Columbus (2017): The Crisis of Interest
Human interests and predilections are as vast as they are curious. But as vast and curious as the collective array of our interests and predilections are, none of us can be interested in everything. Interest, by its very nature, is partial and discriminating. Thus, to be interested in everything is, in actuality, to be interested in nothing. We can be interested in some things, but this begs the question: why are we interested in some things, but not in other things?
In other words, how does any particular thing manage to arouse our interest?
CASEY: This was one of the first modernist banks in America. You can imagine at the time that walking into an all-glass bank was quite unusual, radical, really, because during that time banks were designed to be imposing, fortress-like, with tellers behind bars. The idea here was that you walk in at street level. You don’t have to climb any stairs. It’s inviting.
JIN waves at CASEY.
Uh, sorry, what?
JIN: What are you doing?
CASEY: What?
JIN: Who are you?
CASEY: Shut up. I’m just trying to tell you about this building.
JIN: Okay, stop with the tour guide mode for a second.
CASEY: I’m not in a mode.
JIN: You said this is one of your favorite buildings.
CASEY: It is.
JIN: Why?
CASEY: It’s one of the first modernist banks in the United States.
JIN: No, no, that can’t be it. Do you like this building intellectually because of all the facts?
CASEY: No… I’m also moved by it.
JIN: Yes, yes, tell me about that. What moves you?
CASEY: I thought you hated architecture.
JIN: I do—but I’m interested in what moves you, particularly about a building.
Our interest is aroused when something speaks to us on a personal level, when something stimulates us in a way that demands our attention, as if calling out to us to behold the object of our interest with a keener eye. As this interest deepens, we might eventually arrive at what is known as passion. Further, there is a level beyond passion whereupon our interest becomes an extreme known as obsession.
But is there something that we are missing?
GABRIEL: No, no, he’s not saying it’s an actual myth. He’s just questioning this common usage of “attention span.” Or really this idea of a shortening attention span.
CASEY: So he doesn’t think that this is happening? You’re constantly talking about how no one can finish a book anymore.
GABRIEL: Yes, that’s exactly the point. I’m bookish. We’re both bookish. So what he’s saying is that when we talk about “attention,” we’re biased toward reading. Like, I had this professor who used to go on and on about the idiocy of video games. He talked about how his son would play for hours and that he once tried playing with him, but found it completely dull after just a few minutes. Now, if this was reversed, if the son was talking about how his dad would read for hours and he once tried reading with him, but found it boring after a few minutes, well, he would accuse the son of having a short attention span, right? But why don’t we accuse the professor of having a short attention span?
CASEY: Because it’s not about attention for him. It just seems idiotic.
GABRIEL: But what if that’s exactly the case for the son? See, what he’s saying is that this boy is actually able to give hours of attention to a video game because it’s interesting to him.
CASEY: Yeah, but that’s because video games are designed for people with short attention spans.
GABRIEL: Yeah, see, that’s what bookish people say. But no, what this guy is saying is it’s not a matter of attention, but of interest. The professor doesn’t have patience for the video game because he’s not interested in that kind of experience. In the same way that the son might not be interested in books, and it’s not that he doesn’t have the ability to pay attention, clearly he does. Like the professor, he’s able to pay attention for hours if he finds something interesting.
CASEY: So, down with books, long live video games?
GABRIEL: No, not at all. What he’s offering is a critique of a critique. But in its place, he identifies a different kind of crisis. Not the crisis of attention, but the crisis of interest. See, to talk about attention is its own kind of distraction. Kids pay attention to things that interest them. The real question is what interests them? Or us? Are we losing interest in things that matter? Words on a page, for instance. Yeah, see, maybe that’s not so important. What about everyday life? Are we losing interest in everyday life?
A better way to understand Gabriel’s questions concerning the purported crisis of interest is to pose a more germane question of our own. That being, is there something important, something urgent, that we should be more interested in than we currently are? To put it more simply, is there anything that we should all be fundamentally interested in?
This is the question to which Jin finds the answer with the help of Casey.
Jin works as a translator for a publishing company in Seoul. He finds his work not only uninteresting but rather dreadful. He is weary of everyday life and is often cynical, but his is a practiced, not a natural, cynicism. He feels bothered and bitter about being obligated to come to Columbus, Indiana, where his architect father has just fallen into a coma. He thinks it unfair that he should put his life on hold while he waits for his father to either recover or die. He and his father have not spoken in over a year, and he is disquieted by the thought that his father never took an interest in him, that they never really talked, that his father never cared to make time for him, as he himself is now expected to do for his comatose father.
