less.

In recent years the word “minimalism” has been exploited for its opposite and dredged of so much of its original meaning (and I often think its practical purpose) that it feels a bit clumsy and gauche attempting to apply it to anything I might be doing or exploring.

But the fact remains that in essence, the term is highly useful. If not as an overused label (or, I mean, like a freaking brand), but as an idea and in many contexts — an ideal.

Minimalism in its original sense can (I hope) still serve as a clarifying concept and practice whose application can be compassionate, healthy, fortifying and crystallising.

There is an ecological imperative in this that can’t be ignored, a philosophical ideal for sure, a highly potent mental-health tool, but also a crucial abstract pursuit that is unarguably poetic.

To avoid however falling too far down into the confusion of a commercialised #minimalism sinkhole, I want to describe the place I’m currently discovering myself completely magnetised towards as “a vigorous pursuit of less”. Not just a little less. But so much less.

Less stress and sadness, less work for marginal gains, less burden of the chaotic noise of the world, certainly. But also less in the spiralic sense that I think sometimes we all (all those online at least?) find ourselves twisted into at various points — the hedonic wave of consumption, desire, dissatisfaction, anxiety. The accumulation — and then almost rhythmic divesting-of-life from stuff (Marie Kondo binge, anybody?).

For me, too, as an artist — less. Fewer projects, less diversity of narrative genre, less of a split focus. Less need to make more money. Less need to progress more in the pursuit of status or industry anointed success. Less professional panic.

And also, as a filmmaker, a storyteller — a more minimal lens, a slower beat, a quieter more circular story-shape; an attendance to the least-that-is-required in order to communicate a story. In performance, in direction, in the cut. In the writing. In the entire authorship. How little do I need? How little can we use to show so much. How very little is required? (Note: there is so much more to wonder and write about and discover in this area, and I will. And here. But not today. Today is for a far more general declaration of “less”. )

If I take the wonderfully well-worn William Morris quote, “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” and apply it to my life it makes the decision matrix wildly easy. None of this confusion about “sparking joy” (same, same let’s face it); useful or beautiful. That is all. (Function being significant to the way one lives one’s life, beauty being magnificently, wholly a subjective filter.) A perfect assessor. So unsuperfluous. I can tell you in an instant what these things are. Sans equivocation.

“LESS BUT BETTER” - Dieter Rams (of course.)

In spite of short-lived attempts to divest my life of matter and taper consumption, I have been a more-or-less unconscious accumulator for years (as so many of us have). And the more “stuff” (on the calendar, in the home, in the inbox, in my brain), the less focus, the less sleep, the more obligation, and the more panic ensues. It isn’t just the desire for more stuff, of course. It’s the desire for the dopamine hit of purchase, scroll, gossip, please, agree, book, subscribe.

Being away from home for work these past months, and in such a state of a need for emotional and psychological clarity (calendar-leanness, a minimisation of real-world drama, a stripping back of additional narrative inputs, a sparseness of new ideas; space for so very little but simply performance and recovery) I’ve discovered how much stuff there is in life — in my life — that there honestly never used to be. The panic and overwhelm present even in the simple choice of “what to wear to set today before I change into costume”. Ridiculous, but real.

I’m not going to go all Steve Jobs on my life of course, but there is a a deep calling I’m now heeding to be rigorous, disciplined — perhaps even ruthless — with the question of what I do and do not need.

This is going to be a process of course. Some of it might go quickly. For instance, I managed to purge about 40% of my wardrobe today in a single 10-minute period with barely a thought. And then there will be processes that are far more complex and involved: my agent called me out of the blue the other day, and I had a long but deeply honest conversation about sacrificing smaller acting jobs for a deeper, more durationally-focused engagement with filmmaking — the conversation itself happened more easily and sooner than I thought it would, but after weeks of agonising and journaling to get my thoughts straight.

But all that said, I believe my broad categories for “lessening” roughly fall into:

• digital (tools, platforms, content, world, activities, systems and habits),

• space / home and discretionary decor,

• time, focus, undertakings, inputs, habits and routines,

• clothes, appearance and other adornments,

• hard-technology, machinery and tools.

The intention in doing this — very deliberately, and starting out more or less immediately — is to find peace in so much less fractured focus, calls for attention and obligation; but also thereafter — to actually add more of what it is I actually value and have been slowly but surely losing time and focus to the aforementioned to properly engage with. This includes:

• seated meditation

• more movement

• focused filmmaking work; the study and development of my craft / practice

• seeing more cinema

• reading (more physical books)

• walking without synthetic aural input

• cooking, learning new flavour profiles, and studying more deeply the anthropology of food

• journaling, writing and seeking to understand a greater diversity of approach to narrative, art and poetics

• gardening and attending to living creatures

• experiencing more galleries, shows and art events

• building deep community

• seeing family (related and chosen)

• walking in the natural world — seeking its challenge and beauty

• traveling broadly whenever possible and diving into in more languages and cultures

• engaging more deeply with the experience of listening to and understanding music

• analogue film photography

• developing more artworks, installations and feast-events

• planning conscious grocery (and life) shopping so much better

• re-organising the home library (finally)

• investing in artwork for life

• and finally, when purchasing, only buying the best we can afford at the time that will be with us the longest.

I expect this will be a wildly imperfect process too, and one that I am unsuccessful with at many turns. But part of “lessening” is putting less pressure on myself to get any of this shit right. I might be mistaken, but I feel like this may be the first in a process-based journaling of how it progresses, what it could shift, and how.

I’m not going into this ignorant to the likely obstacles, encumbrances and resistance that will get in the way of this process, either. And yet, the process. - MZ.