TL;DR
Having felt sad at how people were treating crabs on a recent beach trip I created a little educational zine entitled “Be kind to crabs”.
RAMBLINGS: A creative slump for me is more than not just being able to make art and I am learning to fully embrace it as an important part of my creative practice.
ARTICLE: Learning to see the world as strange restores it as a potential place of wonder. And the world needs a lot more wonder right now.
WORKSHOP: Masks - 14th November
BUY: What the February?! books make the idea festive gift.
THE BACK GAEMEN PROJECT: Want to play Backgammon with me as part of a weird social experiment?
PODCAST: Chris Nichols and I had a lovely chat about life, creativity and weird art projects on his About Time podcast.
If you would like to financially support my work from as little as £1 there are a number of ways to do that: Buy stuff in my shop, become a patron of my studio or buy me a coffee (tip jar).
1. Hello
In early September I decided to do a last minute road trip with Poppy the dog. Due to life circumstances and my flat’s lease not permitting pets I don’t get to see her much any more, so when I spotted a discounted Aribnb cancellation to stay in a beach hut right by the sea I jumped at the opportunity. Poppy and I had an amazing 36 hours there. We lay on the beach, swam, played silly chasing games and snoozed and flopped like contented seals with the sound of crashing waves underscoring the whole experience. We also watched the harvest moon rise and eclipse over a beautifully dark and inky sea.
The next morning we went looking for crabs together. If you’ve read previous issues you probably know that crabs are one of my favourite creatures and have been since I was a kid. Living in London I don’t get to see them very often (especially since the jackdaws stole my shell collection) so any time I am near the sea I get ridiculously excited about catching a glimpse of my beloved decapods. Often I will just observe a rock pool or I might use a net with some bacon in it to lure them out and marvel at their beauty. I go out of my way to treat them with respect and care and dignity. If I do pick them up for a closer look I do so gently and ensure that I pay them glowing compliments before returning them to where I found them.
It makes me really sad when I see people treating crabs badly. I abhor the mistreatment of any creature but there is something in particular about crabs. I think it might be the general lack of understanding or interest or knowledge about crabs that most people have. Or that because crabs aren’t cute and fluffy they are perceived as a lower-order species that don’t need as much care and consideration - closer to a walking rock than a sentient being. Or maybe it is because crab fishing is a tradition that is passed on between generations without anyone really stopping to think “I wonder how the creatures are feeling about all of this?” (In a similar way to the tradition of feeding bread to birds.)
I had all of this on my mind when Poppy and I went for a walk to a local harbour and observed groups of people crab fishing and doing things that I know distress the crabs. (Like having a bucket full of around 10-20 crabs, throwing them back into the water from a great height, keeping the bucket in direct sunlight - I could go on.) I also got annoyed by a parent confidently telling a group of kids that crabs are amphibians and can breathe on land just like frogs! (Crabs are crustaceans and have gills under their carapace just like fish.)
I realised that this was starting to feel like a bit of an intense experience for me - a combination of my ethics about creatures mixing with a very specialised and almost obsessive special interest in crabs, all topped off with a general social awkwardness. I really wanted to talk to these people. To tell them some crab facts and how they could be kinder and more considerate of these creature’s needs. But as always in these kind of situations I just cannot fathom out how to do it without coming across either as aggressive/angry or like some sort of lunatic. I was extra paralysed by how many people were crab fishing. There were around 10 groups, each with between 2-5 humans and a big bucket of stressed out crabs. I thought maybe I could stand on a bench and make an announcement. Shouting out some crab facts and care tips like a carcinologist town crier. I imagined making a placard or wearing a sandwich board and having leaflets. Maybe dressing up as a crab in order to show that I meant it all in a friendly and educational way.
In the end I did what I always do and just let my emotions gnaw away inside of me, did nothing and left with a crab-shaped sadness in my heart. A frustration at my inaction and a vague hope that the heavy rain looming on the horizon would encourage the humans to leave very soon.
What I did do was make a little zine about ethical crab fishing when I got home which made me feel better. I think I will make some copies of it to take with me and hand out next time I go to such a place. That way I can disseminate the information and flee before anyone tries to interact with me! (If you’d like to support the cause you can print off your own copy of the zine here.)
