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Performance Artist - Actor - Maker of Stuff

52 Weeks of No TV

I gave up TV for one year in 2012.  Instead of TV, I made some THING every week.  In hindsight, it was a fecund year. (oh yeah, I used the word fecund)  It was the basis for many projects including my full production of Plasticland:  A Better Place.  It spawned unlikely artistic collaborations, built creative confidence and I got to smash a TV with a golden sledgehammer.  I haven't combed through this blog in awhile but I wanted to peruse it for inspiration.

Week 15's thing - Fessing up to a Backslide

I've been having dreams about people I love that have died recently.  I wake up in the morning and they are on my mind.  So far, this year I have lost people close to me and have watched people close to me lose loved ones.  Even the initial impetus of this NO TV experiment came after losing a friend.

I feel desperate to live life and sometimes it's hard to see that I am living life.  Time is such a precious commodity and I feel it slipping irrevocably away.  And I find this frustrating and daunting and depressing.  Let's call it the Blue Mondays.    

Blue Mondays tend to follow me around after I've had a really intense experience, trip or adventure.  Afterward, I feel bogged down by the paperwork of life.  It's like I'm thumbing through a trashy magazine after I've been utterly consumed by the "The Infinite Jest."  After such an intense high of experience, I just don't know what to do with myself to come down. 

So, I've been abusing the loophole I left for myself.  Movies.  My old pal, Movies?  I've been watching movies like crazy.  I couldn't even tell you what I watched.  So, I can only assume I was trying blot out the Blue Mondays with shite, So, during the next level of this experiment, I can no longer watch movies alone in my apartment. 

I'd like to say something utterly obvious to you.  Life is hard.  It's hard work.  I'm crying right now and it's utterly perfect outside.  Later today I'll be heading uptown to meet a few glorious friends.  Hang out in Central Park.  Go see a Beirut show!  Dude.  Why crying?  

I am humbled by life.  

I feel strange being so vulnerable on the internet.  Paranoia says I should be protecting myself against the harshness of the big, bad world but I started this experiment to look deeper at my habits - time-wasting and otherwise.   There are quiet, sad times in life.  I'm not always:  Rah! Rah! I am amazing. 

 I don't want to edit myself to seem like something else.   

It can't all be streamers and balloons. 

Sometimes, the quiet is too loud.  In the quiet, I hear the clock ticking, the inevitable march towards the end.  (I'm so wonderfully dramatic)  In these times, I want to block out the quiet with endless prattle of Meg Ryan. 

Perhaps this next week, I will try being with the quiet. And the subtlety. Maybe this is where I will find all that time that seems to be endlessly slipping away.  

After all, I ain't dead yet.

 

 

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