Oh, Ma.
Empty spaces · Dakar Dance · MDR & Nighy ·
Sometimes it feels like Japanese culture, their approach, their manifestations are a vast glimmering pool of fascination. Today that pool drew me in to little ripples of Ma.
Oh, Ma: A sound that moves that across time and space.
FridayFind: A Dance in Dakar.
Listening: Macro refinement work sounds + ill-advised advice
With: Voyeurism as a business model, Ch4’s AI stunt, and old school Indian studios.
🎧 Prefer to listen?
Hit play above to hear this week’s writings in my mellifluous tones, or over on Youtube.
1. Oh, Ma.
Ma. It’s what I call my mom.
Its a sound that flits across the planet effortlessly, and meaningfully. A baby gurgles it out before it learns anything, and its most familiar meaning is formed. Yet across the continents, it has gathered a surprisingly wide range of meanings: mother, space, numbness, scolding, respect, a question, a ghost, a pause. A tiny syllable holds both universal meanings, and philosophies unique to cultures.
Its most familiar meaning appears nearly everywhere. From Hindi माँ (maa) to Mandarin mā, Swahili mama to French maman, the sound and its import is part of our earliest emotional vocabulary. Of course, there’s a biological bridge to this: m + a is one of the first combinations a baby can physically produce. Caregivers hear it, recognise themselves in it, and reinforce it. Over the ages, a baby’s babble evolved into maybe the most primal word we have.
But just a step or two afield, and the word splinters into meanings that share no lineage.
Mandarin famously turns ma into four (or five) unrelated concepts depending on tone: mā /mother, má/ numb, the source of Sichuan’s sizzling “má-là” (yum!), mǎ/ horse, and mà / to scold. Across Africa, ‘Ma’ or ‘Mama’ doubles as a respectful address for elder women. In some languages it’s a grammatical element, a prefix, even a pronoun. And delightfully, in Georgian, “mama” means father!
Then, in Japan, “ma” becomes something else entirely. It’s what opened up this little rabbit hole.
“energy filled with possibilities.”
Ma (間) is a fundamental Japanese philosophical concept referring to the negative space, interval, or pause that gives shape and meaning to everything around it- not just physically, but also temporally and conceptually.
Absence treated as presence. Pause carrying intention.
We can- quite literally- glimpse the meaning of Ma from its Japanese kanji symbol. ‘Ma’ combines characters for door or gate 門, and sun 日 ; together they depict a door through the crevice of which, sunlight peeps in.
It’s the emptiness that highlights form, the silence that defines sound, the stillness that gives weight to action, and it permeates Japanese art, architecture, gardens, music, and daily life.
In conversation, pauses are not treated with awkwardness, they can be considered “fullness” and “presence without noise”.
In architecture, Ma refers to the dimension of space between structural posts. It is central in ryokan inns, tea houses, and Zen gardens, where empty rooms or open gravel are not ‘unused’, they are intentional spaces to highlight proportion and harmony.
Train to nowhere.
Ma manifests as a sophisticated storytelling and aesthetic device too, revealing values about timing, restraint, and the power of what is left unsaid.
Hayao Miyazaki, the great master of Studio Ghibli, has spoken about creating moments in his films where “nothing happens”. A girl sits by a train window, the wind shifts through grass… so that the audience can feel something.
Sample this wonderful exchange with the critic Roger Ebert, from 2012.
I told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”
He clapped his hands three or four times.
“The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”
Not a memo that mainstream Hollywood and Bollywood received, clearly. In so much of what we see and hear, contemplation now is too often conflated with boredom.
While I may be no Ghibli aficionado, I do recall this stretch in Spirited Away :
“A lengthy two-minute sequence where one could not reasonably say the plot is moved forward. Whereas other films may have treated us to a couple of seconds of jump cuts to traverse us to the intended destination, Miyazaki is interested in allowing us to digest the hour and a half of events we have just absorbed” ^
Fascinatingly, in manga (Japanese comics) too, this manifests in the use of space between panels and dialogue, subtly shaping the emotional rhythm of the story.
“a single panel depicting a character’s pensive expression, surrounded by empty space, can stretch out time in a way that words alone cannot.” ^
Emptiness and meaning.
