by Hannah Culik
***
I’m in the very lucky position that I periodically have time off from specific deadlines. I’m at university for 8 weeks, and then I have almost 6 weeks off. Most of the time I have enough work to fill that holiday, in fact more than enough, in fact more than could possibly accomplish within that time. What’s more is that the kind of work I’m given is difficult to engage with actively. When asked to translate 18 books of the Iliad (on top of a myriad of other texts), what happens is a strangely passive mental activity. Though it’s something you really have to concentrate on, it’s not really stimulating, and seems more like the mental equivalent of peddling on an exercise bike on its hardest setting. You’re working hard, but not really going anywhere. However, I’m not at school, there’s no one looking over my shoulder, and so whatever output I manage is entirely dependent upon my own will power and how much I want to succeed when the time ends and I have to go back to a structure and maintained, cyclical habits. Also I’ll invariably be tested on what they set out for me, so when all else fails, there’s that apparent incentive.
On almost every occasion these more free periods have been characterised by frustration, boredom, and depression, each caused by the pressure of the desire to use my very precious free time for Good and not for, not Evil, but Laziness. Of course, when I’m working (and by working I mean working at my degree), I’m frustrated, bored and depressed too but I feel that there must, surely, be a difference. When compelled to produce a piece of work, regardless of your level, whether high or low, of interest in it, the feeling of having achieved something through completion is at least relatively rewarding. Though we might all wish for a Golden Age of leisurely pursuit, one quickly finds that times of recreation can lose their appeal without something to compare it to.
Right now, since I was recently examined on everything I know (just about), they’ve given us a break and so I’ve found myself truly at my leisure. The result? Frustration, boredom, depression. (In small doses, of course, I’m not really that emotionally volatile.) This time it’s due to something different. When faced with the prospect of free time I made all sorts of plans. I was going to run every day, I was going to eat well, and generally look after myself. I had a list of books I was going to read. I was going to write more often, get something fictional on the go. Etc. In reality the following happened: I haven’t been running once, I’ve been eating particularly unhealthily, I’ve read about half of a book I picked up at the airport and wasn’t on my list, I’ve started writing but am now facing a block. Free time, I feel, did this to me. I wanted to fill my life with creative pursuits but the pressure of using my time wisely made me buckle and give in to the things I don’t really want to do. And why? Well, if I don’t feel immediately turned on by the things which the intellectual part of my mind has chosen for me, I have plenty of other ways to occupy my time. Timekillers, if you like. Things we all take part in, almost every day of our lives.
When given free time, but only a limited amount of it, what would you do with it? An obvious and easily provable answer to this is: watch television, drink a little alcohol or get high, eat more than you probably should, and just wait for the work day to begin. Our nights off and our weekends are typically like this, even though these are apparently the times between our day jobs or degrees or what have you that we’re supposed to live our lives. Part of all of this is the ease of slipping into bad habits. Television and film and video games, they’ve all reached an unparalled position of power in our lives and though it is certainly true that with increased viewership there are examples in each genre that are merely pandering to a lowest common denominator, within each category there are still examples of excellence. Ongoing storylines in sitcoms that are now being produced like films and are updated with regular installments offer the common man a chance to peek into the life of someone better, someone more interesting. Or so, perhaps, you might think. Instead the majority of programming is steadily moving towards the depiction of that common man and his failures – his lack of character, his lack of success, his lack of effort. From the romantic comedy to the mockumentary to the serious drama, we are time and again seeing, essentially, ourselves: we’re watching the type of person who watches television to escape himself. This was probably an inescapable outcome from the start, and is a situation that was treated thousands of years before the invention of television. In Aristophanes’ Frogs the two most popular dramatists Aeschylus and Euripides are pitted against one another in a contest based on witty repartee and literary criticism. Aeschylus, who lived during the time which saw the rise of the Athenian Empire and prosperity, champions noble characters who engage in noble deeds. Euripides, who lived, like Aristophanes, during the time of the most dire Athenian peril, championed stylised realism. The character “Euripides” argues that through this he taught democracy, and even peasants to deliberate. Frogs ends with Aeschylus’ return to the world of the living in order to bring back his ideals. At the time