I’m constantly flitting in between two-three websites on the internet. Reddit - Twitter(X) - occasionally Substack. Often just mindlessly devouring endless reams of information.

There is an illusion that more information will solve problems, but more information is rarely the answer. Instead it is better to chew on the information, taste it and reflect on it. This will give you more insight into the nature of the issue.

I want to write more on this blog to fix this. Specifically reflect on things I’ve found on the web. I want to consume ‘good art’, not trawl through piles of bullshit to find the occasional nugget of gold. I want to curate and reflect on my experiences.

Good Art I’ve consumed this week. Ideas I’m thinking abut

1. Andrew Garfield on Modern Love

I was talking to the girl I am dating about this. She said she cries at everything, and I asked her the last time she cried. She said about 30 mins ago whilst watching the movie we went to see in cinema together. I said I cried yesterday whilst listening to this episode.

She asked me to explain. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly, in fact I could barely remember what the episode was about. A consequence of just consuming and not reflecting.

I said one theme that was explored was impermanence, and the pain of clinging onto things that will fade; certain relationships, stages in life, places. The clinging is the painful aspect. Also I talked about ‘onism’ - how we are prisoners to the set of circumstances we are born into. We are ‘fated’ into a certain life path, and we cannot go back and ‘choose’ differently. We can’t experience all the paths available. I’m a prisoner to my gender, my hair colour, where I was born, my genetics, my upbringing. So many things. And there is a certain sense of melancholy in this.

Maybe I’ll re-listen to this, and then write about it after whilst it is fresh in my mind.

2. Optimism

Tesla just parallel parked a skyscraper; they caught their rocket they sent into space. I’m feeling optimistic about humanity. We can solve problems. I think I had been interacting with a few people that were spreading doom and gloom (legitimate but not useful to think about all the time). The news tends to emphasise the negative, rather than the positive. I need to re-read Factfulness. Life has gotten a lot better (this is controversial to say…)

3. Tech minimalism

I bought a dumb phone (Qin F21) that I intend to use as an occasional replacement to my smartphone. It has 4G, maps, WhatsApp/messaging and access to the google play store for various smart apps I may need, but in a less distracting form factor.

It’s too hard to resist the temptation of having a supercomputer in my pocket. I’m constantly distracting myself.

The thinking I’m doing when on an iPhone is different to what I’m doing when I’m on my laptop. The laptop is much more conducive to longer form reading, creation etc. The iPhone eventually leads me to Tiktok/instagram/perpetual doom scrolling.

4. Adding a photoblog

I want to start taking pictures again, alongside writing. I want to be more creative. I sold my Ricoh GRIII and I regret it. That small camera is beautiful. I’m going to buy it back…

My first act of creativity was implementing a photoblog. I’ll spare the details, but it wasn’t too difficult in the end.

As much as I like instagram, constantly posting multiple pictures feels like I’m intruding on the mental space of the people who are using it. I’d much rather they willingly search for any pictures they want to see.

Plus, I want to try limit social media use in general. I only follow a handful of people I know in real life, and use it to keep in touch.

Quotes I’m pondering

Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again Homer, The Iliad

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to lay with your hair Kahlil Gibran

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. L.P. Jacks

This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery. Robert Heinlen

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn’t have any fresh air. There’s no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. Pema Chodron

This film is beautiful. A meditation on attention, beauty and the value of simplicity.

The film follows the protagonist ‘Hirayama’, a public toilet cleaner working in Tokyo. It shows his daily routine, how he gets up, takes care of his plants, gets ready for the day, commutes to work in his small van listening to analogue cassette tapes, and then spends his working day diligently cleaning toilets in Shibuya and across Tokyo. He finishes his work, frequents the same restaurant, visits a secondhand bookshop and buys a single book, returns home, reads his single book and goes to sleep.

There are many themes within this movie, all hidden in-between the lines (with very little dialogue in the movie). It is a very Japanese way of expression; the silences hold all the truths.

However, one theme that resonated was the value of analogue and what is represents.

By analogue, I mean the fact that Hirayama would read books, listen to cassettes, enjoy taking film photos and develop them. More importantly, it’s the attention that analogue affords.

The easiest way to start to explore this is to look at the modern day human (me) versus Hirayama.

The modern day ‘digital’ human :

• I would get up, instantly check my phone for the messages I have received. Check instagram, accidentally get sucked into a vortex of random meaningless posts. Gain enough sentience to realise this is happening, or look at the clock to break the trance
• Get ready whilst listening to a podcast that I’m not truly absorbing
• Commute to work listening to an algorithmically curated selection of music, that I skip half the time because I’m not instantly captured in the first few bars
• When I get the time to read, I flick between books on my kindle, never truly committing to finishing a single book. I often glance over entire paragraphs, not truly absorbing them.
• When I decide to take photos, I take 10 of the same photo, and decide which one I like the best, and edit it to the point where it is distorting reality
• If I go for a walk, it’s always with headphones. Never in silence. Always a podcast or a conversation so that any signs of loneliness or isolation are buried deep down.
• If having a conversation with a friend, your phone buzzes and your attention slips away momentarily, but perniciously erodes any feeling of true conversation
• If you ever sit down and try to write, you get sucked into the internet. Or you stick to writing stupid listicals or trite posts. You eschew fiction and long complex topics for the surface level.
• If you want to seek knowledge, you google everything. You never sit and try to figure it out on your own. You seek instant gratification.
• If you ever consume a piece of media, it’s always with two screens; the big screen and the little screen.
• When you eat any food, you have to have something playing lest you accidentally take the time to taste your food.
• You distract yourself with Amazon purchases, thinking that the next thing you buy will cure the problems you have.

Take Hirayama:

• He wakes up without an alarm clock to the sounds of birds outside
• Every morning, he takes the time to carefully spray his houseplants
• He gets ready in silence; absorbed in the mundane daily ablutions
• He owns few things. He takes care of the few things he owns
• On every morning commute, he browses through his small collection of cassettes and listens to one from the beginning to the end.
• At work, he diligently cleans the toilets devoting his full attention to the work. He occasionally pauses to look at the light filtering through the trees in the park.
• He eats lunch on the park bench, taking photos of the trees. He spends time visiting the photo shop to develop these later on in the weekend
• He visits a second hand book shop where he buys a single book at a time, which he reads before bed. Once he finishes the single book, he adds it to his bookshelf.
• He eats his dinner at the same restaurant, taking his time to enjoy the food.
• On weekends, he visits the onsen/bath-house and unwinds.

There is much more to Hirayama’s life below the surface which the movie hints at, so I don’t mean to say that it’s all joy.

But the attention that is brought to life, results in joy with the mundane.

The quality of your attention, determines the quality of your life.

The modern human lives a life of fractured attention. Hirayama in contrast lives a life in devotion to attention.

This is what I feel analogue hints at. The nostalgia and aesthetics are valuable, but what they really represent is a way of paying attention that modern day digital devices do not provide us with.

A single pointed attention. Where we complete things, we finish books from start to finish, listen to songs without skipping, pay attention to the mundane. Where we are comfortable with some boredom.

This is essential because in losing this ability, you lose the ability to pay attention to your life. To the beautiful inexorable unfolding. Seemingly life seems to be a set of problems that one must overcome before truly enjoying it, or a way of distracting oneself to avoid facing it head on.

Once I’m done with this [pesky problem] then I can start working on [important thing]. Joy is found there, not here.

Perfect days is the perfect reminder of what matters. It is not the external but the internal. The way one directs their attention. Everything you seek is right here.