welcome to the show

Often-times, “entertainment” gets a bad rap.  The word carries a lot of baggage into the conversation.  Likely, upon hearing the word “entertainment,” you picture someone in a movie theater, face a-glow from the busy screen, cheeks full of popcorn.  The problem with entertainment is that it connotes being passive, even lazy, being distracted from real life.

I think there is a sense in which entertainment needs to be loosed from its bond, relieved of some of this baggage.  The beautiful thing about entertainment, and I think what needs to be emphasized more, is this:  in the process of being “entertained,” an interaction is taking place, and what’s more, that something valuable is happening in the midst of this interaction. 

All writing is entertainment.  Right now, I am entertaining you.  I am offering you something – ideas, visuals, some sort of stimulation.  You aren’t just sitting there lazily, letting everything I say drift into your mind.  It’s much the opposite.  You are actively engaging yourself in my words, you are processing for yourself what they are worth, and in this way, we are conversing.  Your mind is working on this idea, just as my mind worked on this idea, and so we come together on a certain plane of thought, and both of us are changed, in some small way, because of this interaction – isn’t that sweet?  Humans need entertainment, we crave it, we seek it out; we can’t live without it.  We need something outside of ourselves to come into our heads and stir things up; it’s how we learn.  Without entertainment, we would never learn to speak, to read, or to develop any complex ideas.

(And so now comes the admonishment).  Depending on what you believe is valuable in life, I hope you steep yourself with movies, books, conversations, etc… that actually have something worthwhile to offer you.  

Because the idea is this:  if I don’t watch movies about religion, and I never read any works on religion, and I don’t spend much time thinking about religion – then I shouldn’t expect to have anything smart to say about religion, or at least I shouldn’t expect to know anything more than what I learned when I was a kid, or whenever I last took a class on religion.  In other words, you are what you eat.  My favorite thing to eat are books, but there are a million and one ways to entertain yourself.  A lot of beautiful people out there have a lot of beautiful ideas; the best thing we can do is seek them out, in order to learn, and in order that we, in turn, become better entertainers.