A Visual Poem from the Morning Commute

Slack is a visual poem, just over a minute long, that I made recently. It started with a conversation with a good friend and colleague about something as ordinary as my commute to work.

The journey takes about 25 minutes, and I spend nearly 20 of them meditating. I change from the tram to the underground, and during the longer stretch, I sit with my eyes closed. No music. Just me, in a fairly empty carriage early in the morning.

Over time, I’ve become better at finding a sense of calm within myself. Sometimes it feels like meeting who I really am, beneath all the thoughts, feelings and experiences that usually take up so much space.

A few times, that calm has been so clear that I’ve almost been able to see myself from a distance. My thoughts still racing. All the worrying, reacting and trying to stay afloat in a world I’m largely creating myself.

It feels as though part of me is struggling at the surface, convinced I’m drowning. And yet I’m also down below, beneath it all. Completely calm.

Sometimes I remember that. I am not my thoughts. I don’t have to follow every movement up there.

That’s the feeling I tried to give form to in Slack. A woman struggles for air out at sea. A cord tied around her ankle leads down into the depths, where she also lies, still. As the cord tightens, she looks up at her panicked self on the surface.

Finding my way back to that stillness is something I dedicate a lot of my life to. My first instinct was to call it my daily struggle, perhaps my life’s struggle, but “struggle” feels too harsh. It’s something I practise every day. Sometimes it’s difficult. Sometimes simply noticing that I’m thrashing around again is enough to remind me that I’m already there, in the quiet below.

It makes me so happy to be able to give that experience a form. That something felt with my eyes closed on the way to work can become images someone else can see and feel something through.

I’ve already heard several different interpretations of the film, and honestly, I’d rather hear those than have everyone see it through mine. This is simply what I was trying to portray, and where the film came from for me.

If it means something entirely different to you, that’s just as welcome.

– Cedric, The Awarehouse Studio, Stockholm