Yet it is not until a chance encounter with Casey that the nature of Jin’s crisis of interest becomes more and more apparent. Like Jin’s father, Casey is passionate about architecture. She even has a list of her favorite architectural sites in Columbus, and as she introduces Jin to some of these in turn, something begins to take shape inside of Jin—something not unlike interest. That is, through Casey, Jin experiences what it truly means to have interest. Through Casey, Jin is able to at least sense by degrees the impetus behind his father’s lifelong preoccupation with architecture.
To have interest is to give a shit. Jin thinks that his father never gave a shit about him because the latter was always too busy giving a shit about architecture instead. But what if it is Jin who never truly gave a shit? Not about his father, per se, but about understanding his father. Jin never took an interest in architecture because he was never interested in understanding his father. Why? Because he was only ever interested in his own emotions, of feeling neglected and marginalized, over how his father devoted his life to architecture rather than being more involved as a dad. Jin never gave a shit about understanding his father because he was predisposed to characterize him as a man who preferred a bunch of inert buildings to his own breathing son.
Therein lies our crisis of interest: the interest, or lack thereof, in looking beyond the surface. Like Jin, we are apt to pass judgment before we even bother to try to understand the heart of the matter. We are wont to adopt our strongest immediate impression as the obvious and self-evident explanation provided that there is no glaring evidence to the contrary. We are wont to assume what seems to be the case as indeed being the case. We are wont to see something partial to then consider it absolute. And we are wont to proceed in such a fashion because it represents a much easier process than actually giving a shit to look more closely and deliberately as to descry what is less obvious but perhaps more significant.
Had Jin ever taken an interest in looking beyond the surface, he would have realized that these buildings are not just buildings to his father. Indeed, the heart of the matter is not that his father was never interested in him but that he found in architecture an all-consuming interest. That is the cost of finding one’s calling. Jin might not be able to see exactly what his father sees in a building, but he is capable and has always been capable of seeing that there is more to a building than the mere concrete surface of its façade. Had Jin ever taken an interest in understanding the heart of the matter, he would have seen that to find in this life an interest so singularly meaningful and worthwhile is to have a greater reason to live than the rudimentary animal functions of survival and reproduction.
Because how can anyone reasonably blame another for being bound to a reason that gives them the necessary strength and resolve to not merely subsist and survive but to be alive?
CASEY: It’s number three on my list.
JIN: Number three, really?
CASEY: Mostly because… it was the beginning for me, you know?
JIN: This one here?
CASEY: Yep.
JIN: And you didn’t know anything about it?
CASEY: Nothing. I just saw it from over there. I’d probably seen it a thousand times before, but this one night, I was getting in my car and I… looked up, and saw it. So I jumped back in the car and drove up here. Same spot and I just stared at it for a really long time.
CASEY: There were nights that my mom just wouldn’t come home at all. I had no clue where she was. That’s when I started coming here. I found it weirdly comforting. In the middle of all the mess, in this fucking strip mall there was this—(Traces the outline of the building with her hand holding the cigarette.) This… I sort of weirdly became obsessed with this building after that. That’s when I discovered Deborah Berke, who designed it. And I learned about Saarinen, whom she adores, and just started reading all this stuff. Suddenly the place I’d lived my whole life felt different, like I had been transported somewhere else.
JIN: God, my dad would’ve loved you.
It is once Jin takes an interest in seeing architecture through Casey’s eyes that he begins to better understand his father and his own feelings about his relationship with his father. As Jin gets to know Casey better and what it is about architecture that moves her, he gets closer and closer to understanding that there is something more real and substantial to a building, for Casey and his father, than simply its physical presence: it is the presence of beauty and truth in its most personal and intimate form.
This understanding allows Jin’s bitterness and practiced cynicism to slowly dissipate as Jin encourages Casey to accept Deborah Berke’s offer to study architecture at the University of New Haven and reassures her that her mom wants this for her and that she is very proud of her. In Columbus they say their hellos and they say their goodbyes—Casey ultimately leaves, and Jin ultimately stays. But why could not Jin encourage and reassure his father as he does Casey? The crisis of interest. Understanding his father might not have gotten the latter to take more of an interest in him, but Jin would have at least understood and perhaps found peace, if nothing else, in that understanding. Or perhaps, rather than feeling slighted, he might have even felt happy for his father for having devoted his life to an interest that gave his life meaning.
We can never truly understand anything that we do not give a shit about. The crisis of interest is the crisis of not giving a shit. The problem is not that we are not able to see; rather, it is that we do not care to see. The world, others, ourselves… everything starts to look much different once we care to see into the heart of the matter.