One of my favourite quotes (that I have stuck on my computer) is by Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” It’s a sentiment that I wholeheartedly believe and which transforms the quotidian into the extraordinary without much effort at all. This book embodies this quote.
In On Looking: about everything there is to see, author Alexandra Horowitz asks us to take a walk with her. (Well, to take twelve, actually). Her premise is that we are terrifically bad at noticing stuff. Every day we “miss the possibility of being surprised by what is hidden in plain sight right in front of us” because we are too distracted by our modern lives. We have lost the skills of attention and focus, we walk in a daydream, on autopilot going about our business. She advocates a more mindful approach, aiming to bring active attention to our daily lives by noticing new things. And these new things aren’t somewhere different and exciting, they are on your doorstep.
Horowitz’s method is to take a walk around the block in her New York neighbourhood, the streets she ‘knows’ intimately already. At first she walks alone, trying to notice every detail, to take in everything there is to see. She pays attention to all her senses and ends up feeling pretty pleased with herself – “I had seen all that really mattered on the block… I was consciously looking. What could I have missed? As it turns out, I was missing pretty much everything.” She realises that to really notice what is abundantly all around, she needs some collaborators, co-investigators into the ordinary. So she enlists the help of 11 people who have distinct and particular outlooks. She walks with a toddler and a typographer, she strolls with a sound designer and a blind woman, she investigates the sidewalk with an artist and a doctor. She walks with her dog. In each journey she submits to the whims and interests of her companion, allowing their expertise and curiosity be her eyes. And, in this way, she sees everything new again.
This is a charming book. It’s that sort of lovely armchair travel book, without the exotic destination. I always enjoy reading about other people’s viewpoints, seeing what details they pick up on, what they choose to tell us. In this book I get to experience 12 different outlooks. What is really interesting is how I felt I was beginning to see and to know those streets myself. With each new walk there was the memory of all the ones before, a beautiful layering of awareness like tracing paper drawings overlaid. By the end, the picture in my head of this place was rich and dynamic, despite never having been there myself.
If you’re looking to escape without really going anywhere, I recommend this book. It will change how you look at your immediate surroundings for a while (it’s funny how quickly the distraction returns) and make you wish you had 11 interesting people to walk with.
On Looking. About Everything There is to See by Alexandra Horowitz. Published by Simon & Schuster
Lovely blog, thanks for sharing