Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Living with an Artist

Living with an artist can be very interesting. As of last Friday, we (meaning Leila really wanted to and I love her enough to say okay) cancelled Direct TV. So, now we do not have television. For those of you who know me, that is a pretty big deal. I honestly can not remember the last time I was without cable of some sort or another. Although I don't like to admit it, I enjoy watching television and entering that stupid zombiesque trance-like state.


Who knows what this will actually mean for me. Hopefully, I will read more and write more and build more and do all of the things that I kept putting off when I came home from work and collapsed on the couch to watch (usually after cooking dinner) an obscenely giant screen. Hell, you might just have to put up with me writing more blog entries (if anyone actually reads this). Since the TV has been off, I have already finished my taxes and read more. Plus, this last week's weather has got me really thinking about Spring and the garden, so maybe I will really start planning out my next few moves. I have decided to grow from seed and need to get going on this. I really have no idea how this is going to change the way I live, but at least I am in some good company, eh?


What is being lost is the magic of the word.  I am not an image person.  Imagery belongs to another civilization:  the caveman.  Caveman couldn't express himself so he put images on walls.  ~Elie Wiesel, 1995


The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.  ~Ray Bradbury, The Golden Apples of the Sun


Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.  ~Alfred Hitchcock


Television was not intended to make human beings vacuous, but it is an emanation of their vacuity.  ~Malcolm Muggeridge


Art is moral passion married to entertainment.  Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.  ~Rita Mae Brown