Paterson and the Scope of Creativity
“Golshifteh Farahani and Adam Driver in Paterson
(2016).” IMDb, Amazon Studios &
Bleecker Street, 2016. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5247022/mediaviewer/rm566955008
This post contains spoilers for the films Paterson and The Beach Bum.
Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016) is the story of a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey who is also named Paterson himself. It also happens to offer a depiction of two different primary creative processes—one belongs to Adam Driver’s Paterson and is deliberate, focused, and even cramped and the other belongs to Golshifteh Farahani’s Laura and is chaotic and sprawling. Driver’s character works on his poems in his spare time just before starting his bus run, during his lunch breaks, and sometimes during the evening in a small office in his basement. The film is ultimately a character study of him and his process. We see him study a package of Ohio Blue Tip Matches during breakfast one morning and then hear the lines of the poem start to form in his head before he begins to write them down. He composes his work in a “secret” notebook in the spare moments of freedom in his routine. Laura, conversely, seems to have, from our somewhat limited perspective as an audience, nothing but free or spare time.
She seems to be a homemaker and spends her days indulging her creative whims—painting clothes and shower curtains, finding new recipes to bake, and, later, practicing the guitar. She has big dreams about becoming famous for her cupcakes and becoming a country music sensation with her own signature style (always white on black or vice versa). Laura heaps praise on Paterson for his poems, even though we never see him share any writing of his own with her and she doesn’t seem to know the particulars of what’s in his notebook. This specific dynamic, the praise-heaping, is a problematic one. It’s just a bit annoying how the story, like many other similar ones before it, celebrates the genius of a white artist so thoroughly despite the fact that his work does not seem all that remarkable (based on my subjective taste in poetry, of course). On the other hand, I only say “annoying” because the movie is otherwise quite diverse, and the windows it opens into the life and creative process of, say, a black rapper (Method Man) perfecting his craft in a laundromat at night, though frustratingly small, are still compelling snapshots of other minds. I just can’t escape the feeling that there’s something awfully trite to a woman of color fawning over the poems of a white man. And the fact that Paterson’s final revelation comes via a Japanese poet with no name (a “Magical Asian,” if you will, to pair with the historical “Magical Negro” trope) is also just… annoying.
But back to the dynamic between Paterson and Laura. It’s one with potentially unplumbed depths in the film, as Driver’s physical performance seems to suggest some sort of dissatisfaction or unease that is never named or interrogated. As much as Laura does praise him, it is only fair to note that he essentially returns the favor. He praises and supports her work readily too, but there’s something in the set of his face and in his tone that suggests the aforementioned dissatisfaction. They never quarrel, and he only tells her “no” in one scene—after her dog, Marvin, destroys the “secret” notebook and the next day they are trying to suss out what she should or shouldn’t do to try to help him through processing the loss. He’s supportive to a fault—to the point that, I guess, we start to suspect that something must be up due to our prior knowledge of such stories. And that’s ultimately the question: Is it all in our heads?
Paterson reminds me in some ways of Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum (2019). Both are about poets working on their craft as time permits, but, more critically and to the point, both are also exercises in defying audience expectations where conflict is concerned. I said in my previous post on Korine’s film that, in essence, movies are generally confirmation of a paranoid pessimist’s worst fears about reality. The worst that can happen will happen in a film. The Beach Bum creates frustration and uncertainty by refusing to indulge in this sort of thing beyond perhaps the predictable death of the main character’s wife. Paterson similarly allows for only one predictable occurrence—that Marvin, when left alone with Paterson’s notebook for the evening, will destroy it. Otherwise, none of the usual movie things happen: There’s no overt domestic strife, and Marvin isn’t killed or “dog-jacked,” even though an interaction with some suspicious-seeming young men in a car who express an interest in his value might appear to suggest a potential conflict. The only gun ever drawn in the movie turns out to be a fake.
