Source: Rochester City Newspaper/Amazon Studios

Create Like No One Is Watching

Matt Hinrichs
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

On Amazon Prime, I recently caught the acclaimed Jim Jarmusch film Paterson. From a creative person’s standpoint, it was a fascinating watch.

Throughout this low-key, perceptive drama, Jarmusch chronicles a week in the life of an introspective New Jersey bus driver. Adam Driver’s character, Paterson, spends most of the film quietly observing his surroundings (the town of Paterson, New Jersey), using every spare moment to record his thoughts in a notebook. The unadorned poetry that results is reminiscent of Paterson’s literary hero, William Carlos Williams, the modernist poet who also drew inspiration from Paterson (the town). Paterson chooses to live simply and repetitively (when not driving, he’s walking his dog and hanging out at the local bar), although the pleasures of making crystalline prose and figuring out which words flow together feeds his soul. In this context, each day becomes an adventure. It’s a spare, lovely film where nothing much happens—and that’s the point.

Although Paterson is definitely the main character, a good portion of Paterson is devoted to the mutually supportive relationship he’s got with his radiant wife, Laura (played by beautiful Iranian actor Golshifteh Farahani). Laura is a free-spirited visual artist with a unique black-and-white aesthetic. Unlike her husband, however, she views art as little more than a fun distraction. Whether it’s painting curtains or baking cupcakes, Laura seems blissful in her own world. There’s a tense undercurrent with her, however, since Laura merely uses her art in an unfocused, shallow attempt at either positive approval, or monetary gain, or both. A subtly comic side-story has Laura yearning to order an expensive acoustic guitar out of a vague desire of becoming a country music star. Despite having hardly any musical talent, Paterson allows Laura to order the pricey instrument. Why? Because it makes her happy.

When it comes down to it, most of us artists are either Patersons or Lauras. The most likely scenario is that we believe we’re like Paterson—quietly doing our thing as a way to rationalize our place in the world—when we’re actually more like Laura, using art as a shallow method of self-validation. Which one are you?

I have to admit that the Paterson character reminded me a lot of myself—but only in early childhood, when I enjoyed nothing more than taking a stack of papers and drawing by myself. What I drew didn’t matter, neither did the quality of the end result. The enjoyment came in the process itself, and the randomness of what would come out. Sometimes it came out looking nice, or terrible. It didn’t matter, however, since as soon as one drawing was finished, another one would be started. And, like most kids, the nature of the art changed as soon as somebody else reacted to it. If it got praise, you wanted to do more art in a similar vein, to please that person. Thus begins the slippery slope many artists take to Laura-ville (not that that’s a bad thing, mind you).

The messages brought forth in Paterson might be familiar to many artists, but it bears repeating. Create art solely for yourself (it’s not selfish). Keep doing the same thing. Make a habit of it. Integrate the art into the rest of your life. Avoid doing it for approval, money or anything else but your own self-nourishment. The end results may come out good or bad, but that doesn’t matter. Create like no one’s watching.

Matt Hinrichs

Written by

Becoming Rewired. Author and ephemera seeker; blogger formerly known as Scrubbles.net.

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