Ma moves across time and space. It retains its own essence across most geographies, and lets cultures shape it in others. An infant instinct, a shared human starting point, a reverence, an aesthetic principle, a philosophy.
It says so much, and teaches us to savour what can’t be said at all.
~ More on the Japanese Ma, across dimensions.
2. A Dance In Dakar.
A languid exercise in the choreographed ebbs & flows of youth by the Senegalese shores of the Atlantic. ‘The Dance of the Sea’- in the Wolof language, ‘Fetchou Guédj Gui’- feels like an homage to the power and allure of the ocean, yet also a gentle embrace of friendship, youth and community.
Directed by Jorge Perez Ortiz & Rodri Porcelli (who also films and edits it), with music from Raúl Espiñeira, this is an alluring collage of moments between friends in a summer, with dancing, swimming, riding mingling with smiles, silences and contemplation.
“In Dakar, the dance of the sea is not just a visual spectacle but a song to unity. Every wave that rises is an invitation to embrace community, and to understand that, like the ocean, we are part of something much greater. This journey reminds us that no matter how far we go, there will always be a dance that connects us, a rhythm that makes us more human.”
British designer Grace Wales Bonner was just announced to lead menswear at Hermes. But she earned her creds with her own label, which she started in 2014. This film was released in the summer, presented by Nowness, featuring clothes from Wales Bonner.
3. Listening.
Severed.
Much of my writing sessions this week featured this music playing in my ears.
AppleTV has a long Youtube loop called ‘Music to ‘refine to’. Their popular (and acclaimed) show, Severance, is based on the premise that humans are drawn to a technology that can divide their work and personal lives. At Lumon Industries, the employees have undergone a ‘severance’ procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives.
Think of it as an experiment in work-life balance. Your work persona- your ‘innie’- only knows a life at the office, days and memories starting in the lift to the work floor, and ending in the lift back out. Your ‘outie’, meanwhile (the ‘main you’), lives the life outside- home, family, leisure- happily oblivious of the drudgery your innie endures.
The work innies do at Lumon is called ‘macrodata refinement’. It is very evidently tedious work- you categorise numbers on a computer screen that evoke specific emotions. Exactly the kind of drudgery people want to escape from.
A glimpse into my flow? But am I my innie our outtie, while listening to this?
The Youtube set is designed by ODESZA “for eight hours of focus—perfect for your innie’s workday.”
PS- if you’re a fan of the show, someone’s built a MDR simulation. Refine away!
Ill-advised.
“If you are socially adept and enjoy healthy relationships, there’s nothing for you here.”
The inimitable Bill Nighy does a podcast. In his laconic style- a mix of ‘I care very much’, and ‘I don’t really give a s**t’, Nighy is an odd kind of agony aunt. Anyone can send in any question, and he will endeavour to provide an answer that may be useful or useless, may causes mirth, or bewilderment.
“It’s been suggested I invite you to ask questions about whatever’s on your mind and I will attempt to answer them without making things worse.”
Sample this which manages to talk about coffee. (not a paid partnership with me!)
As the show puts it, this is an invitation to squander time.
Masala Peanuts
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting).
In an effort to “show just how convincing artificial intelligence has become,” Channel 4 pulled off a clever stunt with the latest episode of Dispatched. I spoke a bit about ‘Will AI Take My Job?’.
In a thought-provoking piece titled, “From Dorm Room to Default - How Voyeurism Became a Business Model”, Christine Haskell looks through the lens of Meta’s recently released glasses to urge leaders to take on the privacy challenges it brings.
“Harms don’t need villains; they require unquestioned defaults. In a system where attention is rewarded, safety drifts into “feature,” not floor—and families, schools, and workers sit on the wrong side of the information asymmetry. In that world, relying on corporate virtue is malpractice.”In The Vibrant, Disappearing World of India’s Photo Studios, The New Yorker looks at photographer Ketaki Sheth’s stumble into these dying businesses.
People who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over.
They’re worried that the audience will get bored.
They might go up and get some popcorn.
_Hayao Miyazaki, in the same 2012 interview.