A while back I heard a beautiful overture by the British
Composer Edward Elgar, played on the classical music station of Minnesota
Public Radio. At the conclusion of the piece, the announcer mentioned that the
work had its premiere at “an English country fair” in 1890. That simple
announcement got me to pondering: For the great majority of those who heard
Elgar’s overture that day at the fair, this was the one and only opportunity
they would have to do so. It’s not impossible that a very few were able to hear
it again, perhaps in a London concert a few months or years later, but only a
very few, if any. And none would have had access to the precursor of the radio
I was listening to; the first tenuous radio broadcast was fifteen years in the
future. If a music lover at that English country fair that day found the piece
to be yearningly beautiful, that’s all she was left with: yearning.
I heard the Elgar piece because I can listen to classical
music any hour of the day or night. If I find a piece to be yearningly
beautiful, I click on iTunes or Amazon and order it as a CD or MP3, so it is
then available whenever I desire. I wouldn’t trade places with the country
fair-goer, but it is not unreasonable to wonder which of us had the deeper aesthetic
experience. As Orson Welles said, “The enemy of art is the absence of
limitations.”
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| The Chained Library at Hereford Cathedral |
A few years ago, Caryl and I worshiped at Hereford Cathedral
in England. After church, we toured the “Chained Library.” The Cathedral has
had a working theological library since the twelfth century; the literal
chaining of the books was simply a medieval security system. (Especially
before—and even after—the invention of the printing press, a purloined book
would be impossible to replace.) I love arranging and rearranging the volumes
in my little library—and adding books with a frequency that requires some
creative shelving. As with my musical “library,” I have hundreds of books within easy reach even here in my 12’ x 15’ study, and any title I want is available at my wonderful local bookstore or its online site. (Amazon as a last resort!) But
I wish I had the imagination to inhabit the
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| A corner of what I like to call "My Library." |
mind of a medieval cleric as he
pulls a single leather-bound book out of the stacks--backwards, so that the
chain doesn’t twist--and the book lands open in his hands. (And I think I’m a
book-lover?!)
I am of the generation that, in childhood, had to get out of
the chair and walk across the room to change the TV dial to one of three
channels, depending on whether we wanted to watch Maverick or Sky King or
Disneyland or Captain 11. I am not nostalgic about this. (Well, maybe a little.)
I mention it because we recently “cut the cable” for the opposite reason: We
were paying for 800 channels and watching only three (okay, seven) of them.
Now, with Roku and Spectrum and Netflix and Amazon and Broadway HD, we are
unchained from the 800, and free to choose among the really good programs on
the streaming channels. Really, really good. Our new complaint/mantra is “Too
much good TV!” If we add the PBS programming that Caryl and I have watched
every Sunday night (and now Friday and Saturday) for forty-eight years--and the programs of other networks included in these packages--to the
offerings on our new streaming services, here is a partial, random, list of
really, really good TV that we are watching now, or can get to on TiVo, or find
with the juggling of two remotes: Masterpiece (currently, Victoria),
Sherlock, Father Brown, The Amazing Mrs. Meisel, Stranger Things, The Queen, Call
the Midwife(!), Crashing, This Old House, 800 Words, Vera, Last Tango In
Halifax(!), Monarch of the Glen, Nashville, Grantchester, Curb Your Enthusiasm,
The Hollow Crown(!), Colbert, Conan, Highway Through Hell (my one guilty secret reality show!), Nature, Nova, Frontline, American
Experience, the new Broadway musical adaptations of Wind in the Willows and From
Here to Eternity, many HBO offerings, and more. (Let the judging of our TV tastes
begin—certainly l’ve left off your favorite program.)
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TV test pattern used for sign-off at midnight.
Good luck trying to binge-watch Stranger Things! |
Speaking of HBO, Caryl and I nodded in agreement when we
first heard, “HBO is the new Hollywood.” (HBO’s “Deadwood,” described by my
demure wife as “Shakespeare with the F word,” is still the best thing ever
shown on TV.) HBO was followed by Netflix Productions and Amazon Originals and Hulu… Now
they’re all New Hollywood, and, mostly, excellent. Not to mention the regular “old
Hollywood “ flicks that are included in their offerings. The memory of standing
in a line that ran around the corner—to see Spartacus at the Elks Theater in
Rapid City in 1962—fades as I pick up the remote to watch it again on Netflix.
A predictable conclusion to these musings would be to look
back in the spirit of what we English majors call ubi sunt (“Where are they now—the old simplicities of yesterday?...”),
to plead for the return of the three-channel Crosley Television Set in the
living room, to look back in longing at that English country fair—to be sitting
under a tree with a picnic basket, a Victorian orchestra serenading the scene.
But that is not the conclusion I draw from these observations of history and progress.
It is rather to raise again the question that accompanies all progress: “What
have we gained, and what have we lost?” I make no attempt at a complete answer to
this question, but the question itself helps us to temper our excitement with
the new by setting it in the context of another question: “What makes for a
good life?” It might sound wishy-washy to say that the good life must be found somewhere
along a spectrum which includes a solitary country symphony concert on the one
end and an iPhone with a thousand MP3s on the other. This is undoubtedly too
mathematical a scale to judge matters of art and the heart, but it invites us
to consider and apply an idea that has accompanied and tempered all progress:
The Golden Mean. The answer to the good life question is neither “the olden
days,” nor “anything new!” but a learning-from-the-old, and an adaptation of
the new to a standard set by common sense, a balanced personal life, and
supportive relationships. I don’t need to give up my iPhone and all its apps,
but I also need to remember, as Sherry Turkle reports, that an iPhone at the
dinner table—even turned off and upside-down—is an intrusion into the flow (and feel) of conversation
and the connections of the lives around that table. The Golden Mean.
So now that we have nothing but quality TV and a home
collection of classical music, perhaps we are not (in the words of Neil Postman’s
cogent title) “amusing ourselves to death.” (“Hey, I’m watching Shakespeare here! I’m listening to that Elgar overture again!”), but could it be that we are enlightening ourselves to
death? The quantity of high-quality television shows—of which my
list, above, is a small percentage—reminds me of that truism about visiting the
Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.: If a visitor spends a minute at each display,
he will not make it through the museum in his lifetime.
This essay was sparked by that TV program list, which I started
for a personal project of cutting down on some of this excellent TV-watching—limiting
it for the sake of a balanced life and recovered time. If I cut some of it out, I’ll
have a better answer to Caryl’s question, as she steps into my little library: “Are you ever going to read all of these books?”
