Paterson, Neurodivergence, and the Poetry of Routine

(Welcome to the Wednesday newsletter! Each week, I’m publishing a new pop culture essay from a freelancer. Remember: Your subscription fee helps me pay these freelancers for their efforts! This week: C.M. Crockford on the ways Jim Jarmusch's 2016 film Paterson resonates with the lived experience of autism.)

Every day, Paterson wakes up around 6 a.m. He kisses his half-sleeping wife, Laura, and she tells him a sliver of her dreams. He leaves the bed to get dressed, his clothes already laid out, and he eats cereal out of the same mug he always uses. He goes to work as a bus driver for his city of Paterson, New Jersey. (The synchronicity of his name and hometown is pointed out by a few characters, but Paterson is seemingly unfazed when it’s brought up.) In between bus routes, Paterson sits by the Great Falls of the Passaic River and writes poems in a small notebook. He may be emulating a favorite poet of his: William Carlos Williams, himself a Jersey resident who wrote an epic poem, also called Paterson.

These habits are only part of Paterson’s daily routine. There are elements of his day he clearly doesn’t enjoy, like walking Laura’s antagonistic bulldog, Marvin, yet he does them anyway. Each time another day is shown for the title character of the 2016 film Paterson, the viewer sees how Paterson needs this consistency, as well as what happens when that structure is thrown off even a little.

I have autism, and a psychologist recently told me that I almost certainly have ADHD. Those diagnoses certainly explain why I like routines and also why I have a self-destructive tendency to procrastinate or miss deadlines for no real reason. Living with autism and ADHD means sticking to daily habits that help me cope with the ways life can pivot and change, seemingly with no warning. Sometimes, that means I get aggravated or even melt down when that schedule gets disrupted. Yet I also have a capacity for joy the neurotypical mind actively can’t — music can be an intensive, downright spiritual experience for me — and I hold a unique perspective on the universe that I suspect comes from how my mind processes the world. It's hard not to have a different point of view when almost all sensations are incredibly strong.

Is it any wonder, then, that I write poetry, or that one of my favorite films is Paterson? Jim Jarmusch’s film intimately understands the ways repeating steady patterns of behavior each day, as rhythmic as a fine stanza of verse, can allow someone to recognize the sublime running underneath everything. Paterson’s routines would be considered boring if he tried to describe them out loud, but he encounters the poetic and unexpected within them constantly.

He sees Method Man freestyling in a laundromat and meets teens who wonder if they are the only anarchists in the city. The harmony of how he lives gives him the clarity to perceive the hidden beauty of his environment and the lifeblood of Paterson the city. (Actor Adam Driver is also key to the film’s characterization. He understands that Paterson is a reserved person but always responds and reacts with a warm passion for the world.) Contrast Paterson with another character, his co-worker, Donny, whose (understandable) complaints make the sort of clarity Paterson boasts impossible.

Paterson is also juxtaposed heavily with Laura, his wife and creative foil. Where what makes Paterson a poet is his need for stability and inner control — writing poems is something he does for himself alone, to the extent that he won’t make copies of them — Laura thrives on chaos and wants to share her work. Unlike her husband, Laura moves between mediums of expression, one day making cupcakes and the next deciding that her dream is to be a country singer. The only consistency is the black and white motif she always returns to in her creations, maybe as compelled by the pattern as Paterson is by the self-contained nature of a poem. Laura is more impulsive and experimental than her husband, but the movie never argues that this makes her less of an artist. One sequence, in which Laura stares into the black and white of the curtains she paints as Paterson narrates a love poem he has written for her, suggests that their creativity comes from the same mutual, boundless source.

Being neurodiverse means there’s sometimes a struggle in my mind between order and disorder. A good chunk of the time, disorder wins, and I’d be lying if I said I always hate the feeling. At times watching Paterson, I am the steady and predictable poet; at others, I am the flighty, chaotic artist. But I agree with Jarmusch that these two sides of artistry complement and inspire each other. Is it any coincidence that in the first scene, Laura describes a dream where she and Paterson have twins, symbols of dualism and opposite forces, and for the rest of the film, Paterson sees identical twins on his bus routes and on walks?

Paterson depicts with warm insight how grounding routine can be, how Paterson needs the stability of the same bus trips and the same beer at the local bar every night. The film also knows that unexpected disruptions of these routines can plunge the whole day into chaos and even bring out whatever demons had been safely stowed away. In the first real turn of the movie, Paterson’s watch wakes him up a bit late one morning. It’s a little thing, but it’s the little things that usually do it. The rest of his day is thrown off its axis. Donny doesn’t bother complaining, the bus breaks down, and a heartbroken actor pulls a (prop) gun in the bar. Paterson acts quickly and bravely to disarm him, and the situation deescalates. But the stoic man is clearly rattled by the person he had to become to defuse the situation.

What nearly breaks Paterson, however, is when he comes home one night to discover the hated Marvin has ripped apart the only copy of his poems. Marvin’s a stupid dog, but he also functions as a kind of truly unfair retribution for an artist who never made his copies of his work. Driver doesn’t cry or scream upon discovering the bits of paper strewn everywhere. Instead, he’s almost catatonic, barely able to move or put whatever he’s feeling into sentences. He tells a devastated Laura that the poems were just “words... written on water,” but his first visit on a walk is to the Great Falls.

There he encounters another poet: a visiting Japanese man. The tourist senses Paterson’s interest in his translated William Carlos Williams book, and the two discuss the strange intersection of Paterson’s history with poetry. If the eponymous character can’t see the poetry in being a Paterson bus driver named, uh, Paterson, the Japanese poet can. He shows Paterson the beautiful symmetry of his life with his work. “I breathe poetry,” the poet says, and so does Paterson, even if it takes a stranger to make him see this. Before he leaves, the poet gives Paterson the gift of a new notebook: “Sometimes an empty page... presents more possibilities.”

I revisit Paterson every year or so, watching it when I want something comforting that can also shake me out of my limited perspective a bit. What I take away from Jarmusch's movie with each viewing is how poetry, routine, and the revelations of daily life are in concert with one another. Watching the film, I know I need stability, I know I must write poetry, and I know I desire a full creative life. And even when routines and expectations are thrown out of balance, even when autism and ADHD make life seem incomprehensible, there is always a journey I can take myself on, back to a serene and beautifully empty notebook page.

In the film’s final few minutes, Paterson appears to write a new poem, one about the certainty of knowing what you are and how a whole life can weave together so well with that feeling. He wakes up with the watch and kisses Laura goodbye. Sustained by the likes of Ohio Blue Tip matches, and the history of his city, he will eat cereal out of the mug again, and drive the bus, all while writing — and breathing — poetry.

Episodes is published three times per week. Mondays feature my thoughts on assorted topics. Wednesdays offer pop culture thoughts from freelance writers. Fridays are TV recaps written by myself. The Wednesday and Friday editions are only available to subscribers. Suggest topics for future installments via email or on Twitter. Read more of my work at Vox.