Where the sea meets the sky

Amy Hill

In walking, as in life, there is often a juxtaposition between the confident walker and the lost self. One can walk forward step by step, exuding the image of confidence, and yet feel inwardly lost. When Johnny Flynn stood in St Andrews’ King James VI Library on the 27th of April, he looked nervous. He admitted that this was his first live show for eight months. Yet his nerves didn’t diminish his performance; rather, we were invited into it a little bit more. Without a microphone or any other form of amplification, Flynn’s voice swept through the library and washed over an audience that couldn’t take their eyes off him.

Performing does not come naturally to Flynn, although he adapted to it over time. “I’ve kind of grown to accept my awkwardness on stage," he said, "It’s not natural for me – I’m an introvert doing the job of an extrovert most of the time. I’ve learnt to just accept that and not beat myself up for not finding those situations easy, because actually the friction and the tension is potential energy that gets turned into focus. I think if I was too easy in my skin in those situations it might not be interesting.” So nerves can be a positive thing? “I do think that nerves are important. It can be overwhelming, but I’ve learnt that nothing’s that bad.” Flynn admits that he feels his most relaxed on stage when performing to strangers, who have “an open mind and don’t really have a point of comparison”.

In the evening, Flynn gave a talk in the Byre Theatre alongside his friend and inspiration, the writer Robert Macfarlane. The two discussed a walk that they had taken together the previous winter, and spoke about the ways in which walking can both connect you and disconnect you from yourself and from the nature that surrounds you. Although nature can be a comfort, and can fill you with joy because of its sheer beauty, it can also leave you at a loss when you ultimately need it. Flynn explained that he sees it as good for our souls to be exposed to this. Nature cannot actually support you, and will inevitably fail you if you ask it to. However, it does force us to really feel our emotions. In this space, no emotion needs to be negative, and you can allow them all to pass through you like water. Walking through nature can also be a birthplace for creativity. Flynn described this process as a discovery of ideas that were already fully formed. He expanded: “I felt a bit self-conscious as I said that. I’ve said it before in interviews and then I’ve read people like Tom Waits saying similar things. Maybe it sounds a bit cliché. But it is true. There’s this idea of Rodin’s thinker being locked in a block of stone, and all you do is chip around it to uncover it. That’s a good analogy for the creative process. Through stories and walks, you crystallise your own sense of storytelling whilst being in situations that allow you to open up your mind to how you feel. Good things and bad things. You unlock these crevices of feeling that you don’t usually have sight for.”

Flynn’s own journey has been followed by many, both through his music and his career in acting. One moment that perhaps showed how much this artist has grown since his first album (A Larum) was released was during his performance of ‘Brown Trout Blues.’ Half way through the song, Flynn paused and said that he had forgotten the lyrics (“I could be somewhere else/I could be someone else but/you shouldn’t tell me what to do”). He managed to complete the song, and afterwards explained that it wasn’t so much that he had forgotten the words, but rather that he felt that they no longer applied to him. Later, I asked whether Flynn felt as if he has moved past his older songs. “I normally don’t feel that rejection of these characters from my past, but I really did in that moment. It was kind of a curious experience for me. I’ve just finished a new album recently, which feels like quite a departure from stuff I’ve done before. It’s interesting; all of those songs are part of my story, and I do still relate to them. They’re very much part of me.” However, Flynn describes a curious separation from his songs, too. “When I wrote them they never really felt like they were mine in that moment anyways. They were sort of for all time. That’s the model for songwriting for me: they belong to all time. So I don’t really feel like I’m moving through those songs or moving past them.” But what upset him about this particular line? “Something about that line just jarred me. I felt it was weird to be saying those words. I started questioning it, and as soon as I did that I couldn’t say it.”

Flynn, like many performers, uses singing as a form of meditation. The focus required during a performance can serve to silence the thoughts that often crowd the mind. That is not to say, however, that certain thoughts cannot penetrate it. “It’s always interesting to me as to why thought processes like that begins. Why do you come out of the moment and feel resistance to something? That’s the obstacle: the thoughts that send you off on a tangent.” Since it was Flynn’s first performance in a long time, it’s hardly surprising that some distracting feelings entered the frame. “I’ve been doing a play for ages and haven’t been able to play a show for a really long time. It was great remembering what that feels like and I was just really enjoying it. When I had that thought that was the first time I was distracted from the story I was telling to you guys. It’s really interesting.”

Flynn’s latest album, not yet named, is guided by a number of collaborations rather than one over-arching inspiration: “it’s a complicated thing to bring out an album. This album is quite soulful. It’s a bit of a mixture of things, really, with no fixed point of inspiration. I got lots of friends who are musicians to come and play on it, many of whom I’ve never played with before.” Does he think it’s a more mature sound? “Well, it’s more mature in terms of the fact that I’m older and I’m in a different part of my life. In a way, though, I think that as people get more mature what they are really trying to do is trying to get younger in terms of how playful they are. I think it’s more playful, which might be what being more mature actually is.”

There certainly is a playful twinkle in Flynn’s eye. This is a man who is no stranger to travelling and no stranger to discussion. Half way through our chat, a young girl and her mother walked over to us. The girl was about six and was so nervous that she could only peer at Flynn from behind her mother’s back. The mother explained that her daughter was desperate for Flynn to sign her Rubik’s cube. Instead of writing a simple message, Flynn put one word on each square on one side of the cube, explaining that she now had the extra challenge of uncovering the message whenever it gets mixed up. Perhaps this is another metaphor for creativity; the ideas and the messages are there within us, we just have to uncover them.

Flynn’s new album will be released in early 2017.