On Uncertainty and Silence

I've chatted about having a system, and mused on my muse, but what else can invigorate creativity, I wondered? I got to thinking about randomness -- how to generate it to form ideas, and how to mature those ideas into something more -- into sparks of inspiration.

I hate uncertainty. I always have. I'm not good with it, I like things to be predictable. I think we all do, don't we? It's odd though -- when I look back -- my best ideas, and my best decisions -- the ones that actually mattered, weren't part of the plan. I'm not sure they were part of any plan...

The truth is, control is comforting -- but that's a bit of a fib. I like control. Lists, plans, systems —- they make me feel like I’m doing something useful -- but when things are mapped out, I miss the ginnels: The side roads, the footpaths, the things that take you away from the beaten track.

And it's those ginnels that lead you to the unexpected. Creativity never sits in plain sight -- it is never on the path most trodden.

The sparks of creativity are stray moments: Driving the car with nothing playing. In the shower (most often!). Halfway through a random walk. Day-dreaming, and not concentrating on what I should be doing.

Thoughts collide and make something new. It's accidental. There's no control. There never is. You can't schedule it. You can't plan it. You can't summon it on demand -- it's not the elastic cloud.

All you can do, is give it room to happen.

This isn't a problem. This isn't a problem at all. The problem is noise. The allergy to empty space. The need to fill every gap. The need for constant listening. Constant scrolling. Constant Planning. Filling your mind with what comes next, and noise: Noise, noise, noise.

Silence. It feels unproductive. But, it's not. Silence evolves collisions.

Here's the thing: The more predictable your life becomes, the more your thoughts run in loops. Familiar patterns, familiar answers. It’s efficient, but no new ideas live there.

Uncertainty. It forces you to pay attention, so you have to connect the dots you didn't even know were there. With silence, those dots coalesce into meaningfulness.

Is it a paradox? To seek uncertainty. To seek silence.

Maybe. Maybe not. Give the world a chance to interrupt. Let silence create collisions.

Collisions happen when you slow down, when the gaps stay gaps.

The hard part isn't uncertainty; it's not silence either.

The hard part is introducing uncertainty. The hard part is eliminating noise.

But done together, sparks appear.

And sparks are the point -- for me, at least.

Books I’ve been reading recently

The Art of Being Unmistakable by Srinivas Rao (artwork by Mars Dorian) - Create work that is so unique and personal, it can’t be replicated

Caliban Shrieks by Jack Hilton - Life in The North in the early years of the 20th Century

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak - Elif writes wonderful stories full of passion and incredible detail

Exhalation by Ted Chiang - A collection of short stories by one of the best contemporary Sci-Fi authors

Memorable things I’ve watched lately

Alien Earth on Disney+ - Alien meets Bladerunner, promising new series

Alien Apocalypse on Amazon Prime - Comedically awful

Walk the Line on Disney+ - Fantastic biopic of The Man in Black

Fox Hollow Farm on Disney+ - The 2nd largest amount of unidentified human remains, only beaten by the World Trade Centre after 9/11

Wild on Disney+ - Reminded me of a guy I met in the Beekeeper on Middlewood road, who had walked the Scotland coast path. We talked about The Salt Path, a book which I read a couple of years ago about a couple who walked the Cornwall coastal path - it has been turned into a film. I didn’t know.

Inspiring things I’ve listened to in August

Search Engine - A Dubai Chocolate theory of the internet - Chinese social media is starting to sound like the Hivemind

Click Here - The Price Tag of You - Personalised pricing, just like the psycmask in Hellsborough

Darknet Diaries - Hieu - Obsessive hacking, credit card theft, data brokers, and privacy

The AI Fix - A light-hearted look at AI

News articles that inform me about The Dark Peak

A complete world simulation, just like The Matrix? More…

This intrepid quadruped robot is tough, durable, fast and agile. More…

A synthetic biology platform that accelerates evolution. More…

"Wolf" robots are designed to stealthily approach enemies in rough terrain, and fire precise shots. More…

Insects transformed into remote-control cyborgs. More…

Is this telepathy? Your inner thoughts can now be translated by technology. More…

Ultrafast analogue “brain“ chip can process data and wireless communication signals simultaneously. More…

This Month’s words and pictures

“…the woad. They come from somewhere further North in The Dark Peak, no-one is quite sure where, and they are blood thirsty pirates who care little for life: Neither clown, human, xin nor milting -- they would rather slaughter us than look at any of us.

Little is known about the woad Pip, except that they is supposed to come from the most northern reaches of The Dark Peak. Rumours are that they interbreed with the netherlanders from up that way, as well as other creatures of chaos, like smeln and boggarts -- and with other creatures far more heinous. What is known for sure, is that they are blood-thirsty plunderers who go berserk in battle, and stop at nowt in their lust for destruction.

Their gruizers came circling down, the marauders sweeping lower and lower towards the defences of the milting, firing heavily on the temple guards, their fungets ripping through them like they were nowt. As the pirates come closer, milting soldiers poured from the temples into the gardens and courts. But them black craft kept descending -- they was small fliers, built for two or three men, and very agile. They downed into the midst of the milting soldiers, and the woad leapt at the milting, slashing with solid blades that cut through the milting whipo'wil like a shiv through soft butter.” (from chapter 7)

We’ve had a bit of rain in S6 of late, but we’ve also had the warmest Summer on record in 2025. Have a fantastic September - I’ll see you at the end of the month 🚀