The poet 🖋 The painter 🖌 The comedian 🎤 Noticing 👀
Ignorance is bliss.
Every time I come across this idea, another one comes to mind: living on autopilot. Living today like I did yesterday and the day before. Living tomorrow and the day after tomorrow like I’m living today.
Isn’t this autopilot mode blissful? Less energy and attention consumed on being intentional, on deciding how to adapt, on needing to learn new things. Does the conservation of energy apply to each of us? Do active regions of the neocortex consume much more energy than the inactive ones?
What if a notable part of the uncertainty in my life is due to my ignorance?
On living on autopilot?
If I want to navigate better through uncertainty, would stepping out of the autopilot mode help? Would having the ability to better sense what goes on around me help in any way? Would noticing things in the everyday help me have a better radar?
If making sense of things is core to creating a personal strategy, would it help to become better at noticing?
Today’s inspiration comes from art, in three of its forms.
The poet đź–‹
Marius Daniel Popescu is a Romanian poet who moved to Switzerland 30 years ago. This morning, I had the chance to listen to one of his interviews 🇷🇴
I was surprised when he shared that inspiration for him is a banal challenge.
When asked about where he draws inspiration from, he shared that he has thousands of pages of ideas coming from noticing ordinary things. Connect with the story behind each thing. Connect with the different languages used in various mediums: ads, tax forms, shopping receipts. Connect with the universes that we usually miss because we’re not paying attention. A poem that he wants to write sometime is about the trash bag, for example. And the story of how things ended up in there.
How many things have I noticed about the ordinary objects that I’ve used today?
The painter đź–Ś
Cubist artists such as Picasso developed the technique of using multiple points of view in a single painting. Once you’ve learnt to see cubist art, it can give you a richer sense of the structure of what’s being shown.
Michael Nielsen writes about Betty Edwards, a renown art teacher, and the limitations she saw in how most non-artist adults have in terms of what they see and what they can visually conceive.
Adult students beginning in art generally do not really see what is in front of their eyes — that is, they do not perceive in the way required for drawing. They take note of what’s there, and quickly translate the perception into words and symbols mainly based on the symbol system developed throughout childhood and on what they know about the perceived object.
Is the painter seeing the world in a different way than most of us?
How could I see things around me without quickly translating them into words, symbols and generally to what I already know about them?
The comedian 🎤
Jerry Seinfeld is one of the most successful comedians of all-time. I must confess that I haven’t watched “Seinfeld” on TV because I remember I hated hearing the background “ha-ha-has” in American shows while growing up (I haven’t watched “Friends” or other popular TV shows for the same reason).
So I’ve recently discovered Seinfeld as a comedian through his “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” show on Netflix.
“Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m interested.” — Jerry Seinfeld
Two of the ideas that I got while watching Jerry talking with other comedians are about helping others notice things and about paying attention to the emotions around a specific moment.
The first idea is that others might help you notice things, even if you don’t. In the show, I’ve heard Seinfeld or his guests repeatedly saying to each other: “That’s good. Write that down!”
Each of us can help others notice things and be helped by others to notice things.
The other idea is to observe not only what happens on the outside, but also your emotions around what you have just noticed and the emotions connected to the words that you’re using to describe what you have just observed.
This helps the comedian craft a good joke. The raw emotions “captured” by the observation can be further developed for the comedy act: after being invited to notice something ordinary (“What’s the deal with …?” or a funny first line), the audience listens to an emotionally charged story, like Jerry Seinfeld explains in his NYT interview about creating the pop tart joke.
How do the things that I’m noticing make me feel?
Noticing đź‘€
Is our life a form of art?
Can we create better art by becoming better at noticing?
Lots of inspiration,
BĂĽlent
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