Forté #10
A few things that have inspired me lately and what I've been working on..
📷: BRANCH INCENSE
🍃 These very lovely videos from Toby Bain where he makes dioramas out of cassette tape loops and records the sound of the scene he’s made. This is lockdown creativity at its best and I adore all of the little loops he’s made; the rest of his videos are well worth checking out.
The House Plants by Toby Bain
🍃 A photo of Kiyosumi Gardens was on the cover of my latest album, Meditations. It’s a garden that holds a dear place in my heart for being somewhere I visited to get away from the hustle and bustle of life in Tokyo. Visiting would always fill me with joy and I was blessed that it was so close to where I worked. It’s #2 on my list of must-visit places in Tokyo. You’ll have to ask me if you want to know what #1 is! Here’s the unedited photo that made it onto the front cover of Meditations. You can just about see the buildings of Tokyo looming outside the park’s gates.
🍃 One artist whose music deeply inspires my music is Marty Hicks. Particularly his album The Effortless Quiet which I’m currently listening to as I write this. The standout track from the album by far is alnum passages 17: the effortless quiet. Please treat your ears to this beauty:
🍃 Someone I met today had one of these Hobonichi Planners and it instantly became my new obsession—what can I say? I’m incredibly weak-willed when it comes to stationery… (my wife is rolling her eyes)
The story is kind of fascinating though. From the website:
In 1998 popular Japanese Essayist and Copywriter (and sometimes game designer) Shigesato Itoi started a website Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun – The Almost Daily Itoi Newspaper. He posted blog posts, articles, essays and interviews almost everyday, and the website soon grew in popularity, and is currently the most visited personal website in Japan. In 2001 Itoi and his staff decided to create a planner that they would want to use. The first run only had 12,000 copies which has grown considerably in the past 20 years, with nearly 750,000 copies printed last year.
🍃 And to finish I’ll share a quote that I recently stumbled upon and loved a lot because it made me really think:
The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.
Alain de Botton
Thank you for reading! What was your favourite from the list? Please let me know in the comments.
And, my album Meditations is available to purchase on Bandcamp now and comes bundled with a beautiful pack of incense crafted by Japanese incense maker BRANCH INCENSE. Please take a listen.
Stay well,
SJF
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