Between 1940 and 1945 the network of concentration camps in annexed Poland known as Auschwitz Birkenau killed an estimated 1.1 million Jews, Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war. The camp was a machine of death, its name now synonymous with torture, gas chambers and the Holocaust. In 1979 it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is visited by an estimated 1.4 million people a year (number taken from 2011 estimate.) I've visited a few different Holocaust memorials and each time I'm struck by the way that each person around me experiences it. As I walked through the Mémorial de la Shoah's Wall of Names in Paris' Marais district, I noticed people running their hands along certain names, lingering slowly to let the realization of the horrors committed sink in. Others calmly walked by, noting the names but ultimately moving further inside quickly.

We Must Remember

The idea of a memorial as a tourist "attraction" feels odd to me. I love learning the history of a new place, connecting its now to the good and bad of its earlier years and soaking in the context. As I stood in line to enter the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam I remembered the scenes from "Nuit et brouillard"(Night and Fog), the 1956 French documentary by Alain Resnais that looked at the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek a mere 10 years after their liberation. It's black and white depictions of the scene of so much horror is sobering, emotional and ultimately unsettling. The monochrome shots tear at your soul, urging you to examine how these atrocities could have occurred in a so-called modern society.

The pieces that always stick with me are the personal stories and recollections of survivors. They lived through hell and their words carry a weight that should cut through eternity. These memories must be remembered. Seeing the actual diary of a young teenage girl who was sent to her death at the age of 15 for simply being Jewish brought me to tears. I stood in a line of English, German and Dutch tourists viewing her writings and barely a word was spoken. As soon as we left the tiny house, each one sparked up conversations about nationalism and anti-Semitism in each others own country. The house of remembrance had done its job.

Tourist vs. Pilgrim

My wife leads a pilgrimage each year for incoming college students to London and Canterbury that aims to connect them with the roots of the Episcopal/Anglican faith. The students walk through Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey seeing the formation of their faith tradition come alive in front of their eyes. A pilgrim's eyes see not with wonder but discovery. They search for meaning, connection and context to inform their present lives. That's how these sites of remembrance must be approached. The Santayana quote "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," should live in our hearts. Simply visiting sites of remembrance and not letting ourselves be changed by their sobering realities is a disservice to our own selves. See not as a tourist looking for beauty, but as a pilgrim craving meaning and discovery. In that meaning, you'll see a deeper beauty, one that can change your worldview.

In an article for Forbes, contributor Brett Steenbarger wrote, "I’ve never achieved a creative insight in a routine setting.” As normal sounding as that sentence may be, it’s actually pretty profound. Fresh experiences cause us to create new thoughts, ideas and insights. I spent most of my time in college studying in the exact same position. The back corner table by the bookshelf in The Mudhouse in downtown Springfield, Missouri. It was my home away from home and made me feel comfortable, welcome and caffeinated.

The college period of my life was marked by a pretty heavy creative output. I wrote more words in that coffee shop than probably in all other coffee shops I’ve been to since. It was my routine spot for five years and to this day holds many fond memories. The problem is, the more I look back, the less creative that time seems.

Passport Stamps and Scrutiny

I received my first passport in 2007 and that little government issued booklet has been more of an idea creator than any amount of time I spent at The Mudhouse. The question is, why?

"While traveling, however, I’ve experienced many fresh perspectives and generated quite a few new ideas,” Steenbarger posits in the Forbes article. "The more unique the travel destination, such as the Alaska glacier, the more likely it’s been that I’ve arrived at important realizations."

The moment I stepped off my first trans-Atlantic flight in Birmingham, United Kingdom, every idea I had up until that point quickly faded. I was dutifully  singled out for scrutiny by airport security. My ability to think on my feet was now imperative. This was post-9/11 England and forgetting to bring your destination address was obviously frowned upon. No phone, no address and pretty much no clue, I somehow talked myself out of a weird situation by claiming I was just a dumb American (at that point, true) who’d never been to England before.

Creativity as Necessity

I was traveling alone, having opted to book my own flight without the group I was meeting to save money. Growing up in Houston, now the most diverse US city, had given me a chance to experience lots of different cultures. This, however, was a whole new level. Steenberger writes that “creativity seems to be a function of fresh experiencing,” and that’s exactly what I had stumbled into. Next thing I know I was watching a new friend feed her child some type of lamb stew. Everything was different. It was raining outside, as usual, and my head needed rearranging.

Early on in my stay I found a tiny cafe at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham’s city centre. For the next month that little place became a haven of new ideas, conversations and thought. I had brought along a few books on philosophy and my mind was awash with new accents and world views. I visited a church for Iranian immigrants fleeing persecution in their home country. Every sinew inside me was pushed to its limit as a brand new reality unfolded in front of me.

At that little cafe, I wrote, read and believed in things that I never would have thought possible just one month earlier. My “fresh experiences” turned on sections of my brain that I didn’t even know existed. I was hopelessly addicted to travel and the world around me.

