In the last days of her life, my wife’s mother spent most of her time sleeping on the couch. In the few hours she was awake, she was watching Biathlon on TV: Something that comes very close to a visual non-stimulus.

During Covid I started watching old movies: The rule was not their age, but that I had already seen them. Their predictability were part of what interested me there. I did not want to be surprised, not visually and certainly not by a story.

That you are content with just a low-level stimulus, barely registering above white noise or just the plain nothing-at-all of sleep.

You don’t need much of anything any more.