Swiping through TikTok, I landed on AOC knitting, talking right at me, inches from my face. Of course, I took her advice—I turned off the notifications on my phone.
Save yourself from the onslaught of headlines, she suggested. Check the news on your own terms. And she’s right, I’m trying to find my way of managing this maelstrom of malice. I want to avoid what happened last time—when nonsense and cruelty interrupted me all day long.
Too much in this world gets our attention only because it’s moving quickly. I wish my iPhone would remind me to admire the sunset. Or alert me to take a deep breath.
I wrote “More Than We See” while on a trip through the Adirondacks. Which, if you’ve never seen, are stunning. At one point, floating in an inner tube, I was surrounded by towering cliffs and resting in a quiet little lake.
This piece is about perspective—how much of the world is changing and unfolding beyond what we notice. Take flowers, for example. The video captures them in time-lapse because, otherwise, humans are incapable of more than glancing at a flower, never perceiving that they’re in motion.
Floating in that lake, it’s easy to feel small compared to the infinite amount around us that we don’t see. We are but part of the landscape. So with this video, I wanted to zoom in and speed up nature—to reveal it at the pace we’re accustomed to, the speed to which we’ve become inured.
How are you able to slow down?
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