David McElroy

You’re sitting in front of a television screen and you absently switch from channel to channel to channel with a remote control. You’re distracted. Bored. Your mind is elsewhere. But before you know it, you’ve spent an hour or more watching things that were only mildly interesting — and you don’t know why.

I’ve done that. I suspect almost everybody has.

The pervasive power of television to take over my life was one of the factors which led to me eliminating TV programming from my life for the most part years ago. (I’ve written about that before and talked about the influence of Neil Postman’s book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” which I still strongly recommend.)

After I quit watching television, I thought I had taken permanent control of the “media ecology” around me and that I had control of which messages were going to bombard me, but I was wrong. I didn’t see social media coming and I had no idea what the web would evolve into as a whole.

Today, I don’t sit in front of a television with a remote control. I sit in front of a MacBook and go through a dizzying array of websites which make what I watched on television seem manageable by comparison. Once again, I find myself struggling against a pervasive popular culture — coming to me through a wildly popular medium — in an effort to control my time and my thoughts.

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When I received the rough cut of my short film 10 years ago from an editor in Los Angeles, it still felt woefully unfinished and I was afraid I didn’t have anything that really worked. Inside, I was panicking. The guy in LA had bailed on the project right before it was finished, so I had to figure out how to finish locally.

I went to visit Ed Boutwell, the legendary founder of the local Boutwell Studios, down at his home in Shelby County. He watched my rough cut and told me I had something great, even though he disagreed with my libertarian satire since he was a progressive left guy. Because he thought it was good —and because he was eager to help a wannabe artist — he agreed to help me.

Ed told me I could get a local video editor to easily make the final picture cuts and credits but I mostly needed someone good to work with me on the audio recording, music selection and final audio mix.

Ed was retired, but he set me up to work with Courtney Haden, whose voice I had heard on Birmingham radio for years — mostly notably on Kicks 106 when it ruled local rock radio — and who was now co-owner of Boutwell Studios. Courtney had been a star of local FM rock morning drive radio at a couple of stations — and he still had the voice and personality I recognized.

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But when I thought how to understand this,
it seemed to me a wearisome task,
until I went into the sanctuary of God….
— Psalm 73:16-17 (ESV)

As I listened to the people around me squabbling with each other Monday night, I felt a vague sense of unease. They snapped at one another. They were petty. On the surface, things were almost civil, but you could feel the hostility of unhappy people taking their feelings out on others.

I felt completely out of place.

I felt as though the boiling anger in these people’s spirits should be obvious to everyone. Much of what I was seeing seemed to be outward projections of internal rage at self. The tension in the air felt emotionally painful to me.

Once more, I felt like an alien among creatures who made no sense to me. Once more, I needed to find peace somewhere. I needed sanctuary from the world. I needed a person, a place or a loving spirit which made sense — which gave me refuge from the storm of this world’s banal and routine hatred.

Again and again, I’ve tried to make sense of this world — and of the people of this world — and I’m left frustrated and feeling alone. What’s more, I can’t find a sense of peace. And like the ancient psalmist, I found myself needing sanctuary — where there might be refuge and understanding.

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