To make a light and clean sake, a sake maker polishes the rice; they strip away the husk of the rice to get to the soft, sweet and predictable centre. But the husk also has a flavour; it provides earthy and warm characteristics to a sake. Husk creates uncertainty. It imparts a perfume of a rice grain that’s had less intervention, less control, more serendipity.

The difficulty with digital mark-making is like polishing rice. One can edit, shape, redo, until one has it perfect. But, like a less-polished sake, physical art making brings a level of spontaneity and imperfection that can excite and captivate the viewer.

Neither is better or worse, sometimes I like clean and light sake. Other times, a more unpredictable one is what I’m looking for. And the same goes for making marks.

At the time of writing this, I’ve been alive for about 14500 days. That means I’ve had 14500 opportunities to watch the sun rise. Of those 14.5k opportunities, I’ve maybe done it about 10 times. Most of those are when I’ve been on holiday – away from work and my ‘everyday’ life.

Even if I gave myself a few thousand days grace (for being a child who didn’t care or know any better, or for days when the clouds were too thick to see the sun) that’s a lot of sunrises to have missed or left unnoticed. But, that’s the thing with the everyday, it’s easy to take it for granted but the wonder of the universe is ever present within those ordinary days.

I’d love to be able to say that I know when a good idea is going to come. But I don’t. I know there are certain conditions that make ideas more likely. Like manufacturing space in my day to let my mind drift aimlessly. Or putting myself in novel environments (like walking a different route home from the station in the evening). Or doing automatic physical activity (like walking or washing the car). Being able to see the horizon helps sometimes, too.

But none of this is certain. So I’ve learned to stay ready by keeping a notebook and pen on me everywhere I go. That invisible muse may be waiting around the next corner, about to to throw me an idea and if I don’t catch it by writing it down, the moment passes and so does the idea. So. Ready? Catch!

There is a type of music that’s made for the brain. Another type of music that’s made for the heart. And another type of music that’s made for the hips and feet. If a person wants to go dancing, they probably won’t go to a Chopin concert. There’s a reason lullabies don’t have a samba or salsa rhythm.

It’s the same for books. Which means almost any book is worthy to make because we don’t always know what people need and when they need it.

About 6 years ago, I made a promise to myself: to write down something I learned about me or my art practice once a week. To create a commitment and space in my week for self-reflection. To ensure I was truly learning from my experiences. To prevent myself from repeating past mistakes. As part of this commitment, I started this online journal. A public space to keep myself ‘accountable’ to my promise.

Until last year, I posted here weekly and religiously. But things have changed. I still journal (in fact, I’m journalling twice a week now) but the posting has become secondary. I used to feel that what I wrote or made wasn’t ‘finished’ until it was shared, but that’s not true anymore.

The act of creating and the act of sharing are two different things. I used to be much more driven by the sharing. The reaction to what I shared used to be a strong source of motivation. But these days, writing private notes to myself is enough.

So why bother share at all then? Why not keep it all private from here on out? There’s still a part of me that believes that sharing one’s ideas – in words, images, music, or whichever medium one chooses – is still a deeply human act of vulnerability, generosity, and courage. These are values and habits I want to cultivate in myself and demonstrate the value of to others. Sharing is still important to me, just for different reasons from when I first began. And that’s OK. In fact, it was kind of the point all along.

When I attend the Jazz Club on a Wednesday night, I order the same drink and the same meal. After my first four or five visits, the bar tender asked me if I wanted “The Usual”.

There’s something nice about “The Usual”. To be able to order “The Usual” means that someone else out there in the world knows you exist, remembers you, and knows what you like, even if it’s in the most narrow sense like a favourite drink or meal. This other person knows a small piece of you and what brings you pleasure.

Of course, the usual can also impose artificial limits on us, limits that form ruts, habits, and assumptions that, for whatever reason, encourage us to act automatically, often without interrogating whether what we want this particular time might be something… unusual.

You could prompt a generative AI service to make you an image, or you can prompt yourself.

I think that most people who don’t draw assume that a drawing begins with a clear vision or image of what’s in one’s mind. The drawer simply takes that well-formed image out of their mind and commits it to paper. But, in reality, a drawing is a series of prompts. I make one mark, I analyse it for shape, colour and quality, then I make another mark in response to the first one. Then I make a third one based on the relationship between the two marks that now exist. And so on.

Instead of helping to build a more robust neural network and pattern recognition system for a large tech company, the simple act of drawing builds my neural networks and pattern recognition skills. In fact, making anything at all will do it.

