Meditations #2

 "Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Five

This is one of the first passages from the Meditations that draw me to Marcus Aurelius many, many years ago.  As I've gotten older (much more on that to come) my devotion to this philosophy has only intensified. Marcus talks a lot about leading an intentional life, on that doesn't waste moments, and this is something that has definitely carried over into the world of literature and film for me. Besides making me more than a big of a pretentious wanker, I think it has all too often led me to isolate myself. This was definitely a problem in the long term relationship that ended a year ago. She and the kids were usually in the other room watching some dreck on the big screen while I was streaming foreign films on my tablet. The obvious question is: was I better off for doing so, or would it have benefitted me/us if I had given myself up to more bad TV with the pack? I suppose if they had ever let me pick a movie I might be more moved by the notion that I should have joined in (grin). I think it has kept me from reading new books (it's less true in regards to films) as compared to rereading Proust or Dickens or Murakami. There is a purity in beauty, and I guess on some level, consciously or unconsciously, I completely agree with MA here. And this brings me to the Criterion Channel. After having Netflix for years I finally dropped it a few months ago. One night I spend over an hour trying to find something to watch on the streaming service and finally gave up in disgust, and then the next morning I received their email explaining why they were raising their rates; poor timing, as I cancelled it immediately. For a while I kept the DVD service, which I guess was the original service (or, as my friend Sanford would propose, the True Service) because that was always the one that I used to get foreign and independent films. However, even that one become troublesome. Part of is was beyond their control. When the Trump junta decided to destroy the postal service I went from being able to watch three DVDs a week to about four a month (and even I can figure out the finances on that one). The bigger problem, however, was their own doing: just as their streaming service shrank, so did their DVD selection. It was especially annoying when I would choose a film and they would include it in my waiting queue, even though I had got it from them in the past. So, essentially, they had either destroyed all DVDs or taken them out of rotation. In what universe would it be appropriate to take Grand Illusion out of circulation? So, Netflix was already on life support, and then I discovered the Criterion Channel. Anyone who loves foreign films knows about the Criterion Collection; I used to joke that I couldn't believe that my students didn't pool their resources and buy me the Criterion Collection and it's only several thousand films. As it turns out the good folks there also have a streaming service. You don't have access to the entire collection, and it rotates every so often, but the collection is so rich that I can never get through every option. Plus, they include related interviews (what another famous director thinks about that film) or documentaries. And they also offer collections such as Japanese Film Noir or Foreign Films that Won the Oscar, etc. It's like a streaming service that also provides graduate credit. I'm already lamenting its passing because nothing this good that makes me this happy on a daily basis can survive for long.  It's easily the best nine collars I've ever spent per month because I watch at least one movie on the Criterion Channel every day. To be fair, I usually watch a foreign film and then switch over to Amazon Prime to watch the dumbest monster movie I can find (it's sort of like how the ancient Greeks would watch devastating tragedies and then remarkably inappropriate comedies from Aristophanes; yes, I'm actually trying to sell that argument). Anyway, circling back to MA, I guess as the light begins to dim I become even more attached to great films, and find it almost painful to watch something that is utterly vacuous. 

I mean, how can you not love a channel that includes collections like Japanese Film Noir and Czechoslovak New Wave? My friend Erik and I are already talking about creating a new class that would focus on US, French and Japanese film noir.