On Attention & Devotion

Why I am choosing to spend fifteen weeks with the same painting.

I think a lot about where my attention goes, and what/who is demanding it at any given moment. Attention is one of the highest currencies in our current economy. It is exceedingly hard to sustain and therefore incredibly precious to have. I watch subway ads flash; I wake up and open pinterest saving things I can’t afford or won’t make; I get phantom buzzes when my phone isn’t in my pocket; I remember almost none of the things I consume, and I consume them quickly, as though afraid of something lurking around the corner.

I have a friend who is an actress, and she once told me that tv shows and movies are adapting to our current attention economy, writing scripts that allow a viewer to simultaneously use their phone and still understand the plot. We all have a similar story: that moment we realized that our cultural output is directed first and foremost, by attention. This means that everything, including art, is at risk of being short, fast, digestible; snappy, colorful, forgettable. It also means that creating can become a romantic notion rather than an act, and the product of said creation consumed, but not savored.

I am not interested in talking about how this new relationship to attention is effecting us. Not culturally, nor politically, nor psychologically. There are countless articles that talk about it—we are in the “new epidemic” the “attention span collapse.” I am not even interested in how we got to this point, really. I am not here to blame late-stage capitalism or AI. I am asking why we latch on to this new way of being, even when we crave something else. I am interested in that something else.

There’s a hungry animal trapped within me that I’m training to be patient. I put that animal on diets and restrict its eating. Feeding time is in an hour, I berate when I feel its claws. I sometimes starve it. Other times I try to make it like other things, something else, like a parent convincing their child to enjoy broccoli. Though the animal learns silence, it doesn’t fully go away; the second instagram is downloaded on my phone hours go by before I resurface, the animal licking its lips and I, disgusted by its full breath.

My animal loves flashing colors and short-form content. He’s afraid of time and how it flickers away, he thinks that there is no time left to spend eight hours painting and whole mornings writing. “Short” makes him feel like he is hiding time in his back-pocket. But I want my animal to empty his pockets. I want to satiate his appetite with luxurious time. I don’t want an animal that hopes to burn, kill, or waste time. I want an animal that stretches, embraces, caresses time. Attention can only be sustained when we believe we have time to lovingly give. Which is why I am giving myself time.

This Substack is my attempt at attention, and at devotion. It is time lengthened, it is attention captured. By visiting the Whitney every week and writing a poem about the same painting each visit, I hope to engage in what I see as modern day worship: sustained attention.

Each poem must be unique, and each week I will give my future self a score on how to interact with the museum space next, encouraging a new relationship to the space, and to others. For the first series of this Substack, I will be writing poems about Edward Hopper’s Seven A.M:

I will write about this painting for fifteen weeks, or in other words, I will write fifteen poems. Then I will pick another painting and start anew. Fifteen weeks is an arbitrary number I chose as a way to challenge myself.

This isn’t about producing a perfect poem, it isn’t even about writing a good poem. It is an attempt to take a ball of yarn and untangle it. I am showing you my threads. I am lingering in the noticing and observing. Process is the joy, the problem-solving, the connection building. Process is a puzzle for the creator, product is a puzzle for the audience that we aren’t encouraged to solve. We have enough product in the world. Product is consumption, process is attention. Which is why each week alongside my poem, I will also include “my work”. How I got to that specific version of the poem that I decided to stop at. The work will be published through hand written scans, the “final” poem will be typed up.

I encourage everyone to pick their own, something else. It can be a park, a walk, a friend. It can be an album, a ceiling fan, a stew. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the poems.