Seeing

I’m going to be sharing three different stories over the next little while… different days, different thoughts. I have a bit of a build-up of stories, so I suppose this is me slowly catching up with myself.

I turned 28 on the 30th of August.

I still need to buy myself a birthday cake.

A girl at work asked me, “How does it feel?”

She’s 19 lol.

So… how does it feel?

Hmmm.

I don’t know if getting older necessarily feels like anything. Maybe it’s less about feeling older and more about noticing differently.

A little while ago I shared a post about The Still Moment by Edwin Denby, and about his way of looking at dance

not simply watching movement, but really seeing it.

I wrote:

“Lately, I’ve also been reading The Still Moment by Edwin Denby. I don’t agree with everything he says, but I admire how deeply passionate he is about dance… almost to the point where everything else feels secondary in comparison. Maybe that’s similar to how I feel about art versus football (unless it’s Scottish football, then my bias appears immediately - I don’t even support football, I just support the fact that it’s Scottish lol).

What I’ve really taken from the book is Denby’s way of observing movement. He writes about how dancers can create entirely different visual and emotional experiences simply through the way they move on stage. He has this ability to translate the subconscious feelings we experience while watching a performance into words with remarkable precision.

One idea that’s stayed with me is his encouragement to trust your own impressions, to pay attention to what moves you and learn how to articulate it honestly. There’s something exciting about that, because it starts to connect art with your own personal life: it changes what you notice, how you look, and what you value paying attention to.

I’m going to see Romeo & Juliet alone tomorrow evening, and I’m excited to see what I take from the performance.”

A week or so later, I shared a very long post about what I took from Romeo & Juliet.

And now I’m back in Edinburgh in a different state of mind.

So I suppose I’m curious about what I see now.

I think a lot about how much the people around us quietly teach us how to look at the world.

I’ve been deeply inspired by Sav’s mind for a long time. She has taught me, in her own way, to be more unapologetic… to say what I think, to trust my own perspective, to take up a little more space in my own life. 

Although, if we’re actually together in person, you’ll probably hear me say “sorry” approximately ten times in two minutes.

Some lessons take longer to stick than others.

Today I finally went bouldering in Edinburgh.

There’s something quite funny about that too. About eight years ago, I used to see a boy who climbed. I remember it being a part of his life, but at the time I had absolutely no idea what it meant beyond that.

It didn’t click.

Then I moved to London, eventually found climbing for myself, and somehow fell completely in love with it.

On and off, admittedly.

But still.

It’s strange how some things can pass through your life years before you’re ready to recognise them.

Maybe that’s what getting older actually is.

Not necessarily becoming someone completely new, but returning to old ideas, places, people and feelings with a different pair of eyes.

Realising that something you once overlooked can suddenly become beautiful.

And now I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Edinburgh, typing all of this into the Notes app on my phone, which feels slightly ironic considering how much I’ve been thinking about observation, attention and the act of really looking.

There’s a man sitting beside me reading a book.

He’s completely absorbed in it.

Every now and then he turns a page with the same absent-mindedness people have when they’re somewhere else entirely.

Across from me, there’s a girl with extraordinarily long hair writing with a fountain pen.

I keep noticing the movement of her hand.

The tiny pauses between words.

The way she occasionally stops, looks at what she’s written, and then continues.

(Maybe I’ll start doing that too. Although, I say this as if my thoughts don’t come to me and disappear approximately 9 out of 10 times… so I’ll probably still be whipping my phone out )

There’s something so valuable about slowing down enough to notice the movement of your own thoughts on paper. It’s something I absolutely adore, and something I definitely need to make more time for.

To leave a little evidence of yourself behind in ink.

I think that’s what I’m becoming increasingly interested in: the things we miss when we’re moving too quickly.

The feeling of being back in Edinburgh…

The strange fact that I am 28 now…

None of these things are particularly extraordinary.

And yet, sitting here, they feel like enough for now…

Maybe the art of seeing isn’t about finding something beautiful.

Maybe it’s about becoming attentive enough to realise that something was beautiful all along? 

05/09/2026