timeaftertime

Time after time

by Bob on April 29, 2007

Time after time. Yes, that's what was meant. One could easily think of the beautiful 1983 song by Cyndi Lauper by that title: "Time After Time" and its music video. After all, Cyndi is from New York, like me, although she's from Ozone Park in the borough of Queens whereas I am from Manhattan proper. Recalling that the only one of the five boroughs of New York City that's connected to the mainland USA is The Bronx. Nevertheless, a brilliant song and realisation by her.

Now, aonother way of interpreting this odd turn of phrase has got to do with what one sees, or in fact doesn't see, and misses these days. Specifically when one is on the train or beside another in a bus, or standing in the street, or at the next table in a restaurant, if one has forgotten one's wristwatch, one can hardly find the time anymore osmotically from other people.

The time is now esconced in a cell phone in their pocket and not on their wristwatch anymore. So, it used to be that if you wanted to know that time you could just look at someone else's wrist and voila there was the time, especially if the watch was the geometrical two hands type, as opposed to digital. It's so much more readily available as two clock hands rotating around a central axis. The angle simple tells us the time, and we don't have to bother to look at the numerals. Near-sacred geometry with compass and square. Vesica Pisces. The Golden Ratio, Fibonacci numbers, and a nautilus shell. And Elmer Fudd always complained about the silly rabbit.

It's virtually gone now. Hidden inside a pocket or handbag inside a cellphone. When one wishes to know the time, one reaches for one's cell phone, flips it open, and the time is shown privately. That's just plain "un-mutual" as was said in the 1967 visionary TV series, "The Prisoner".

Now, one of course realises that one hardly even needs a timepiece. Humans have an innate clock inside them which is far more accurate and subtle than anything we can purchase. It only needs us as a battery or wind-up mechanism. And it's a great internal alarm clock. One observes oneself coming to alertness seconds before one's electronic or mechanical alarm clock goes off. Amazing. And trying the experiment of living without a wristwatch, one can find that the time is quite accurately known internally as we guess the hour. Circadian rhythms notwithstanding and results from experiemental sleep chambers in Psychology Departments of universities and medical schools.

Or even the public clock. Big Ben or the like. Most people just need a reminder every few hours and they remain spot on internally.

If we consider Susan Sontag and her controversial 1978 work, "Illness as Metaphor" we can also, with Dr. Jung's permission as cited in his Synchronicity work, say that time is a metaphor. It might be an invention of mankind, after all. Or simply an uncovery by mankind as Dr. Jung wrote, ibid. We can again just turn to the impossible term to define, following Frederich Nietzsche and his thinking in Also Sprach Zarathustra, that of a "moment". It's elusive. It, if it ever really exists, comes and goes before one can put a finger on it. Even Heisenberg knew it.

Time is necessary to a productively functioning society it would seem. And the over-rated "Distance = Rate x Time" metaphor which even makes paying a taxi cab fare easy for the most part.

Hence we might consider what Jung thought of as a slippage in the space-time continuum, the infamous Deja-vu, and what the White Queen said to Alice in "Through The Looking Glass", by Lewis Carroll, Chapter 5, Wool and Water: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards". Dr. Jung liked that quote for his Synchronicity.

Then we get into some complications, such as Temporal Logic, not just plain Syllogistic Logic or Propositional Logic and the like. Logic that morphs over dicreet time. Arthur Prior (amazingly co-incidental surname for this field) at Oxford. Even Frege had a hand in it.

Time is quite a popular subject of songs and poetry and literature. Then there's the image of Father Time, or The Grim Reaper with his sickle. Thinking Ingmar Bergman and his brilliant 1957 film "The Seventh Seal".

Time is on my side, oh yes it is, sayeth the Rolling Stones. I think they meant it used to be.

Worldwide crusade beginning to either (a) get wristwatches worn again, at least for mutualty and not un-mutuality, and (b) to not use timepieces, but our internal human clocks.

I once had a student from the Far East in Asia who whilst in NYC told me she yearned for her small home village where time was simply measured by the seasons. She really made me think. Perhaps avoid Hobbsian practices, although Thomas Hobbes was timid and a bookworm. Hardly a Leviathan.

One cannot close such a thought without being Sixties, and remembering the brilliant 1968 11-minute long song by The Chambers Brothers, "Time Has Come Today". It yet again pre-saged our modern times. Listen to the cowbell and reverberation chamber. Not to forget the brilliant 1967 song, "Time of the Season" by The Zombies. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. On Wooden Ships. Horse Latitudes. The Doors take on it with a song opening. Jim was Dionysus he thought. We should all be so lucky.

One must not forget Salvador Dali and his brilliant 1931 painting "The Persistence of Memory". Obviously, he knew all about time and its illusory nature. Nietzsche and Jung were like applauding in the aether whilst Bishop Berkeley might have been somewhat cross, in his Solipsism. All right, Immaterialism, if you insist. And "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones was a great song, even for 1965. Based on gospel and R&B. A great combination, great guitar riff which was absolutely continuous throughout the piece -- kind of a first. Then came "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve. Bitter sweet indeed in contrast with the Stones song.

"The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali. 1931.