Tag Archives: Television

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it’s perfectly okay to stare at the wall and do nothing

Depending on what your cultural background is, this may not come as a shocker.  However, I grew up in a society where Seinfeld’s David Puddy was a comical guy because he tended to stare off into oblivion like a lunatic.  That was the joke, that’s it, that he just stared at nothing.

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It also helped that Patrick Warburton did the joke particularly well.

Years ago, during one of the rather darkest moments of my life, I often found the urge to sit in a chair and accomplish nothing. This is real dark shit, where you don’t want to / can’t work, read, eat, sleep, nothing. You just want to sit there staring at a wall for twenty minutes. It’s all you’ve got.

At the time, I confided to a wise person that this behavior bothered me immensely. That there was something wrong with this ala David Puddy. To which the person said in response, “It’s perfectly okay to stare at the wall and do nothing.”

Boy was she right.  Even now when life isn’t as, relatively, dark I still allow myself to do this on a regular basis.  When made a regular part of your daily life, it helps to cleanse your brain.

And when you think about your caveman self, this makes perfect sense.  Once upon a time some hunter dude would just blankly stare at trees for eight hours while he awaited the forthcoming sabertooth tiger kill.

When I traveled to Sicily I heard them refer to this concept as, “The Blessed Nothing”.  I’ve never forgotten that phrase.

And yet in our high-impact-super-modern-culture we never bother to employ this cleansing.  We can’t even sit down for eight seconds without having to do: something, anything.

When I was on the road this last weekend and on long layover at the airport bar I happened to notice that of the twenty or so folks sitting at the bar, every single one was holding a smartphone.  I was the only one just sitting there slowly sipping my beer and staring at the wall.  It’s relaxing.  But taken at face value, somebody would be like, “Who’s the weirdo just sitting there without his phone?”

Even worse was the couple at the small table behind me who instead of, you know, talking to each other were just sitting there in silence tacking away at the smartphones.  I haven’t been in a decent relationship in a long, long time.  But I’m pretty sure that if all you’ve got to talk about as a couple is a smartphone, that there’s a problem at hand.

So friends, the next time you’re at the bar, or seated alone in the terminal awaiting your flight, or waiting for your friends on a park bench?  Just sit there and do nothing.  Stare into oblivion.  And see what delicious places your mind can take you.  Once you get used to doing this on a regular basis, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.  Your brain will thank you.

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“…well, then that would be even better.”

Life is not a dream. It’s really not. I know this because right now I’m drinking an awesome beer surrounded by my dogs. This is real. So are we. And so are the ideas that keep us going.

Leonard Nimoy knew this. Better than most I suspect. It bled through his art. And if Nimoy was anything, an artist in the old sense he was. He wrote books and poetry, he took photographs, he mastered the craft of the motion picture.

It is this reason, not just because people love Spock, that made him a household name. He had the power to tell us who we are. He made it seem like he wasn’t one of us, when he was actually among the best of us.

More than anybody else, Nimoy made Star Trek. Everybody thinks it was Priceline Senόr Bancό de Rόbber Bill Shatner. It wasn’t. In the beginning, nobody working on the show really liked Shatner or Gene Roddenberry. Although folks don’t talk about it openly, except perhaps George Takei, you get the idea that things tended to almost fall apart because Shatner and Roddenberry were arrogant jerks.

Later, Nimoy and Shatner would actually build respect and ultimately a deep friendship. When you read about how Nimoy tried to help Shatner with the troubles and ultimate tragic death of his wife, it brings tears to your eyes. It’s rather strange but poetic, that two men who were friends only on screen for so many decades would actually find friendship later in life when they needed each other the most.

Don’t get me wrong, Bill cleaned up his act and I really like the guy. A lot of people still call him a bad actor. Mostly those who have never watched all of Star Trek or one episode of The Practice. But it’s clear to me, that without Nimoy, Star Trek would have been an unknown bad hack science fiction nothing.

I have the idea that Nimoy kept everybody together. Everybody else on set showed up because Nimoy was there. And the idea that was Star Trek, it was his as much as Roddenberry’s. Nimoy’s view of what Star Trek was is best exemplified by his goal with The Voyage Home where he said:

“…no dying, no fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical bad guy. I wanted people to really have a great time watching this film and if somewhere in the mix we lobbed a couple of big ideas at them, well, then that would be even better.”

This was Star Trek. A fun show the whole family could watch, but also riddled with big ideas that could melt the brain of any serious adult. When I was a young idiot, I couldn’t stand The Voyage Home. I’d be like, “what’s with these stupid whales, man, when is somebody going to get cut in half.” But when I rewatched it last year, I couldn’t believe what a joy it was. It’s a masterpiece. I breathed in the happiness.

In a modern storytelling age where the fog of doom is pervasive, it’s comforting to go back and watch a view of the future not owned by failure and bleached skeletons. Nimoy’s future of a still flawed but noble humanity with a bright existence remains inspiring, and a future worth fighting for.

So here’s to Nimoy and the hopes that he’s embarked aloft alongside DeForest Kelley and James Doohan and they’re off to Valhalla at whatever warp factor they prefer. Kelley’s chuckling, Doohan’s got a glass of scotch, and Nimoy comments offhand as they blast into the stars, “Life is but a dream.”

leonard_nimoy

farewell shipmate, fair winds