I’ve been out of the loop.

It was my birthday week last week and I usually take it easy that week, even if I’m not actually away.

And I also went off media a couple of months ago.

Specifically, I went off tv. And, even more specifically, I went off the news.

I mean, for one thing—those pharmaceutical ads have gotten WAY out of hand! It had become impossible to enjoy even my favorite TV shows (Columbo, for one) without hearing about the various diseases I could have, or the side effects I could suffer, or, if the pharmaceutical corporations weren’t occupying the sound waves, it was products that would have been completely unmentionable in the first two-thirds of my life.

Really, I can do without all that.

At first, it was weird.

I am used to having some sort of news on a lot of the time. Or I’m checking the headlines.

As if anything major was happening. Of as if I could do anything about any of it.

So, when I shut it all down, I didn’t quite know what to do.

Listening to books—TONS of them—and music and some podcasts (though the ads are annoying there too) moved in.

I ended up in a state of enchantment.

I loved the books I was listening to. One was Keith Richards’ autobiography Life. It went hand in hand with listening to the Rolling Stones’ latest album (can we still say that word, album?) Hackney Diamonds. Without going into desperate details—about which this post was not meant to be—about either: they are both excellent. And inspirational.

And enchanting.

Because they are all about things that mean something.

And everything I was listening to before was about the surface, about agitation, about the moment—not about what matters, what endures.

Music, mastery, bandmates, the long run—these matter.

The moment to moment, chattering, inexpert blah blah blah—this doesn’t actually matter.

I have decided to apply the pioneer test to news.

If I lived in the pioneer days and I had gone west to make my fortune, it would take three or four months for information to get to me. If it still mattered then, then it would have been important. If not, not.

One thing I know for sure after listening to these tons of books is that, if it’s a good book about things that matter, then someone put a lot of time and attention and trouble into writing it. Because no one would do that if it wasn’t something that really mattered, that drew them like (I was going to say a moth to a flame but it is more accurate to say) a caterpillar to its butterflyhood.

Anyone feeling also enchanted, intrigued, drawn?