The Creative’s Guide to Community with My Neighbor Factory Obscura
Written for Shoot the Breeze Magazine: Volume 00 - July 2024
30% of young adults feel the shadowed tug of loneliness nearly every day. In a oversaturated world, finding an authentic community is critical. Our canvases are covered in remnants of our day-to-day struggles. Drained of pigment from the pressures around us, telling us what to do, what to think, and how to feel. It’s easy to lose our sense of self. True community brings beauty back to our lives. This community is where we can be fully ourselves, supported by others on the same journey. Sadly, though, you’re not going to stumble your way into this community. A true community is meticulously crafted, much like the worlds brought to life by the Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli. My Neighbor Totoro, released thirty-five years ago, showcases the enduring value of hand-made animation. This practice is reflected today by the efforts of Factory Obscura. This local collaborative company breathes life into the creative spirit. Combining tradition and innovation, Studio Ghibli and Factory Obscura demonstrate an attention to detail and a timeless commitment to their craft. Last month, I had the privilege of chatting with a few of Factory Obscura’s founders. What revealed itself was a community built with intention, where every voice matters. In this article, we’ll reflect on shared values between Studio Ghibli and Factory Obscura and create a path for building your own community.
Planting the Seed: Invest in Ideas
You have two options after you plant a seed in your garden. Patience and impatience. Patience is a nurturing force, invested in the now. Impatience is a negligent force, only focused on the result. Impatience says you should grow at the rate I say, because I provide you just enough. Impatience wants the most for the least. The first step towards any big project is investment. Usually in the form of money, time or some other resource. Investing in the result has been a part of our mindset for a long time. What if we did things a little differently? The movie My Neighbor Totoro and Factory Obscura both highlight how planting the seed and nurturing it can lead to such beautiful growth. The idea here is to let go of the result; it will come as long as you do the admin properly. If you spend that time instead investing in people and their ideas it opens a whole new world of possibilities. We all need a nurturing force in our lives, people around us to support not just our goals, but the ideas we come up with to get to those goals. Imagine for a minute, being surrounded by like-minded individuals, who want nothing more than to hear your ideas, and help you bring them to fruition. You dear reader, must create the world you want to live in.
Everything is Temporary: Choose Positive
This idea of letting go of the result and creating the world you want to live in comes with challenges. We often run into struggles when it comes to the result, we want it to turn out a certain way, to be the exact idea we imagined. The key here is to remember everything is temporary, from the feelings you feel reading these articles, to the paper in your hands. The buildings around you, the sounds of the environment, even the people you see every day. It’s so often we want to build something ‘from the ground up’. This idea originally relates to construction in the 1800’s, now relates to starting any new idea. We plant the seed in the ground, we nurture it, we care for it, but in the down time we worry about its death. We spend all this time extending this moment of beauty and forget to enjoy it. We need these moments of joy in our life. Factory Obscura and My Neighbor Totoro both show us life is meant to be lived one moment at a time. Whether it’s mystical creatures on a screen, or a magical hand-crafted world, we need a place to feel. When the world feels like it’s crashing in around you and all you can focus on is the result, remember this too is temporary. Choose to move forward, choose positive.
Ego and Communication: The Code of Collaboration
Everything needs to be built on some sort of solid foundation to grow. Plants and buildings set their roots deep in the soil, while people set their foundation in their values, their experiences, themselves and others. We often make our decisions based on our values and experiences. Over time without even realizing it, you analyze and take in so much data. It’s so easy in the moment to feel like you know what’s best, and to make a quick decision. While this is helpful in a lot of situations and gets us through most of life, we also must be able to step back and get the full picture. While conversing with Factory Obscura, I was given insight into their ‘Code of Collaboration’. This is a living (always changing) document that gives everyone something to fall back on. Two things stood out in this portion of the conversation, letting go of your ego, and communicating effectively. Just like everything around us, the ego serves a purpose. Your ego, or your sense of self helps mediate between you and the real world. This to me is like a set of sunglasses, polarized to keep things out. Our ego can build up and become overly polarized. Imagine trying to drive at night with overly tinted windows, and you might see the issue here. This is where open and honest communication comes in. Share your true self with others, let them evaluate and give feedback.
Embrace the Grey Space: Put in the Damn Work
I quite often feel uncertain about what’s coming next. There is this awkward time in between creative thought. This time that often feels like limbo, it’s a sluggish time. This is a grey space. Grey space is where I often feel stuck. Positivity often skirts around grey space. The ego builds up, communication breaks down. Pure chaos. Imagine a hand drawn animated film. While watching 24 frames (images) will flicker across your screen every second. After watching an hour-long film you’ll have seen 86,400 different images. Can you imagine the chaos that comes along with piecing all of that together? This grey space though, is where the magic happens. When you learn to embrace the challenges and uncertainty that come, you will thrive. This requires a lot of active effort. Dedication is usually the word used here. Factory Obscura and Studio Ghibli both show this dedication to detail through their work. Both show the amount of care to create a moment just for you. Each of these moments is not truly realized until you view it, until you perceive it. Your experience of this work is what brings it all together. The next time you are taking in a work of art, slow down, look at the detail, the way the hair blows in the wind, or the tiny hidden vegetables living their lives. Appreciate the work that happened in the grey space. On the other end of this, appreciate your own grey space. This is where your magic happens, find your vision and make it happen.
A great conversation with a few of the founders of Factory Obscura gave me a lot of insight into building a creative community. I think there are a lot of us out there who are craving a supportive and nurturing community. To get this we must plant the seed, and really invest in the ideas of others. Give them the same care and support you want to receive. We are building the world we want to live in. This world though, just like everything in it is temporary. We must lean into this impermanence. While understanding that things are temporary is a good start, we also must choose to think positive. Temporary can feel dark, it can feel scary, but temporary is beautiful. Enjoy the flower while it’s in bloom, don’t worry so much about when it’s going to whither. Being positive is a step in the right direction. We’ve put ourselves out there, our full nurturing and positive selves. Now keep an eye out for that ego, it’s easy to build up as your skills grow. Our ego may relate our self to the real world, but it can breakdown collaboration. Too much worry about the self in general will break down the group. To combat this ego, we communicate openly and honestly. You’ve invested in people with similar values, now you must be willing to share your feelings and ideas, for the good of the community. Finally, just as the movie My Neighbor Totoro from Studio Ghibli shows us, we must put in the work. The grey space will appear between the ideas, and this is where your hard work matters. Effort and dedication will help you and your group thrive in the creative space.
