Slowness As An Ideal.

In creativity, and life.

Two trains came through the station at once and it felt like a hurricane. The whole week’s debris flying all around. Strands of frantic hair whisked in the winds of mechanical wheels, automated power touching a nerve. My brain fog dissipates like mist on the rails and leaves me stuck between the haze. Three times I tap, tap, tap my foot like ellipsis on the ground. I stop and let my sole hover above the asphalt. I stand there, lingering like dust, wondering what it’s all for.

I mean, art. I mean the practice of art. The compulsion we have to excel in our craft. To bring expression into the world. In the age of AI, where creative output is near instant, the purpose behind personal creation feels more pertinent than ever. More hazy, more grey, more useless, too. To live inside a world drawn from experience once meant to go Gonzo like Hunter S. Thompson. To method act like Hemingway. To conduct poetic journalism like Didion. To live. Then, to write. None of it seems to matter as much as it once did with the advent of artificial intelligence.

My intuition says otherwise. In a landscape so over-saturated with possibility, my gut tells me to listen beyond the noise. To hone my focus towards the small corners of my desk. To find meaning in work slowly done. As convenience becomes synonymous with speed, slowness becomes an ideal.¹ To live by way of subtraction is a new luxury. To do less, have less, and most importantly, to need less is to discover quiet freedom.

The convenience of AI art creation slams its head like a hammer on the central question of creative endeavours. What is art? What is it, to those who choose to practice it? A form of aesthetic voyeurism. A willingness to notice the moments bestowed upon us. The good and the bad. The sad and the ugly. The tangents, junctures, and blips of void in between. And then, to express it. To embellish a kernel of truth around stylistic wrapping. To transcend beyond it.

With slowness as an ideal, practice becomes a luxury. To practice by way of human failure is something AI can never do. It won’t know the frustration of a sentence that refuses to fall into rhythm. It won’t know the embarrassment of plunderous strokes on a canvas that needs repainting again and again. It won’t know the raw fingers that bleed from strumming the same few notes on the strings of an instrument. The bruises, cuts and callouses collected on the hands of an acrobat. Human excellence within creative work is never its nearness to perfection, but the tension between its vision and execution.

In the cacophony of a world ‘Ghiblified,’² AI-generated innovation screaming at you from all corners, muting out the noise to focus on—practice—becomes a cheat code to purpose. Besides. Almost all pleasure from creativity comes from creating the work. The private victory of watching a scene click in front of your eyes in the edit room. The joy in hearing the cadence of sentences spring up and over another on the page.

Witnessing hidden sentience between collected order.

To limber your sensibilities, stalk the aesthetic everywhere. In the cracks of the pavement, in the gait of a walk, in the whistling sound of wind between the washing. Expression is not limited to the scribbles inside leather-bound journals, to light caught in film canisters or to splatters on canvas. Style can manifest itself in physicality, in stillness as well as noise. In fullness as well as emptiness.

To be intentional in slowness means to honour your curiosity, to refine your taste and to improve your ability. Art has always been an inward journey folded outward into the world. Whilst technology optimises output, it still falters on original input. AI can’t feel. AI can’t see, smell or taste. To slow down means to focus more on the depth of your experience as opposed to the vastness of your output.

To slow down time, notice the world around you. Let your eyes rise to meet the sky. Strain your ears beyond the peripheries of your surroundings. Inhale a great big breath and think of the colours you can taste. Notice life, in all its immediacy—and slowness will be your friend.

In a world so desperate to move ahead, ahead, ahead—perhaps the most radical act you can make, is no act at all. Notice. See, hear and feel, at your own pace. So that instead of rushing to get on the next train, you can simply stand there. You can watch it leave. You can linger. And you can let the dust settle where it may.

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For everyone expecting a bluezone video this week—sorry! Life came crashing all around me recently. It genuinely did feel like I was caught in a mini hurricane. I hope to finish the film off next week and share it with you all here. Thank you as ever for the support and kindness. See you soon.
-iL.

1. ‘Slowness As An Ideal’ as a concept was first introduced to me by the brilliant essay of the same name by Tommy Dixon, found here — highly recommend you read it! I ripped the title from him, and added my own twist. Sorry, and thank you.

2. A reference to the recent Chat GPT update which turns any image into a Studio Ghibli Image. A compelling and haunting essay that goes way more in depth on this is Erik Hoel’s piece ‘Welcome to the semantic apocalypse’