In the furtherance of my art I watch TV. Only, now, it's all over.
The last episode of Deadwood just aired, at least for the season, and now I've regained some time that I can devote to writing instead of viewing. You see, I watch these TV shows to see how other writers deal with the intricacies of exposition, and I watch Deadwood to hear the word cocksucker a lot. Our ancestors, it seems, were potty mouths.
I would have survived poorly in the West. Not so much the gunslinging, but the journey alone and all the labor involved with merely surviving would have been a true test of the Russell mettle. I think about this often, how different life was when most of one's life was occupied with food, clothing, and shelter. I know one of Lewis and Clerk is famous for being depressed, but I wonder if it was as prevalent then as it seems to be now. I find it unlikely, but I may be engaging in a romantic past.
It's true, I think, now that many of our maladies, both individually and as a culture, may result from our simply having enough time to "enjoy" them. People on fire don't complain about splinters, and those engaged with guaranteeing enough food to make it through a bitter winter probably rarely worried if their ass looked big in their overalls. They may have struggled with much, but I think they were less pre-occupied in finding themselves than we are.
Time, leisure time, is a luxury. For millenia it was the province of the elite, the wealthy, the ruling class, and now we mostly have it in bucketfuls. This gives us time to produce and appreciate art, but it also gives us a chance to worry too much.
Life Regained
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
About the leisure time thing-- I've been thinking about how my ancestors lived. I come from common, farmer stock. There ain't no elites in any part of my family tree. As far back as I can tell, my people all worked the soil and most of the time (until we got to Oklahoma) we didn't even own the land we worked. My ancestors worked hard tilling the soil and milking cows and all that. But they had time. They had lots of leisure time. During the cold months and after the crop was put in. After the sun went down. My people would get together, sit around and tell stories. They talked. Perhaps not artful talk, but talk nonetheless. If they wrote it all down we might even consider them artists, but because it was all talk, it's lost.
I think we work too much in these modern times. I have to sacrifice sleep just to work on my novel. I'm not winging; it's just an observation. The technological nature even seeks to encroach on our free time. Just how free are we when we are watching TV? I guess that depends on what we mean by free time. I'll stop here.
Post a Comment