The Work Must Be Real or Not at All

It all starts with discomfort.

Tokyo, 2013

Some people document. Others cannot not document. The distinction lies in motivation. One takes pictures because the world is interesting; the other because the moment might otherwise disappear. I unmistakably fall into the latter category.

We say we’re drowning in content, but most of it evaporates on arrival. The goal is no longer to make something that lasts, only something that lands. What matters isn’t substance anymore, but engagement, traction, metrics, results. The creative act becomes less genuine, more superficial. It is not art that matters, but the gesture of it. Not depth, but its simulation.

In spaces built for visibility, people seek recognition before even knowing what they want to express. It’s no surprise. The system rewards reaction over reflection, virality over value, novelty over memory.

As far as I am concerned, the need for permanence is what keeps me up at night

I need to leave a trace. Something that stays. Photography allows for that. Not only through what I capture but also in the act of revisiting, places, subjects, ideas. My archives aren’t nostalgic. They’re systems for cataloguing. For seeing structure. For staying oriented. Each folder, each photo book, each sequence is a method of carving time into manageable, recallable fragments.

In my photographs, in the edits of my videos, in the unresolved structures of my music, there’s a recurring logic: an impulse to hold on to a fleeting moment, like sand slipping through your fingers. Beyond the sentimentality (or fatalism?) there is inherent creative value in revisiting ideas, places, moods, to see if they have changed, to see if I have changed, to see if there's something more to say or do, to uncover the influence one changed state might have on another.

The mundane is not dull. It’s dependable. But I don't merely repeat, I develop (yes it's a photography pun). In front of the backdrop of sameness, I find orientation through the smallest variations. My repetitions aren't obsessive looping but are more like arcs. I connect gaps to maintain a certain kind of continuity, just like a documentarian or diaristic approach to life, but loose and maybe slighly less obvious. I fill in blanks, in timelines, in memory, in meaning. I build sequences because the world around me often doesn’t. I assemble what feels fragmented to make it navigable and tolerable from within.

Recording session, 2007

Drumming came first. I played like I wrote, like I take photographs: relentlessly, with no regard for trend. With Quantum Cellar (an instrumental progressive rock band I co-founded) we never played live. It was by limitation, the material was dense, layered, and difficult to reproduce as we envisioned it. Ultimately, we didn’t fit the moment and we ended up disbanding around 2012. I unpretentiously believe that what we created anticipated the Zeitgeist. What we created would have fitted so well in a world in which Synthwave and aggressive instrumental music have a dedicated following. Maybe that was the pattern all along, for the band, and for me. Slightly out of place, slightly off-tempo.

Our composing process was intuitive; little was written down. Instead, ideas emerged during jam sessions that we recorded and later debriefed. This process, unforced and emergent, is one I still favor. To this day, I find little appeal in playing something I didn't help create or in following something simplistic to the letter. In music, I believe that simplicity without intuition is restrictive and complexity without emotional exchange, hollow.

The work must be real or not at all.

It is only years later, in the stillness of the Covid lockdowns, that I found my way back to sound and music. Alone, this time. I began recording under the name Quantum Sea, a nod to the old band, but more introspective and self-indulgent. I'm not trying to recreate the past, but I try to honor where I come from. Using only synths, drums, the occasional sampling, and the good old trial and error method, I do not practice nor rehearse. I also don't really seek an audience as I only follow my instincts and try to transpose my state of mind into sound.

Creating alone, I adopted a method shaped by limits: each musical idea is played once. No loops. No returns. Repetition as a musical structure is a concept I have no use for in what I try to create. In music as in life, I prefer forward movement even as I find myself returning to familiar grounds.

My music lives in reaction to other media. Megastructure came from getting lost in the knobs of an analog synthesizer. I had no plan, I just let myself be carried by distortion and drift. Later, while making sense and arranging some of those long recordings, I recognized Blame! (a manga by Tsutomu Nihei) in it. Disassembly was built around the echoes of the sci-fi show The Expanse. Isolation was haunted by the eponymous game in the Alien franchise. Vox Arrakis speaks to the dry myths of Dune. None of these were soundtracks. They were residual vibrations of how these works haunted me. Explaining this, I see a clear parallel to my photography: just as I try to express how a moment felt rather than how it was, my music captures the internal echo of an experience, not its surface.

Most of my synth tracks are improvised. I rarely know what they’ll become. I shape them afterward, by listening and reordering. Even when I plan, the execution is live. I can’t name notes and therefore can’t retain melodies. I have taken that limitation from a hindrance to becoming a method. What I lack in practice I compensate by relying on intuition. I have no theory, but recognize the terrain. Emotional topography. Internal landscapes. Narrative structures formed through tone and pacing.

I create music as consistent but non-repeating pieces.

This isn’t traditional composition. Nor is it performance, really. It’s more a process of release; a way to let out impressions that resist verbal articulation. Where most music reaches outward for harmony or connection, mine starts in isolation and often remains there. It’s a response from myself to myself rather than an intention to broadcast, but if others connect to it, it’s because they’ve stood in similar ruins.

I make music not to please, but to expel.

My approach to creativity is less about authorship (that is something that I find, takes shape in the arranging after-the-fact) and more about mediation. A sort of channeling process if you will. The work doesn’t come from planning; it arrives. When it does, I respond. The creative state is transient; once it shuts down, I can’t be certain when or if it will return.

All my work is rooted in a moment where perception and tools align, and something takes shape that cannot be repeated. That is the essence of my practice across all mediums.

My teaching follows the same logic. Teaching is about transmitting a way of looking at surroundings or raw materials, or structures. In most cases, people don’t need better tools but they need permission to slow down and resist immediacy. To ultimately make choices that somewhat resist the autopilot's plotted course.

That’s the paradox: at a time when everyone is “creating,” creative work can feel increasingly diluted. Platforms reduce expression to metrics. Authenticity to content. The very systems that claim to promote creativity often sidestep its real demands; focus, subtlety, intent, patience. Everything around us accelerates, but often, what’s needed is deceleration and renewed awareness.

I create outside of that system that demands results and compels people to seek engagement. I write blogs few read. I release music few hear. I make books few buy. But I continue, because for me, making things isn’t strategic. It’s compulsive. A necessary way to maintain my inner continuity. It’s a method for managing time and the experiences within it. For understanding how my mind works. For recognizing the rhythms of the world around me.

Recognition was never the goal, and yet, every once in a while, an expectation that someone might notice the care and time spent creeps up from the depths of my mind. However, invariably, the idea of creating for others and/or seeking attention, feel like self-betrayal.

As Rilke wrote, “A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.” and there aren't many things in my life that have been more compelling than this all-consuming need to put something "out there".