notice what lives

In the movie Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016), the bus-driving protagonist of the same name writes poetry in the morning before his ride. He also writes poetry on his lunch break by the river and writes poetry at home. As he drives the bus, he eavesdrops on passengers’ conversations, and you can just tell, it is so clear, how this simple act of listening is the same exact thing he does with a pen on paper. I personally practice this in the holy terrain of my notes app, a sort of digital temple I visit and pray in daily. But the medium itself doesn’t matter. The witnessing does. Poetry is note taking with your senses, and Paterson is always writing, even when he’s not. The film spans the course of a week, every day being an atmospheric chronicle of uneventful happenings. As I watch all these nothings unfold on screen, I think to myself: “Clearly, this life, this is art. Here is an artist, and here’s an artist’s life. This is an artist who made art out of his life, who makes art by being alive.” Every day is the same, except it’s not, as every day has a brand new thing to offer. And this daily offering is especially generous when seemingly minute and unimportant.

The whole world becomes a studio the moment you understand everything is a medium. Making art, writing poetry is not much different than stepping outside and noticing what lives. The everyday is quite cinematic, even—especially—when not much is happening. Because so much is happening, all the time! You’re walking around, going about your day, living your little movie life and everyone else is doing the same. We’re all leads and extras. The extra in your film is the lead in a movie you haven’t seen but which is playing at the same time as yours, and you’re just an extra in there. I love it. I love thinking about this. It makes it all grand and meaningless at the same time.

Even if all I did was spend the day people-watching on the porch, I’d still be making something. The scene is the canvas my gaze brushes against. Earthly existence in and of itself is an act of creation. The closer you remain to life in all its forms, the more art there is. This also means that the creative act at its core—the intention, the vision—is independent of location, method or tools. These obviously impact whatever it is you’re making outside of yourself, but creative research extends to all mediums, including those you don’t perceive as such. You will have your favourites, the ones you come back to over and over, but consider that the performance you give every single day—walking around, rushing to the office, making plans, watering the plants—might be your greatest creation.

Many artists don’t produce anything for months, even years at a time, but can we ever say that they’re not making art when their immersion in the mundane parts of their human existence is, in fact, art making? There is this living image we paint together by being in it, wandering through the various planes of a dense and intricate composition. Your mere presence is all it takes to create something. The one who doesn’t claim the title of creative, isn’t any less of a creator, for no reason other than simply existing. Passing occurrences are the true spectacle. To be wide awake for the daily intrigue is to perpetually receive whatever it is life has for you. And whatever it is, take it. When you assume there is always something waiting to encounter you, an encounter happens at every single turn. It will not need to be obvious in order to be felt. Small doses are potent and treasures have a way of hiding inside details.

A deep and abiding state of awe only requires your willingness to participate. At any given moment, walk into the scene. The assumption that there isn’t a single moment unworthy of your attention is a wise one. Think about it. It is another way to let yourself exist in a constant state of wonder. From this place, your existence is to bask endlessly in poetry. You are a walking, breathing verse writing itself on an immense page.

To do life entirely is to embrace the paradox of its weight and weightlessness. You are both a fleeting particle and an integral thread in the great weaving of things. There is no moment too small to contain the infinite—no stray beam of light, no idle conversation, no half-forgotten word sitting somewhere between your mind and the edge of your lips, that does not, in some way, reflect the entire cosmos. And so, the act of paying attention is not just an aesthetic choice, but an existential stance. It is to play the game willingly, knowing it is just a game, and yet following the guidelines like the stage directions they are.

Such openness neither clings nor recoils, it neither demands nor denies. In this space, even the most ordinary things become portals to something vast and unnameable. You are not separate from it; it is you, in some other form. With all this in mind, life ceases to be something that happens to you and instead becomes something you are continuously, tenderly, and reverently becoming.

There is a quiet alchemy in displacing yourself, however slightly, from the patterns you assume are immutable. On your way home, instead of taking the usual route, turn an unknown corner. Walk on the opposite sidewalk. Take a detour. Investigate your surroundings, even if you think you know them too well. Assume you don’t. Be a tourist in your own home, and forget about the integrated GPS inside your phone. Actually, forget you have a phone.

It is not just the streets that become unfamiliar, but the self that moves through them; suddenly more alert, more porous to the world that reveals itself as if for the first time. And now, here’s that vintage record store playing that Stereolab song you haven’t heard in a while. A forgotten memory now looped in your head the rest of the day. In stepping outside of your own well-worn pathways, you remind yourself that there is no true knowing, only the endless unfolding of what is, seen anew with each deliberate act of attention. And perhaps, in this small act of disobedience against routine, you also disrupt something deeper: the illusion that life is predictable, that wonder is reserved for elsewhere,

for another time, for grander things. In abandoning familiarity, even briefly, you allow reality to shake you awake from assumption. The world, after all, is not fixed; it is waiting to be noticed and interpreted. It longs to be made new by the simple, daring act of looking again.