A cook adjusts the flavour of a dish as they go – season, taste, assess, respond. The more often you do it, the better you get at recognising the how much salt is too much and in what context. We build a ‘model’ of how to cook.

A jazz musician is constantly being prompted at rapid speed by the sounds they make, and the sounds made by their band, to help them generate an idea of what notes to play next. A gardener learns how to care for their plants through repetition, trial and error. Too much water this year, not enough fertiliser, I planted it too close to the pond etc. We take action, we receive a reaction, then we in turn react to that.

By prompting ourselves with stuff that’s based in the physical world like music, art, and the nature, we build our own neural pathways: our sense of touch, taste, smell, feel, and sight. And, just like when we prompt a large language model, chances are our response will often be imperfect (too much salt, too much potash, a pencil line or music note in the wrong place). But, what any failed prompt does is help clarify our thinking and get us even more in touch with our senses. What we end up with is a life and that is glorious.

It’s what we say when we never saw it coming: it came outta nowhere. The truck that speeds through the intersection, the flowers from a colleague you thought was platonic at work, the death of someone ‘taken too soon’, the proposal on the beach. Surprise can be devastating, alarming, joyful, and rapturous. It is, in many ways, deeply human because we are narrative creatures.

Surprise is a function of the narratives we build for ourselves about ourselves. Whether we know it or not, we’re all writing future chapters of our story based on the life we’ve lived so far. We say things like, “At 65, I’ll retire and travel the world.” Or, “At 35, I’ll have a husband and child.” Or, “In 3 years time, I’ll be Vice President of my company.” Or, “I’m getting a cricket bat for Christmas from Santa.”

Writing the future helps us understand where we are now and also provides something to look forward to. In some cases, these expectations can give us a reason for doing what we do today: I’ll drink that green smoothie now so I’m more prepared to run a marathon in 6 months time.

But our story is not ours alone to write. The truck that speeds through the intersection, someone taken too soon, the flowers from a colleague, the marriage proposal; these are all actions taken by others that necessitate the re-writing of our own story; a story that needs to be re-written to accommodate the pain or joy that ‘came outta nowhere’.

Grief, it seems, is a response to this narrative re-direction. We were ‘supposed’ to be travelling the world with a loved one in retirement but now we find ourselves alone because of that truck at the intersection that ‘took her too soon’. That’s not the way it was supposed to be. Now what do I do?

Thinking about our futures as unwritten stories may then, be helpful in dealing with those surprises in life: My life is a loose plot, but I wonder where the supporting characters of my story will take me. And yes, those paths carved into our story by others may mean that the path we saw for ourselves is no longer available to us, but that doesn’t make the story worse, just different. We still get to take the next step, to write the next page, to approach the future curiously – I wonder what will happen to this person, me, next.

I’ve recently been overwhelmed by lots of small tasks. Getting back to people about workshops, responding to feedback about art for a book, doing various small home maintenance tasks and so on. These ‘bits’ of life shrapnel have been orbiting my brain for a while but each have never felt important enough to pluck them out of orbit and get them done. Always de-prioritised in favour of bigger things: new ideas, materials and art media to explore.

So, I made a list. Like a beachcomber collecting shells, I gathered all the disparate bits, put them in a line, and ticked them off, one at a time. And sure enough, the progress felt good. Lists work. I should make the more often.

I think that most people would describe a film by Quentin Dupieux as ‘weird’. I find them almost impossible to describe to someone else to a person unfamiliar with his work; someone who expects a ‘normal’ story.

Mr Dupieux’s films haven’t smashed box office records and most of them haven’t had a cinematic release here in Australia. Yet, they are made and I love them because they help me see and think differently about the world.

A Quentin Dupieux film hasn’t yet made anyone a billionaire and most people in the world wouldn’t have seen them. Of those that have seen them, most probably wouldn’t have enjoyed them or even ‘understand’ them. With that kind of expected response, why bother making them at all?

So, Dupieux could just dream up the ideas but never take the next step to make the films he makes because it would all just be too hard, to sell the idea and then to fund it. But, one of the lessons from Dupieux films is that it’s not always about commerce. It’s about saying something to someone else by working out what you think and feel through whatever medium helps you. Chances are if that process helps you, it might help someone else. Not everyone. But someone.

No matter how obscure or weird, if Quentin Dupieux follows through with ideas, maybe I should to. Like him, if I do it for long enough, some people, the right people, will probably notice and may even enjoy them.