Ever since I first visited Death Valley in April of 2008, I've started to, as they say, enjoy the silence. Like never before, I acquired the ability to sit and think, without a newspaper, without music playing, without a TV chattering in my ear and distracting my eye.
After that, whenever I'd go to the hair salon, I'd refuse offers for magazines, in favor of just sitting. Sometimes I would put headphones in my ears as makeshift earplugs, not to pump music in, but to block music out.
In August when I moved out of my Manhattan apartment, I put my TV on the curb. I moved into a spare room of a temporary apartment, with a roommate who had his huge flatscreen TV blaring at full volume all of the time, sending me into my bedroom with the door shut to tune out.
Sure, as a freelancer, I was on my laptop all of the time, with a dozen tabs open in three different web browsers, YouTube videos playing, newsfeed scrolling, emails arriving. But without constant music playing or television flickering, I could read and write without distraction. Food's flavor intensified. Attention focused.
Since moving to LA, I've had a hard time unplugging. Sure, I still don't have a TV (to the horror of the entertainment biz people I encounter out here), but now I work in an office with KCRW playing all day long. And today, I've pushed myself to the brink of overstimulation by listening to a week's worth of General Hospital episodes on my laptop via earphones that don't sufficiently block out the radio, providing me with a kind of hold music during quiet scenes without dialogues and the brief bits of silence in and out of commercial breaks.
Why am I doing this to myself, all whilst replying to emails, checking Facebook and Twitter (which is actually relevant to my job), updating spreadsheets, reviewing designs, and answering phone calls?
How can I give any song, or any episode, its proper due attention when it's been relegated to the background? Does art ever deserve to be anything but a focal point? When it becomes ambient, white noise, a textured backdrop, do I really hear it, see it, comprehend it, much less appreciate it?
The people who have criticized me for my lack of a television set say things like, "Oh I just always have the TV on. If I'm cooking dinner, or cleaning the house, or getting ready in the morning, I just like to have it on." But why? Are these people that lonely? Bored? Afraid of their own thoughts? I don't want to mindlessly inject noise into my ears, into my brain. I want to stand in front of a painting in a silent room and just stare. I want to sing along to the radio. I want to watch characterizations and stories that bring me to tears.
But in truth, since moving to LA two months ago, I haven't devoted much time to appreciating art and pop culture. I'm not in my apartment enough to watch any TV. I listen to the radio while I'm driving (but turn it off if I need to talk on the phone). Instead, I live. Life is my art, or, at least, life inspires my art. I travel, hike, explore, and love, so that I have something to write about, some experience to draw upon when I perform as an actor. I've always preferred living to reading. After all, I'm trying to be a writer and not a reader.
But sometimes, in order to write, I need the sound of only my own thoughts...
Related: Trying to Unhook Myself