The house is quiet. No electronics are on (except for the ambient computer, the inexplicable stack of DVR, VoIP and Xbox thingeys in the living room). I'm listening to the neighbors mow their yard, the dogs napping and the tick of a clock I got at IKEA for my birthday a bazillion years ago.
The kid is away for a weekend youth group thing, and I have hours and hours to myself. I cleaned ALL the surfaces in the kitchen (except for inside the fridge or oven), and I'm moving on to declutter the mountain of clutter that clutters up the clutter-magnet areas in the kitchen, dining room and living room. Decluttering is a job best done when one has all the bills paid, all the dogs happy and all the trash cans empty. Which means it's a daunting task that never gets done around here.
I listened to a couple of radio shows and then turned on the TV thinking that I would putter while watching mindless stuff on TV, but it's not mindless. It's mind-sucking. It draws me right out of my headspace and into something else. It's devious and insidious. Pernicious and a couple of other -iouses. In fact, I'm very close to calling ATT and disconnecting everything except the internet.
Once I'm back in my own groove, I plan to cut out some last things to sew up for a little friend for xmas gifties, and then the epic mail run will be Monday. I always cut it close on the mail drop date, but this year, it's CLOSE.
Most of all, I spent last night watching a fun new show that I've got queued on Netflix: Hotel Babylon. It's a slightly racy hipster version of the Love Boat/Hotel (remember James Brolin's hit TV series?). The hotel theme isn't a new one, but this is a particularly clever one that is nice low-calorie fluff. Knitting with novelty yarn kind of TV. I dabbled in eating myself stupid with popcorn, wine and then some chocolate. By the time I had moved on to the cheese, I realized several major revelations about me: a) booze is a gateway drug to overeating, b) popcorn tastes really awful and leaves your mouth all greasy, and c) my chocolate tastes are very very expensive ones.
I decided that I was going to give myself the gift of weight loss for the holidays. Tonight is a dinner party, so I'll be testing my mettle, but I want to be in the minority. I am GOING TO LOSE WEIGHT DURING THE HOLIDAYS. I won't feel deprived, I won't cheat and I won't mope... it's a gift I richly deserve.
See what a little quiet can do? Uh oh, the neighbor has fired up the mower, now right under my window, so I'm heading into the other bedroom to sew. And not eat.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
December 18, 2010
December 8, 2009
The Stories
I am wrapping up teaching a course on Myths today. And I want to try and wrap up the perplexing course material for them. I already know I will fail, and that the one very mouthy student will tell me I'm wrong, or "that depends on your belief." I have said over and over that the urge to form language, to communicate and to transmit ideas and stories is deeper than religion, belief or even conscious thought. We dabbled in Jung, but again, "that's just his opinion."
What I see, though, is that we are hungry for stories. HUNGRY. Turn on the TV and see hundreds of shows during a week that are stories - ongoing, long, slow, quick, one-episode, mini-series, feature-length, dramatic, funny, intriguing, "real" and fictional. Look at the bookshelves in the airport: magazines, books and newspapers loaded with stories. Tales of people in other places and other skins. In fact, it is an embarrassment of riches. We are story-laden, media-heavy in modern culture.
Something must be missing when the mass quantity of stories does not satisfy us. We continue to seek out new stories, new twists on the old plots, new characters for whom the same old story is playing out. (I'm thinking of a particular athlete whose story of infidelity is all over the news, even NPR. STILL. After a week.) Replace the main character in that story with a politician? with a desperate housewife? with a car salesman? Pretty much the same story, heard on E! News, talk shows, Oscar-winning feature movies and the headlines of the tabloids. And yet we listen, we rubberneck, we gawk and we stop to listen, or to read the headlines or the entire article (if we’re waiting at the dentist’s office).
Why? Why are we so obsessed with stories? What is missing?
My belief, based on a little reading and a little life experience, is that we are indeed missing the vital cultural components to properly absorb the "meat" of the myth. In the same way that rice and beans complement and provide a "complete" protein (remember Diet for a Small Planet?), too many stories and not enough deep structure cause cravings and even dysfunctional consumption of our stories.
Even Joseph Campbell talks about this quest for stories, the desire to tell and hear the stories, even to re-enact the major tropes of human culture in our own lives. The hero quest, the revenge story, the creation/flood/recreation motif. He writes about the "monomyth" that guides all of human striving. Clifford Geertz (and others) called it "deep structure" and Jung called it “the collective unconscious.”
True, we have plenty of stories but if we are not skilled enough to read the purpose and structure of these stories, if we cannot derive meaning from them a satisfying way, or learn to live, to pursue a proper practice, we will continue to binge and purge ourselves on stories.
