rain on the tram glass
neon dissolves into veins
the city exhales
There’s a small café in Bern I sometimes write in when the world feels too sharp. It’s hidden between an antique shop and a tailor who always leaves his door half open, no matter the season. The tables are uneven, the chairs mismatched. But the light — the light is perfect.
Last week, as I sat there with a chipped cup of coffee, I thought about my favorite artists. Not the ones who hang in museums or headline festivals. The ones who shape the invisible. The ones who teach me how to see again.
The Architects of Stillness
If I close my eyes, I can still see Miyazaki’s worlds moving in slow motion. Steam rising from a pot, wind threading through tall grass, rain washing a street that smells of soy and metal. His films breathe. They remind me that motion doesn’t have to mean rush — it can mean rhythm.
Kubrick, in contrast, taught me the discipline of vision. His worlds are maps drawn in light and geometry. The silence in his films isn’t empty — it hums, precise as a heartbeat. Every object, every pause, is deliberate. He didn’t tell you what to feel; he built the space where you could feel it yourself.
Both men built universes that made the ordinary infinite. A teapot. A shadow. A sigh. They turned details into devotion.
The Listeners
Then there are artists who work in silence, who listen more than they speak.
Brian Eno calls his music “gardening.” He plants sounds and waits for them to grow. His songs breathe — soft loops, accidental echoes, light spilling through reverb. They don’t rush to impress. They linger.
Agnes Martin painted patience. I saw one of her pieces once in Basel. At first it looked like nothing. Faint graphite lines, almost invisible. But if you stay long enough, the canvas begins to hum. The silence grows muscles.
The world gets louder every year, but these artists remind me: attention is the last form of rebellion.
The Honest Makers
A few years ago, in Kurashiki, I met a potter with clay permanently under his fingernails. He sold me a small cup with a gold line running through its side. “The break,” he told me, “is the truth. The repair is the story.”
Kintsugi isn’t just about pottery. It’s a way of seeing. Cracks don’t ruin things — they reveal the life inside them.
When I look at that cup on my shelf, I see his hands, steady but rough, turning the imperfect into something holy. And I think: maybe that’s what all good art does. It tells you that the wound was worth surviving.
The Connectors
Some artists move like translators between worlds. Björk, for instance. David Byrne. They turn architecture into sound, technology into tenderness. They mix moss and machinery, concrete and rhythm.
They remind me that creativity is a kind of compost. Everything we experience — heartbreak, laughter, failure — breaks down into material for the next thing. If you feed curiosity enough, it eventually sprouts wonder.
The Everyday Artists
The man who cleans the brass rail in Bern Hauptbahnhof at dawn — he’s an artist. The barista who pours a perfect leaf into foam, even when no one’s watching. The woman at the market who stacks oranges like planets, precise and bright.
They create beauty without a name for it. Their reward is the act itself — the small rightness of doing something well.
Art isn’t just what we hang on walls. It’s what we do when no one’s grading us.
The Thread That Connects Them
All my favorite artists share one trait: they know how to stay.
Kubrick stayed with light until it confessed its geometry.
Miyazaki stayed with air until it began to breathe.
Eno stayed with sound until silence grew texture.
Martin stayed with lines until they started singing.
The potter stayed with clay until it remembered its form.
And the unnamed ones — the janitor, the vendor, the busker — stay with their small rituals until the world feels whole again, if only for a minute.
What They’ve Taught Me
Light. After Kubrick, I see the color temperature of every café. Morning blue. Noon white. Evening gold.
Air. After Miyazaki, I read the wind. The flags, the trees, the kettle steam — all messages from a slower world.
Sound. After Eno, I hear stairwells differently. Doors closing, rain tapping metal — it’s all rhythm.
Patience. After Martin, I trust stillness to speak.
Forgiveness. After kintsugi, I understand that repair is its own art form.
Art changed how I move through the day. It trained my senses to notice what most people scroll past.
The Field Guide
Art isn’t an escape from reality. It’s a return to it.
You don’t need talent. You need to look.
Start by fixing one broken thing — even if it’s just gluing a plate or stitching a sleeve.
Watch a movie with the sound off. Listen to a record in the dark.
Write one sentence that feels heavier than it should.
Arrange fruit like a constellation. Sweep a floor with intention.
Creation begins the moment you pay attention.
TL;DR
My favorite artists don’t chase perfection — they reveal presence.
They remind me that beauty isn’t rare. It’s everywhere: in cracks, in silence, in small acts of care.
Art isn’t a product. It’s a way of walking through the world.
And if you slow down enough, you’ll realize —
you’ve been surrounded by it all along.
life 