Consumption Log

Consumption Log

 

Sunday  February 15, 2009

 

9:00 a.m. – Wake up.  Cell phone is missing so I turn on computer immediately to see what time it is.  Confronted with a picture of sunset on desktop.  Around the room I see two paintings done by my father.  One print is done by my girlfriend.  Books are on the bookshelf and a stack of old climbing magazines that I received as a gift the day before.  I wake girlfriend up with verbal communication.  We decide on breakfast.

 

9:30 a.m. – Get in car and hear stereo.  Music is by the Rolling Stones.  The album is “Exile on Main Street.”  While driving and listening to music I see traffic signs and traffic lights.  I see a sign that says Brickhouse café and I turn in.  At the door I see a stack of magazines entitled Mountain Gazette.  I pick one up.  While waiting to be seated I read and look at photos in the publication.  We are seated and the waitress hands me a menu.  The menu has writing that describes the food available there.  I read.  I pick something out and then wait on the waitress.  I order by telling my waitress what I want.  I then wait on my food and read the Mountain Gazette.  Food comes and I eat.  Then I am confronted with a piece of paper with math on it.  It is the check.  I reach in wallet and find an appropriate amount of money and leave it on the table and then we leave. 

 

10:30 a.m.- I get back in my car and listen to the Rolling Stones some more as I drive.  While driving I look at traffic signs and then I arrive at my girlfriends house.  My cell phone is there and I pick it up.  No Missed calls!  Yes!  I look at the most recent issue of climbing magazine that I had left at this house.  Photos of climbers and text pertaining to climbing stimulate my brain.  My girlfriend then shows me the artwork that she is drawing.  I look at them.  Then she shows me the photos that the drawings are from.

 

11:30 a.m.- I get back in my car.  More Stones and traffic signs as I drive to my house.  I get back in bed.  First I pick out an old issue of Climbing Magazine from the stack on the floor.  I lie in bed and read about the climbers and climbing of Llanberis Wales.

 

12:30 p.m.- I use my cell phone to call a friend.  She answers and we discuss a meeting place for a video shoot.  I get back in my car.  I listen to more music by the rolling stones and see more traffic signs.  I arrive at a coffee shop.  Inside I buy a cup of coffee.  The cup has a drawing of a hoarse on it. 

 

1:00 p.m.- I get back in my car and drive while listening to the same Stones cd and more traffic signs lead me to the location of the aforementioned video shoot.  I get out of my car and greet my friends with hellos and then we get out the equipment from the trunk of my car.  A camera, a microphone, batteries, boom poles, and reflectors are produced from the trunk of my car.

1:30 p.m.  For the next four hours we work as a team with the equipment and verbal communication to film a video.  There is so much media being used.  The camera, production book, microphones, and verbal communication all counts as media consumption.

 

5:30 p.m.  We are finally done with the video shoot and we pack all of the equipment away.  I get back in the car to hear more stones and follow more traffic signs.  While driving I call my girlfriend on my cell phone.  We discuss dinner.  She offers to order a pizza.  I get home and get back in bed with more climbing magazines.  I also use my laptop to access the Internet.  I refer to the article about a Llanberis climber and then I Google his name.  There is not much information but I search and search.  I find very little information about him. 

 

6:30 p.m.- My girlfriend arrives with a pizza.  The pizza is from Homeslice and they just recently got new pizza boxes and I check out the design.  It reminds me of an Italian villa.  We eat pizza and drink cokes out of the can.  Then I remember that I have band practice.

 

7:00 p.m.-  I set up a guitar amp and my guitar.  My other band mates arrive and they set up their equipment.  We begin to play.  Music is a form of communication.  We communicate between songs and sometimes we play the same song three times to get it right.  We do this for three hours.  After this we have a quick discussion and disband. 

 

10:30 p.m.- I lie in bed with my laptop and read an article online about simulation and it is really hard for me to understand.  After I read the article I open Microsoft word on my computer and start to type.

 

12:30 p.m.-  I now have typed at least five hundred words on the subject of the article I have just read and I save my document and then I turn off my computer. 

 

1:00 a.m.- I have brushed my teeth and now I am ready for bed.  I turn off the lights and go to sleep. 

The media is inescapable.  I am now immersed in media as I am writing.  What I have found recently is that the media is very healthy for me.  It provides influences and inspiration.  It creates outlets that in turn allow me to create.

         I am aware of my media intake more often now than ever.  I believe that this is possible because I shut myself off from the many forms of media I often use now.  After I turned twenty-one, I dropped out of college and moved to Ouray Colorado.  It was a big change.  I went from a student at the University of Mississippi to a drifter sleeping on a couch at a friend’s house in Colorado.  I remember feeling free.  I lived there for the following three years of my life and I was really shut off from the world.  I did not have Internet or a television.  My most common form of media that I regularly consumed was climbing magazines.  Someone had given me a box of back issues and I absorbed everything I could about the sport.  I also occasionally visited the library for books and a quick Google search but that was it.  Other than that I just climbed and worked and it felt good. 

            It felt good only for about a year.  After a year my inspiration as an artist was gone.  I was so bored that I could hardly stand it.  The next two years were hard but conducive for saving money.  I was definitely craving more media influence in my life though.  After three years of that simple life style I moved to Durango.

            When I moved to Durango I thought I was in a city.  Compared to Ouray there was so much going on that I was overwhelmed.  I started a band.  I bought records.  I spent hours in the coffee shops surfing the net and getting reacquainted with the world.  It felt so good.  I even started college again and now I feel like my life is so much more complete.

            The media causes my life to be stimulating.  I admire a simple lifestyle as well but for me personally there has to be stimulation through the media.  New music, new books, new topics of thought, and everything else that comes from the media are extremely healthy for me.  I do have a Thoreau side but I have been there and done that and I ultimately found it extremely boring.  It was therapeutic but overall it was extremely boring.

            My life is not so boring now.  I get frustrated about how busy I am occasionally but when I look back in hindsight I feel better than the way I used to feel.  I am driven and inspired and I attribute a lot of that to the media.  This exercise made me actually look at the media I was absorbing and I was super impressed.  I was doing things that three years ago seemed improbable.  I was happy that I was creating as much media as I was absorbing.  This is not always the case of course but for this particular day I put as much effort into the creation of media as I did the consumption of media.