By Leo Hermes 
Hi, you probably don’t know me. My name is Leo Hermes, and I’m hijacking Vacation Vulture. I stole my good friend Liam’s blog to brag about rediscovering my creativity on my vacation to Japan.
You probably are thinking “this fucking guy is so lame” and you know what, you’re right. I’m an indie songwriter and producer from Mexico City, and as an underground wannabe artist, self-loathing is the bread and butter of my days.
That’s why I’m sharing some of the days when I didn’t feel like a worthless piece of shit. It’s a shame that I could only feel that way in Japan, but hey, at least that’s something.
So if you’re also a struggling artist, brace yourself. In this post, I’m going to convince you to sell all of your belongings and book the next flight to Tokyo (or whatever unknown city is in your budget), baby.
Rediscovering My Creativity
Have you ever thought about whether there’s an energetic field around us?
No?
Well, I think about crazy shit like that all of the time. In my creative endeavors, I got obsessed with finding the best configurations to boost my creativity. I went hard on the Feng of my Shui. Jokes aside, the environment where we are born and live has an enormous impact on our personalities and our way of creating.
At first I didn’t believe it, but when I finally arrived in Japan, I felt it in every inch of my bones.
For context, before the trip, I was in the middle of one of my biggest creative crises and was at a crossroads. I was considering giving up on my dream of being an artist.
Am I still an unsuccessful and under-the-sewers artist, who is in a perpetual state of angst and confusion? Yes, but that’s not the point of this story hahaha.
Escaping the Monotony
There’s something magical about a trip, and I’m aware this sounds cliché, but this shit is real.
In the complex machinery of life and reality, we are all stuck in our cyclical gears. Part of the reason that we are stuck (and we’re unable to realize it) is because of the endless repetition and homogeneity that we are subjected to on a daily basis.
Think about it. From the day that we become adults, and start having jobs and responsibilities, our circle of friends starts to shrink, and also the places we visit and inhabit. Architecture is the soul of a city, so imagine having to have the same conversation with the same person over and over for the rest of your life: it would be soul-crushing.
Repetition is the poison of spontaneity, and spontaneity is the mother of change. So having the blessing of a trip is like stepping out of your hamster wheel for a while. It is only when you see the wheel from outside that you can decide to go run in another wheel.
So there’s a really powerful psychological, emotional and energetic aspect of traveling. It’s like a reboot of our entire system. No wonder Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung explored the theme of the Hero’s Journey to define maturity and personal growth. Traveling to another city or country is like traversing through a portal to another you. So having all of this philosophical mumbo jumbo out of my system, I’ll begin.
Here are my best recommendations for having a bohemian vacation:
#1 TRAVEL ALONE
“But Leo Hermes, I´m terrified of traveling alone”
Call me Vacation Hermes, and that’s exactly why you have to do it.
Have you ever asked yourself:
– Who am I when I am completely alone?
– How’s my relationship with myself?
– What do I like and what do I really want out of life?
– Am I in the right path ?
– Am I my most authentic self ?
My bet is that the majority of you can’t answer any of these questions truthfully. We live in a saturated society. We’re living in the timeline where George Orwell’s 1984 ass-fucked Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
This dystopian reality increasingly demands our attention and thoughts. We constantly live in a maze of screens. From the moment the day begins till it ends, we’re flooded with a storm of cellphone notifications and a constant dopamine fix of reels. Our brains have been programmed to grab our cellphones in the very instant we feel bored.
Boredom as a Creative Force
“But Vacation Hermes, this doesn’t sound so bad. It’s awesome that we can watch reels and movies from Netflix wherever we feel like it”
NO, it’s not awesome, it sucks ass. Boredom is exactly where the magic happens. It is in boredom that we find the space and joy to create.
In boredom, we have the containment to ask ourselves the difficult questions. In boredom, we have the urge to step out of our comfort zones. It is only in boredom that we get to truly know ourselves. So no, one of the biggest modern diseases we are facing is the elimination of boredom.
“Ok ok, I got it. Boredom is important, but why traveling alone?”
Because traveling with someone you know will make you behave like you. When we make a friend or even an acquaintance, we create a unique persona for that person. We start to unconsciously label and define ourselves, which limits what we can do or become.
One of the magical aspects of traveling is the re-signification of our identity, so traveling with someone else would lessen that experience.
