Taking a walk in a rose garden is good for the soul. I am not “doing nothing.” I am doing a performance of nothing, because I am obsessed with what the nothing means and quite capable of conveying that to others, because that is my nature. By subjecting our “nothing” to this kind of analysis, creating social capital rather than coin, all future instances of doing it start to feel performative. I want to notice, not notice that I’m noticing. The parts of me that use my quiescent liberal arts education to justify and self-analyze those activities are exactly the parts of me that I’m trying to quiet down when I do them. Judging by her author photo, we may in fact literally see through the same glasses.īut here’s the thing. I have been fundamentally changed by encounters with art.
Yes, I am a park sitter, a library lover, an animal observer, a seeker of space and time and meaning. Odell’s thoughts will sit in a very uncomfortable uncanny valley. I think it’s because it destroys the nothing it’s trying to save.įor some readers, like me, Ms. Why, then, did I find the experience of Ms. It tells a truth of “doing nothing” that I recognized and embraced. The artful myth of Momo hit home for me emotionally. Odell writes: “I see people caught up not just in notifications but in a mythology of productivity and progress, unable not only to rest but simply to see where they are.”Įnde’s hero, Momo, has a special talent for listening, and she must save those around her from the erasure of free time. However, as valuable as it clearly is to reclaim our attention, her book doesn’t seem to quite accomplish this feat.Īs I read, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the children’s classic “Momo” by Michael Ende, in which Time Thieves make the world “more productive” at the expense of living life and being happy. So, can “doing nothing” be an act of resistance when the world demands constant productivity? Ms. (Unless perhaps you write a book about it.) When you pause life to do the “nothing” of watching birds off your porch, no one makes any money off that. Every time you pull to refresh Twitter, your attention is part of a capitalist exchange.
What she is critiquing is the addictive and invasive aspects of social media and technology in particular. Looking at or creating art can be nothing. This is no small problem when our attention is owned by corporations through our phones.Ī warning: To properly read this book, we must set aside the knee-jerk argument against her definition of “nothing.” The nothing she wants us to do is not the absence of activity, but a redirection of time, energy and focus toward things that cannot be monetized. And she believes that this examination of our attention is essential because through our attention, we create our reality. Odell gathers together her examination of attention using sources ranging from Diogenes to Donna Haraway, from communes to the compositions of John Cage.
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