So, to return to the potential unexpressed dissatisfaction in Driver’s character, is it all in our heads and a result of past viewing experiences shaping our expectations? Maybe. As I said, no overt strife ever erupts, but films communicate a lot that is not overt through visual language like juxtaposition. For instance, we have to consider the contrast between Paterson’s cramped basement study versus Laura’s free reign to paint the whole house. One character’s creative space is small, while the other’s is much larger. Driver’s character has one small creative project, while Laura has many passions. What are we meant to take away from the simple fact that one day she’s talking about being a famous baker and the next about how she needs five-hundred dollars to buy a guitar and lessons she found online? The dreams don’t continue to multiply, but we still see the rapid switch and know, realistically, that very, very few people will be either famous bakers or musicians. And there are other things—Paterson bites into one of Laura’s cupcakes on his lunch break but then places it back in his lunchbox unfinished. It later seems that her cupcakes are fine, though, since they perform well when she sells them at the market. And yet there’s also the matter of Laura’s cheese and Brussel sprout pie which Paterson claims to enjoy even though he only takes two bites and basically drains his water glass after each. And Laura even asks him if he’s not enjoying it between the bites! Here we have the universal cinematic signposting for dissatisfaction with a meal, but Paterson is vague on whether this is dissatisfaction or not.
Is Laura a good cook or not? Is she meant to be seen as just a passionate creative or as impulsive and unfocused? There is no explicit answer, but there’s just something in Driver’s look and his behavior that suggests uncertainty or nervousness about something. The character reminds me of a fundamentally awkward person who’s uncertain how to behave naturally in a relationship and so opts for silence and always answering in the affirmative. Maybe they were aiming for something more poetic about calm waters running deep, but it strikes me more as a portrait of a sort of a possibly shy man that finally got the girl but now isn’t really sure how to behave around her. He loves her (and explicitly says in one poem he can’t live without her), but the relationship feels stunted or restrained in some way that is hard to pin down.
If there’s any dissatisfaction there in Paterson’s relationship or not, there doesn’t seem to be any in or with his creative process. Watching Paterson reminded me of a topic I thought about a lot when I was younger—the idea of being honest with yourself as a creative about what level of success or recognition is necessary for you to be fulfilled. For me as a writer, the big question ended up being, Do I want to be published by a big press (Y/N)? When I was very young, I had a very nebulous sort of idea of what success as a writer would look like. I guess I always assumed that that would look like being published traditionally—the only picture of success in that field I could envision because it was all I was exposed to at that point—but I don’t remember ever externalizing that desire or in any way vocalizing it. As I got older, I became more self-reflective, and figuring out what I actually wanted from writing became both more important and more doable since I had a better sense of what avenues were available. It became increasingly clear that I wasn’t going to be a Big-Time Writer—that the odds weren’t in my favor period and that, furthermore, my particular cocktail of mental issues probably wasn’t conducive to even initiating, much less seeing through, the process. At this point, self-publishing (probably only digitally) is the only thing I could see myself pursuing if I ever had anything worth publishing, but that’s a whole other topic altogether.
On the subject of publishing, though, I am going to go ahead and link to a very illustrative video by essayist and author Lindsay Ellis on YouTube. In it, she walks through her process of getting published in the old-fashioned, Big-Time sense. If any aspiring writers are reading this for some reason, I highly recommend watching the video and also having that heart to heart with yourself I mentioned before if you have vague ideas of success currently. Would that we could all be Stephen King! Unfortunately for most of us, the life of the writer as depicted in literary fiction (as only a writer) is almost certainly out of reach. Paterson is much closer to reality (the writer as also a 9-to-5-er).
Like I said before, however, Paterson seems content creatively. He is content to keep his poems in his notebook and is hesitant to even make personal copies or share them with Laura. He tells her at one point that he is writing a poem for her, but the only one he ever shares with her is one written by a young girl poet he meets while coming home from work one day. During his nightly visits to a bar for his single beer of the day, Paterson sits at the bar and stares at a wall of news clippings and images of famous figures, including creatives, associated with Paterson compiled by the bar’s owner, Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley). There’s no sense of despondency here, despite the fact that Paterson is in a bar, which is often cinematic shorthand for dissatisfaction. Another way of looking at the small office in the basement I mentioned before, in fact, is to see it not as a negative aspect of Paterson’s creative existence but as evidence of his satisfaction with where he is as a creative—He’s perfectly happy with a dedicated space for work, and he’s only too willing to leave it when prompted by Laura. It takes up little space in the house, but so too is writing just one small part of Paterson’s routine and life. He’s the opposite of the obsessive, consumed creative depicted by much of fiction in this way.
