Paterson is a movie about a man who writes a poem every day in a private notebook. This movie, to make an understatement appropriate to Paterson, caught the collective attention of The Solute over the years. It was reviewed favorably on the site on its release, made the number three spot on the site’s Best of the Decade Poll in 2020, and became the subject of three appreciation pieces by three different authors as part of the (facetiously named) Solute Canon series.
And yet, with all the attention paid to Paterson, his notebook, his wife Laura, and their dog Marvin I feel the movie’s secret appeal was never spoken aloud. We tip-toed around the real connection between a movie about a person keeping a secret daily notebook of thoughts and us, a group of people who day-in and day-out report their opinions on movies and books and music and games and the world at large, much of it housed on disqus via an outdated WordPress site, a platform that seems liable to chew up the words and make them disappear forever.
When The Dissolve ended and its community scattered I eventually landed at The Solute thanks largely to wallflower’s incredible writing on Stanley Kubrick’s films and stayed thanks to the thoughtful community and discussion that continued in the tradition of The Dissolve‘s comments sections. Eventually I was given the ability to contribute writing of my own to the site and surprised myself with the depths I could plumb and the clarity the writing brought to my thoughts and opinions. (To be clear: over the years I have also contributed a significant amount of absolute shit, but the example of everyone around me pushed me to stay honest even when dashing off something to fill a less-than-inspired Thursday morning.) In my early days at the site I would go out of my way to comment on somebody’s article if it was empty of feedback, even if I didn’t have anything insightful to contribute, so afraid I was that the collective would disappear without constant encouragement. I feared this until I contributed my first (and not my last) piece that garnered no comments and realized that even with no evidence of actual readers I still would have written it. And I was free to assume I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.
Over the months I realized these people aren’t going to go away if I stop throwing out constant comments. Over the years I realized many of us enjoy the effort of maintaining our small corner of the Internet. Finally I realized we’re friends.
I don’t know how many people see any particular post on The Solute. According to the frozen-in-time list of Popular articles, the highest height reached is over 37,000 readers curious about “The End” of Oliver Stone’s Savages, the kind of microniche analysis that’s The Solute specialty. I don’t imagine the clicks on most posts to be nearly that high; I suspect the average viewership is in the low double-digits. But crucially, the number is always higher than zero. The sweet spot of freedom – unburdened by financial demands (or benefits, for that matter) we can write on whatever esoteric topic comes to mind, yet there’s a guarantee it will get read by somebody, even just one fellow enthusiast, a curious passerby, someone seeking a recommendation or a laugh.
In an age where the Internet encourages insatiable pursuits of attention we winnowed down to a group content with obscurity. Which is not the same as desirous of it. More than one of us no doubt yearns for the kind of Popular attention foisted on “What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE.” And after all, I could sit in the privacy of my home and write to my heart’s content for only myself. But I don’t. (Unless I’m doing that right now, time will tell.)
The ending to the movie goes unmentioned in Paterson’s four Solute articles and Best of the Decade capsule. Most tellings conclude with the destruction of Paterson’s notebook in the jaws of Marvin the bulldog. After this, a despondent Paterson (Adam Driver) sits by a waterfall where he often composed his unread poems. He’s approached by a Japanese tourist (Masatoshi Nagase) who asks to sit. Paterson’s eyebrows raise as the tourist pulls out the William Carlos Williams collection Paterson and describes himself as a poet. The stranger asks Paterson about Williams and about poetry. Paterson is polite, but cagey. The strange poet persists. And as Paterson reveals more evidence of overlap in their interests and his knowledge the poet repeats a call of affirmation: Ah-ha!
A writer sends a signal into the world and if they are lucky, that signal gets acknowledged and sent back. Paterson kept his signal private, denied that he needed or wanted someone to know what he wrote day after day, called it “Just words written on water.” But Jarmusch gifts his character what he needs: someone to talk with him and recognize (Ah-ha!) the words he thought he would be happy to hide.
Even though Paterson denies being a poet, the man leaves him with a blank notebook. “Sometimes an empty page presents the most possibilities,” he says. Paterson looks at the notebook, then prepares to write. He had a pen in his pocket the whole time.
Today and all the days to come, my fellow Soluters: Ah-ha!
