All the small things
Something I've been grappling with for a long time is the idea that regular, small things matter as much, or more, as larger, more dramatic, more story-generating big things.
A fancy restaurant meal that we have once in a while might stick in our heads, but actually the breakfast we eat every day sort of matters more, even if it is not as memorable or special. In art, a lot of people are drawn to spectacle and drama - superhero films, large colourful artworks, musicals, fireworks, projections - but the book you read, music you listen to, drawing that you've put on your wall perhaps influence you more. Certainly, you spend more time in their company. Yet those things are less remarkable and less championed, and that may mean they are overlooked. If the day-to-day stuff we do, see and notice is overlooked then it maybe can't end up mattering.
The thing is, I really care about these small things, I don't really know why. I recently was trying to express this in an essay I wrote for someone's exhibition. Why do these photos of small, local, routine interactions between people matter so much to me? How is this valuable? Why does it move me, deeply, to think that it's the texture of our day-to-day existence that is so vital?
I don't really have a clear, one sentence answer, but the more I think about 'why' the more I think about the Wind in the Willows, you know the aggressively quaint kids book. This book is pretty romantic, but I really loved it as a kid. It has such well drawn characters: the charismatic rat, the gruff-but-loving badger, the effervescent toad, the meek mole. In one of the final chapters of the book, mole stumbles (literally, smacks into during a snowstorm) into his home. Over the course of the book he has made new friends, gone on adventures, been swept up in the drama, intensity and grandeur of interesting and exciting new things. So much so that he's forgotten where he started, and what his home was like. The story just breaks my heart, this totally lovable character is embarrassed, ashamed even, of his home - showing his new friends the humble, perhaps even drab, place that he lived. More then that, the character realises he's forgotten a part of himself, he's neglected the part of his personality that's embodied in the house. He's become a bit unstuck, heady and un-tethered.
To me, this story contains the entirety of what I've been struggling to express. Of course the excitement matters, it pushes us to grow and to learn, to move and to find out, but there's something inexplicably real about smaller things. Our home, our food, our neighbours. I think there's more to learn about watching someone cook a meal then there is from just about anything else. Instantly you see if someone's nervous, sloppy, precise, caring. You see how someone does (or does not) show love and affection. You see how they think about living.
Or driving - man you can tell a lot about someone by how they drive. I almost always drive if my girlfriend and I drive anywhere, largely because I'm a shit passenger and like being active. It's a bit immature but sitting, argh, I just want to do something! You can learn a lot about me from that, I think. But what do you call this? Mundane feels dismissive. Quotidian feels pretentious. Everyday feels tiresome. There's a texture to our unexamined habits, to our mannerisms and interactions, to the way we water plants, brush a dog, tie back our hair, sigh when we arrive at work, take stairs two at a time. I think this stuff is so important, and so interesting, yet we all cannot examine it all the time.
The ways that we are specific and unique people seem to me to be much less about the totally original things we might do (or, more likely, not ever do) and the smorgasbord of habits, routines and choices that add up to make a person. I love sultana bran, make a great pasta, am a morning person and just love winter. It would be hard to make any action-packed movie, novel or TV out of my life and, in a way, the more exciting things I've done have always been incredibly temporary. But those exciting things, because they are rare, perhaps don't really contribute to making me as much as the fact that you can regularly catch me walking a bit too far to the shops, forgetting small details easily, still enjoying Caramello Koalas or talking to myself on long drives.
I've sort of gotten to the point in writing where I ask myself 'ok, Matt, what's the point you're trying to get at here?' and, again, I don't really know. I guess I wanted to get something out of my head.