Josh Capelin Gets Out Of His Own Head
Our Writer's Residency finalist on a life well-travelled
A man who wear many hats, often in many places, Josh Capelin is one of the few wordsmiths to enter our Writer's Residency that has truly traveled to many wild places all across Australia. Managing Partner at Projucer, a multiplatform content company that works with some of the biggest TV properties in the country, Josh knows not only how to spin a yarn, but also how to package it up into something we all want to watch.
Of course, our judges didn't know all of this when they first read Josh's piece, A Saturday Afternoon. What they did know was that this sounded like a new voice with something to say - about our environment, family and the benefits of sometimes stepping outside ones' own mind. We tracked down Capelin to get the skinny on what growing up next to a rainforest does for your sense of adventure.
Your production company has seen you travel all around the country to work on different shows and campaigns. What's the favourite far-flung place you've been to? There’s a torn edge of cliffs near the Western most point of the country that the mighty Indian Ocean smashes into some 150m below. We were filming with some marine scientists for one of our shows and during a break, they took us to this small area on top of one of these cliffs to fish from. By hand. Each time they whirred the line to whistle out and down to the crash and thunder below, it would take no more than 10seconds to get a bite, and then about a minute to pull the line back up, each handful laboriously hoping the big fish wouldn’t get bumped off the line as it was being hauled through the air. It was wild and dangerous and irrefutably Australian.
Producers in particular are known for always being on the go. How have you adapted to working from home? Have you found the change difficult? Luckily so much of what we do happens behind the scenes. And thanks to COVID in 2020 (remember that year?) our team had already had to adapt to work virtually. So we kind-of became this everywhere indie of a company with staff and our projects spread across four states. Creative development, fundraising and pitching etc can all happen in the cloud so luckily working from home hasn’t been a huge shock to the system. The hardest thing to manage has by far been the travel restrictions, and editing virtually. On the upside however, we’ve been forced to expand our network and contacts across the country, and also become tech wizards at zoom… silver linings are important to find afterall in these crazy times.
Both you and your wife [Lauren, Principal at Startmate] work in incredibly fast-paced businesses. Do you have strategies as a couple to leave your work at the door when you come home or on weekends? How do you unwind together?
We kind-of have an unspoken pact that if work needs to get done, it has priority. And I’m sure my wife would agree that her work is so much more important than mine in many ways so usually it’s an easy decision either way! But to unwind…. Sometimes it could just be a nice walk on the beach at dusk or a morning out w the kids. Or a date night, definitely without the kids. Or we each take time out - me to surf, and her to purchase a ridiculous amount of books which we will receive a new delivery each day for the next two weeks…
On a scale of one to Bear Grylls, how comfortable are you out in the elements? Have you spent a lot of time out in nature for pleasure rather than work?
I think it’s my safe place. Haha there’s way more crazy wild adventurous types than me, but all i know is that as a kid I grew up with a huge backyard and across from two ovals and a sprawling rainforest near our primary school so afternoons and weekends were very much spent outside. Mum and Dad were nature lovers who grew in us the same intrinsic connection to the natural world. Summers were split between the Sea and camping & windsurfing Lake Cootharaba on the Sunshine Coast which taught me a few things about the elements… storms and too much wind, or no wind at all and you had to half float/walk home... I’ve always felt that the power of the elements speaks to us in a language that can be scary, but also needs to be respected. It can also teach us about ourselves.
I’ve always felt that the power of the elements speaks to us in a language that can be scary, but also needs to be respected. It can also teach us about ourselves.
What do you think we're missing in the city that you can only get in wide open natural spaces?
This is random, but way back in 2013 i built an indoor national park, on Oxford St in Sydney’s Darlinghurst. I was running a shopfront with the City of Sydney and I would change its focus every month. With the help of friends, I filled this shop space with trees and bark, and even erected a tent inside that you could rent on airbnb. And even this installation, created indoors, ironically provided an immediate sense of the outdoors, including watching the wildlife queuing up for a bar at 1am.
To be honest, the biggest thing that wide open natural spaces gives you is the time to be bored. Just to sit in a chair and watch something which is such an underestimated hobby. I’d love to see more of our rooftops design spaces for these experiences to take place. As noisy and as light polluted as they are, if the right curation can take place in a shopfront window on Oxford St, it can happen anywhere in the big smoke.
Let's talk about your piece, which was a firm office favourite. Do you write a lot personally or is this new for you?
I call myself a writer but i don’t write. Is that even allowed? I love writing. For work it's an every day thing but personally I haven’t crafted something for a very long time. Perhaps this will be the start again. I just need a cabin somewhere...
Your work makes reference to certain -ahem - natural nature-enhancers. There's a lot of evidence that these can positively affect cognitive function, especially in natural spaces. What's your vibe on that idea?
This is an out there claim but guess what, we are all really different. How we think and respond to stimuli and social situations… how we feel emotionally, what makes us productive and excel at our chosen line of work… as a species we are at once really dumb and supremely limited when it comes to our openness to helping ourselves. But it’s changing. The fact that you can buy and abuse alcohol every night of the week, but the whiff of microdosing raises eyebrows of all shapes and sizes is indicative of where we’re at, but change is a coming.
The science is slowly backing up what I guess the fringe has known for decades and what the First Nations people in some parts of the world have known for millennia…and that is that plant based medicines hold remarkable physical and mental healing, altering properties. No doubt for the developed world, and modern society, it’s all probably about money and taxes so once that catches up… but who knows maybe the blockchain can help and all those really smart people who make the laws will find they’re already being made elsewhere… We'd love to know where you were when you came up with the piece. Your description is so evocative!
When I write my best, it’s normally in the moment of something occurring. Like in real time. And nothing, no editing or revisions, will ever beat that initial raw thoughtrack that occurred. I had three distinct observations about nature during a mushroom journey (my first) which a very dear friend had invited a close group of friends to ceremony for his 40th. For him who has his own reasons for consuming nature (mushrooms): we are nature. And I experienced such a simple yet hyper normal connection with it, that four hours later… those three observations which were so enjoyable in the moment, imprinted enough in me to paint around them when days and weeks had passed. I’m just glad you liked them as it’s the sharing of a special memory for me, forever on loop, now in print. And which as I say definitely won’t be my last.
Josh is one of our Writer's Residency finalists and will be published in our upcoming Anthology later this year. Read more about the program - and meet all the finalists - here.