In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic.
— J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories”
Most of my blog posts are inspired by conversations but this time it was an e-mail. My friend Karl got in touch to let me know he’d achieved his black belt distinction in martial arts. One sentence in his e-mail really caught my attention.
Going to the gym is my “quiet place” where, despite the blasting music, I can shut out the noise of external life and just focus on one thing.
You’ll hear more from Karl because I invited him to expand on what his martial arts sessions mean to him. For now, though, I want to explore that one line. I’ve never been inside a gym and can’t imagine doing so. Nevertheless, what Karl said resonated strongly with me. The focus. The sense of being in a world of one’s own. In my case, it’s not gyms and martial arts, though. It’s coffee shops and writing.
I’m there almost every Saturday. (Here, in fact, because that’s where I’m writing this piece right now.) After breakfast I order a second coffee to see me through the coming hours. I catch up on my diary, then set that aside and assemble my writing station. Android tablet and phone on their respective stands. Bluetooth keyboard and headset. I hotspot my tablet to my phone, open the document I’m currently working on, and begin writing. It’s not uncommon for four or five hours to go by. That’s not four hours writing without a break, but for most of it I’m heads down, lost in what I’m doing. In the past I’ve said that the main reason I write is because I’m scared to stop. Karl’s e-mail helped me realise, however, that there’s more to it than that. I value the process of writing, the getting lost in the moment. My Saturday session at the coffee shop is the highlight of my week. I take days off work and spend them there, in this world of my own.
Now that I think about it, writing has always offered me this opportunity, no matter what I was working on at the time. Poetry, articles, short stories, the books I co-wrote with Fran, and now my blog posts. It happens less with my diary. That may be because that’s focused on the here and now of my life, rather than being a creative escape from it. It hasn’t only been writing, though. I remember my six-month university placement in Norwich, losing myself each weekend in the novels I picked up at the market. In Bradford and London, hours dissolving as I worked on painting portraits of my friends. When I first moved to Newcastle, my house-mate and landlady calling goodbye in the morning as I settled down at the dining table to work on my clay models. She’d return in the evening to find me still sitting there as though no more than an hour or so had passed. In more recent years, I remember losing myself working with Photoshop and web design.
The phenomenon is hard to describe from the outside, because by definition it’s characterised by being divorced from present reality. For me, the key features are an intense focus on what I’m doing, and an environment such that I’m not disturbed or jolted out of it. Although I’m focused on what I’m doing, I’m not consciously thinking about the next step. I’m more or less on auto pilot, following my creative instinct wherever it leads. I find background noise a boon rather than a hindrance. I’ve always found low level sound relaxing, especially conversation at a volume just below my ability to follow what’s being said. The background hum of the coffee shop helps me enter the almost meditative space I need. I’ve tried ambient noise apps but there’s no substitute for the real thing.
I was interested to note that Karl’s experience in the gym takes place in a noisy environment (“despite the blasting music I can shut out the noise of external life”). That probably wouldn’t work for me, although at times I’ve achieved success listening to certain music tracks on my headphones, loudly on repeat. I mentioned that I’d asked Karl to expand on his experiences. He gave me permission to use any parts I found relevant but I want to share it in full.
As a friend put it the other day, my Sensei is my other MH [mental health] doctor. Going to the gym is my “quiet place” where, despite the blasting music, I can shut out the noise of external life and just focus on one thing.
Outside of the gym, I’m a father of two, a husband, a specialist in my role at work, but most of all a 45 year old man who suffers with anxiety, depression, anger and low self worth. Inside the gym, I don’t need to be any of those things. I’m accepted for who I am — I’m eternally grateful to the owners of my small Martial Arts gym, who have fostered such a community amongst their members — but I don’t have to “be” anything. If I want to be quiet, and only speak to the person I’m training with, that’s fine. If I want to interact with the rest of the class, that’s fine too.
All of the stresses of the day, whether they are financial, work or familial, stay off the mats. My own personal rule is that my phone is on do-not-disturb for the hour I am in class. My smartwatch remains on my wrist, but when it is tracking a workout, it blocks notifications. For that one hour, to quote Metallica, “Nothing else matters.”
It’s not even about getting rid of aggression, although there is that too, when needed. It’s the scalpel-like focus required to throw a leg-kick which lands in just the right place to impact the lateralus muscle, but to do it without the force to disable the person you are working with. It’s the challenge of doing something better this time than you did last time.
I recently completed my 1st Dan Black belt examination, and sparring was part of the assessment. For those who don’t know, that means donning protective gear, extra padded gloves, and fighting one on one with a focus on technique and limited power. One of the instructors, who I also view as a friend, was helping out as a sparring partner and he countered almost every move I tried to make. Every punch or kick was blocked, evaded or answered with one of his own. I spoke to him afterwards, and he told me he was deliberately trying to provoke me, to get me to lose my cool, to get me to be out of control. He couldn’t, because I couldn’t — my training is my escape. I find my Zen in violence.
— Karl Douglass
I’m grateful to Karl, not only for contributing to this blog post, but for opening my eyes to a world I know little to nothing about.
As I check the time, I see that a couple of hours have passed since I began working on this post. For this all-too-brief period I’ve experienced what I call the gentle art of losing myself. I wonder whether it’s myself I lose at such times, or my attachment to everything other than myself. Karl writes of setting aside the roles of father, husband, and IT specialist, as well as labels relating to his health and wellbeing. I share some of those, and have many of my own. All are left behind when I enter my creative space, as Karl’s are when he enters the gym. I am, perhaps, more truly me, myself, and I when I’m in my little world than at any other time.
Several of my short stories — written years ago and unpublished beyond a small circle of friends — relate to people losing themselves in parallel worlds. In “Poser,” the portal to this alternative realm is a rogue computer program. The interplay between physical and virtual reality is explored further in “The Palantir of Josef Betz” and “Homeopathy has a word for IT.” In these tales, the alternative realms are perilous, to say the least. They’re a long way from the kind of inner world I’m describing here. There’s a link, however, in the quotation I opened with. In various ways, my short stories are all related to the fictional world of Middle-earth created by J. R. R. Tolkien. His 1947 essay “On Fairy Stories” was written as a defense of the genre and a repudiation of the derogatory charge of escapism levelled against it. It’s something I might explore further on another occasion.
Another hour has slipped by in the coffee shop, in my little world. It’s time to emerge, to re-engage in the real world. Whatever that is.
Photo by Hannah Wei at Unsplash.
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