Pixie Dust

August 24, 2025

Fast?

Our age thrives on speed. Our feeds refresh every second. New shows are watched in a single weekend. Albums are skimmed for the “best” songs. And our reading lists keep growing even though most books never make it past the first chapter.

Art, it seems, is being consumed like fast food—quickly, in large quantities, and with very little thought. But culture was never meant to be swallowed whole. It was meant to be savored like the we get or the curry our mothers make. Even when we eat it after a while, the taste remains the same. What if instead of rushing toward the next new thing, we slowed down and allowed art to live with us a little longer?

Think about the difference between racing through a book to “finish it” versus letting a bit of the book stay in your mind for days. There’s something almost magical about rereading the same sentence, trying to figure out what it means and why it was written, or pausing to underline a thought that feels like it was written just for you. That kind of slowness transforms reading into communion.

Or consider music. Today, playlists are curated for efficiency—background noise while we work, while we travel, and while we scroll. But when was the last time you listened to an entire album, start to finish, with nothing else demanding your attention?

My father does this a lot; he will sit in one place and do nothing but listen to music. His music is all Mozart, Bach, theme songs from movies, all instrumental or orchestral and classical, and once in a while he will listen to his rock music like Deep Purple, The Doors, and many others. Still, he sits with the opening track and allows the songs to flow into one another; he tries to understand the story the artist wants to tell—and this is a slower, more profound way of listening. It’s how music begins to rewire his brain, and then his music time will get over, and he gets back to work, but he enjoys his music.

When you think about it, films, too, are victims of fast consumption. We watch once, form an opinion, and move on. Yet so many films only reveal themselves on the second or third viewing, when you’re no longer distracted by the plot and can notice the tiny choices and details that make the film work. The way many other details turn up when I watch The Pirates of the Caribbean for the 20th time. Watching a film again is like looking at the same view for many years and then realizing the little details that make up the view, for example, the insects, the leaves changing color in autumn and falling with the sun rays making it look like gold pixie dust, the new plants or flowers that have grown, and many other things.

Slow consumption isn’t about looking back or avoiding new things. It’s about going deeper instead of wider—spending more time with what matters instead of constantly chasing what’s next. In a fast world, slowing down becomes a quiet act of resistance.

There’s also a creative perspective to this practice. When we slow down, we don’t just consume art—we allow it to shape us. A single poem can alter the way you see the world. A song can become the soundtrack to an entire season of your life. A film can give you a new language for feelings you didn’t know how to name. These experiences require time. They require presence. They require attention.

Maybe that’s the real secret of slow consumption: it transforms art from entertainment into memory, from distraction into nourishment. We stop skimming and start savoring. And in that shift, culture becomes less about what we “finish” and more about what we carry with us. It’s simple: slow down. Revisit. Reread. Relisten. Let a single piece of art linger longer than feels efficient. Give it space to echo inside you.

David Attenborough once said, “It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement, the greatest source of visual beauty, and the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.”

—Shailin H. Lyngdoh.