Creative slump
I’ve been thinking a lot about creative slump recently, having found myself in a rather big one during August. It is a recurring thing for me, but this time I experimented by sharing my experience of it a bit more overtly. As a result of this I got a number of supportive and encouraging messages from people telling me that it would soon pass and that I would soon be making more fabulous art once again. These messages were nice to receive and its always good to hear that my art means something to others. But these messages also caused me to reflect on the fact that my experience of a creative slump is so much more than just a diminishing of my artistic output.
One of the things that has become more noticeable over the last 15 years since I set out to work for myself and live a life more aligned to my creative philosophies is that the boundaries between different parts seem to have dissolved. I find it hard to distinguish between what is work and what isn’t work. (Which is different to distinguishing between what earns and doesn’t earn me money - which is very easy to do!) I also find it hard hard to distinguish between which mode of “work” I am doing. At various different times I am in a different mode of being an artist, a podcaster, an audio producer, a coach, a consultant, a speaker, an academic, a writer, a facilitator (and so on.) All of these forms feel like slightly different patternings of the same thing for me. Simply different moments of spontaneous self-expression. I find labels problematic, especially labels to do with who I am and what I do which is why I gave up on the idea of having a neat and eloquent elevator pitch many years back. (My friend and colleague Charlotte Sills once told me “Labelling is the last thing you do when you make jam!”)
This lack of boundaried division really works for me. I find it means that I can settle more into a continual flow of my experience without having to make clunky feeling adjustments from one ill-fitting label to the next. But often others find this lack of boundaried division concerning. What about my work-life balance? Where is the leisure time and the hobbies? When do I relax? Don’t work too hard! And whilst I appreciate the concern I can’t help but notice that it all arises from the social construction of the “work vs life balance” - a concept which I appreciate is helpful for some but I simply cannot relate to in any meaningful way. (And I have some suspicions about how this whole work-life separation thing might actually be an unhealthy philosophy to live our lives by.)
But even though I find it hard to relate to this concept, my resilience and wellbeing are very important to me. So rather than paying attention to the balance between work vs life, the important thing is whether my activities balance out in terms of energy, meaning and spirit. Whilst this isn’t a well thought through theory, these three factors feel like they are key components of my own resilience and wellbeing. Some activities expend more than others and some are more renewing than others. But most of the time, I can find that sweet spot where my day to day experience involves cycles of expending and renewingnthat overall keep me in the black. (My friend Rowan Gray was instrumental in helping me to learn this when he wired me up with a heart rate variability monitor back in 2017 which gave me undeniable day to day data about how my body and nervous system were doing over the period of a very intense week.)
But every now and then this balance starts to slip. It tends to creep up on me ever so gradually with different experiences and life circumstances slowly eroding my energy, meaning and spirit until I suddenly realise that I am sliding down a slippery slope. And by the time I notice this is happening I realise there is little I can do about it. My capacity to maintain the fine balance begins ebbing away and the more effort I put into trying to fight against the downward trajectory, the more energy I expend and the worse it gets. And that’s when I start to hit what I call the creative slump. (Which feels like a much nicer way of describing what is likely a combination of stress, anxiety, depression, physical depletion and burnout.)
It is when this happens that the lack of boundaries between the different parts of my life become problematic. Rather than just my artistic output suffering, everything does. As everything I do is essentially part of the same stream of creative self expression literally everything becomes heavy and hard and I just have to go into some sort of standby or safe mode, preserving only the vital processes like eating, drinking and exercise and wait for the dark clouds to slowly lift. And it is is this process of sitting with the slump that I am fascinated by.
I have learnt that, for me, the only way out of the slump is to learn to fully surrender to it. To deeply experience the thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations of being in the slump as fully as possible. To acknowledge them, be curious about them but not try to change them in any way. I find comfort in the buddhist mantra that “the obstacle becomes the path” and this philosophy helps me immensely in these moments. To move towards the thing that I am trying to resist or escape from. It always feels counter-intuitive but as Eckhart Tolle suggests “what you resist, persists.”
This philosophy of surrender helps me in ways that I do not fully understand. It feels like through doing this I emerge from a slump having shed some layers that needed shedding. Maybe feeling closer and more connected to the raw and vulnerable core of my creative self-expression. Maybe the creative slump is actually like some sort of instinctual hibernation - a call to withdraw and shut down temporarily and enter some strange and difficult metamorphic state in order to emerge lighter and more full of wonder on the other side. A lot of exciting things tend to emerge from the slump. Big projects, experimental ideas, a renewed enthusiasm and fascination with the weirdness of life. This Substack, the podcast, the Back Gaemen project, my trip to the beach hut with Poppy and lots of other things that I feel motivated, intrigued and excited by right now have emerged from the most recent slump.