Will the stories ever end? Will we ever get our fill? Not likely – without the rituals, taboos and prescriptions from our ancestors' time, we might understand our lack and supplement our stories with academic knowledge, but we won't be able to digest the moral fiber and make it a part of ourselves.
Campbell’s answer to those who wish to understand, to know the meaning of life: “Follow your bliss.” This cryptic answer is not satisfying and does not provide that key to why we crave stories so much. But it does however suggest that simply by doing our own lives, by creating our own story authentically, we will be participating in the mythmaking, in the storytelling, rather than consuming the easy-to-chew but ultimately unfulfilling vicarious stories of others.
Follow your bliss. Write your own ticket. Make your own kind of music. Do it “your way.” Or else, continue to live an attenuated, mediated, voyeuristic, shallow life. (Next piece of homework? finding the thinkers who have written about this “hell in a handbasket” view of media.)
When it's all said and done, however, we do still have the stories. Charlotte's Web. Black Beauty. Sophie's Choice. War and Peace. The Exodus. To Kill a Mockingbird. There are truths in our stories, and we cherish the capacity of these books (and retellings on film) to teach us and improve us. But only if we move from consumer to participant. One does not have to write in order to participate, but critical reading and active digestion of the stories might also be a way to "follow your bliss."
For now, following my bliss as a writer involves clearing away the fog and clutter, and getting to the real nugget of my novel.
And that is something I hope to get to... on Saturday, when the semester is over. For now, it's time to give a final or two.
What I see, though, is that we are hungry for stories. HUNGRY. Turn on the TV and see hundreds of shows during a week that are stories - ongoing, long, slow, quick, one-episode, mini-series, feature-length, dramatic, funny, intriguing, "real" and fictional. Look at the bookshelves in the airport: magazines, books and newspapers loaded with stories. Tales of people in other places and other skins. In fact, it is an embarrassment of riches. We are story-laden, media-heavy in modern culture.
Something must be missing when the mass quantity of stories does not satisfy us. We continue to seek out new stories, new twists on the old plots, new characters for whom the same old story is playing out. (I'm thinking of a particular athlete whose story of infidelity is all over the news, even NPR. STILL. After a week.) Replace the main character in that story with a politician? with a desperate housewife? with a car salesman? Pretty much the same story, heard on E! News, talk shows, Oscar-winning feature movies and the headlines of the tabloids. And yet we listen, we rubberneck, we gawk and we stop to listen, or to read the headlines or the entire article (if we’re waiting at the dentist’s office).
Why? Why are we so obsessed with stories? What is missing?
My belief, based on a little reading and a little life experience, is that we are indeed missing the vital cultural components to properly absorb the "meat" of the myth. In the same way that rice and beans complement and provide a "complete" protein (remember Diet for a Small Planet?), too many stories and not enough deep structure cause cravings and even dysfunctional consumption of our stories.
Even Joseph Campbell talks about this quest for stories, the desire to tell and hear the stories, even to re-enact the major tropes of human culture in our own lives. The hero quest, the revenge story, the creation/flood/recreation motif. He writes about the "monomyth" that guides all of human striving. Clifford Geertz (and others) called it "deep structure" and Jung called it “the collective unconscious.”
True, we have plenty of stories but if we are not skilled enough to read the purpose and structure of these stories, if we cannot derive meaning from them a satisfying way, or learn to live, to pursue a proper practice, we will continue to binge and purge ourselves on stories.
Will the stories ever end? Will we ever get our fill? Not likely – without the rituals, taboos and prescriptions from our ancestors' time, we might understand our lack and supplement our stories with academic knowledge, but we won't be able to digest the moral fiber and make it a part of ourselves.
Campbell’s answer to those who wish to understand, to know the meaning of life: “Follow your bliss.” This cryptic answer is not satisfying and does not provide that key to why we crave stories so much. But it does however suggest that simply by doing our own lives, by creating our own story authentically, we will be participating in the mythmaking, in the storytelling, rather than consuming the easy-to-chew but ultimately unfulfilling vicarious stories of others.
Follow your bliss. Write your own ticket. Make your own kind of music. Do it “your way.” Or else, continue to live an attenuated, mediated, voyeuristic, shallow life. (Next piece of homework? finding the thinkers who have written about this “hell in a handbasket” view of media.)
When it's all said and done, however, we do still have the stories. Charlotte's Web. Black Beauty. Sophie's Choice. War and Peace. The Exodus. To Kill a Mockingbird. There are truths in our stories, and we cherish the capacity of these books (and retellings on film) to teach us and improve us. But only if we move from consumer to participant. One does not have to write in order to participate, but critical reading and active digestion of the stories might also be a way to "follow your bliss."
For now, following my bliss as a writer involves clearing away the fog and clutter, and getting to the real nugget of my novel.
And that is something I hope to get to... on Saturday, when the semester is over. For now, it's time to give a final or two.
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