I often think that I’m distracted. But then I realise that’s not exactly true. It’s not that I’m not paying attention. Maybe I’m just paying attention to the wrong things.

While someone is telling me a story, I notice the way they hold their cup between their hands. While everyone else is taking pictures of a monument, I’m looking at the crack in the wall beside it, the plant growing between the stones, the elderly man sitting nearby who looks as if he’s been waiting for someone for years.

When I walk through a city, I catch fragments of conversations that I’ll probably forget within minutes, yet some sentences stay with me for days. I notice the way two people brush past each other without really touching, the dog that keeps turning around to make sure its human is still there, the worn-out shoes of someone who has probably walked much further than we could ever imagine.

Sometimes I wonder whether everyone notices these things and simply lets them pass by. Because for me, it’s almost impossible. It’s as if the world is made up of thousands of tiny details constantly asking to be seen.

Maybe that’s also why I’ve always struggled to choose just one creative path. Because everything seems to be telling a story. A photograph is never just an image. A sound recorded on the Underground is never just noise. A torn piece of fabric is never just fabric. A sentence overheard by chance can become pages of reflection. An object found on the ground can turn into a collage. A scar can become a tattoo.

For a long time, I thought this sensitivity was a flaw.

You’re distracted. You’re too much. You get lost in the details. Get to the point.

Then I started wondering if the details were the point all along.

Maybe this is simply the way I move through the world: collecting the things that seem insignificant and remembering that this is often where our humanity hides. In automatic gestures. In hesitation. In cracks. In the moments and objects that never make it to centre stage.

I don’t know whether other people truly don’t notice these things or whether they’ve simply learned to ignore them.

I only know that I notice them.

And perhaps all of my art begins there: in the attempt to say, “Did you see that?” while pointing at something small that was about to be forgotten.

Because sometimes the smallest things are the ones that tell the greatest truths.