One reason is that it focuses me on gratitude for simple things. In accounts of prison life, there is always such pure joy in a very ordinary (to us) pleasure-- an orange, a conversation, a view from a window, a postcard, etc. Why can't we hold onto the joy of ordinary things in civilian life? Alexander Solzhenitsyn described his pleasure at seeing the vivid colour of a red fire engine when he had escaped the gulag, and feeling that free people did not appreciate such things. We don't, but how can we learn to? How can we avoid becoming habituated to simple joys? I suppose mortification and penance is one answer, since it has the secondary benefit of making us appreciate pleasures and comforts more after we give them up for a little while. I'm not great at mortification, maybe I can become better.
Another reason I enjoy prison stories (and all stories of confinement) is because they satisfy a hunger for organic community. We are all so dispersed in the modern world, living and working and socialising in different places. I've become wary about keeping in touch with people by email or text, because I'm always dreading the response: "We must get together for coffee/lunch"... Not because I don't want to, I very much do, but because it's such a heavy toll in terms of time and money. And I'm relatively lucky because I work in a big university which is like a small town, so I DO have more of an "organic community" than most people today.
This same hunger for organic community is why I'm so drawn to Star Trek series like The Next Generation and Voyager, where they are all living and working in the same place and seeing each other every day.
Also on those Star Trek series, the crew are generally engaged in amateur dramatics and concerts and poetry recitals and all that kind of thing-- the sort of thing I WISH was more prominent in everyday life. The same with prison stories, they always seem to involve prisoners making their own entertainment and freeing their own creativity, even in the most challenging circumstances.
For instance, the one I'm reading involves political prisoners singing to each other through prison bars. I never sing. I barely know any songs. I'm extremely ashamed of this. I've resolved I'm going to learn more songs, and sing them to myself if to nobody else. I might even write some songs for myself to sing.
Another reason, as I mentioned before, is the absence of banality in prison stories. It actually seems more dignified to be working in a laundry room or cleaning toilets than coming up with marketing campaigns for yoghurt, or all the other things sentient human beings have to apply their intellects to in modern society. And indeed, that we CHOOSE to apply our minds to, include aimless browsing on Wikipedia.
Recently I've been craving (more than usual) something that I find it hard to put into words. When I try words I come up with things like "dignity", "refinement", "solemnity", or even "priggishness".
It's more an aesthetic consideration than a moral one. I think the passage that comes closest is the famous passage from Walter Pater, who I've never actually read: "A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."
Recently I've been feeling this more, to the extent that I'm resolving to stop listening to pop and rock music (though I like it), stop engaging in silly or ironic conversation, not read anything trashy or gossipy, appreciate silence more, pay more attention to whatever space I am in at any given moment and prize it more, all that kind of thing. But I've had these resolutions before and generally wandered from them.
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