Thoughts and musings
…on the passing of time in the digital age. A message received by BA on New Year’s Day 2014 from Phil Dadson in New Zealand.
Unbelievable another year has swept by already .. not sure whether it’s this speedy digital era we live in or whether our brains are changing, or maybe just a symptom of growing old? Is our perception of time passing – the hours of the day, the passage of months and the changes of the season the same in all corners of the planet? Does the passing of time register the same in your town as in mine? in your brain as in mine? It’s intriguing to me that we can measure time objectively the same everywhere but that it can be interpreted so individually & subjectively. We’ve been watching a Scandi-noir thriller series just recently –The Killing, you quite possibly know it . .one of the Euro’ terror-fear /fundamentalist-Islam paranoia TV series . .. but an interesting example of frenetic pace story telling, compared say, with the pace of a Herzog feature from the 80s such as Fitzcaraldo . . or with the pace of a much earlier classic, On the Waterfront. Obvious in a way, but revealing to observe how the speed of an era is reflected in the construct and the editing of a narrative. .. .rave, rave
For your amusement here’s a link to recent vid just hot off the drive, currently on my homepage www.sonicsfromscratch.co.nz/ or at https://vimeo.com/82317185
aaah, the streets of London . . .
…I’m reminded of another piece Phil wrote following a trip we made together from Dunhuang to Urumqi in China:
” there is an old Chinese tale about Confucius and his disciples visiting a famous waterfall to meditate, but on arriving finding the river in full flood and the waterfall a raging torrent. Suddenly something caught their eye diving into the churning mist of the waterfall. A few moments later a wirey old man emerged from the boiling waters, water and hair streaming down his back. Confucius asked one of his disciples to go ask the old man what magic he used to survive such dangerous waters. ” no magic !” The old man replied. “just in with the whirl and out with the swirl”.
www.sonicsfromscratch.co.nz/dadsonics.php?id=70
I had one insightful response to this question of how we perceive time, from Bart Hopkin, founder/editor of Experimental Musical Instruments magazine & a living encyclopedia of Organology, who suggests that for a small child, for whom life is an open book, that a year is a very long time indeed, compared to the perception of a year’s duration in the life of any one of us filled with the accumulation of a life’s work, family and whatever experiences & responsibilities.
Considering this, I reckon that each year as we grow older, time flies by incrementally faster year by year as we progress into the twilight years, and that it possibly all slows down again as we approach the mystery & timelessness of letting go & death.