The Work Must Be Real or Not at All

It starts, not with a camera, nor with a drum-kit. It starts with discomfort.

Tokyo, 2013

Not the romanticized discomfort of the tortured artist, but the persistent friction of being slightly out of sync with the world. Before the first photo, before the first note in a rehearsal space, there was the tension of being overly aware and easily affected. The kind of attention that doesn't let things slide by unnoticed.

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—it’s traction. Not art, 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.

But permanence is what I seek.

Not fame—just presence. A trace. Something that stays. Photography allows for that. Not just through what it captures, but in the act of returning. My archives aren’t nostalgic. They’re systems for noticing. 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. Not out of sentiment, but structure. There is value in quietly revisiting ideas, places, moods, to see if they have changed, to see if I have changed, 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. In front of the backdrop of sameness, I find orientation through the smallest variations. My repetitions aren’t loops—they’re arcs. I connect gaps, not for conclusions, but to maintain continuity. I fill in blanks—in timelines, in memory, in meaning. I build sequences because the world doesn’t. I assemble what feels fragmented. Not to resolve, but to make it navigable. The result is never complete—but it holds.

Recording session, 2007

Drumming came first. I played like I wrote, like I take photographs: obsessively, with no regard for trend. With Quantum Cellar (an instrumental progressive rock band I co-founded) we never played live. It wasn't by design, but by limitation. The material was dense, layered, and difficult to reproduce as we envisioned it. Ultimately, we didn’t fit the moment. But maybe that was the pattern all along—for the band, and for me. Slightly out of place, slightly off-tempo.

What we made was real, but it wasn’t built for attention. It was driven by a longing for self-expression. 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.

Years later, in the stillness of the Covid lockdowns, 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 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—no plan, just distortion and drift. Later, while making sense and arranging my 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—how these works haunted me, not how they sounded. 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. That limitation isn't a hindrance; it's a method. It's not lack of practice, it's relying on intuition. It's not theory, but terrain. Emotional topography. Internal landscapes. Narrative structures formed through tone and pacing. Not unlike memory or dreams—consistent but non-repeating.

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, not a broadcast. 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 and more about mediation—a channeling process. 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. What’s left is the outcome—raw, imperfect, and final. My creative work—whether photography, writing, or music—comes in bursts, driven by the nature of my neurodivergence. ADHD and likely ASD push me toward hyperfocus. When the urge strikes, it consumes me entirely: no sleep, no food, no breaks—just the work, sometimes for days, until it's done.

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 isn’t about delivering facts—it’s about transmitting a way of noticing. A way of structuring time. Most people don’t need better tools—they need permission. To slow down. To resist immediacy. To make choices that contradict the automatic. A classroom shouldn’t teach compliance. It should sharpen perception.

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, silence, patience. Everything around us accelerates. But often, what’s needed is deceleration. A pause. A space to observe, not to perform.

So I create outside of that system.

In self-published books. In written texts. In image sequences that don’t demand attention but build resonance over time. 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 continuity.

This isn’t a career. 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. For insisting—quietly—that repetition isn’t about resolution, but coherence.

Recognition was never the goal. And yet, once, there was a hope for it—an expectation that someone might notice the care and time. But creating for others, seeking attention, feels like a betrayal, not of the audience but of myself. As Rilke wrote, “A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.” Anything less is mere performance, a façade. Still, I desire to be seen—not as a product or timeline, but as a process. My work must endure, not to glorify me, but to leave a path behind. Art isn’t the artifact; it’s the madness in the method. The result is merely what remains after the creative detonation—the shells, the trace. The imprint of being, not its performance.

The silence clarified things. Even without external response, the pattern holds.