Up until about two years ago, I kept my televisions situated on the main levels of my homes, in the living rooms where I could see them most of the day. I left the tv on during much of the time I was home, mostly because I liked the noise. It wasn't that I wanted to sit and stare at it, but I liked to listen to things going on. There are countless shows and movies that I have heard more than seen. I'm pretty sure that at one point I had half of the dialogue to SLC Punk memorized, but I don't think I've actually watched the entire thing start to finish, for all that my then-teenagers played it dozens of times. I learned years ago that sleeping to the sound of a television in the middle of the afternoon is quite restful, and I feel like I sleep better that way than I do in a quiet room at night. I even learned to use the tv as a sleep timer. I would put on something like CNN, and sleep on the couch. When my barely-conscious brain registered that the stories had looped and were repeating, I would wake up feeling refreshed.
My pattern has changed with this house. We put the tv downstairs, in a room specifically designed for it. I chose a dark borscht-red wall color, and we installed surround sound and dimmer switches on the lights for a full movie-theater effect. But I don't spend much time in the basement. I like to be in my living room, by the giant picture window, watching the cars go by (and yelling like an old person at the idiots who floor it and try to speed through the two blocks between the stop sign and stop light). I have electronics around me, but no constant video or audio stream. I miss television. A few times a week, I'll go down and get caught up on the things on the DVR, but that is almost invariably @Midnight or the Walking Dead. I rarely watch live television anymore. I mostly ignore suggestions from people about shows I ought to be watching. I just can't get enthused about much these days.
I changed things up and revisited the old ways tonight. I'm surprised by how exhausting it was. I've been keeping a close eye on Twitter, as I've admitted, and tonight felt like a good night to go watch a little cable news. (I'd already had a nap, thanks to needing a pain pill, so I was able to stay awake through it all.) I had no idea what shows were when anymore. I hadn't watched much of this stuff since moving to this time zone. I got downstairs a few minutes into the Chris Hayes show, and stumbled into a moment I didn't expect. I was alive during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, but I was far too young to have any interest in watching it unfold. As an adult, I wondered what it was like viewing the interviews, press conferences, and testimonies live, and realizing how this was going to play from a historical perspective. There was an interview tonight that was so startling, so "what the hell is he thinking, saying these things??" that I honestly feel like it will be in the public record for this administration's historical file. It felt like a tiny little snag was picked at, and a great unraveling was begun. But this was only the first of several stories that had an anxiety-producing effect on me. We watched for nearly three hours, and backed up several segments to listen again, to verify we heard the outrageousness that we thought we had caught the first time through. I don't know where to go from here. I still don't want to hang out in my basement, but I feel like I ought to be keeping my attention on the quickly-evolving situation in real time, rather than occasionally opening a Twitter app. I'm not moving my tv upstairs, and I'm not getting a second one. This is a hair-on-fire moment in history, and I can't decide how much of it I really want to witness.
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