Greg
(00:00) Hello and welcome to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. Today is episode 54 and it's a treat for you today. It is May the 31st 2025 and coming to you live from Bordeaux in the south of France is today's podcast. The question is how does location affect your creativity?

(00:22) Alessandra

Alessandra
(00:24) Well, I have to tell you that being in Berdou for symphonic holidays has been quite an adventure. I have never been anywhere this remote in my life. This little village of Berdou is in the south of France. It's between two mountains that have names that I would need to take Duolingo and a private tutor six weeks to be able to pronounce them in the native language.

(00:47) But I can tell you that this little tiny village goes back to medieval times. And you can walk from building to building, path to path. The buildings are very even and straight. But the second that you step out, you're walking on a mountain.

(01:05) There's trees everywhere. There are seven peacocks that I've seen so far. I've seen only four cats. I hear that there are many cats.

(01:15) Just to get to this food hall, which is called La Taberna, From the house where I'm staying called James's house, I walked through at least two dozen chickens. So it's really a very, very special place and the people who come for this event return year after year. This is the ninth year. of Symphonic Holidays.

(01:38) So we run rehearsals for the orchestra in the morning and from 8 to 10.30 at night and then it's wine time because you can't really pay attention and stay tuned. But yeah, it is. It's an adventure. It's difficult.

(01:55) It's inspiring and the way that I spend my time playing is just like the joke about playing the mandolin. How do you play the mandolin? Well, you spend half your time tuning it and the other half playing out of tune. That's been me.

(02:13) I'm the rookie and that'll be the thing that I work on in my music for the rest of the year. But this is a special place that I wanted to share it with you. So thank you, Greg, for the introduction and allowing us to visit this topic, which today is

Greg
(02:30) How does location affect your creativity? And I'm going to go around the room and ask. You've got myself, Greg. We've got Alessandra.

(02:37) We have Bobby B, Devin, and Shadows Pub. I will go to Devin. How does location affect your creativity?

Devin
(02:46) Merci, Greg. Well, it actually affects me enormously. Example I can think of, the best example, drop me anywhere in the Scottish Highlands and I just want to start being creative. I want to write, start writing a novel on the back of cocktail napkins, anything I can get my hands on.

(03:04) I want to write songs and poems and just want to express myself creatively. But leave me in like my space where I usually work. and my space here in Connecticut. and there's almost no creativity.

(03:20) And I don't completely understand this, but I know something about, maybe it's the work vibe, maybe it's just not, you know, there's latitude, but definitely a huge impact. And I would know that if I needed to be creative, if I had like a creative deadline, I would absolutely make sure I was in one of the places where I was confident that I could access that creativity. Thank you, Devin.

Greg
(03:43) Shadows, how about you? How does location affect your creativity?

Shadows Pub
(03:47) Well, since I don't change location, it doesn't. I'm probably the same no matter where I am. I don't know.

Greg
(03:53) Bobby, how about yourself? How does a location affect your creativity?

Bobby. B
(03:57) It can affect it quite a bit. If I'm writing things that are more in touch with emotion, then the environment can really project on me and sometimes I intentionally simply move to a different part of the property or go to a coffee shop or other location. But I'm going to echo back to Devin for a moment. I do have a location in the house I normally work from and it's like a long-term relationship.

(04:28) You know, sometimes you just have a hard time making it fresh, doing something. And so the other day, I rearranged the shelves above this desk, just took all the books down, reorganized them, moved some other stuff. And that was enough just to make the mundane seem a bit more curious. And it got rid of that little bit of mental block that can happen when it's the same place and the same thing.

(04:56) And you may know I do a lot of mentoring and tutoring, and I've watched some of these students sit down with their homework, their assignments, wherever they're at, and just dive into it. That's a little tough for me at this point in life. But I do take away the fact that you don't have to simply accept where you're at and the detriments that might be there. It doesn't take much to

Greg
(05:20) shuffle the deck. I think going to the library can change your creativity, going in nature changes scenery, even if you can't be there. Go there virtually, right? Bring up some soothing music, the visuals and stuff like that.

(05:45) But Alessandra, how about you being in the south of France? How's that location affecting your creativity?

Alessandra
(05:51) Well, it's certainly taking me out of my routine. I can tell you that because there's a different routine that we have here. But I know that when the old workaholic patterns that I have make me want to get myself to practice in the afternoon, but I... Don't do it because I need the rest.

(06:16) So the location is as beautiful as it is and as many little adventures as I could go off on or sit and write. I really have to preserve my energy. I was able to break, you know how some people have writing streaks and then it's like if they break it they're like, Yeah, broke my streak. You know, and they're putting an L on their forehead.

(06:41) And, you know, with my own writing practice, I'm stuck so much the time that I actually, I think it was a couple of days ago, I broke the, I broke the streak of being stuck, and actually wrote something. And I couldn't have possibly done that except for being here, because what I wrote here could have only happened here. And just let me explain. I stepped into the house, James's house, where I'm staying for the 10 days for Symphonic Holidays.

(07:14) And it was my roomie and me, and it was Jonas who helped us with our heavy bags over to the house. and I turned when we stepped through the door and we closed the door and I looked and I saw the one bedroom that's on the ground floor and I looked through that doorway and what I saw in real life was Van Gogh's bedroom. It looks exactly like the painting. It looks exactly like the period of the painting.

(07:47) What I saw through that Old Lord Doorway was the same window that's in his bedroom painting, the same bed placed in the exact same place in the room, the same armoire. I had to break the I can't write streak to write that. And that could have only happened through the magic of how location can affect creativity. But I do have to ask shadows.

(08:16) Shadows so you everything that you do creatively happens from your home from the same spot really and do you have you ever like Devin and I have been lucky enough to be invited to your home and We we worked at the kitchen table, but that's not where you usually work on a daily basis Is it

Shadows Pub
(08:40) no?

Alessandra
(08:41) And have you tried other places in your house? Because you've lived in that same abode for how long? 40

Shadows Pub
(08:50) years? 40 years maybe? Since 1988. Since 1988.

Alessandra
(08:57) Is that the same sofa? No!

Shadows Pub
(09:00) It could

Alessandra
(09:03) be close. So location can be global, but location could be, and that references what Bobby was saying too, and what Michael has said, and Y-Ling has said about using creative space in their own, is that this can also be micro locations. of changing up furniture, changing up books, changing up the room where you work. So what other places have you worked in that house?

Shadows Pub
(09:27) Well, I have a desk across the room. In fact, it's a desk my dad built. Oh. The problem with using the desk is that the cats do not fit on it well.

(09:40) With the couch, they can sleep on either side of me and I can get my work done. At the desk, they'll usually want to sleep on something I want.

Alessandra
(09:48) Ah, like the computer?

Shadows Pub
(09:50) Yeah.

Alessandra
(09:51) It's for the most. Warm mom. Exactly.

Greg
(09:53) I see a future episode here being something like, how do caps affect your creativity?

Alessandra
(10:00) It helps if you have at least one arm available. Sometimes. Because we referenced the village of Verdu and we referenced the symphonic holidays, we will include information about the place and the program in the show notes. So what do you think, Greg?

Greg
(10:17) I think that it's that time again. You've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the creative work hour podcast when you could have been doing something else. But how about you? How does location affect your creativity?

(10:31) Let us know. Visit us at creativeworkhour.com. And in the meantime, come back next week and we'll be here with another question.