a phenomenology of boredom

in high school, i was best friends with one of the first Billie Eilish fans to exist- we're talking pre Bellyache era. as we strolled through corridors, she hummed the hook of Bored.

“i’m so boOOoOooOred” it went.

& god, there was something about her, uniform stained with paint, high pony swinging behind her, & bored. it was like only she understood cool. even her boredom was cool.

cuz it made sense. she was bored of school. her boredom was a rejection of imposed values that simply didn't interest her. how do schools that mandate attendance never consider making their classes more interesting first?

that boredom could have such expressive potential is enough to make it interesting to me. but a more complete map of the phenomenon of it, the feeling of it, the coming to be of it, the creative potential of it even- wouldn't hurt. so here goes nothing.

are we bored of all that doesn't command our attention? no. there's plenty that simply doesn't need attending. somehow, we are only bored of that which needs our attention. case in point would be school.

it only becomes boredom when we are attending to it even while we don't want to. otherwise, we would simply look away.

of course, there is also Boredom, with a capital B- to be bored of life itself. but i think Boredom is a sort of category error, ie, some specific boredom gets projected onto the whole of life. existentialism, then, is the most sophisticated avoidant strategy. capital B Boredom strikes when there is some one thing that desperately needs attending to- not life itself, but something specific- that is so painful to attend to that we say we'd rather not attend to anything at all.

but attention- the little fairy that moves our brain about- is a gift! you give it to yourself in how you practice it. it is an embodied map of what you value. we wear it sometimes, as our boredom, other times, as our engagement, & all times, as our flow.

haven't we all fallen in love with the way someone's mind moves?

the art is in extending that love to the way one’s own mind moves. to watch, with curiosity, how it picks up and puts aside its daily fascinations. to name the forces that shove its thoughts around. to befriend the trigger and the finger that rests gently on the trigger.

when boredom rests on our face, the gears in our head continue to click. maybe you know exactly what you would rather be doing.