No time for profundity (i.e. excessive length). Just time for a quick rumination on the strange places that human instinct takes the solitary but connected human in these electrical times.

Do you often watch movies on television or listen to music from the radio, at times of their choosing, not your own, which you already own in a form that you could play to yourself at a time of your own choosing?

I first noticed this odd syndrome when I caught myself listening on Radio Three to a recording of Elgar's First Symphony which I already owned on CD. And not only was I doing this, but a fact to add is that my CD player makes far better sound than does my radio.

Last night, which was what reminded me of this, I watched large chunks of one of my favourite movies, The Right Stuff, which I already own on DVD, on television.

It occurs to me that these two works, Elgar One and The Right Stuff, are rather similar. Both embody the confidence of a Great Power at the height of its power, and with an undercurrent of nervous laughter caused by the uneasy feeling that maybe it won't last. Both are very public pieces, especially the Elgar. And I've chosen a picture from The Right Stuff to illustrate this post which also captures the public importance of those First Seven astronauts. The Right Stuff is at least as much about the supreme social niche that those men briefly occupied in American society, down there on the ground, and about the earthly society they inhabited, as it is about their astronautical achievement. As Dennis Quaid's grinning Gordo Cooper says, he's got all manner of deals going, and a "free lunch from one end of America to the other", and all this before he ever ventured into space. And who could forget the scene where John Glenn, played so beautifully by Ed Harris, proves that, at least for that brief shining moment, he and the other astronauts between them outranked the Vice-President of the United States?

And of course those rocket expeditions were immense public events.

So both the Elgar and The Right Stuff, being public pieces, are the sort of things you want to witness at a public event. So is that why I wanted to witness them on the radio and the TV? At least I join a virtual "event", instead of it being a private event of my own, as the next best thing to a real public occasion.

Or is it that if there is a major terrorist incident in some big western city with huge loss of life, I want an emergency news bulletin to interrupt the proceedings and tell me about this straight away? This can't happen when you listen to a CD or watch a DVD, and in this respect the public media are an improvement. Do I want the potential connection with History, should a slice of it erupt while I'm watching or listening? Closer, maybe.

Is it simply that I'm human, and as such, am a social animal? I simply like to huddle together with my fellow humans. But actually huddling together with fellow humans brings me slap up against their imperfections, and mine in their eyes. In the sort of audiences I am usually a member of, they aren't the people I'd really like them to be. And I'm very rarely the person I'd like myself to be. But if I listen to the radio or watch it on the telly, I can imagine my ideal audience, and be an ideal member of it. I think it's more like that. Sociability without all the bother and sweat and annoyance of actual socialising. The idea of other people, as opposed to the actual fact of them. Mankind, rather than other people.

Forgive me. I profounded on rather more than I intended to.