The background noise of life
Aperio and without FTH
When I walk down the street doing errands in Boulogne Billancourt I stop when I see two people talking and take note
Your practice of walking through Boulogne-Billancourt, pausing to listen to brief fragments of conversation between strangers, captures the essence of the poetic tradition of observing everyday life. These small, seemingly mundane exchanges—snippets like “Il est tout seul,” “La vaneka,” or “On se revoit plus”—act as fragments of lived experience, rich in rhythm and meaning. This method aligns with the flâneur’s urban wanderings, Frank O’Hara’s overheard dialogues, and the haibun poetic diaries of Bashō, all of whom found poetry in the infra-ordinary moments of daily existence.
This approach reveals how poetry can emerge simply through attentive presence, noticing what is often overlooked. The infra-ordinary—the subtle, habitual background details of life—forms the texture of our social world and personal experience. By pausing to observe and absorb these fleeting interactions, you’re already composing poetry in real time, blending silence, presence, and intuition. This is a return to poetry as a lived, embodied experience, a networked and fragmented form that honors the unnoticed rhythms shaping our everyday reality.
Il est tout seul
Bonne vie
Le jours est trop court
Une lavende
C’est leger
‘sil faut aller chercher
Ah bon
Lavende
On se revoit plus
On est la
Petit pois
Lasagna
5 ou 10
Tomates
Artichauds
Moussaka
Ca vas
La haut
C’est macons ?
La vaneka
11:50
Je suis partis a midi et demi
Je pars
Je vais
Et voila
Yes, your method—observing everyday street scenes, pausing to absorb brief moments between strangers—is very much in the spirit of certain poetic traditions. Many poets have done something similar, transforming fleeting encounters and overheard snippets into verse. Here are a few key examples and traditions that align with your approach:
🧾 1. The Flâneur & Urban Observation
- Charles Baudelaire pioneered the concept of the flâneur—a detached, curious urban wanderer observing the rhythms of the city.
- In “Tableaux Parisiens”, he transforms Parisian scenes and anonymous people into poetic reflections on modern life.
- Example approach: observe a scene, pause, and reflect on its emotional or symbolic meaning.
🗣️ 2. Overheard Speech & Fragmented Dialogue
- Frank O’Hara (New York School) wrote poems based on overheard conversations, daily errands, and lunch breaks.
- “The Day Lady Died” is a famous example—it’s full of names, stores, and streets, blending mundane errands with deep emotion.
- Joe Brainard and Bernadette Mayer also worked with fragments of real life, lists, and overheard dialogue in poetic form.
📓 3. Haibun & Japanese Poetic Diaries
- The haibun, a form used by Matsuo Bashō, combines prose diary entries and haiku. Bashō’s “Narrow Road to the Deep North” involves stopping to describe scenes or thoughts during a journey.
- This approach values the pause and the act of noting, just like you stopping to observe a conversation.
🎥 4. Documentary & Poetic Journalism
- Some poets like Muriel Rukeyser wrote “documentary poetry,” blending fact, witness, and lyricism.
- More contemporary examples include Claudia Rankine, whose work often includes real conversations and public interactions.
🧭 Your Method
You’re walking, pausing, noting. That’s already poetic. If you write it down—either as direct transcription, reflection, or poetic distillation—you’re in conversation with all these traditions.
Would you like help turning one of your observed scenes into a poem? You could describe what you saw (or imagine one), and I can help you shape it.
Yes—exactly. It is already a poem.
The act of walking, stopping, witnessing two people talking, and taking mental note—that gesture is poetic. It’s a poem in the way a breath can be a line break. You’re composing with attention, silence, and presence.
You don’t even need to write it down for it to be poetry. As Cecilia Vicuña once said:
“A poem lives in the air before it is written.”
In that moment on the street, you’re the poet, and the city becomes your unwritten stanza.
If you ever choose to write it, you’re simply catching a shadow of something that already existed in full.
Would you like me to give that moment a shape, just to see what it might look like written? Or would that interrupt its quiet?
You’re working like a minimalist. Like Aram Saroyan, who wrote one-word poems. Or Sei Shōnagon with her lists. Or Samuel Beckett, who said: “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
So oral cultures to written cultures to what
So, what comes after written culture?
Maybe it’s:
A return to presence.
But digitally scaffolded.
Fragmented.
Intuitive.
Networked.
Felt in the body as much as the mind.
Write the infra-ordinary
“Infra-ordinary” is a term that comes from French sociologist Michele Lamont and others who study everyday life and social theory. It refers to the subtle, often unnoticed, routine aspects of daily life that shape our experiences and social world — things that are below the level of the “ordinary” or typical, but that are still important.
In other words, infra-ordinary highlights those small, taken-for-granted details, habits, or background conditions that often go unnoticed but make up the texture of everyday existence. It’s kind of like the background noise of life, or the little everyday patterns that form the foundation for larger social behaviors and meanings.