true because it was too engaged with the self and um, yeah it, I, yeah. I mean the sketches are brilliant. Obviously the translation is brilliant and then the introduction is worth the price of admission too.
Speaker 1:Highly recommend it and anyone always does a great job, but it's there.
Speaker 2:I can't wait to add that one to the pile, my friend.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a good place to tie it up. It had been a golden afternoon. Why can't we to add that one to the pile, my friend? Well, that's a good place to kind of look.
Speaker 2:It had been a golden afternoon and I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. Thank you,
