You are Now on Notice to Take Notice
How to look at things
Note: The Podcast audio is at the end of the story.🫡
You seek it in the eyes of the beady-eyed people, their double-glazed peepers keeping dark thoughts warm. You seek it in the wide eyes of the confused, or the darting-pupiled folk, and even those with irises made of raging emotion lava. Hooded hazel, bored brown, blissfully disaffected blue. You seek stimuli, inputs, and yearn to see confirmation of your existence reflected there. Those eyes—they are not your windows to peer into, and in seeking connection through them, you’re missing the one that never looks away.
No. When you seek connection do not look to the people, look to The World.
This body of yours—skin, blood, bone, muscle, tissue, nerves—is anatomical, biological, pliable and viable, delicate and vulnerable. It runs, it jumps, it could once use a fidget spinner. But all that regular human shit is for amateurs. What you’re missing is this: your magnificent body, even with its personally perceived flaws and limitations and dysmorphias, is hands-down the single most advanced receiver in the universe. This skin you’re in—it’s a metaphorical lightning rod, pulling life and inspiration and all the creative inputs you’ll ever need, toward you. It’s a synergistic sponge that’ll soak up the juices of the earth just so you can dab those juices on your life walls. Get the picture? You won’t unless you’ve tuned your body to receive.
Time to de-fuzz.
Tuning into The World and picking up the signal does not require drugs, nor does it require any special skill. You do not need a certain model of body—any body will do. The one you have is perfect. The only thing that’s required is attention. Full. Body. Attention. With this, your body is able to send roots into the ground or tentacles into the atmosphere, allowing you to plug into the signal and establish a secure connection.
To illustrate. I was talking to someone the other day about how, on the subway in New York, I would rarely look at the people1. Instead, I’d employ a technique we’ll call the “Focused Zone-Out.” I’d stand holding onto the pole and examine everything that made up the interior of that subway car. The metal accents, shiny and silver. The particular high-gloss blue of the seats and how it compared to the dull orange and yellow seats of the older carriages. Rivets holding the trim around the windows were counted. The floor, the curve of the ceiling, the slide of the door—all noted. I would think about how and where everything was made, and wonder who had touched it during that process. There’s a reef made of subway cars in the ocean, did you know that? Directing my attention to the ads, I’d note the fonts.
Don’t roll your eyes and say, “That’s just looking.” It’s not.
It’s noticing.
You see with your eyes.
You see with your ears.
You see with your nose.
You see with your hands.
You see with your whole body.
Look. There’s a sway and a sudden lurch of the subway car as it switches from one track to another. It rocks and jostles me and when the train is moving slowly, there’s a metallic creaking noise as though it is cracking its knuckles as we ride. There is the smell of chicken rice in a plastic bag making the whole carriage stink like a food truck. The bag rustles apologetically as it rests on its owner’s lap. I can feel the warmth of the pole where my hand has been holding it for 10 minutes. Hot. Sweaty. A person coughs, but I do not look at their face. They are of the scene, not the whole play.
Everything is filed away in my brain. I may never use this memory for anything. Oh, wait—did I just use it?
You are now on notice to notice. Twist those dials and tune your magnificent receiver. Where is your body now? Is it somewhere scenic? Is it mundane? What is happening? Look up from your phone. Engage for just five minutes. Breathe in and observe. What can you hear? Is your heart beating fast? How alive are you right now? I have stood on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and felt the great emptiness of the world through the soles of my feet. I have had that same feeling standing on the concrete of 52nd Street. My body received those signals—yours can pick up signals too.
You are the collector of your life. The constant archivist. The magpie sorting through the dull for the shiny to add to your knowledge nest. Just keep on adding. More signals = more data points. There’s no way to guarantee you’re going to use any of it in your work, but it’ll always be there, ready to be accessed.
To notice is to not just be ON The World, it’s to be IN IT. All in. This is the longest relationship of your life. Honor it, respect it, and give it the attention it deserves. For when you clap at The World, it will always clap back.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
Stanley Donwood’s2 original instructions to fans on how to create artwork inspired by3 the release of “A Moon Shaped Pool”, which turned 5 on May 8th. This could easily be applied to ANYTHING you are creating.
I like to write with music playing, but I struggle to write anything original or creative if the music has lyrics. Why? Because lyrics seem to divert my focus toward them instead of what I’m working on. I can get a little obsessive which halts work, plus concepts or words from the lyrics can seep into what I’m doing and I don’t necessarily want that. The right kind of music is the kind you don’t notice actually stopped 30 minutes ago. That’s a sign of a good day. Anyway, for this week’s musical interlude I’m sharing my “Music to Write By (no lyrics)” Spotify playlist. I tweak it occasionally so don’t be surprised if it gets noodled with. I recommend you put it on shuffle, lest you fall into the Steve Reich trance4 hole.
This is lovely, and everything I love about bikes—the early morning in particular. Your world perspective can change on a bike. See more. Absorb more. Connect more. Part of the New York Times’ “The World Through a Lens” series, this one shows how travel photographer, Roff Smith, used his travel-restricted pandemic time. A couple of screencaps below for a taste, but easy scrolling eye candy and thoughts from Roff at this site.
Well, this is very silly so of course, I love it.
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
Fear of eye contact, perhaps?
Still working my way through “There Will Be No Quiet”, which is astounding. All the backstories to how the artwork for the majority of Radiohead and Thom Yorke’s albums came about. Yum.
To celebrate #amspturnsfive Radiohead posted a handy compilation of the vignette videos directors and competition winners made at the time of its release. Quick and easy to watch.
Not trance music. Just straight up hypnotized trance.