Yesterday, like most days, we walked by a lot of places and people and paid almost no attention to them. It’s easy - for us, at least - to let the world slip into the background. We cannot attend to everything in the world, so we often attend to nothing in particular. This casual indifference isn’t, though, total. For example:
We were walking for quite some time behind this woman before it came to our attention that she had, beneath her arm, a bunch of stray wood. This wasn’t, to be clear, wood from the wood store (?), but rather planks of wood seemingly pulled free from a pirate’s boat or witch’s shack. You really don’t see wood like this often. Or at least we don’t. We really had no idea where she got it. Moreover, we could not really think of why she had it. Was she, perhaps, setting out to build her own pirate’s boat or witch’s shack? Was this an arcane form of community service? A get-rich-quick scheme? Was she merely delivering this wood to someone else? Despite being quite notable, all of this almost slipped entirely beneath our notice. This woman and her wood were none of our business, so we almost didn’t recognize their existence at all.
We don’t really know a) why we didn’t pay attention to this woman initially or b) what made us pay attention to her eventually. Both our inattention and our attention are weirdly mysterious or causeless. It seems fair to say “Well, why would you pay attention to that at all?” and equally fair to ask “How couldn’t you pay attention to that?!” The scene is both uninteresting and interesting at once.
It’s tempting to say that an essential part of urban experience is becoming immune to the vagaries of urban experience. If everything is interesting, then nothing is. The city is host to endless attractions and distractions, so you have be discerning or discriminating about who and what you attend to. This city, in particular, often seems hellbent on putting irregular things in your path and totally ruining your day and mind. Like, for example, this thing that happened at us:
Is it art? Is it a threat? Is it a message from an elder race of robot gods? Is this meant to be enjoyed? Reverred? Is it complete unto itself or merely part of a larger something that has since decayed or been dismantled? Is it the reason the three neighboring apartment buildings seem (or are) abandoned? Does it wish us harm?
We would never get anything done if we attended to every bizarre structure/sculpture we happened across. At a certain point, it seems, we learned to stop asking ourselves “What and why is that?” and, instead, merely accepted that this - whatever or whyever it may be - is irrelevant. It has nothing to do with us and can do nothing for us. It’s not even that we decide not to pay attention to it, but rather that it doesn’t even come into focus as something that exists in any meaningful or substantive way. Most of everything just becomes part of the undifferentiated background of our life.
You might want to say that this kind of indifference to our surroundings isn’t just an excusable or understandable part of urban experience - but rather the sign of some more generalized kind of apathy. The city’s perpetual commotion isn’t to blame for our failure to attend to things. The problem, instead, is with us. You, it seems, aim to hurt our feelings.
:(
This, though, doesn’t seem right. We don’t lack care for people or places, but rather operate on the assumption that most people and places don’t require our care. So long as things seem to be going OK - people are doing regular people things, places remain typically place-like - we don’t concern ourselves with them. We imagine that people and places operate the same way in regards to us. So long as we’re not, like, on fire or something - we’re quite content for passersby to pass us by without note. And places, well, places can’t really care about us in the first place - so things are equitable on that front.
The unspoken social contract seems to be that it’s best to live together by operating as if we live entirely apart. This isn’t a matter of apathy, but a collective agreement that everyone ought really to keep themselves to themselves. We are each doing our best to live our own lives near each other and our best is easier to do if we pretend we’re effectively solitary in some unremarkable landscape.
Wandering around the world without paying much attention to the world itself isn’t - as far as we can tell - a bad thing necessarily. It does, though, mean that most of our experiences are characterized by internal, private stuff rather than external, public stuff. We take the metro, say, and spend the majority of the time worrying about an absent friend or wondering about some character in a TV show. We walk down the street and focus on our uncomfortable boots or that email we really ought to have responded to by now.
There’s no harm in being preoccupied with our shit at the expense of all the shit going on around us, but it does (for us) often render the world oddly homogeneous and functionally irrelevant. Everywhere becomes just another site to think thoughts and feel feelings about ourselves and the matters that concern us directly. Every other person becomes just another stranger doing things that do not much interest or involve us. Sometimes, though, things stand out. Like the woman and her wood or the malevolent red metal curls or the three people we saw trying to navigate a street particularly fucked by construction.
They came to the end of a sidewalk and were met with a sizeable hole and all the usual markers that construction was under way. The hole gave them pause. They were briefly indecisive, but then - one by one- stepped carefully into and out of the hole blocking their path and walked straight through the construction site.
It might not be evident from the photograph, but these people are really not meant to be where they are. There is, moreover, no way out of where they are. It’s all fenced in. They eventually recognized that and turned back around and got out of the construction area. Prior to that, though, they just kept on keeping on. No sidewalk? No problem! Not even really a street? Not even really a concern! A total absence of other people walking over here? A total absence of fucks to give about any of that!
It’s not our place to suggest that these folks were, in their own way, failing to attend to the world that surrounded them. In a manner of speaking, they attended quite well to the small pit that blocked their path and impeded their journey. It does, though, seem that the ability to keep operating according to only your own particular concerns regardless of external conditions is predicated on not really paying much mind to or concern for the world as it stands outside of you.
There’s something about those three people that seems admirable and lamentable at once. Admirable that they refused to recognize an impediment to their desires. Fuck you, I’m going this way is - at least metaphorically - an awesome way to go about life. To refuse to let arbitrary institutional barriers stop you from proceeding in the direction you want is a beautiful way to spend your days. On the other hand, it might also kill you. Being so singularly focused on your particular life’s goals regardless of the very real, potentially important signs that the world is throwing in your path is maybe risky to yourself and others who care about you. The two foot pit might be unworthy of meaningful attention, but might also really merit it.
The question, then, doesn’t seem to be about whether we pay attention to things, but rather why and to what ends we are (or aren’t) paying attention. Are we ignoring the world because of some myopic self-interest? Or are we attending to ourselves as an act of self-care? Are we noticing the world because of a desire for distraction and escape from our very real concerns? Or are we appreciating the world as an end in itself in all its weird and alien glory?
It seems that we have to pay attention to how and why we pay attention at all. Great. Good. Just what we needed - another reflexive problem. Thanks.
There is, though, maybe a way out of the reflexive bind of paying attention to ourselves paying attention. Namely, sharing the ebb and flow of that attention. We were doing all this - noticing things, etc. - for the sake of elaborating some basic part of our experience to and for someone else in the hopes of - we suppose - violating that unspoken social contract that we all ought to live together apart, solitary and side-by-side. There can be, in something as basic as noticing things and relating that act of noticing, a way out of the rigid idea that it is just us alone and the world outside.
There is - as we’re sure you’re aware - something quietly affirming about merely attending to someone as they attend to something. Random observations or interjections might not seem meaningful, but they are at least momentary instances of welcoming someone else into the foreground of one’s experience, of acknowledging the background as always more than mere background.
"The unspoken social contract seems to be that it’s best to live together by operating as if we live entirely apart. This isn’t a matter of apathy, but a collective agreement that everyone ought really to keep themselves to themselves."
More alienation, please!
This was a beautiful piece. Thank you for writing it. Sometimes all that's necessary to communicate is a recognition of the fact that communication exists at all, completely in defiance of the implied insularity each of our singular minds imposes upon us.