With all the movies and TV shows recommended via social media feeds, you’d think Netflix concocted this virus in a lab themselves. I mean, dropping Tiger King in the middle of this “stay the hell at home!” order across the country and world?? Netflix, you knew EXACTLY what you were doing…

But kidding aside (because COVID-19 is no laughing matter), I have a plea to the millions, heck, billions, around the world sitting on their couch or looking out the window wondering if COVID-19 will lay siege on their home by way of the mail delivery person or pizza boy: BINGE READ instead of BINGE WATCH.

Hear me out…

How do you feel after watching episode after episode or installment after installment of a TV show, movie, or miniseries? You feel like you have to “eat” more. “One more episode.” or “What else can we watch?” This is addictive behavior, ya know. That’s what today’s TV shows, like drugs, are designed to do: make you crave more.

Now, TV, for instance, has never delivered stronger writing and production. The product is top-notch. This is nothing against our creative brethren in the film and TV production industry (aka “Hollywood”), but this request/soft demand is more a response to the environs in which we reside today.

Sitting at home and consuming film or TV isn’t exactly “good for the cranium.” Sure, a nice respite of your work at home (or worse layoff) is required at times. For screen-oriented entertainment, there are inherent truths we cannot forget. You consume film and TV by sitting and watching and listening.

As the late acclaimed writer and thinker David Foster Wallace put it, “Television is really darn easy. You sit there, you don’t have to do very much.”

You are a hard drive for download. There is no interactivity, nor real stimulus other than emotional firings of the brain.  In other words, it just revs you up. And when the credits are rolling, your brain enters that addictive state — “I want more.” Heck, Netflix doesn’t even GIVE you the option. They just auto-launch the next episode or related show. Hence, the extended, and fruitless, binge sessions.

Open the page…

Have you read in healthy sessions lately? Perhaps an airplane or during a daily commute? Well, that’s gone. So, maybe before you put your head down at night?

Another question to ponder: Have you ever thought about replacing whatever time you watch TV with reading? Non-fiction, fiction, poetry, etc. Doesn’t really matter.

I implore you: Try BINGE READING. Read that book sitting on your nightstand or end table. Engross yourself. Reading is a very personal experience (more on that at the end).

The art of the written word isn’t about the author and all the hours and energy he or she invested to deliver XX amount of words for your provocation or enjoyment… screw their egos. But what about the conversation? A conversation that is a true escape for your mind. A world, a life, a character, a place, a distant land not ravaged by lockdown.

Your brain fires off dozens of levers for imagination, inspiration, motivation, understanding, empathy, compassion, and more. Reading delivers dynamic elements — both right and left sides of that noggin — that you can USE as fuel for your own work and purpose and fun. Oh, and stories on the page can be quite entertaining! How many times have you heard, “The book was so much better than the movie.” There’s a reason for that…

During this COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps one of the greatest gifts we could give our minds is the gift of time in order to read the written word… instead of absorbing light emission activity generated on a screen. Maybe it’ll also deliver a stabilization. There is a great big, world out there. Let’s read all about it. And by the time we’ve filled ourselves with prose and poetry, the world will reopen for us to experience again.

And I leave with you this from Carl Sagan:

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

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If you’re looking for something to read, one of The Creator Studio’s members, David Salvi, wrote a new science fiction novel, CANAAN (2020).

This science fiction adventure is a thrill ride from start to finish.

Purchase Here (Kindle or Paperback): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086H2FKV9