And whilst I can never think as clearly and hopefully as this when I am actually in the slump, it feels helpful to recognise the cyclical nature of it and to maybe think of it more as a natural and necessary part of the ongoing flow of my experience.
2. Learning to see the world as strange
I only ever half-read books, even ones that I am really interested in, and “How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog” by Chad Orzel is one of them. I didn’t stop reading it because I didn’t like it - I just find books hard work so it is easy to get distracted and forget I was reading them.
But one paragraph from this book has stuck with me ever since:
”Quantum mechanics seems baffling and troubling to humans because it confounds our common-sense expectations about how the world works. Dogs are a much more receptive audience. The everyday world is a strange and marvellous place to a dog and the predictions of quantum theory are no stranger or more marvellous than, say, the operation of a doorknob.”
For me this passage beautifully articulates the concept of wonder, a word I have grown to adore and a word that seems wistfully absent in our modern day to day lives. We are born into an experience of wonder where nothing makes sense, meaning is fleeting and, if we feel safe and secure enough, everything is an object of fascination and curiosity. And then, as we learn the way the world works and our perceived place in it, that raw and visceral wonder is gradually replaced by knowledge. And the sadness for me in all of this is that human wonder can be such a powerful force for change, connection, dialogue, empathy and creativity in all areas of humanity. But it seems the concept of wonder sits in a stark opposition to the powerful positivist forces of logic, strategy, agency and expertise which have become the largely unquestioned norms of what it means to be a productive, effective and mature adult human being. Wonder gets consigned to the sidelines only to be indulged in when the important, tangible and real work has been sufficiently completed.
I have come to believe that the practice of not knowing sits at the heart of nurturing wonder. It is the most important (and difficult) practice in my own life and lies at the core of work I do with others. Whether I am doing a talk, running a workshop, facilitating a group or working 1:1 with somebody, if we are unable to nurture our ability to not-know together then the creative potential of the work feels significantly dampened. (This is why I aim for my talks and workshops to fascinate, intrigue but not really make sense.)
During the 2020 lockdown, in my old Art Bunker studio, I had a quote by Frederich Nietzche on my wall that said “Learning to see the world as strange makes us unhome in the everyday and thereby restores it as a potential place of wonder.” I had this on the wall because I was doing a lot of online workshops and would regularly refer to it but also because it really spoke to me in a number of ways. Each element of it seemed to articulate exactly why the practice of not knowing had become so important to me:
“Learning to see the world as strange…” - the importance of continually challenging the things I have come to regard as normal or real. To question what Alfred North Whitehead referred to as “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. To strive to experience at least a tiny fraction of my day-to-day experience in the spirit of the dog in Chad Orzel’s book. To gaze at a tree or a spider or a car from a state that genuinely enables me to think and feel “what the **** is that thing?!
“…makes us unhome in the everyday…” - the importance of confusion, dissonance, disorientation (etc) as a vitally important part of our human experience and a sign we are on the edge of not knowing. To develop a tolerance of these experiences and regard them as being as important as clarity, lucidity and certainty. To develop enough of a sense of safety to allow ourselves to sit in the unhomeness for a little bit longer each time and seek experiences that engender this. To start to realise that these experiences aren’t necessarily a sign that something is going wrong but are in fact a sign that we are on the edge of something new.
“..and thereby restores it as a potential place of wonder.” - this final phrase beautifully ties up the whole quote and encapsulates the importance of not knowing. We are not practicing not knowing as an act of self-flagellation or to develop some sort of stoic resilience - we are doing it because it starts to shift our experience of reality to be one that glistens and sparkles a little bit more. To encounter everyday wonder in a such a way that it energises and motivates us to take action, play, experiment.
In her essay entitled “On the Value of Not Knowing – Wonder, Beginning Again and Letting Be”, Rachel Jones suggests that one of the major challenges facing artists is to resist the desire to reduce the strange to the familiar. She proposes that a vital part of any artist’s practice is “remaining open to the strangeness, being prepared to lose ourselves in the encounter [and] risking not knowing as the condition of possible transformation.” I think this is wonderful invitation, not just for artists, but for any human wishing to live a life more imbued with creativity, adventure and wonder.
