The Subtle Notes
“To be an artist is… a practice of paying attention. Refining our sensitivity to tune in to the more subtle notes” Rick Rubin
“We perceive, filter and collect data, then curate an experience for ourselves based on this information”
“Your entire life is a form of self-expression”. Rick Rubin
I was always going to quote Rick Rubin eventually. I don’t agree with his every word on everything, but lots of what he believes rings true for me.
This is going to be a roundabout ramble that comes to no conclusion, but bear with me and maybe you’ll agree or have an opinion on it.
Recently I was on my way to Aldgate East station in East London and wandered past The Whitechapel Gallery. I decided to pop in with my spare 20 minutes and see whatever art was available unticketed. It turned out that my attention and mood that afternoon didn’t lend itself to whatever was on show. Perhaps I didn’t have the focus needed for anything in that moment, having just been part of a group critique at my old photography school. I wasn’t immediately struck by what the artist had made, so decided to do a brief drift around the room to see if anything grabbed my attention and let my eyes rest there.
Some writing from the artist’s journal struck me and I took a bad picture of it. I liked what they had written. But it wasn’t what they had written that got me thinking. The artist was sadly deceased, and so the exhibition was something of a retrospective. The glass table casing had collections of items that the curators felt told us something about the artist. The room was showing us who they had been and what parts of them might be relevant to the work they had made.
It reminded me of something I wrote recently about AI art being less interesting to people because fans of art, whether musical, visual, written, or any kind, are interested in the people behind it and why they had made what they made. If this is true, then maybe everyone deserves this kind of interest?
It got me thinking about this privilege that known artists, writers, and scientists have, that everything or so much of what they have said and done becomes important. What is it that makes what this person wrote on a scrap of paper more important than something you have written today, if it was with intention and felt relevant to life? I’m not talking about a scrappy grocery list or a “I’ll be back by 7pm” note, which no one writes these days anyway now that everything is a text, but your journals, your to-do lists, your notes to self that make their way into a notebook. Maybe even your Morning Pages, something I’ve started doing (see Julia Cameron, *The Artist’s Way*) and would hope to burn before passing away, should anyone for even a second want to read them.
The phrase “If one thing matters, everything matters” started running round my head. It’s the name of a show by the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans from 2003 and somehow felt relevant here.
I started to imagine that everyone could get a retrospective of their lives in this way, hopefully before they passed away, and to what extent that would change how we curated our lives.
There is something rather idealistic about the idea of curating your life, especially if you have to do something as difficult as, say, a strenuous manual or a boring repetitive job with long hours to make ends meet. But without wanting to make life performative, I wondered what about our lives would people find and say was important. Pivotal moments, photographs of you with certain friends or family, notes to self even if digital, drawings done as a child or adult, photos taken of a sunset or a tree or holiday destination, colours chosen for your home, recipes you kept somewhere. Books you read.
How would you or I be depicted in that small room full of mementos and signifiers?
But then I wondered, how does this whole idea sit alongside the concept of “death of the ego”? A phrase used across spiritual, psychological, and philosophical traditions to describe a profound shift in identity, moving away from a narrow sense of self, the ego, toward a deeper, more expansive awareness. In other words, the collapse of the illusion that your worth or existence is tied to your identity or persona.
If one thing matters, everything matters.
There’s a paradox here that I always circle back to in my own time. If everything matters, then perhaps it also follows that nothing matters in the way we think it does, at least not from the standpoint of the ego. What if the beauty isn’t in the preservation of meaning, but in the letting go of it? What if the real art of a life isn’t in how it’s remembered, but in how fully it was lived, moment to moment, free of performance or the need to make it significant?
Maybe the idea of curating our lives, like we might curate a gallery of our past selves, only makes sense up until the point where the ego loosens its grip. Beyond that, perhaps we begin to sense that we were never the centre of the story anyway, just part of the field. Just a note in the song.
People have casually made fun of my very plain circle tattoo before, but I think it often sums things up so perfectly I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be reminded of.
Maybe that’s why it felt right, as a reminder of wholeness, of continuity, and of the soft disappearance of beginnings and ends.
About Me
I’m Sarah. I’m a creative coach, photographer, recording artist, and music mentor. My work lives at the place where emotional insight, connection and the drive to make meaningful things meet.
Over the past two decades, I’ve toured the World as a musician (Sarah Howells, Bryde and Paper Aeroplanes), photographed countless faces and moments, and coached incredible humans, many of them creatives, through burnout, resistance, reinvention, deep transformation and starting something.
I believe in creativity as a life force, a healing tool, a source of deep learning and of play.
More if you’re curious…
Music – I release music under the name Bryde, songs about longing, power, softness, and everything in between.
Photography – I photograph people in a way that lets them be seen. You can find my portrait work here
Coaching – I work 1:1 with creatives, guiding them through blocks, burnout, reinvention, and big dreams. Learn more or book a session here.
Or just stay here, on the ground. I’ll be writing once a month.