#69 Going with the Flow
Finishing the month with fresh air, farm animals, and a feature film about hope.
It’s still January? Doesn’t it it just seem to be the longest month of the year? Yet sunset is still before 5PM. The month has been dragging, and I am so ready for spring to arrive.
We just got back on Monday night after visiting my family back in Latvia. We were there only for a few days, but got a fair chunk of cultural activities in. If you’ve ever lived far away from your family, you'll know the feeling.
When you go back, it’s not quite a relax-and-forget-your-woes kinda holiday, it’s not quite a digital nomad experience if you bring work with you. It’s something in the middle. You have the family meetups, the responsibilities, the family stuff, and some chores thrown in there, too.
But you also want to make the most of your time there and end up squeezing a bunch of activities in before you wave goodbyes at the airport again.
The day after we landed, we had the gem of our holiday—Andrea Bocelli concert.
Initially, we got these tickets for us four: me, my other half, my mum, and my grandma. Unfortunately, my grandma is not doing very well right now and wasn’t able to attend, not even in a wheelchair (which was our initial plan), so we took my brother instead.
He wasn’t a huge fan (as a first year IT student, would you?) of us dragging him to this, but life’s all about widening your horizons, right? I can’t remember the last time I was in such a huge arena for a concert, but it was a lovely treat for our eyes and ears.
Bocelli did a cheeky ‘OK, I’m all done,’ before returning back to the stage to deliver his “Time to say goodbye” and saying bye for real. We looked at each other as if to say, ‘There’s no way he leaves us hanging like this.’ And, of course, he didn’t.
To celebrate one day of my mum not having to worry about feeding us all, we went to a Georgian restaurant.
If there’s one thing I could bring over to this part of the world (besides reduced bureaucratic hurdles), it’d be UK-style customer service. You get it in some places, but not all.
Take water as example. We had a good chat about this—there are still far too many places that don’t offer free tap water, let alone bring you a jug of it upon ordering your food. Cue my mum pulling out a bottle of water out of her handbag in case we’re thirsty, left over from the concert the night before.
The food was great, though. I highly recommend khachapuri, a a traditional Georgian cheese bread with an egg baked in its centre. It’s kinda like a cheesy crust-filled pizza, but smaller.
It was an unusually warm visit for what’s a typical Latvian January. No snow, but plenty of dark skies and drizzles of rain. ‘Shouldn’t you be used to this?' was the question I’d get far too often, referencing the famously grey and rainy British weather.
Still, we had to stretch legs one way or another. Instead of the usual snow shovelling of my parents’ driveway, we went for a couple of walks in the nearby forest, stopping at a curious garden on the way.
It was filled with old cars (likely to be done up and resold) and a weird selection of unusual artifacts—an Egyptian cat figurine, a tiny sailing boat model, a kettle, and a bunch more.
The tall pine trees gave us just the right amount of cover. Usually we’d spot some animals in the wild: once a deer, other times a woodpecker. This time it was eerily still, not a single movement or sound.
The overall mood in the house was just as dampened as the weather outside. Constantly alert and worried about my grandma’s health, we didn’t have any grand plans. The day before we had to return, we went for a short visit to a nearby farm zoo—just a little something to cheer us up, get us out of the house, and in the fresh air. Something to take our mind off things.
I didn’t think much of the photos I took, but when I got back and started editing, something hit me. I got my love for black and white again.
It brought the attention to the expressions, the eyes, the shapes, and the shadows.
It’s a special kind of feeling when you get that little piece of joy and passion for creating—it helps you forget the rest of the world just for a moment.
And just that half an hour going through the photos gave me that.
It’s similar to starting a new book and feeling a sense of excitement to flip the page and absorb the story. Maybe this is how it feels to paint or create music.
If you’ve been here for a while, you know I always go on about creating for yourself, because that feeling is truly special. These photos won’t really go anywhere, but they don’t have to—they served their purpose and gave me fulfilment.
A similar feeling—akin to a visual meditation for my mind—I got from our cinema trip on one of our days away. We went to see “Flow,” a beautiful animated film about themes of connection, individuality, strength, survival, and hope.
The plot summary reads, “Cat is a solitary animal, but as its home is devastated by a great flood, he finds refuge on a boat populated by various species, and will have to team up with them despite their differences.”
One reviewer describes it as: ”A vividly experiential white-knuckle survival adventure that takes place in a world on the brink of ruin.” It’s an animated film, without dialogue, “set within what appears to be an environment composed of no humans, as the only characters that appear in the film are animals.”
There are other reasons what makes it special:
The team was very adamant in getting all of the "voices" be done by real animals, so they recorded real animals for the movie. To get the capybara sound, the sound engineer had to travel to a zoo and tickle capybaras. However, the real capybara sounds did not match the personality that the capybara character would have, so instead they used a baby camel for this one. (IMDB)
The entire movie has been created and rendered only using the free and open-source software Blender.
Nominated for an Academy Award in the categories of Best International Feature Film and Best Animated Feature Film
Budget of just €3.5 million
Received more awards than I can add here
Here’s the film in the words of the director, Gints Zilbalodis:
And here is Gints hearing the news his film is up for an Oscar nomination, a first for our country:
So it’s no surprise it has quickly become a national treasure, showing what Latvian talent is capable of against gigantic budgets. Everyone’s going to see it—little ones and adults. Even the city is decorating its streets and buildings with the cast and hyping up the filmmaker and director.
It was a lovely way to finish the handful of days we were there. I came back with a touch more motivation and hope. I’m so ready to leave the winter behind and see what’s next.
Thanks for sticking around, I appreciate you being here!
That’s all from me this week—if you enjoyed this newsletter issue and haven’t subscribed yet, you can click the button below. I’d love to have you here! Hopefully, catch you next week.✨
I love the black and white! Need to shoot more of it.