In real time

In two excellent series, The Pitt and Adolescence, the stories play out in real time.  An hour-long episode represents an actual hour.  No omitting the ordinary moments usually are left on the cutting room floor.  No music bridging or anticipating action or setting the mood. 

Both very realistic and totally engaging from start to finish.  Noah Wylie, lead actor in The Pitt, described the sounds of the doctors yelling commands to each other (unintelligible to us laypeople) as taking the place of music.  Without needing to understand the technical language of trauma surgery, the realism of it is captivating. It is indeed like staccato sounds in music, alternating with quiet reflection by the doctors and nurses as they tend to people after a mass shooting. While tending to those who are dying and those who can be saved, the conversations among doctors and nurses takes the viewer into the heart and head and muscle of one hour. 

I heard on NPR a story called Slow Television, a concept started in Norway.  There is little perceptible action and no plot, yet people are drawn to it and find it relaxing.  It might be a mama cat giving birth to a litter of six kittens or a chef preparing a meal or a family talking at night on a patio.  It sounds a bit like watching paint drying.  

At first, I thought--how strange!

But then I realized I've been doing exactly that for months.  I watch videos on book binding that are more interesting to me than carefully crafted plots on pages of published books.  

Some do not have words at all; others have voice-overs explaining what they are doing; others have quiet music. Each video captures the slow and meticulous movements of a needle attached to thread going in and out and under and around, connecting section to another.  If there is a plot, it's simply the push and pull of threads. 

While I'm watching to learn the skills involved in making a book, and while these videos might only interest those who want to perfect a skill, I'm sure there are videos like this on every subject under the sun.  

I've almost entirely given up television.  When I went to a movie in a theater recently, I noticed that the volume (for the five or six of us in the audience) was distractingly intense.  Not only that--but all the previews of "coming attractions" (now called trailers) were all incredibly loud, not one of which I'd have wanted to see.

Everything seems urgent, overblown, and magnified--just as television news does.  

So if you are looking for an antidote to all that, find yourself some slow TV.  One of the plusses of technology is that it's out there, countless little islands of quiet that soothe the weariness of soul.