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When I was a student at Oklahoma Baptist University, I led on quite well that TV shows were something of a pithy stab at the deeper meaning of life and I would never be caught dead employed by such a thing. I had more significant things to do like stroll around the student union with a copy of Carl Jung’s “A Man and His Symbols” and anticipate that someone would inquire as to what I was reading. But, clandestinely, my roommate and I would gather with a few others and watch “Project Runway” dutifully every week.
We poured over the clothes and the over-dramatized designers, yelling exclamations at the TV set when we saw something we loved or hated. This was really my first familiarity with what author, David Dark, would call “a perfectly good waste of emotion.” Because, you see, my concern with the show did not end when the show ended that night, it continued through the week until the next episode. We did not all simply gather our things and return to our papers on Milton. The designer’s names seeped into our everyday conversation; we shot nods at each other in the corridors while saying things like “PR at my place tonight.” What was the stimulation we found in something reasonably insignificant to our own lives?
Soon after this stage in my life, I moved on to become a musician relentlessly on the road. I was gigging in a new city every night and I was wide-eyed and starving for new acquaintances and diverse scenery. I don’t think I picked up a magazine or watched a TV show for two years because of all my giddy excitement with the constant traveling. I soaked in every image and conversation I could and wrote it down. My emotions were being exhausted on germane things—real people, real places, personal feelings, communal activities.
It was invigorating! But, eventually, the patina faded and, though I still love how I make my living, it has its moments of boredom and forlorn isolation. It is in these times I’ve turned to Itunes downloaded episodes of Ugly Betty (I started watching this after several people commented that I looked like the lead actress and my curiosity got the best of me) and House M.D. A seven-hour car trip between shows can fly by in no time with a few installments of my favorite drama and a gossip-filled People Magazine or two.
So again, I have found myself, an impressionable bird, take flight into a world of one-dimensional plots that may satisfy my boredom provisionally but are, at last, neglecting to my mind and soul.
Our ability to perch ourselves on the wall of reality and really interact with and care about the other birds, not opt to fly off into an invented world of holograms and sentimental stories, is at the core of us remaining aware and questioning and growing as humans. It should be noted, however, that there are instances of media that are redemptive and enlightening but I find myself indulging in, not the refining variety, but those soul-sucking inventories of celebrity life instead of using that time to invest in my family or my friends.
When was the last time I was just as equally engrossed by the lives of people dear to me as I was with Kanye West’s recent flare-up at the MTV Video Music Awards? Is there room within us for our concern with God or spiritual cataloging when we care more about how many Facebook friends we have collocated than how many actual friends we have and how well we keep up with them and know them and love them? It’s a vicious cycle, as most things are, in that we lose awareness of the people in our communities because we waste our emotions by loving and entertaining this maudlin and doltish media and the real-life people we disregard will also grow to adore these things to feel engaged in something. Those around us will almost always benefit from our humanity and empathy because, as much as we are guilty of giving up our affections to a fictional world, perhaps we go there because we’re craving someone in our existent lives to take notice.
Editor’s Note: This guest editorial is offered by Samantha Crain. She is a Shawnee native who attended OBU and is now a traveling musician. The views expressed by our guest editorialists and guest columnists are theirs, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the News-Star’s management.
When I was a student at Oklahoma Baptist University, I led on quite well that TV shows were something of a pithy stab at the deeper meaning of life and I would never be caught dead employed by such a thing. I had more significant things to do like stroll around the student union with a copy of Carl Jung’s “A Man and His Symbols” and anticipate that someone would inquire as to what I was reading. But, clandestinely, my roommate and I would gather with a few others and watch “Project Runway” dutifully every week.
We poured over the clothes and the over-dramatized designers, yelling exclamations at the TV set when we saw something we loved or hated. This was really my first familiarity with what author, David Dark, would call “a perfectly good waste of emotion.” Because, you see, my concern with the show did not end when the show ended that night, it continued through the week until the next episode. We did not all simply gather our things and return to our papers on Milton. The designer’s names seeped into our everyday conversation; we shot nods at each other in the corridors while saying things like “PR at my place tonight.” What was the stimulation we found in something reasonably insignificant to our own lives?
Soon after this stage in my life, I moved on to become a musician relentlessly on the road. I was gigging in a new city every night and I was wide-eyed and starving for new acquaintances and diverse scenery. I don’t think I picked up a magazine or watched a TV show for two years because of all my giddy excitement with the constant traveling. I soaked in every image and conversation I could and wrote it down. My emotions were being exhausted on germane things—real people, real places, personal feelings, communal activities.
It was invigorating! But, eventually, the patina faded and, though I still love how I make my living, it has its moments of boredom and forlorn isolation. It is in these times I’ve turned to Itunes downloaded episodes of Ugly Betty (I started watching this after several people commented that I looked like the lead actress and my curiosity got the best of me) and House M.D. A seven-hour car trip between shows can fly by in no time with a few installments of my favorite drama and a gossip-filled People Magazine or two.
So again, I have found myself, an impressionable bird, take flight into a world of one-dimensional plots that may satisfy my boredom provisionally but are, at last, neglecting to my mind and soul.
Our ability to perch ourselves on the wall of reality and really interact with and care about the other birds, not opt to fly off into an invented world of holograms and sentimental stories, is at the core of us remaining aware and questioning and growing as humans. It should be noted, however, that there are instances of media that are redemptive and enlightening but I find myself indulging in, not the refining variety, but those soul-sucking inventories of celebrity life instead of using that time to invest in my family or my friends.
When was the last time I was just as equally engrossed by the lives of people dear to me as I was with Kanye West’s recent flare-up at the MTV Video Music Awards? Is there room within us for our concern with God or spiritual cataloging when we care more about how many Facebook friends we have collocated than how many actual friends we have and how well we keep up with them and know them and love them? It’s a vicious cycle, as most things are, in that we lose awareness of the people in our communities because we waste our emotions by loving and entertaining this maudlin and doltish media and the real-life people we disregard will also grow to adore these things to feel engaged in something. Those around us will almost always benefit from our humanity and empathy because, as much as we are guilty of giving up our affections to a fictional world, perhaps we go there because we’re craving someone in our existent lives to take notice.
Editor’s Note: This guest editorial is offered by Samantha Crain. She is a Shawnee native who attended OBU and is now a traveling musician. The views expressed by our guest editorialists and guest columnists are theirs, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the News-Star’s management.
