I FIND the mundane and ordinary fascinating. Maybe I should rephrase that: there is something fascinating and overlooked in the mundane and supposedly ordinary.

One of my favourite pastimes that is cost-free is to sit and observe. Not in the voyeuristic manner but just observing everyday life from the vantage point of a fly on the wall. In filmmaking, this is known as cinema-vérité.

I developed this pastime as a kid growing up in 1980s and 1990s Kuala Lumpur, especially in the 1990s after my family relocated out into the then-backwaters of Bangi.

The power of observation is probably the most overlooked aspect of a creative process – or maybe I’m just unaware of its formal use or terminology in different artistic practices.

To observe means to not be the centre of attention – something contradictory in the generally assumed narrative that artists are the centre of attention because of their supposedly in-born talent.

To observe is not as easy as it seems – and this is my own take not backed by any theoretical underpinnings. Try it out.

The first thing you might realise is how much our own personal bias and opinions shape our perception and eventually our understanding of the external world around us.

And that is the point of observation – to pause and observe the external world around us.

This practice is probably most obvious in the study of visual arts, especially in learning how to sketch external objects and environments.

The visual arts are the roots of all modern art forms to me. It’s something that predates language (and language itself can also limit or expand our understanding and articulation of the world around us).

The most cliche examples would be primitive cave painting, which on the surface may seem rudimentary but when you start to think about the tools and ideation behind them, things start to get interesting.

Even literature conjures images or scenarios that are visual in nature. The articulation of the external world around us and the internal dialogue within us is the basis of all forms of storytelling.

Storytelling itself is not neutral. There are always points of views from which a narrative must be based on and from this, we develop characters since human characters or human-like characters through the use of anthropomorphism makes us feel some commonality with the narrative and creates empathy.

Now back to the practice of observation. Just like thinking, the activity seems on the outside to not involve doing anything – and that exactly is the point.

We live in a modern (or post-modern) society that seems to espouse “activity” to our value and identity as human beings, an espousal that is ideological because it serves the status quo more than the individual.

From this form espousal of “activity” or busy-ness, we witness the rise of counterproductive culture in the workspace – people pretending to be busy when actually, sometimes, there is very little to do but we pretend to because we are expected to be in our offices and desks for a given period of time through our contractual obligations.

This culture, to me, is a by-product of our materialistic world, even more so in our endemic phase of the world right now.

Have we not learnt anything about how the nature of work can and has changed because of the Covid-19 pandemic?

The phrase “new normal” is a loaded empty term because there is no such thing as “normal” nor it is “new”.

It is an ideological falsehood that is meant to keep the consumerist and materialist machinery running to serve, well, the owners or shareholders.

Now, at the risk of being pedantic (and conjuring images of a particular bearded 19th century thinker), I stand by this assertion.

Not because I am a preacher of some ideology but as a private tax-paying individual in a world that seems to demand every drop of your energy and time devoted to “productivity”.

“Productivity” itself is what has got us in the state of the planet we are in right now, with the same major corporations now espousing “green” initiatives after much plundering over the past century or so.

So, what’s the best way to stem the tide of a selfish world? Do nothing and observe. Try it out.

You will start realising that it is harder than it seems to do “nothing”, especially with your smartphone around you.

Go ahead, log out, tune out and tune in to the world around you and observe the mundane and ordinary and find out it is not that “mundane” nor “ordinary” to begin with.

You deserve these small pockets of contemplation because that is what differs us from beasts.

You have my permission. – February 17, 2023.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.