Everyday Virtue | Paterson & David Foster Wallace 

Like Stories of Old I love the movie Paterson so underrated

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.

Great video! You say that your favourite moment is the conversation between the two guys on the bus which shows that there probably never really was a story to begin with. Please could you elaborate why this scene, to you, is particularly significant?

Thank you for all your beautiful work. Would you consider doing a piece on Code 46 and/or Michael Winterbottom?

is this not mediocrity?

@@sportsportsport I believe you can achieve extraordinary things within the confines of routine.

@@sportsportsport For a Long time the Idea of Mediocrity was my bittest fear. And i Thought that routines are sure way there. But a solid set of routines is one or the way to be able to be extraordinary. The cognitive capacity that you don‘t waste on insignificant things, you can use towards extraodinary goals or thoughts

@@TimSmithWordSmith I totally agree with you.

Who said this?

@@ScotisticDad Old Zen koan. Maybe even older, into Taoism.

Yes grasshopper

Hahahah

I got to write this on my bedroom wall.

Same.

All are the cited lines from Infinite Jest? I remember the last one coming from the Don Gately character...

Tooni thank you

My favorite piece of writing from the entire novel... things I learned in a halfway house. Thanks for sharing.

Just read this part from IJ today... really amazing affirmation of mundane life.

Love this comment

yes!

I agree some of the most peaceful times of my life was when I was driving a rock truck for a living.

I have never known boredom. What is that? Seriously.

​@@TheCompleteGuitarist Maybe definitions vary, but looking back at my youth (not that I'm really that old to begin with), I find "boredom" was a word others attributed to me (and, consequently, I attributed to myself) when I was under-stimulated. I wasn't actually bored, I was craving something that my mind could latch on to. If I wasn't playing with toys, or reading, or watching cartoons, or solving artificial school-appointed problems, my mind became desperate for something to wrap itself around and devour, as eagerly as a starving rat might jump onto a wheel of cheese. (Sometimes, this proverbial rat would find that the proverbial cheese was just too large, or too hard, or somehow too complex for it to devour wholly, or even at all, which would gnaw at the rat's soul for several months before it could bring itself to forget the encounter. On some occasions, the piece of cheese was in size akin to an ant, meaning many of them had to be taken in before the rat was full, and yet many more had to be eaten before the rat realized that it was not only full, but on the edge of sickness.) But my mind's desperate need for stimulation (or the overabundance of stimulation) in my childhood didn't become a problem -- I now realize, all these years later -- until the arrival of the internet in its modern form. Suddenly, a bright new world of possibilities opened up, with stimulation as plentiful or rare as I would desire, often, of course, the blissfully ignorant child that I was, not so much opting to indulge in endless hours of consumption, but somehow coercing myself into it. Given the exponentially ecstatic disposition of modern technology over the years, my mind, of course, followed, until there was nothing left but a shell of a person who had not only wasted years of human time experiencing small fragments of others' lives instead of building and experiencing its own, nor only realizing the daftness and futility of -- and also resenting itself for -- the continued participation in this scheme, but, and this is crucial, for some reason, wanting _more_. Here this rat stands humiliated, and, for the moment, humbled, realizing that, perhaps, the fact the wasted years of participating in this world only as a third-party observer, the missed opportunities, the unfulfilled potential for development and growth, mean it is too late for it (the rat) to rebound and enjoy a life of normality. Never again will it be "un-bored", never again be able to appreciate the so-called simplicity of day-to-day life, the so-called normality of it all.

Hi, it's been two years, but I hope the rat knows it can fully enjoy life, all bored, anytime the rat feels like it - it'll take effort, but good effort after all. Your writing is hauntingly beautiful :)

Adam Driver's chillest role to date. And it premiered at Cannes a mere six months after mainstream audiences watched him kill Han Solo.

And he STILL LET HI BACK IN from the garage! Most zen character of all times

YES!

Thanks! I feel the same way!

- George Eliot :)

Thanks Sam! Really appreciate the support!

Sam Clay The complimentary comment describes the hero’s journey. 👍 DFW probably wouldn’t appreciate the irony given the film’s message.

In my life I attribute that to meaningful coincidences from fine tuning your attention. It's similar to when you bump into a stranger then you end up seeing that person everywhere. Them coincidences are a good thing, keep up the practice

I love this interpretation so much! I knew that his book getting destroyed had to be significant but couldn't put into words why 😅

Finally someone points this out. I think all creative people can resonate with that deeply. It's so beautifully shown how he silently grieves over his loss. His life is somehow emptied, his morning, his own-time in the basement, when he sits on the couch and his face is dark and somewhat painful which he tires to hold back not let it be seen by Laura, he tries to faintly smile to Laura's offers trying to cheer him up.. he has now a better understanding of Everett's pain when they meet. (He was kinda laughing on him earlier in the pub.) Jim Jarmusch is amazing. So is Adam Driver as an actor.

@@micahscanz I really, really loved this comment! I do have one suggestion (disagreement, maybe?) that I wonder what your thoughts on it would be. So I studied Arabic & Islamic civ. in my undergrad and got heavily interested in both the sufis (Islamic mystics) and Arabic religious calligraphy. One really important concept for entire schools of that stuff is that they create calligraphy that is impossible to read if you are not the one writing it. They have big and long ideas about why they do that and it all centers around themes like the individual before God, excellence for its own sake, etc. I wonder if you would think that “God” would be the other for whom that art is created? Or maybe the people who see such indecipherable calligraphy would still count as the other for whom the art is made, even though they can’t interpret and/or receive the intended message of the artist? My personal experiences with such people when I lived in the Middle East leads me to believe that there are people whose lives stand in disagreement to your ideas. I don’t think something receives its “art status” in its reception, but in its conception maybe?

Damn you're fast! :p Thanks!

Daniel Drylie For me, the evident “big thing” in the movie was the accidental loss of a whole year of creative work and the possibility of becoming a popular poet, as his admired William Carlos William. Getting more spare time to write poetry and not drive buses all day would probably have been quite satisfying for him too. He also loses that chance when his notebook is destroyed. My two cents.