Splash No. 227 - It’s An Experience
It’s An Experience
This morning, as I started to make my coffee, I put on a podcast interview with my favorite writer who draws, Austin Kleon. He was talking about how everyone draws as kids, but eventually give it up when they decide that they’re bad at art. He counters this idea with a question — do you go for a walk for the result of the walk, or for the experience of walking? As kids, we draw for the sake of drawing, not necessarily to create a work of art. It’s doodling, something to fill the time, a way to find shape in the world. It’s about the experience of drawing, not about creating something beautiful or amazing.
After hearing this, I turned off the podcast, deciding that I would focus on the experience of making my coffee. I put on some ambient music and slowly poured the water over the beans, standing in the sunbeams coming in through the windows like a sleepy dog between pours. I don’t remember how the coffee tasted, but the feeling of making that cup of coffee stuck with me throughout the day. There are certain activities that feel like this — writing in a journal, walking in silence, exercising, but it’s easy to lose them among the bustle of life. Any of these activities can have their experience diminished easily. We can focus too much on the result of these actions: did what I wrote make sense, did I walk enough steps, will this workout make me lose weight? Or, we fail to fully experience the activity in the first place, letting our attention wander and the moment pass before we realize it at all.
I’ve been wondering what sorts of things in my life I can consider experiences. There are the obvious ones above but beyond that. I spend much of my days looking at one screen or another, but I don’t know if those actions preclude a true experience. For example, I recently read the book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, which brought me to tears countless times. I read it mostly on my phone’s Kindle app, and think of it as one of the more moving experiences I’ve had lately. I’ve also been deeply drawn into the video game Persona 5: Royal, with a rich story, visual style, and soundtrack that immerses my entire being. Such media may appear on a screen but feels incomparable to what a majority of my consumption looks like — mindless social media posts, endless chat messages, formulaic videos.
What’s the difference between these digital media? It seems like the bar is much higher for digital actions to feel substantial and experiential compared to things that are simpler and in the real world, like walking or drawing. And how bizarre is it that what doesn’t fall into the substantial and experiential categories is often what consumes most of our time. Is it because experiencing something requires attention, something that we’ve been robbed of? Have we re-taught ourselves to consume what’s easy rather than what is good, what is nourishing? Can we return to our younger selves, the ones that could lose ourselves in the act of doodling, forgetting that anything needed to come out of it?
Drops of the Week
ALBUM - Music for Nine Post Cards by Hiroshi Yoshimura - unbelievably good ambient album
ARTICLE - "The Twitter Trap" by Terry Nguyen - great takes on the Twitter situation, especially with the quote "Twitter is no town square. It’s more comparable to Times Square."
POEM - "It's November Again" by Tahan Tahajian - I am filled with hot coffee & so much smoke / that most of the time, it's hard to see clearly.
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Maybe drawing,
Nikhil