Touch Has a Memory
Mar. 15th, 2014 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSo-o-o spent all of yesterday watching television. Well. Not actually watching television, since I don't own a TV set and never intend to own one again, but watching television shows.
My favorite television shows are not actually sophisticated postmodern dramas like Mad Men and True Detective, although sure, I enjoy those. They're hipster puzzles; it's fun to catch and catalogue their allusions.
But my favorite shows are actually sentimental family dramas like Parenthood, Blue Bloods and Switched at Birth. I'm also totally devoted to Call the Midwife.
I suppose what appeals to me about these shows is their total lack of irony.
I'm sick of irony. I'm sick of trying to pretend that the disconnect between slick surface appearances and their heartbreaking underlying realities is anything other than disappointing.
A temporary phase, I'm sure.
Yesterday I binge-watched all of Season 3 of Call the Midwife, and by the time Episode 8 rolled around and Sister Monica Joan is quoting Keats to Chummie at the bedside of Chummie's dying mother, I was sobbing like a baby --
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free... ?
Practically everyone I know decided to telephone or text me too, so I ended up having many long conversations, if you can call it a conversation when they're in their little box and I'm in mine. Shades of E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops, right? E.M. Forster who also once wrote despairingly, Only connect!
Oddly enough, one of the conversations I had was with Ben. It was a very good conversation, too. He had some excellent insights into the whole Pollyanna mess and my reactions to it. I forget sometimes how very, very well he knows me.
He also had some really useful recommendations for moving forward with the smoothie cart business plan if it's something I really want to do. I know I'm sounding all egotistical and stuck-record about it, but damn! It is such a great plan! It would have provided my kids with summer employment, sharpened their job skills, gotten a few of them into college --
I'm never going to see those kids again. Not Malik, my 6'4" prankster; not Metrius with our running Uncle Vito gag; not Jada, who spent four months mixing and matching nail polish colors till she finally came up with an eggplant-colored one for me that exactly matched my messily dyed hair; not Kiara, who broke down when I took the kids to see Gimme Shelter one Sunday and ended up sobbing in my arms.
Reverend Cal pulls the plug and poof! They're gone from my life.
The boys throw stones at frogs for sport
But the frogs die in earnest
My favorite television shows are not actually sophisticated postmodern dramas like Mad Men and True Detective, although sure, I enjoy those. They're hipster puzzles; it's fun to catch and catalogue their allusions.
But my favorite shows are actually sentimental family dramas like Parenthood, Blue Bloods and Switched at Birth. I'm also totally devoted to Call the Midwife.
I suppose what appeals to me about these shows is their total lack of irony.
I'm sick of irony. I'm sick of trying to pretend that the disconnect between slick surface appearances and their heartbreaking underlying realities is anything other than disappointing.
A temporary phase, I'm sure.
Yesterday I binge-watched all of Season 3 of Call the Midwife, and by the time Episode 8 rolled around and Sister Monica Joan is quoting Keats to Chummie at the bedside of Chummie's dying mother, I was sobbing like a baby --
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free... ?
Practically everyone I know decided to telephone or text me too, so I ended up having many long conversations, if you can call it a conversation when they're in their little box and I'm in mine. Shades of E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops, right? E.M. Forster who also once wrote despairingly, Only connect!
Oddly enough, one of the conversations I had was with Ben. It was a very good conversation, too. He had some excellent insights into the whole Pollyanna mess and my reactions to it. I forget sometimes how very, very well he knows me.
He also had some really useful recommendations for moving forward with the smoothie cart business plan if it's something I really want to do. I know I'm sounding all egotistical and stuck-record about it, but damn! It is such a great plan! It would have provided my kids with summer employment, sharpened their job skills, gotten a few of them into college --
I'm never going to see those kids again. Not Malik, my 6'4" prankster; not Metrius with our running Uncle Vito gag; not Jada, who spent four months mixing and matching nail polish colors till she finally came up with an eggplant-colored one for me that exactly matched my messily dyed hair; not Kiara, who broke down when I took the kids to see Gimme Shelter one Sunday and ended up sobbing in my arms.
Reverend Cal pulls the plug and poof! They're gone from my life.
The boys throw stones at frogs for sport
But the frogs die in earnest
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-15 07:08 pm (UTC)I have not found a single other person who watches "Switched at Birth". Very cool!
no subject
Date: 2014-03-17 04:20 pm (UTC)I adore Switched at Birth!! :-)
Call the Midwife
Date: 2014-03-16 12:19 pm (UTC)Re: Call the Midwife
Date: 2014-03-17 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-17 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-17 04:21 pm (UTC)So you say
Date: 2014-03-20 01:09 pm (UTC)Oh, that dissonance can be many things besides disappointing. How about enraging? Or is your disappointment the usual cover for anger--melancholia?
Or how about "engaging". If the world were as un-ironic (Spel-Chek burped at "unironic") as you claim that TV to be what fun would it be to live in it? You'd probably be shoving something up your nose to substitue for the missing thrill of supercilious knowing.
Re: So you say
Date: 2014-03-20 03:23 pm (UTC)I don't get mad, actually. It would be psychologically healthier if I did. But when you're raised to think of yourself as essentially worthless, you tend to blame yourself when anything goes wrong, no matter how irrational it is to do so.
Re: So you say
Date: 2014-03-20 03:37 pm (UTC)OTOH. A story: Mom and Dad and I and the 2 bros were at an amusement park. I had just put a particularly molten french fry in my mouth. As I reacted, all the lights went out. Mom yelled to me "What did you do?" Then the lights came back on.
[I had got a reputation for touching switches, cash registers, anything mechanical--leading to to loss of a thumb-tip, so she wasn't totally irrational.]
That said, there's an old joke. It's 1944, and two guys are digging their graves under the watchful eye of an SS officer. One guy finishes and spits at the SS. The other yells "Sam! Don't make trouble!"
Re: So you say
Date: 2014-03-20 03:52 pm (UTC)Your amazing good luck, of course, has been the subject of more than one conversation between us. (We're about due for a conversation by the way so I'll call you soon - Tomorrow morning good?)
Since I am mystically inclined, I'd have to say yr good fortune and ability to short circuit electrical systems with the mere act of eating a French fry reflect the accrual of good karma in a previous lifetime. Maybe you were Schindler! :-)