Mental Health
Why I Listen to and Watch Classics
….and you should too…
From classic movies, to classic music, to finely aged wine you have to admit there’s something that tastes good about age. Since I was a kid I’ve always loved watching classic TV shows, classic movies, listening to oldies, and reading old books (except for the ones they wanted me to read in school because bleh). It’s not a habit that particularly helped me in anyway until recent years. The ways that it has helped me since, however has been quite remarkable.
What I have learned from being a student of the classics, whether it’s studying the ancient world (no not the 30’s), listening to old — and I mean way outdated music — and even watching old black and white films and shows, is quite simple: Life hasn’t changed much. It really hasn’t! Some of the most horrifying things that I’ve had to go through in my life some of the most petrifying unanswered questions I have: they’re not remote to me. As a young man constantly being invited to join the 27 club ( I guess I’m 28 now, so I made it), I’ve found this stark truth to be absolutely comforting!
One of the movies that struck me the most was Of Human Bondage. This 1935 film follows the life of a young English doctor who falls in love with a woman who doesn’t love him back. He spends years with her, marries her, has a child with her, and eventually loses her.
He spent years consumed by his passion for her. And it wasn’t in fact until she had died, that he felt himself free from that passion, but only by the recognition of one simple truth: “Everything that’s beautiful to me is right here.”
That was an amazing truth that I found in a film from 1935.
What I found next was a film based on a book published in 1915! Now I’m reading the book! And these things are full of truths more relative to my life right now than anything I’ve consumed in contemporary media. In fact this book has nearly saved my life! It’s made me realize that I’m going to be okay and that this life is cyclical. That despite the feelings — I’m not alone. People have in fact gone through the things that I’ve gone through, and been forged from its fire to be better men and women because of it.
Old films, old books, old music, are voices from the past. Today is difficult. We live in an age of new things. They often call it a new age. We’re constantly salivating over easily consumable media on our phones. Let me rewrite that. We are constantly shoving trash into our eyeballs. Looking for the sustenance and substance that we actually need in order to feel relevant, and related somehow, to this life.
But the media we consume in this new age is not about life as we know it. Our media now is about life as we want it to be. Life as we seek it. There’s no moral value to many of the stories we see in our mainstream media outlets. The world we live in today harks to an old song that I hope you know. It was remade recently so I’m suuuure you do! It’s called ‘The Sound of Silence’.
If ‘The Sound of Silence’ was a prophecy then we are living smack in the middle of it, (And Paul Simon’s a prophet)! We live in a world where anyone can say anything to the whole world, but be heard by no one. People are too busy looking down that they can’t look up.
Our whole lives are in our phones. Our emails. Our text messages. Our snaps. People can’t experience art without taking a picture of it. Taking a picture of art…we’re so consumed by it. We have been overmediafied. By making everyone a member of the media we have destroyed much of its value.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against social media, or technology. I just think that much of the value in media is being lost because of the saturation of content. This brings me back to the sheer beauty of classic arts. It’s over. The 1930’s are over. All of it has been experienced. The people who had the value derived from it, to add into the media for us to consume and gain meaning from, have done so! And guess what: it’s still completely relevant to your life today.
I consider myself to be a student of the classics. I listen to musicians who have passed, read poetry from ex-poets, books by ex-authors, movies by directors who have found their direction. Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s my personality, but I don’t want to read your new book, or buy your new class or watch your new movie. We know that 80% of it has no value. We won’t know what 20% has value for at least 10 years. In short: don’t consume new things: it’s saturated in garbage.
