I like having a background noise while drawing or doing something else that doesn’t require my full attention. If it gets too loud, I just turn the volume down three clicks- click, click, click. Done.
“It would be nice to have that volume button right now,” I thought, watching an obnoxiously loud family as I was sipping a cup of coffee in a cafe the other morning. At the next table sat six people, including two small kids. A family gathering for breakfast, I assumed. They were laughing at full blast, trading jokes with each other, while the children watched cartoons on an iPad, uninterested in adult conversation. As though they were all in their own living room. The volume button was definitely broken at that table.
What a perfect violation of “civil inattention,” I thought to myself, taking a bite of my avocado toast. The term resurfaced from my subconscious. Often used by sociologists “civil inattention” is a brief acknowledgment of people you happen to share space with. It can be a glance, a nod, a smile, something that says, “I know you are here and I respect your space.” We practice this small act of social order every day, without even thinking about it. It’s a kind of volume button we all carry, quietly turning ourselves down so someone else has room.
My voice is quiet by nature, so quiet that when I try to project, it feels like I am yelling, even when I am not. But that’s beside the point.
When I am with somebody in a public space, my attention narrows on them, and my awareness of everything else fades into the background. But some quiet part of me is always aware of the people I share that space with.
I wonder if this is something people are taught, like table manners or saying please and thank you. Or is it something you are just born with, already there before anyone teaches you anything.
1 comment
I get it, your blog is very thought-provoking and very well written. I am quite the opposite, it’s hard for me too focus when people are distracting while in a crowd or simply sitting at a table in a café with noisy kids or adults next to me. You have a gift of tuning out people and focusing in on a certain subject or person.