⛵ VOYAGE #02 — Responsibilities of daily life
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⛵ VOYAGE #02 — by Nick Jaffe — October, 2, 2020
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Responsibilities of daily life #02
Welcome to edition #02 of VOYAGE: to the many who emailed me, I have not forgotten you — I will reply to each and every one. It has been a busy fortnight.
I am fortunate enough to have a lot of interesting, driven and successful people in my life. I met many of these people during or as a result of my adventures and pursuits — from politicians to billionaires to famous authors to activists and beyond — this is not to brag, it is simply to highlight that doing interesting things attracts people doing interesting things. To watch television, endlessly peruse social media and watch the lives of others, is to consume the creativity of someone else at the expense of your own.
How do you do interesting things? At its most basic level, you start with a reduction in consumption and an increase in production. In my personal experience, I have also noticed that a certain level of material poverty in exchange for immaterial richness, is both an excellent personal motivator and a powerful signifier to others of your level of personal investment: when a person can be seen as fully invested into their pursuit, the world seems to have a tendency to bend in their favour. When your risk exposure vector is visible to others, it can also function as a social accountability tool. When I was struggling to finish my book I made a commitment to post my daily word count to thousands of people on Instagram. Not only did this help motivate me to finish, but surprisingly, I received messages from dozens of people about how it had helped motivate them to finish various projects.
My dad used to tell me stories of living and working in the Bowery, New York City in the 70s, during a time when the Bowery was a place for addicts, poverty and the homeless. He worked filing sculptural bronze castings for Andy Warhol by day, and by night he would find himself at the apartment of Norman Mailer with friends. He would sit quietly in the corner and listen to the booming ego of Mailer, still too young to interject in conversation without being made a fool by an intellectual giant.
Dad lived in a kind of poverty that is chosen, rather than forced upon. A bohemian poverty. A creative poverty. A poverty not of hopes and dreams, simply a poverty of materiality. To be critical, perhaps a very white poverty — it takes a certain kind of privilege to be able to choose between poverty or comfort. I too chose material poverty while living in Berlin, sleeping on a piece of cardboard and chipping away at my dream to sail home to Australia — I once lived in a 2 person tent inside a warehouse for months to save on rent in the name of business. I then spent a summer camping in a borrowed van to build my Airbnb, followed by a Tasmanian winter sleeping inside a half converted shipping container with a bucket for a toilet and a cold shower. I chose this, not because I had no other choice or because it makes an interesting story, but because I had to decide whether I wanted comfort and lifestyle, or whether I wanted to pursue short term discomfort in pursuit of living on my own terms. When I think of all this, the iconic image of Steve Jobs alone in his apartment immediately springs to mind: "All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo."
While reading this fun article on John Cleese last week, I kept re-reading one of his answers:
So, to be creative, you have to have creative thoughts. You need to be in a creative mood. How do you get in a creative mood? Well, a creative mood, by definition, is a playful one. Why can children play so naturally? Because the parents are minding the shop. The kids don’t have to worry about who’s making dinner. So, if you want to play as an adult, you have to create a space where you get away from the ordinary responsibilities of everyday life.
Fredrich von Schiller speaks along similar lines, equating freedom and creativity with childhood playfulness — I dare say Cleese has stumbled across Schiller's work in his lifetime.
When I've thought back to my own peak periods of creativity, there has always been a parallel line of material poverty. I think this stems from a kind of renunciation of "the ordinary responsibilities of everyday life" — it's pretty hard to be in a creative mood when you have so much materiality to support.
Sterling Hayden and his famous quote (used by every small boat sailor to justify their insanity, since forever) puts it this way:
To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse.
Anyone who has taken the time to read my book will know financial stress is a constant theme — I once sailed across the Pacific in 88 days aboard my second boat Harmony, driven entirely by financial unrest. I do not necessarily condone these extremes — everyone is having their own experience of life with their own limitations (self-imposed or otherwise) — however I have been thinking a lot during these introspective times and the theme is clear: it is simply not possible to do interesting things, pursue dreams or be creative, if you are not able to first build a creative environment by getting away from the responsibilities of daily life. How you achieve that is up to you — for me, I've been in a position choose periods of material poverty to achieve certain things (through a combination of luck and my own forethought). For you, it may mean something else entirely.
Fuel for thought.
Recent photographic outputs
- From a drought of commercial work to a busy three weeks, shooting stills for Bellroy, seaweed for Sea Forest and motion for Kathmandu, I will hopefully have some free time next week to continue on some small personal documentary projects.
Recent workshop outputs
With an obvious passion for Land Rovers, I have recently completed the design and tooling for two leather accessories for the Land Rover Defender. These include a centre console pocket, and most recently my leather door handles, all made in my little shipping container workshop overlooking the sea.
Recent inputs
- How Creativity Changes as We Age — "Now it’s recognized that there was not a falling off of creative powers but that their creative powers have changed."
- For Camus, it was always personal — "In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
Elsewhere
My primary Instagram / Website & work / YouTube Channel / Workshop Instagram / Airbnb / Twitter
Reach out
If there is something you'd like me to riff on in the next edition or delve into further personally — simply reply to this email.
Colophon: written in Markdown with a dash of CSS in iA Writer, captured via Squarespace + Zapier & shipped to you via Buttondown + various tubes.