In Search of Beautiful Things (and Creative Inspiration)...
In 2017, I started an experiment that transformed both my personal and artistic lives - and maybe it can help you, too
Let’s start with a little personal back story. Back in 2017, my family sold our home in Los Angeles, packed the whole of our possessions, and left the United States for good. We settled at first in Southeast London, in East Dulwich specifically, though I think the terrace house we rented there was much less geographically certain than its official address. Across the street was Camberwell. A few more blocks away was Peckham. And so, in my mind, we lived at the intersection of all three and their very different cultural flavors.
The two years we spent there were, I think, amongst the happiest of my entire life. But shortly after we settled in, professional anxieties — born from starting over in a new country in many ways — not to mention the recent death of my mother and the constant dire news about the state of the world (especially the United States) sent me into a bit of a personal and creative tailspin. I began to lose focus on how lucky I was to have been able to up and leave my birth country over political differences with it. My solution was a kind of experiment that might help some of you in similar states of existential flux. Here goes:
I decided to look for beauty every day.
Sounds a bit hooey-flooey, I get it. Let me explain. What this means is, I committed to seeking out and photographing one beautiful thing every single day and, as much as possible, sharing it on Instagram (as a means to holding myself accountable).
I never defined what “beautiful” meant, by the way. I just knew I’d know it when I saw it, regardless of its form. Sometimes this meant something conventionally beautiful, such as, say, a Georgian façade or a two-century old bridge or a piece of street art. But it could just as easily mean a sunset over the Thames, a pint of great ale in an old pub, a colorful door in Notting Hill, picnics in the summer sun, a choir rehearsing in a dimly lit church, an amazing donut spilling its guts out, a gallery wall in a museum, a busker singing her heart out, spring blossoms and autumn leaves, a scribble of graffiti on a bathroom wall, a Sunday roast when the cheesy leaks are cooked juuuuust right…well, you get the idea.
Before long, I found myself rushing to get out the door even more than usual and, more, my wife seemed to be getting into the habit, too. I’d even recruit my oldest son, who was three at the time. I tried to teach him to look up and right and left and down every side street and passage and mews that he could in search of something unexpected and wondrous.
The effect on my writing was near-instantaneous. Within a couple of months, I was churning out work again at a clip I was accustomed to. More, the ideas I was generating, the stories I was discussing with U.K. producers, quickly began producing work. That work beget more work. By the following January, whatever was still holding me back broke wide open a little over a week after my second son was born. At 3 a.m. in the morning, I began to write what would become my debut novel Psalms for the End of the World. I finished a first draft during the six months that followed, as well as a second draft of a feature screenplay I was writing for Park Chan-wook (Old Boy) and a commissioned U.K. TV pilot that turned out so strongly that I’ve landed numerous jobs in the years since using it as a writing sample.
In so many ways, I would call this the most fruitful creative period of my life (though I think I’m entering into another similar one as I type this).
I believe this “creative awakening” — if we can call it that — happened because I decided to start treating beauty as something worth seeking out every day instead of as something that just happens to you in its own time. A ritual, you might say.
At the end of the first year of my experiment, I decided to press on. It would become a permanent part of my daily routine – and it did for another year in Southeast London and then two more in Oxfordshire, England where my family moved half a year before Covid kicked off. We spent sixteen months of the pandemic living in the countryside, and every single day, no matter how dark it got in the news — and including the death of my father in the later part of this period — I still found something beautiful to photograph every single day.
I think this practice kept me sane.
Something changed, though. When my family decided in 2021 that our British adventure was done and it was time to finally “return” — as Aussies say — to Australia from abroad, we arrived at the start of yet another lockdown. Two weeks in hotel quarantine, then another couple of months isolated from family and friends. The trauma of Covid, losing my second parent, and a second international move in four years broke me more than I realized at the time.
I stopped taking my photographs.
I didn’t even notice it happening at first. I just…stopped. Days and weeks would pass before I thought to snap one.
Beauty had again become an afterthought.
Even now, I can barely be bothered to post anything beautiful I experience on Instagram. I suspect that’s my own growing aversion to social media platforms, despite how much my career forces me to use them. But the consequence of this was real. My mental health suffered. My writing suffered even more.
Late last year, I finally resolved to start addressing this unexpected spiritual regression. I started looking for beauty again wherever I could. I don’t photograph it as much anymore - but maybe I don’t need to. The search is what’s important, after all. The commitment to it existing in my life.
You might be interested to know that after a few months of reembracing my beauty ritual, my creative output has again begun to skyrocket (which I also attribute to my presence here on Substack, which you can read about here). And when I say skyrocket, I don’t just mean my prolificity. I’m talking the quality of the work and the joy I’m taking from it. I feel creatively alive in a way I haven’t for a few years now, in fact.
Beauty, as it turns out, is one of the answers to the question: what is the meaning of life?
We all need it, in some form or another.
So, if you’re feeling a little creatively — or even personally — lost, I would encourage you to attempt the experiment I’ve described here. Commit yourself to seeking out beauty every day, too, as a form of spiritual therapy. Refuse to accept days with none in it. Catalogue it when you find it, if you can; explore its dimensions, poke at it, work out why the thing is so damn beautiful to you in the first place. Share it with others, if it helps.
The good news is, there’s so much beauty around you that you won’t have any trouble finding it.
If you read on, you’ll find a collection of photographs I took of “beautiful things” in the United Kingdom during the first six months of this experiment - culminating with the birth of my second son and what I feel was the real start of my first creative renaissance. It was fun combing through my old pics, compiling these for you, so I hope you find something inspiring in them, too. (Sorry for all the filters; I didn’t abandon occasionally using them until about six months after these were taken.)
This article struck a chord with many readers and has since become a new regularly monthly feature at 5AM StoryTalk that invites readers to share their own moments of beauty with the community here. You can read more about this — and participate — here.
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If you enjoyed this particular article, these other three might also prove of interest to you:
Making yourself find the beauty in the world is an excellent piece of advice. When my dad was receiving cancer treatment a few years back, my mum used to keep a “One Good Thing” notebook where she would make sure to note down one positive experience every day - something sweet or funny my niece did, a friendly interaction with the supermarket staff… it’s a similar exercise although less related to the creative, I think.
Just looking at those photographs is a joyful experience. I imagine posting them on instagram was a positive for other people, not just you. I was listening to Undefeated by Frank Turner as I browsed through and it was an oddly emotional experience. Thank you.
What a great idea! It reminded me of this practice I used to have for a period of time when I would write 1 haiku per day. And I don't even remember when or how I stopped... Maybe I could revive it again. Or maybe I'll try with photos, which might help me with my nonexistent photography skills and just sounds fun. Thank you for sharing.