theatre was the equivalent of television – it was a source of entertainment but it often conveyed more serious ideas, political, moral, and otherwise. I would argue that we have reached a similar situation. The type of television that would be comparable to Aeschylus, the morally edifying, has certainly given way to the depiction of reality. I don’t even really mean reality television, which is so orchestrated it doesn’t deserve the title “reality” at all. It is the mark of a good sitcom to offer you a character that you can personally relate to. There is perhaps a problem of circularity here, however. It is a somewhat provable fact that if one witnesses similar behaviour in another person, one feels that behaviour condonable. So if you see a fictional character behaving like you do, you both enjoy their exploits because you like them, and you also feel better about yourself because your actions are an Acceptable Thing. No one likes to be criticised or alienated. Writing sympathetic characters is the key to successful television. The problem I’m seeing is that, if characters are made to copy you and you copy the characters, there is bound to be some kind of degradation of, not morals, but at least productive behaviour. If it’s ok on television to work at a soul-destroying job, why isn’t it ok in reality (The Office)? By extension, if it’s ok on television to be a serial killer, why isn’t it ok in reality (Dexter)? The ultimate truth is that so many people, including myself, watch television because it is entertaining, and because it is passive. It doesn’t require any mental exertion of you.
But video games have reached a new level which bridges the gap between the passive role of film and the (theoretically) active nature of reality. Branching, non-linear plot lines and the choice between good and evil actions which affect multiple outcomes have given the modern day game player the ability to take part, more and more interactively, with otherwise impossible situations. God games from the creator of the best-selling PC games, as of 2008, in history, Will Wright, are so mind-numbingly addictive due to the fact that they grant the player the ability to make multiple false lives that they themselves might never attain. They facilitate customisation of intimate details, and, perhaps more importantly, the ability to cheat. Cheats such as a machine that recharges all of the sims needs to make them ultra-happy or the traditional money cheats which eliminate the need for a day job are so obviously attractive. But even the seasoned sim player (and I’m clearly confessing myself as one) knows that after a while cheating loses its appeal. The new generation of sims in The Sims 2 are given aspirations to fulfil, and, depending on how they are orientated (towards intellectual pursuits, towards popularity, towards sleeping around etc.), generate different desires. A sim who wants to learn will desire skill cultivation. A sim who wants to be popular will desire to meet someone new, etc. A sim who is exhausted or seriously needs a shower will not always obey your will if he is in that bad a mood. What’s not to love about them? In truth I’ve learned a lot about humanity through this life simulator, but at the same time I’ve, let’s call it “invested”, countless hours of my time into creating sims and killing off sims and building houses and making love triangles, often simply through addiction and not really because I wanted to.
At this point I will have to admit that I am easy prey to the outlined pastimes. But I had a plan, remember? I wanted to make the most of my time. I wanted to have a creative output – I wanted to write and cook and be outdoors. It turns out that these habits are more ingrained than you might realise. Writing, or painting, or even reading, are pastimes which have been demoted in the face of more immediate media, and I’m starting to feel that perhaps part of my ability to create something of my own has been demoted too by the easy access I have to the ideas of others. Moreover this issue is further complicated by the difficult nature of creativity in the first place since, though there are those blissful times of industry fuelled by inspiration, there will always be that inescapable fact that though at first you may love what you’re producing, the effects of overexposure to your own ideas and the pressure to cultivate them often leads to hatred of your creation. Writer’s block, facilitated by boredom with your own ideas, is the murderer of progress, but it is inescapable. Though times of plenty are amazing, times of drought are all too frustrating and all too frequent. Ultimately, as things are now, we aren’t sims and can’t conjure money out of nothing, and most of us will have to do jobs that are undesirable in order to support ourselves and our families. Between the times when we are working are times when we can relax and frustration at a life squandered to perceived pointlessness does not always equal high creative output.
Ultimately it seems that within this configuration of life there is little room for creativity, though great desire for it remains. The answer is not entirely simple, since these are all social habits as well as personal ones, and each of these is difficult to escape. It is easy to accept what is offered you for your consumption. It is up to us to decide what is worth swallowing and adding to our minds, and what is not.
