#1 Postcards from Japan

Dear friend,

It has not been easy to create of late, so my trip to Japan was a gift. There I found myself picking up my camera with intentionality, curiosity, and peace. Street photography found its flow again. Every photo that stayed with me felt like a kind offering from the world. As if to say, “You saw that, too, right? Let that be our little secret.”

To my mind, the opposition to flow is inertia and the build-up of pressure/guilt. It is terrifying. It brings up real anxiety about not being as good/productive/efficacious as you were a day ago. Let it go on too long and you wonder what has changed. Longer, and you’re wondering if you’ve lost yourself. It is perhaps in anxious avoidance of such a feeling that the subject of what helps one get past a certain creative threshold to do what they need to do and put their art into the world has long been an obsession of mine. After all, aren’t we what we do?

Well, in part, but not completely. I’ve been trying to hone my relationship with myself through the expression of my values – say, in wanting to feel spiritually connected, or to be brave in expressing my inner world – than in outcomes. The best part is that trusting the process tends to secure good outcomes, but this does not quite work out as well the other way. (Focusing on the outcomes does not guarantee flow. Procrastination arises from stressing about outcomes, not laziness.) But this remains a practice, as perhaps it would always be, for every day.

Of course, it helps that Japan is an incredibly beautiful country. Even electrical wires bear a certain compositional strength; perhaps it would really be impossible to take a bad picture here. Being on holiday itself also cues one, in part, to be curious, although I would admit to feeling a little frenetic about getting from A to B every once in a while. My best memories of the trip came from me tending to how I felt at a particular moment. When I finally let myself sit in a cafe for an hour or two to sketch and read, I was very close to bliss.

But I think the biggest thing that helped me find flow was a determination to practice what I learned about mindfulness over the years. I let myself slow down, to notice. Combining that with my camera, I was reminded of why an image is also called a still, and the powers embedded therein. Fittingly, Japan is a country that healthily encourages, at least for tourists, its unique flavor of zen and pause. A traditional tea ceremony asks you to give an hour or two for a cup of matcha and a piece of wagashi. (I highly recommend it.) A dish from a food market is to be enjoyed by the stall, not to be nibbled as you walk. There is nothing else to do in an onsen but to sit rather still, literally naked.

In other words, I got to affirm some thoughts I recently articulated elsewhere: “Creating any art, I am convinced, demands you feel your feelings, and proper feeling necessitates your presence.” Might I have confused overstimulation – before my trip, I’d been reading up to seven books, almost simultaneously – with productivity and self-efficacy? Perhaps being everywhere all at once is not quite being anywhere at any one time. Presence asks you to take in this moment, for it won't come again.

I have great gratitude for being able to share in these moments. And here I’d like to pass on some of these little secrets.

Love, Milton