Nature Boy noted recently that he has acquired extra powers of vision and perception.
鈥淚鈥檓 seeing all kinds of violets, mauves and yellows in the colour of the water that I never noticed before,鈥� he said. 鈥淲atching all of those painting shows must be having an impact.鈥�
We were walking along the coast in East Sooke Park. It was a change from his usual weekend activities. In recent months, those have included Portrait Painter of the Year, Landscape Painter of the Year and other reality TV-type art shows on YouTube.
Why?
鈥淚鈥檓 curious about how these people see and transfer what they see into their art,鈥� he says, 鈥渆ven if I don鈥檛 always like what they produce.鈥�
It appears he has picked up some of those ways of seeing.
The same thing happened when he learned his birds.
Years ago, all the tweets, twitters and trills heard during a walk in the woods were just generic bird calls. Now, he can pick out each of the calls and name the birds making them.
What had once been a wall of chatter at a woodland bird party resolved into the voices of friends and acquaintances. Chestnut-backed chickadee. Nuthatch. Olive-sided flycatcher. Bald eagle. Hello, Stellar鈥檚 jay. Good morning, pileated woodpecker. What a song, song sparrow!
And we experienced something similar when we learned the names of the region鈥檚 native plants. 鈥淕reen shrubs鈥� acquired specific and separate identities. They became evergreen huckleberry, hairy manzanita, and salal, for example. 鈥淐onifer鈥� resolved into Douglas-fir, grand fir, hemlock, shore pine and cedar. The generic green-ness separated into individual acquaintances that opened the door to learning more about and appreciating them for their own unique characteristics.
The more we learned, the more we recognized. The more we recognized, the more we saw. The more we saw, the more attention we paid.
Nature Boy and I pay that kind of higher-resolution attention to plants and animals in our green spaces, but others might focus on other aspects of their environment.
Where I see 鈥渞ed car鈥� or possibly 鈥渞ed聽sedan,鈥� somebody else might recognize make, model, year and other features. Where I see 鈥渟hoes,鈥� others might be able to name the brand, designer, style, and even how much they sell for.
What we each choose to pay attention to is as individual as our tastes and preferences. And what we each pay attention is what we, as individuals, value.
Paying attention and learning about something in detail makes it personal. It adds breadth and depth to everyday life.
You could also say that the very act of attending to something also gives it value. And that, in turn, increases the likelihood we鈥檒l pay closer attention to it and attend to it in the future and for longer periods.
Generally, it鈥檚 not a behaviour we give much thought to. We see something, it interests us, we pay more attention and so on. Big deal.
But entire industries are founded and funded by attention. The founders, boards of directors and stockholders of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube and the other social-media and internet-service companies know very well how valuable our attention is. Their algorithms assess our every Like, Share, Tweet/RT and click 鈥� learning about our preferences, interests, relationships and personalities. From this massive cache of data that is enriched daily, they come to know each of us better than we know ourselves. And they use that information to capture and hold our attention, and to profit from it.
Hello, Nature Boy 鈥� here are some other art videos you might be interested in and 鈥� well, looky here, here鈥檚 an ad for a product that must have been made just for you. Hello, pointy-headed columnist, you鈥檒l certainly be interested in 鈥� Wait! you have three notifications from Facebook that you must absolutely respond to right away. 鈥�
Whatever our interests, whatever we choose to attend to 鈥� however we spend our hours, online or otherwise 鈥攚e create value. And somebody has probably found a way to profit from it.
And if we鈥檙e lucky, we profit from how we spend our attention, too, benefitting from the enriched depth of our observation of and appreciation for whatever it is we attend to.
