I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a large bearded man in footy pajamas, a man in a wheelchair, a black musician, and two dogs in sweaters. Regardless of my expectations, I walked into the Rose Common Room and sat down at a table with construction paper and some markers.

Nicholas Carbonaro, the presiding artist, told us that this was an experiment, an experience in being present and noticing things with our senses in the moment. He spoke on the idea that in our current day an age, we notice things only through our screens- while we are walking out in the world, we mostly have our heads down with our eyes locked on our phones. When we notice something in the actual world worth looking away from our phones for, we immediately capture it- through our phones. We Snapchat it or Instagram it but we rarely appreciate beauty without using a technological medium.

And so Nicholas made us put our phones away. He made his friends (the group I described earlier) gather in the center of the room and move around. And he made us observe them in any medium we liked- drawing, writing, writing music- but no photos. No phones.

I’m a huge people watcher. But I do it with a sense of shame. I find immense beauty in strangers and beholding them and wondering about the possible complexities of their lives, but when I get caught staring, I, of course, feel strange (a feeling I’m sure fellow watchers share).

But there was this moment, when the man in the wheelchair did a handstand on his handlebars, and it was such a beautiful and intimate thing- I gazed at him and just lost myself in the wonder of his movements. Then, suddenly, that shame snuck in: “stop staring!” When I remembered that it was OK to stare, I felt this huge sense of relief and liberation. I could fully take in the beauty of his form. And that was a super cool feeling.