Less Can Be More

I am a great fan of film. Anyone reading some of my most recent blogs will already know this.

Quite recently, I have benefited from a VIP free membership from a well-known DVD rental company, and I have been able to supplement the films I already have purchased, and those that I have recorded over the last two or three years, with films which are more recent to DVD. This has vastly increased the range and number of films that I have been able to view, which has been very welcome indeed.

I have been sharing my membership of this DVD rental opportunity, with a good friend of mine who is perhaps in a similar situation to myself, in that a regular subscription to watch more recent DVDs than are broadcast would be beyond his means.

This is an act of friendship, but also shares the responsibility for choosing which films to watch, and this process of choice is surprisingly difficult, and particularly so when I already have a collection of approaching 1000 DVDs, over and above those films which I may have viewed already, and which for some reason are not available to purchase or to have recorded when broadcast.

What all of this has taught me, and surprisingly quickly, is that it is quite easy to feel swamped by the quantity and range of what it is possible to view.

I had not contemplated that like eating good food, I would have become so full so quickly.

The friend that shares my film viewing with me feels similarly that although of course this opportunity to make choices that would otherwise be beyond our reach is a great privilege, but he too has quickly become saturated, and almost ready for some kind of fasting or break from the treadmill of watching film after film.

What both of us find comforting in this situation is to watch those favorite films which we can view time and time again and in spite of regular viewing remain consistently films to which we can return for some kind of solace. Knowing what to expect perhaps, and certain indeed of the quality of what we will experience.

I am reminded of a story I heard many years ago, the origin of which I cannot remember, but it recalled a group of 16th century sailors that were shipwrecked on a desert island for some months, before they were rescued.

The island clearly provided sufficient by way of food and fresh water, and one of the ways in which the sailors kept themselves busy whilst they waited for the eventual rescue was to perform a piece of theatre that some of them had recently seen. In other words, in the days before there was so much to be seen by way of entertainment, it was possible for probably illiterate sailors to have remembered something that they may only have seen once at the Theatre. and remembered it sufficiently well to recount it to their shipmates so that they could re-enact the whole play.

It does not matter whether this story is true or false, the potential for it to be true ease what is important and remarkable.

There is no doubt that we all of us in what is referred to as the “civilized” world are subject to an enormous volume of sensory stimulation by way of theatre, film and television.

I have never discussed what this might mean from a psychological perspective in terms of our capacity to remember explicit facts and individual experiences. It is easy to assume that our capacity for memory expands continually to incorporate whatever range of experiences we need to remember.

I suspect that the exact mechanism for the brain to remember what it is stimulated to experience is not fully understood.

But with my experience of the past few months to draw from I have come to the conclusion that less might be much more. That it is far too easy to reach a point where what we wish to do is to cease adding to the volume of our experience, and concentrate instead on the quality of it.

I have begun to add films to the memory of my computer, as I have discovered that I can copy films that I have recorded from broadcast on to the backup drive of my computer.

I am therefore accumulating a selection of films that are consistently available to me without having to have them available on DVD so that I can play them. Removing the need for prior choice, or planning. Essential for someone in my position where I am unable to stand or walk, and therefore must depend upon my carers to provide for what I wish to consume.

I am finding that I get far more pleasure from the familiar than from the new and unexpected, which so often may disappoint, at least as often as it becomes something valued and worthwhile collecting.

This is an unexpected consequence of what after all has been a welcomed gift, and I wouldn’t for a moment wish to downplay my gratefulness for what has been done for me.

It is perhaps an unexpected lesson in the extent to which we are able to assimilate cultural things, and in a modern world that is saturated with sense experience, a reminder that a holiday could be as simple as not consuming those familiar things which we are so accustomed to consume. And thereby transforming perhaps the quality of how we experience those things that we do consume.

I haven’t yet quite understood how this might affect my general consumption of cultural things, but I have no doubt that I must at least have a good think about the implications of what I am experiencing.

This morning, my carer that looks after me at weekends, whose first language is not English, asked me to clarify some things that he had read recently.

This is a regular conversation that we will have, and he is often very complimentary at the extent of my understanding of the English language, which perhaps is more surprising to me then to him, as I am a native English speaker, and he has been brave enough to try to learn an entirely other language than his own, which is South American Spanish.

One of the things that he asked me to clarify was the meaning or something that I think is directly relevant here.

Quite simply, he had read in one of his many books aimed at introducing him to the breadth of English idiom a little story that had entirely perplexed him.

It was the description of writing a book of poems as like dropping a rose petal over the Grand Canyon, and expecting to hear a sound.

I did my best to explain this rather beautiful idea, and I don’t know if I was able to do anything other than explain that it is a beautifully poetic description of the indescribable.

Something else to think about in those moments when I contemplate what it is to make sense of the world through the senses that we are blessed with. I don’t even remember by whom the story was meant to have been told by.