Screen time & story time

It's been about six months since I/we pulled the plug on the TV.

I can't take all the credit. The roommate who owned the bunny ears moved out in June and I failed to replace them. So the TV sat unused for awhile until my new roommate and I converted the spare bedroom into a guest room slash movie watching room. We now have a DVD player for movies, but the TV doesn't get any reception, let alone cable.

And the amazing thing is, I mostly don't miss it. There have been a few evenings when I've been under the weather and wanted to collapse in front of the TV for my a Simpsons-World News-Simpsons media meal, but beyond that (and sort of wanting to watch the CNN/YouTube debates), I'm FINE. Really.

It has me feeling sort of baffled about time. How did I ever have time to watch TV? At this point in my life, I am definitely not super Type A or overscheduled, but after interacting with my roommate, working on various projects, hanging out with friends, cooking and eating food, etc, my evenings are pretty much done. Is there some weird TV-watching time-use formula, sort of like the consumption formula? Instead of "the more you have the more you want," it's something like "the more time you waste the more there is to waste?" Or is it how you use time that influences how much of it you think you have? Is time like rich food: a little, used well, goes a long way?

I recently re-read Momo by Michael Ende, who also wrote The Neverending Story. Unlike The Neverending Story, Momo is out of print in the US and has never been butchered by movie producers, so its a lot less well known here. It's explicitly (and sort of hoakily-beautifully) about time, as well as consumerism and capitalism, friendship, imagination and storytelling. Momo is a homeless girl who lives in an abandoned amphitheater on the outskirts of a European city, and passes her days playing with her friends and telling stories until the Men in Grey appear. The Men in Grey are nefarious time bankers who live on hours stolen from people who have been convinced to "save" their time by not day dreaming, playing, or doing anything that isn't productive and stream-lined. It was published in the 1970's but is still amazingly insightful.

TV is only a subtle presence in the book -- one of the main characters starts out as an amazing but penniless storyteller and is "discovered," only to resort to rehashed narratives and canned plot conventions for TV specials -- but it's definitely part of the stream lining the Men in Grey advocate. I think Ende wants us to understand TV as canned and stream-lined stories, and a poor substitute for what has been happening among gathered people and around fires since there were people. That TV makes the storytelling experience more passive, and less about personal and community history, is definitely something to worry about.

I maintain that stories are how we teach and remind eachother to be human -- that listening to each other's stories is a basic act of love. Maybe that means I should be even more turned off by TV's addictive blue glow and constant attempts to get me to buy into concepts and products. (When I hear corporate brands and development campaigns described as "really just stories" I want to shout "keep your capitalist paws off the stories, assholes!") But actually understanding that there are basic storytelling themes and conventions -- love, reconciliation, living in community, redemption, prodigal wandering, the search for truth -- at the root of a lot of TV shows actually makes them vaguely redeemable for me. In the end, I think stories might be more powerful. Maybe I am an optimist.

Last Saturday my friend R came over for a couple hours in the afternoon. We spent awhile on the couch picking out flower seeds and planning a garden, and then baked cookies before going our seperate ways for the evening. At some point mid-baking, amidst a conversation about what the Beatles meant to us when we were teenagers, I thought Woah, this is what I want. At some point in an earlier part of my life, that kind of activity and quality time with friends who live nearby is exactly what I imagined for some future fantasy version of my life. Those moments when I stumble into that vision are nourishing and exciting. Not surprisingly, TV never has anything to do with it.

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Oh, and what I said about later first snows in Philadelphia? Nevermind. This picture was taken December 2nd. Apparently we are doing winter this year.