Did a lot of computer work yesterday after which the brain was quite taxed so it was time for one of my favorite pastimes, starting at square one on YouTube and seeing where that leads.
Stop number one was Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsody and in the video the incredibly complicated sheet music for that work scrolled along with the song. Hmm- interesting. Stop number two, when I got tired of listening to Lizst, led me to stop three, then so on and so forth, and I eventually, after watching sand scuptures being made, ended up watching domino falls.
Ornate stacks of dominos, hundreds of thousands of them, fell in designed patterns and it was relaxing to watch that, but I had to wonder how much work and planning went into those falls beforehand. I watched those dominos fall for a good long while before I typed in 'steel balls rollling on a track', which led me to steel ball sculpture art. This too was strangely relaxing, though, like the domino falls, not as satisfying as you would think. There was also some time spent watching Rube Goldberg machines in operation, and if you don't know what a Rube Goldberg machine is, it is in reference to the comic strip artist in the 1920's who drew up designs for machines that were incredibly complicated, only to make toast or something simple like that.
Image from 'Rolling Ball Sculpture'
I imagine the designers of these works of art did so for the challenge, as well as to bring a bit of enjoyment into the lives of others (not to mention the YouTube views) but the end results were only moderately exciting, I must say. Still, it showed that in a world seemingly beset with issues contentious, that there are still areas on the planet where people have so much free time that they can spend who knows how long constructing totally useless temporary art and meaningless contraptions. This also tells me that they have nothing 'better' to do and among the choices available as to how to spend their time they chose this. Hell, I chose this!
I could have been learning calculus, or engineering, watching surgery being performed, studying home and/or car repair videos, listening to a spiritual teacher, or any number of productive videos on every subject imaginable, it all depends on what you type in. But the mind can only take in so much technical information at any one time. After that it's domino falls, cloud watching, TV, or staring at the fireplace.