On Cloudwatching

Commonplace Newsletter #102

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“It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm." 
Samuel Johnson: Idler #11 (24 June 1758) 

When I was younger I used to detest small talk, whether it be about the weather or any other topic which seemed to offer no possibility of actually leading anywhere or being meaningful. I was a philosophy and psychology student you see, enamoured with the idea of wittering on and having ‘deep conversations’ about ‘big ideas’¹. How foolish I was to not see the paradox that the extraordinary parts of life are to only be found in the depths of the ordinary- are often right in front of you- and that to intentionally try and stage (self-) important conversations leads to being that most mundane type of character- the pompous know-it-all whose book-learned concepts become a limitation when put up against authentic wisdom that can only be derived from a life that’s well lived when a person is far away from the library. 

A person’s declaration (and it is always a declaration, always apropos of nothing) that they hate small talk is a tell. And not a subtle one. From that sentiment alone, you can deduce that the small-talk detester has a utilitarian cast of mind that says every activity must have a tangible, quantifiable outcome and benefit (or at least it should give this appearance). You can also bet that they listen to lots and lots of podcasts. I am truly grateful that I came of age and went through my own pretentious anti-small talk phase before the advent of Spotify and the like, otherwise I might well have become a Hubermensch or a Fridman proselytiser².  

Which is not to say that I crave small talk and endlessly seek it out, but that you have to take these things for what they are and enjoy them on their own terms. Small talk and especially its most common subgenre of weather-talk is about the simple statement of the patently obvious, as Dr Johnson tells us. It is the simple act of noticing and affirming the present moment. When person A and person B have the dialogue of: 

A: [Tugging at collar] It’s a hot one today 

B: You’re not wrong, I’m boiling, me 

What they are really saying is: 

A: I am here and alive in this present moment 

B: Good to meet you, so am I

So weather-talk orientates you and creates common ground without the risk of things quickly descending into argument and acrimony³. This is my take on it anyway. Of course, all of this is not done consciously- neither person A or B could truly explain why they have the exchange that they have and what purpose it serves- it’s just something that they do. It’s just how people act, they would say. And they are right. People say something to have something to say, because the act of communicating and communing is itself the point- the relating, the affirming of life, the recognition of the present is the purpose of the dialogue.

There is nothing small about small talk.

St Ives, Cornwall.

Cloudwatching has become my new pastime. As talk of the weather situates you when with another (usually a stranger or a new acquaintance that circumstance has led you to share a moment with), cloudwatching orientates you to the present when you are by yourself.

Every session of cloudwatching is the same but it is also different every time. Even if the temperature and wind speed were to hardly ever differ (which is certainly not the case here in England where the weather is so changeable⁴) the clouds would still always be different shapes and paint different pictures across the sky. I find that this ephemerality reminds you of both the moving nature of time and also of the timelessness that lies beyond. The shapes you see in the clouds- the animals, nature, buildings, monsters and symbols- are perhaps as telling as any take on the Rorschach test. Somehow just looking at the clouds- a completely free activity- has a therapeutic and restorative effect, at least for me.

There is nothing except for the clouds.

I am not talking about identifying clouds and attempting to predict the weather here- but the observation of clouds for its own sake- beyond human imposed categories and terminology and predictions. Because I feel like I have more than enough of those things in my life as it is.

In this Information Age, in this time of Knowledge Workers toiling in the Attention Economy, it is a true pleasure to do something that doesn’t involve thinking or forming an opinion or having to look something up or find something out. All of those/these concerns and modes of being disappear when your head is in the clouds.  

It’s undeniable that many of my ideas come to me when I am up in the clouds. And I would say that this works simply because I do not see cloudwatching as an instrumental activity for eliciting some specific outcome. Ideas come when you are not banging your head on a desk desperately trying to make an idea materialise. Optimisation hacks are not something that the Muses really take into consideration.

Cloudwatching is a enjoyable in and of itself, like going for a walk or looking at the ocean. It’s free to all and it is available all day, every day. To experience it all you have to do is pull yourself from the screen, turn your eyes to the window and look up. 

Until next time, 

Live well, 

Tom. 

1. I use inverted commas because of course these were psuedo-deep conversations about psuedo-big topics, they had the form and some of the vocabulary of the real thing but were self-conscious, performative and either overly earnest or overly ironic. 

It was a very understandable worldview of course for a teenager leaving home for the first time.

2. For those who don’t know- and I envy you if this is the case- this sentence is a reference to podcaster and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and podcaster and computer scientist Lex Fridman. At the time of writing they both talk for hours and hours each week on their respective podcasts that both reach audiences in the millions. One wears a black shirt, the other wears a white shirt. It is all as interesting as this description makes it sound. The monochromaticism is a metaphor, it feels like. 

3. Although in these tense times anything is possible. 

4. There is a saying I’ve heard here in Devon: “If you don’t like the weather here; then wait twenty minutes.”