Finding Fresh Experiences

"We become better creative thinkers when we become more emotionally creative, and we become more emotionally creative when we actively engage the world in fresh ways,” writes Steenbarger. The problem that I have is finding fresh things in the city that I live in. Houston is the fourth largest city in America and has an overabundance of culture, arts and entertainment. It’s literally around every corner. But for me, I have trouble seeing any of it.

This city has been my home for a good number of years and each day it feels exactly the same. Kim and I take little trips and go out of our way to find adventure, but the city feels the same. I crave fresh experiences and for some reason, the only place I can find them is somewhere else.

Redefining Wanderlust

That’s all well and good, but traveling can be pretty expensive and time-consuming when it isn’t your job. Just the other day I visited a piece of the Berlin Wall that is housed on the campus of Rice University. It’s been there since the 1990’s and yet I had never seen it. There’s a wide world right next to me and I can’t seem to stop looking up flights on Google Flights.

Wanderlust is a real thing, now I just need to learn how to translate that wanderlust closer to home for the in between times. After all, for the part-time traveler, the in between time is usually 90% of your life. For the sake of fresh experiences, creativity and happiness, I’ve got to open my eyes a little wider.

Those times at The Mudhouse really seemed creative at the moment, but now that I look back on it, all the end products looked the same. Angsty poetry, research papers and poorly structured song lyrics. The experience itself can't be discounted but the lack of exposure to the world left me a pretty shallow pool to fish from. The more I see the world, the more I am shaped and opened up to these fresh experiences. The creative output that comes from those times is definitely more interesting and inclusive. Steenbarger's right, "the ability to experience the world distinctively" will sharpen and enhance your worldview and your art.

There's a familiarity to home that can dull the senses. Routine is often liberating and productive but rarely is it innovative. Every once in a while, your body, mind and soul need a shock. For me, that shock is travel. So today I set off for Paris and Amsterdam to see the familiar and breathe in the new.

Paris is less a shock than a reprieve considering I've spent a lot of time there, but Amsterdam, that's a whole new ballgame. I've never set foot in The Netherlands and the thought of Dutch words makes my head spin, which might be exactly what I need. I recently wrote about my struggle to find myself creative. It's a seriously daily thing. So for this trip I am bringing my camera but with only one lens. A 50mm prime lens to be exact. Known more as a portrait lens, the limited range will force me to get up close and personal to whatever I want to capture. It's an exercise in doing more with less. That's what travel is all about after all, doing more with less. You can only bring so much but options are limitless once you arrive.

Capture My Heart O' City of Light

My first trip to Paris, apart from a quick stopover in 2007, was in 2009. It lasted for 6 months and was one of the most formative times of my life. I learned how to adapt in a different lifestyle, how to fit in. My French is and was pretty bad so I relied on body language and my roommate a lot. I fumbled plenty, but eventually found my rhythm. I taught conversational English classes on university campuses and made a friends with a multi-talented singer/songwriter. Many turkish kebabs were consumed and I always had a sleeve of Prince cookies in my room. It was a simple life. It was a good life.

Paris was my first extended period of time outside of the United States and it was necessary. I had just graduated university during the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis. My prospects for a job were slim so I found myself folding sweaters at Banana Republic for pretty crappy pay. So I took all of my savings, raised some money from family and friends and left for France. It was rash, impulsive and I'd counsel anyone to do something similar at least once in their life. It introduced uncertainty into my life in a way I had never dreamed of before. I knew no one, spoke a different language and was distinctly Texan (with a slight British bent, but that's another story.)

Celluloid Dreams

Me in Paris, 2015. Taken by my lovely wife, Kim Thompson

Walking around the city was where I first felt the pull of photography. It was rudimentary, vague and probably contrived, but I could feel the buildings calling stories out to me. Odd signs on doorways. Alleyways with graffiti. People walking up Metro steps. All of it was a story I was just learning to capture.

Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School and the author of numerous studies on creativity and international travel talked to The Atlantic in 2015 about what travel does to your brain. “Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms," Gailinsky told The Atlantic. For me, travel is what melds the creative side with the ability to see things in a different light. At home we often overlook things we see everyday but when traveling, everything is new. It causes us to reassess our views and look at problems in a whole new way.  Quite simply, travel makes connections that may have been directly in front of you at home, but that you never noticed.

Finding The New

There's a certain anxiety about traveling to a new place and I've dealt with that a lot this week. Not only have I never been to Amsterdam, I'm going by myself. At least I won't be too embarrassed when I inevitably get lost and turn down the wrong canal. I'm really excited about my limited lens possibilities, because as my boss knows, I get lost in technical stuff. Should I bring the 24-120mm even though it's heavy? Maybe buying an 85mm could help get some great medium shots. With only one option, there's no second guessing. Just a man and a camera. Get closer or farther away. Bokeh or deep depth of field. It's all dependent on how I manipulate the camera. No extra technical stuff.

