On Attention
"Wherever we go, we are friends" -Sloth and Manatee
Sloth and Manatee
So many things are spoken about attention nowadays… it’s the attention economy, you’ve got to reclaim your attention, attention is the commodity of this century, it’s mined like a big vein in the ground, it’s The Matrix, it’s ours but it’s taken away from us every minute of the day in order to enrich someone who is not-us.
Making something into a commodity to buy and sell flattens it, puts shrink-wrap around it, and arranges it in rows on shelves or in scrolling interfaces. But attention is not flat at all.
Attention is lumpy and messy and has many levels and means many things. Attention is respect and also love. Babies of all species need their parents’ attention to survive.
Attention is learning. Whenever I travel somewhere I go for a run, and that’s when I feel like I have actually arrived. This is a form of paying attention. You have to pay attention with your eyes and your feet, when running. You have to pay attention to the local weather. If you don’t, you might fall down or get lost or get heat stroke, and I have done all of those.
Attention is experience. When an artist draws something, that is attention. This is a huge part of my art practice nowadays. It has not always been.
I made a drawing of a teapot that was a wedding gift. It looks simple, but every object blooms into something complex once you really look at it. I asked myself just how much attention I could pay to this object. This was the question I posed by drawing it.
As I drew I thought about the people who gave us this gift. Ron and Jerry. Jerry did my hair for our wedding. Ron was his partner. Jerry died of AIDS a couple years later. Ron was broken by this and was never the same. Ron lived to his 80s and died a few years ago. I looked at street-view of his house and the formerly beautiful and perfect craftsman bungalow had become overgrown and unrecognizable. I felt that distance but also proximity. I felt a lot of things.
All this came from paying attention to an object. This doesn’t even get into the unreachable crafts-person who made this antique, probably in Japan. How it was designed, formed and put together, how the lid was made.
Attention is love.
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Things Of The Week
Okay this is a highly entertaining video of a bloke going back to the 1980s by using all 80s technology for a week. I appreciate his enthusiasm. I don’t know how I feel about things from that era being seen as quaint or simplistic, though. It feels like our “sophistication” has just been handed over to devices. But it’s great fun. Now I want a Sony Walkman again.
This is a cool game where you figure out quotes from prominent thinkers.
Go play the Boots and Cats drum machine some more.
Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.
May you get lost in attention for something, may you get to push some very satisfying analog buttons, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy
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