If we run with the idea of Paterson and Laura being contrasting portraits of creativity, then, one could argue that he is a creative with a sense of the scope of success he needs to be satisfied, while she is one who has not yet made that decision. She is initially introduced to us, after all, as a literal dreamer when she shares a dream with Paterson in bed at the start of his day, and, as previously noted, the scope of her artistic dreams may realistically be simply out of reach. Her big day at the market nets her just under three-hundred dollars, which is a success (and a relief after the ambiguous messaging about her cooking from earlier in the film), but it’s not a success she could live on. The two no doubt spend a sizeable chunk of that money when they go out to celebrate with dinner and a movie. She seems to be picking up the guitar quickly enough, but there’s a world of difference between playing a guitar and being a country music star. Of course, a less cynical and pessimistic reading of this information would be that perhaps this is a scope of success that Laura is content with. Maybe she doesn’t actually need to accomplish any of these grander things and the process of learning a new skill is enough for her. The film is neither condemnatory towards her nor excessively celebratory.
It’s her freedom and security as a homemaker that allows Laura is to pursue her passions, however. She’s happy and cared for, which frees her to do what she does. I wrote before in my Beach Bum post about how the idea of the tortured artist is a tired and dangerous one to continue to propagate, and I thought of it again while watching Paterson. As opposed to those other portraits of creatives that I keep referring to, Paterson opts for something more realistic. Paterson has to work to write his poetry, and, in fact, the film makes the argument that one does not need to be a Writer to write. A prominent focus of the film is the poet William Carlos Williams who, we are reminded, also worked as a physician while writing his poetry. When Paterson meets Masatoshi Nagase’s “Japanese Poet” character at the climax of the film, he introduces himself only as a bus driver; however, his conversation with the other man ends with him receiving a new blank notebook. The clear message is that being a bus driver (or physician or meteorologist or whatever) is not mutually exclusive with being a poet. Creativity can (and arguably realistically must) live alongside the practical necessity of living—and that means making a living.
While watching the movie, I also thought about some of the arguments I’ve seen other people make about the work week and how a 40-hour schedule (probably much higher for those working multiple jobs to try to earn a living wage today) is designed to make people desperate for relaxation and consumption above all else and to take away the time and desire to, say, campaign for social change or even to engage with the world more constructively or creatively. This really is not my wheelhouse at all, so I am just paraphrasing what I’ve seen others say, and yet it makes a certain amount of sense. The massive protests we’ve been seeing in the wake of George Floyd’s murder for weeks and weeks now in America arguably would not be quite so sustainable if so many Americans were not currently out of work. There’s no doubt that the necessity of work stifles our ability to do much besides work. The scope of Paterson’s creativity enables him to function as an artist under these conditions, but there are plenty of creative dreams that will never be realized due to the nature of our society. There are video games, novels, movies, paintings, and other great works of art that will never see the light of day because their potential creators’ situations are such that they cannot create, whether that’s because of their physical work situation or possibly a combination of that with mental health issues (possibly exacerbated by their physical work situation—and so we go round and round).
Personally, I’ve felt the desire to create anything just slip further and further away with time. As I’ve become busier with work as an adult and have become more aware of just how precarious my situation is and just how cruel and unfair the world actually is, I’ve lost just about any will to sit down and write or draw consistently. One of my biggest fears is that I won’t have any sort of legacy and that I’ll spend my whole life existing only to consume or living just to work so that I can live to work some more. And now even that grim future looks increasingly unlikely as we face down a virtually uncontrolled pandemic in this country. The ruling class is desperate to get us all back out to work despite the significant safety risks. I live with someone who is immunocompromised and works in public schools, and I’ve spent this summer trying and failing to deal with the very strong possibility that they will catch COVID if they’re made to go back to work. If they get it, there’s almost certainly no way I won’t, and the thought of potentially losing them and my own life all because of the truly shitty demented world in which we live just makes me want to scream. If I could just scream until I can’t anymore, I think, maybe I’d be able to get the despair out of me.
I don’t want to belabor this point, and, truthfully, I don’t even have the words to describe in full how I feel about the world right now. Or the words are there and I just don’t have the will to find them. This post simply wouldn’t exist if the power hadn’t been off for hours today (July 22nd), leaving me with “nothing” to do but write. And even this isn’t what I want to do as a creative person. I don’t know that Paterson is really dissatisfied with any aspect of his life. The happy ending of the film is him starting a new poem in his new notebook and going home to continue his established routine for another week. He seems secure enough and happy enough with the scope of his creativity, so I’m really just projecting onto him. But that uneasy cast to his face makes me imagine that, like me, maybe there’s an irreconcilable part of himself that’s screaming inside anyway.