Amsterdam is new to me, exciting and adventurous. I think that's exactly what my creativity needs right now. A shot in the arm. Expect a lot of 50mm shots on Instagram in the coming week or so. For now, it's time for a plane ride.

The date January 25 probably doesn't hold too many memories for most people. It's close to February so It's still cold and bleak, unless you live in Houston like me, and you're probably recovering from the holiday spending and trying to make some sort of feasible budget for the year. In 1995 it was probably the exact same for most people, unless you realize that the world cam just minutes from an all out nuclear war. Business Insider proclaimed "The World Was Never Closer To Nuclear War Than On Jan. 25, 1995" in what has become known as the Norwegian rocket incident. It started when Norway launched a missile that carried scientific instruments to study the aurora borealis. Former Soviet Russia, led by President Boris Yeltsin, apparently didn't get the memo from Norway to the proper channels and mistook it as a nuclear launch that was headed straight for Moscow. Remember, this is post-Cold War Russia. The Berlin Wall had fallen, supposed democratic elections had taken place and the U.S.S.R had been broken up into its various nation-states. Sure that doesn't mean that tensions weren't still high, but we at least had more open communications with the Politburo at that point.

Nevertheless, a missile was launched and Yeltsin and his advisors came minutes away from launching a counter-attack towards the U.S. that would've started an all out nuclear war. Five minutes. We literally came within the length of a Youtube video of the nuclear apocalypse. That's a pretty sobering thought.

Why not take five minutes today and write down what you're thankful for because in 1995, we came that close to losing everything.

Here's a quick video that recaps the incident.

There’s a piece in 12 Rules Of Creativity by Michael Atavar that says;

At all times in the creative process, great care must be taken to protect your soft and vulnerable qualities.

I wrestled with that statement for a long time. I was always taught that creativity was being vulnerable on a page or canvas or so on. The whole thought of bleeding out onto your art was something I totally got. Leave nothing on the field, as my baseball coach used to tell me, was how you lived. Well it turns out that only leaves you empty and with nothing left to create with the next day.

I wrote poetry for a long time that was marginal with the occasional okay piece of work. It was how I coped with a lot of stuff in high school and college. You could find me scribbling in coffee shops, furiously taking notes and then rewriting until only the most essential words were left. Sometimes I came up with some good stuff, but most of the time, I just left tired. I see now that all I was doing was taking my vulnerabilities and pushing them onto other people instead of actually dealing with them myself. Atavar calls this “working with shadows,” and encourages the creative person to have a network of people around them to bounce ideas off safely. I struggle with being told my work isn’t good enough, even if it honestly isn’t. My vulnerability quickly turns into shame when there’s push back, shame of not being good enough, not having a proper education or simply not being creative enough. Some days I’m a walking bag of doubt that comes from my shame and it totally kills my creative spirit.

In her book Rising Strong, Brené Brown writes, “Curiosity is a shit-starter. But that’s okay. Sometimes we have to rumble with a story to find the truth.” As creatives we are constantly curious, looking for that beam of light that glints off a building in just the right way to pique our imagination. We have to be vulnerable, chase down the story and wrestle it until it comes out looking like something that we knew it could be.

In college I wrote poems about drug use and being a rock star, not because I did or wanted to do anything of those things, but because it insulated me from writing about my real self.

Untitled #74

Sometimes on Friday I dream up

how easily I could become a cokehead.

Cutting lines with my friend's razor blade,

I would never keep my own in case of

horrible binge nights. An ornate mirror

would sit majestically in the middle of an

imaginary French coffee table that my parents

got at some antique barn in Indiana.

People would beg to do lines next to my gold

records and ’72 Telecaster Custom.

“Just one more before I drive home,” my

girlfriend would say, but I wouldn’t let her.

Even cokeheads have limits.

Maybe I would be involved in some type of

Eastern European supply chain that decided it

was easier to move the dust in through airports

in Kansas. Who’d expect that?

“Stuff’s good this month,” I’d snipe at the

Mafioso who switched bags, only to settle

in close to my Parisian throne.

Sometimes on Friday I dream of being

a cocaine addict, only to realize that it’s

Saturday morning and I’m too broke

to even afford prescription meds.

You can debate how good or bad that poem is, but what you can’t debate is that I was being vulnerable in a completely different way than I should have been. I was being risqué just to be risqué. I grew up pretty conservatively in the South and drugs were never something I would have dreamed of doing. So instead of being truly vulnerable and talking about my struggle with appearances or commitment, I daydreamed scenarios that were completely nonsensical. Needless to say, it didn’t really connect with anyone.

Atavar writes that you have to “work with small parts of your personality” to be creative and stay sane. I think this is what David Bowie did when he changed looks, costumes, names and hairstyles all the time. He was slowly letting us into his world just enough every time, so we could handle it.

I used to think that art was all about abandonment, but now I realize that only leads to losing yourself. A creative life is a life that shines a light onto things, however small that may be, so that others can enjoy the same view as you. That doesn’t take abandonment, just courage.