Imagine that you have a work buddy called Richard. You and Richard bonded over classical music and constantly critique the people who go to clubs to get drunk and dance Reggaeton. Imagine that you travel together to Panama and in a museum you meet a gorgeous Panameña. The lady invites both of you to a Reggaeton party, and you face Richard asking for mercy with your eyes, and the guy responds, “Sorry, we actually hate reggaeton, we can’t go.”
Fuck Richard, right? If I want to explore my crazy reggaetonero side, no one should ever stop me.
Only by traveling alone is that you can fully explore the unknown aspects of yourself.
#2 CARRY A JOURNAL
Cliché right?
Well, clichés are clichés for a reason. They fucking work.
Writing is a great way of releasing the filthy clutter of the repressed thoughts, emotions and fantasies bottled up in ourselves. No wonder some of us feel so anxious and repressed all the time. We usually don’t have any place where we can express ourselves.
So go at it. There’s no wrong way of doing it. Keep it weird and personal.
Also writing is the best way to strengthen our memory muscles and help us remember better a trip. Write about everything.
Write about how the air feels in Mount Fuji, a stupid poem about traveling in trains, a silly sketch of a Torii gate, an inspirational quote of a famous samurai, how the street food tastes, a weird dream that you had, a new and completely wrong hypothesis about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave that got stuck in your mind at 3 am, a storyboard for a music video. Jot down EVERYTHING that passes through your mind.
#3 GET LOST WALKING
Fuck the GPS, fuck all the maps. Download 3 of your favorite albums, grab your earphones, your journal, and go outside your hostel/hotel and start walking without a direction, and don’t come back till midnight. Just go wander with lust (get it ?).
Up in this Vulture we follow magic and the only way to experience it is to embrace the mysteries of life. Start having conversations with the city you’re visiting. Follow sensations, intuitions, smells, and sounds. Let the vibrations of the city guide you to the most interesting places.
Most of these places are hidden gems that even most locals won’t notice, so why visit the most popular Instagram spots? You are a bohemian traveler, so you can’t be limited by that.
#4 READ A BOOK
Really, you’re selling all of your belongings to go to the other side of the world just to stay in a hotel and watch Emily in Paris on your iPad?
Fuck that!
You’re better than that
So: NO social media, NO Netflix films, NO Youtube videos.
If you want to do something on the train or the subway, go and buy a book set in the same city you’re visiting. Go read a writer from that country. There’s no better way to get a glimpse into another culture.
The book and the journal are more than enough to keep you entertained when there’s nothing to do on your travels. So, really seize the opportunity to spend as much time as possible outside of your hotel/hostel and as little time as possible on your cellphone.
Embrace the silence and the boredom. It will lead you to the most interesting places.
#5 CREATE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
If you really followed my previous advice, you’re going to start feeling very creative. Like someone finally unclogged your creative fountain. So this is your chance to submerge your whole goddamn face in the fountain and gargle the sweet waters of creativity to spit out something meaningful for you.
Let’s say that you’ve always wanted to be a painter, but life punched you in the face and made you a lawyer. Now is the time to regain that identity. Remember, you are on a magical threshold. You’re inhabiting a different energetic field.
So, go out and let the city you’re visiting inspire you and become your muse. So go hard at it, paint that shit like it is one of your French girls. Paint whatever feels beautiful for you. Give it all.
In my case, I suck at painting. But ‘m a musician, and also one of my dreams is to become a filmmaker one day. So, I challenged myself to record a video of all of the cool places that I visited while getting lost walking (wink wink) and edit a videoclip.
The Result of Rediscovering My Creativity
Let me tell you this: I didn’t create the next Citizen Kane, but I had a blast. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had doing a creative project since I was a little kid. Each new street I visited gained a new meaning and depth for me. I was finding beauty at every corner of the city. It was really magical.
It was one of those moments where I felt like the protagonist of my own movie. I hope that everyone can experience that feeling at least once in their lives; it doesn’t compare to anything else. That’s why I think that creation is so important.
It connects us to something deep and powerful within us. Call that God, the Source, the Universe, your Inner Child, whatever. So, go and jump into that void. Embrace the “errors” and “mistakes”. Fully release your inner creative beast.
When I returned to Mexico City, I was still so energized and inspired by my trip to Japan that I decided to write a song, based on the video I edited. So I grabbed my guitar, watched the video, and let the buildings of Tokyo and the rhythm of my way of walking direct the rhythm of the song.
This was the first time I ever did something like that. It was magical. To this day, this is one of my favorite songs I’ve recorded.
If you’re interested, here’s the video:
“WTF Vacation Hermes is that it, are you not supposed to give us the best places to visit in Japan?”
No, that is for you to discover!