#005: On the creative magic of solitude, nudity in public spaces, and the connection between art and play

Dedicated to the effortless beauty of Japan

Read time: 4m 43s

In Japan, onsen (温泉) is a way of life. Onsen are natural hot water springs with unique mineral compositions that are found throughout mainland Japan. Onsen have been woven into the religious, social and cultural fabric of Japan for over a millenium, serving as sites of purification, healing, relaxation and cultural exchange. It’s obligatory to enter the onsen naked, with one set of baths for women and another set for men.

During my trip, I’ve been to two: the first an outdoor onsen nestled in the foothills of Mount Fuji that blended seamlessly into the surrounding nature, the second, a more functional onsen overlooking the East China Sea in mainland Okinawa. Both my onsen experiences have led to some kind of revelation, regarding everything from the importance of embedding intergenerational rituals deeply within a culture, to how the normalisation of naked bodies in public spaces influences young people’s relationship to their bodies, to how onsen double as containers for both peaceful solitude and deeply connecting experiences. This last one has been playing on repeat in my subconscious and is the subject to which I dedicate today’s newsletter.

🪟 A window into my brain

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“All of humanity’s problems,” said French scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal in 1654, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

There’s been no shortage of discussion throughout history about how solitude fuels creativity and innovation. The founding father of neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, wrote “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” It has indeed been my experience that our capacity for creativity is proportional to our capacity for solitude. I also believe that the capacity for solitude is a gift offered by your mind and soul when they have experienced intentional care and cultivation by both the self and others.

Let’s imagine the mind as a room in which we store our ideas about life, death, reality, religion, what it means to be human etc. Every conversation that floats through the open door adds a little bit of potential clutter to our precious room. Some people are hoarders, information junkies who get high on the hedonistic but often futile delight of inhaling more “inspiration”: more facts, more opinions, more polarities. Others take a more Marie Kondo-esque approach to maintaining their room, neatly organising their thoughts, ideas and information by category and consciously asking themselves: “Does this piece of information bring me joy/intellectual stimulation/peace/reason?” If the answer is no, the information gets tossed out to make room for what really matters. I’ve come across very few people in this latter category. I certainly fit more into the former. But I’ve realised that the less time we spend bringing in clutter thinly veiled as inspiration, the more time we have to listen to the wisdom our inner landscape has been lovingly cultivating over the course of our lifetimes.

If the default state of our room is that the door is always slightly ajar, we must take care to sometimes pull it closed completely. Ironically, closing the door gives our room the space it needs to breathe. Creating that space requires us to revel in the quiet respite of solitude. In this deep solitude, narratives that remain etched in the furthest recesses of our minds patiently await our excavation. Memories mingle with dreams and suddenly crystallise into high definition images. The most challenging of problems get solved and the seeds of great works of art grow into saplings. Intentional solitude is essential to cultivate the fertile soil for these revelations to unfold in our consciousness.

Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly a time and a place for bringing in novel ideas, understanding new trends and learning about different cultures. But in a highly networked, content-fuelled world, we must carefully pick those moments as if they were a smattering of daisies in a parched field. If our inner landscape is the raw clay from which we mould all art, it pays to be more intentional with where we direct our attention and how often we pursue the creative seeds sown by solitude.

🖋️ Sentences I wish I’d written

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If solitude fertilizes the imagination, loneliness vacuums it of vitality and sands the baseboards of the spirit with the scratchy restlessness of longing — for connection, for communion, for escape.

Maria Popova, The Marginalian

suente

n.the state of being so familiar with someone that you can be in a room with them without thinking, without holding anything back, or without having to say a word—to the extent that you have to remind yourself that they’re a different being entirely, that brushing hair away from their eyes won’t help you see any better.

Joe Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Serious art is born from serious play.

Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

🚀 From idea to reality

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In 8 life lessons we can learn from improv, I wrote about how we only listen to about 20% of someone’s sentence. Our ego steals the remaining 80%. In other words, we spend most of the time someone is talking to us thinking about how we’re going to respond. This bias shows just how much we focus on keeping up appearances in social interactions. By cultivating spaces for deep solitude, we liberate the mental bandwidth that we usually spend appeasing others to focus on unearthing hidden gems within our own psyche. This week, I challenge you to dedicate two uninterrupted hours to releasing this pressure on yourself. Descend into a space of meditation, do nothing, paint, whatever you wish. Just make sure you’re alone. Deliberately cultivate your solitude and reap the fruits of this intention.

💭 A question for you

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When was the last time you indulged in play?

I’d love to know what you thought of today’s newsletter. Let me know what you think in the comments and thank you, as always, for reading.

Nikita 💃🏽