3. What the February?! - the perfect festive gift
Back in 2020 I had the curious question “I wonder what would happen if I asked people on Instagram to do weird things?” and What the February?! came into existence. Every February for four years I posted a daily weird, creative challenge and people around the world did them. Some of the challenges were art-like, some were movement-like, some were strange social experiments but, no matter what I posted, I was amazed by the things people made and did.
I like all of my projects to end well, intentionally and at a peak so I killed off the What the February?! Instagram challenge in 2023. It was only then that I realised that the last four years of WTFEB had in fact been research for a lovely weird little book of creative challenges that went on to become one of my best selling items in my shop.
So, this is a pre-emptive seasonal/festive plug for it and to suggest that it makes the ideal gift for somebody you love, like, hate or are largely indifferent to. You could buy an entire set for your team. Or just one for yourself to dip into whenever the world feels too normal and restrictive.
5. Be part of the Back Gaemen Project
Back in July I awkwardly went to a board games event in a pub, met an old Iranian guy who taught me how to play Backgammon and a new weird social experiment/project was born - “I wonder what would happen if I asked strangers to play Backgammon with me?”
Do you want to be a part of it? The structure is really simple: we meet in person, we play between 1-3 games of Backgammon, I draw an imperfect portrait of you that you get to keep and we co-create a haiku about our experience.
I wrote more about this project in a previous issue of this Substack if you’d like to know the full backstory.
And you don’t have to be a stranger or somebody I haven’t met before to take part. I just want to get a nice balance of experiences between people I know and people I don’t.
Get in touch if you would like to be a part of it.
..:: MORE INFO ABOUT THE BACK GAEMEN PROJECT HERE ::.
5. About Time podcast
Chris Nichols and I have only met a few times but each time it has been through serendipity and accidentally finding ourselves in the same place at the same time.
So I was delighted when he recently invited me onto his About Time podcast to chat about life, art and the importance of having people who see something magical in your weirdness. I also shared some stories about the origins of some of my strange, experimental projects.
..:: LISTEN ON SPOTIFY HERE ::.
6. Workshops
Just the one workshop left for 2025. I’ll start to get some dates in for 2026 very soon.
Mask Workshop
14th November 2025
Bloomsbury, London
£130 + VAT. Limited to 10 attendees. (ONLY 4 PLACES LEFT)
This is my absolute favourite workshop to run - so much so that I can only do them four times a year as they are so brilliant and intense that I need to lay down for a few days afterwards!
Basically it is a day of using masks to explore parts of our personality that we have lost touch with or didn't know existed. We will spend the morning getting to know different masks and the afternoon putting them in different playful and bizarre scenarios and situations.
Previous participants say:
“It is like getting access to un-owned or repressed parts of your personality”
“Simply the best workshop ever.”
“Possibly the most liberating experience you might ever have.”
“I’ll never forget the bits of me I met for the first time at the mask workshop.”
“Very weird. In a very, very good way.”
"A truly magical experience"
"It is like going home with a bunch of new friends inside yourself!"
To keep it playful and intimate the workshop is limited to just 10 places so if you'd like to come along then grab a place ASAP as they sell out quickly.
..:: MORE INFO AND TICKETS ::.
5. Support my work
Thank you to everyone who reads this that bought me a coffee recently. I appreciate every single donation no matter how much it is. It means a lot to know that you appreciate my work and want to support it financially.
I write this Substack for free as it has become somewhat therapeutic for me and I want everyone to be able to have access to it. I also do the podcast for free and all of my weird creative projects are deliberately not-for-profit. But I still have a need to earn enough money to sustain this work so if you can afford it and would like to support me financially there are a number of ways you can do this from as little as £1.
Buy some art from my shop. I have a big selection of prints, original art, books, badges, t-shirts, posters and more.
.:: VISIT MY SHOP HERE ::.Become a patron of my studio. For a one-off donation of your choice you become an official patron with a badge, a certificate, a behind the scenes blog and your name added to the scroll of honour in the window of the studio.
.:: BECOME A PATRON HERE ::.Buy me a coffee. Like a tip jar.
.:: BUY ME A COFFEE HERE::.