What better way to kick off the holidays than with Todd Rundgren’s “Play the drums all day long” Loud. This works best when it’s played on local terrestrial radio, introduced by a DJ named “Scooter” or “The Bearman,” with you and Carol from accounts payable air drumming.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that doesn’t understand the value of tradition. And yet, even heard through earphones, that defiant opening line (“I don’t want to work”) is an unmistakable sign that freedom is on the way.
You don’t need a philosophical justification to empathize with Todd Rundgren, but if you do, Josef Pieper’s “Leisure: A Cultural Foundation” For Pieper, “leisure” is “not idylls on Sunday afternoons, but freedom, education, culture, and the preservation of an undiminished humanity that sees the world as a whole.” Our problem today is that we have replaced our sense of God with an obsession with productivity.
The emptiness caused by the neglect of worship is filled by boredom, which is directly related to the mere waste of time and the inability to enjoy leisure, for one can only become bored if the mental capacity to enjoy leisure is lost.
We are arguably more bored than ever before. What could be more boring than finally closing your laptop after a long day of work and picking up your phone, picking up your drumsticks, or even doing nothing at all?
Do we even know how to relax anymore? “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoonist Bill Watterson doesn’t think so. “We haven’t been taught very much how to relax constructively,” he said. 1990 Commencement Speech At Kenyon College.
It’s not enough to find distractions. You need to restore and develop yourself. Relaxing means plodding down in front of the TV and surrendering your brain to its pandering stupidity. Shutting down your thought processes doesn’t make you younger. The mind is like a car battery; it recharges by running.
Watterston learned through her work that there’s nothing better than having to come up with new ideas every day to keep her brain from melting. Instead, she found another way to relax: “I found that the only way to keep writing every day for years was to let my mind wander into new territory, and to do that I had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.”
That playfulness is evident in Watterson’s approach to his art. Nearly 30 years after its final episode, Calvin and Hobbes remains one of the most beloved and acclaimed comics of all time. But to this day, you can’t buy a Hobbes stuffed animal or a Calvin bobblehead, or stream the Calvin and Hobbes animated series on your device or smart TV.
Judging by the net worths of less commercially astute artists like Charles Schulz and Jim Davis, it’s fair to say that Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson wasted millions of dollars, as did his decision to end the series at the height of its popularity just 10 years after its launch.
Perhaps this explains why “Calvin and Hobbes” achieves a consistently unsentimental, honest and highly entertaining portrayal of childhood. To monetize something, you first need to assess its value, and that involves seeing it through the eyes of potential buyers.
Kids can be wayward, to be sure, but this kind of self-consciousness is completely foreign to them. Watterson likely knew that the delicate relationship between a mischievous, philosophical six-year-old and a wise, loyal pet tiger was never going to last. Like so many showbiz duos before them, success would only drive them apart.
