Clocks show their faces moments pass us by in silence there is no time today
Time. I’ve never truly gotten a handle on it … slippery thing that it is. I can count. I count really well. I count in even beats and measures … I turned this into percussion and music … it seemed a natural progression. I read an interesting series of articles in New Scientist recently on the nature of time … of causation both forward and backward (think about that for a bit … something in the future having a causal effect on the past). Of how time doesn’t inherently have direction …that it doesn’t implicitly flow one way or the other – it is how we perceive time that makes it appear that it flows. That bends my mind it – really does.
What is time to you? What your watch or phone says. Is it a feeling or a notion? Is it an instant or a the suite of sensations that accompany an event or moment? For me it can be all of those things … how about you? I’m interested.
About the photo:
Camera: Mamiya 645 Super with 80mm f/2.8
Film: Fuji FP-3000B B&W Polaroid
Scanned: my dusty 3-in-1 multifunction scanner
Subject: Old clock sitting on the piano at Ness
Ok, this is interesting: the last comment you happened to leave on my blog mentioned an image with fish that required text, but was a post you were planning in the future. Your post above, reflects the subject of my next sketchbook post. Are you by chance, known as the Dr.? –Time Lords in your lineage?;)
Terrific image, all nonsense aside. The noise is excellent.
Thanks Elena … Alas – no the burdens of being a time-lord do not rest upon my shoulders. Funny that we’re in sync … something somewhere must be aligned! 🙂
These old clocks have souls, they sounded the hours of time for many years and the treatment you have chosen fits their
Thanks Marie … they’ve done their time so to speak 😉
Haha, dusty indeed but the fluff suits the picture very well. And the timing for this post is nice, I was just out shooting some film today which feels like going back in time 🙂
Time for me is usually most present for me at night as my sleeping behavoviour is a bit odd and I wake up every two hours or so. And I dream every time so a lot of stories told and pictures seen as well, a lot of moments noticed in passing even in the dark.
Sometimes I just cannot fall asleep … I lie there and after an hour or so I slowly realise my eyes are still open and I’m awake … still. Slipping into dreams in between makes for a busy night with not much rest 🙂
Oh, this I know too well. No matter how tired I am, my brain just doesn’t want to shutdown and I always need an hour or more to slip into sleep. I’m always amazed to see others fall asleep within minutes. One moment they are talking to me and the next they are gone, snoring silently sometimes 🙂
Likewise … I’m the one left awake listening to the snoring 😉
Very interesting question you pose. Very interesting pictures. Maybe Carroll Lewis investigated the concept of time as these scientists did. It is possible the a re-read of Alice In Wonderland might be not a bad idea.
Time indeed is slippery . In our waking hours it all seems rather linear but if we delve into the land of our imagination, sleep, daydreaming or just turning ourselves upside down, it is possible that time may not be what we think it to be at all.
Such a slippery fellow you with your concept of time. Thanks for giving me time to pause. At times it seems to be such a speedy weedy and so much can be accomplished in such a short time and other times time just doesn’t seem to move at all or at the very least seems to moving at a snail’s pace. Maybe it all has to do where our heads are at the time .
Questions , questions, questions!!!!
Lewis Carroll may well have been onto something. Another author is/was Kurt Vonnegut and his Tralfamadorians who experienced all time occurring simultaneously. The Vonneggut books are well worth a read.
I love Vonnegut. there me some re-reads coming up shortly. time, something you could talk forever, no pun intended…
‘talk about’…. I mean…
ah, it’s too early…. and no way to edit…. just ignore everything I said…. I meant ‘ there may be some re-reads coming up’
I kinda like the ‘early ramble’ 🙂
I can fix it up for you if you like … no one need ever know 😉
lol, as you wish. but it takes a lot for me to feel embarrassed 🙂
I left a comment earlier that didn’t take, Geoff, so I’m gonna try again!
Time really IS an interesting concept, especially since the only moment we ever have is right NOW. However, i love what happens when time seems to stand still in those moments of ecstasy. Someone has aptly called them “eternalized moments.”
Hi Ginnie thanks for trying and for letting me know … hope the gremlins have been sorted. I love those externalised moments too … when everything seems possible and limitless.
Time is really a fleeting perception. Usually I don’t think much about, time just fly by. But as a philosophical issue, I have always been interested in time. And my understanding of time is really that it comes down to how we perceive it. Like you say when one start to talk about how the future can cause something in the past, it becomes really mind bending. Usually time makes us into slaves, but if we are able to be more focused in the now, time becomes less of a master to us. (And by the way sorry for having been absent lately, I just haven’t had time to comment the last couple of weeks).
Time is one of those things I’m not aware of until I focus upon it … or try to focus on it … slippery thing that it is.
Otto, great to see you back up and commenting again … your insightful posts and comments have been missed all over the internet I think.
“We live in time – it holds us and moulds us – but I’ve never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.”
you know how once something comes to your attention you see it everywhere… started reading ‘the sense of an ending’ today and had to think of your post…
Is that a quote from the book? It’s very good and fits my thinking on time too. I’ve read some Barnes before but not his latest work.
yes, it’s from his book. a very interesting read. you should give it a go.
I will!
Wonderful image – I like it a lot. Amazing to come across this post this morning, because only minutes ago I said to myself, ‘Forget about time, it only brings stress. It’s the thing movie-makers put into films to create tension. So just forget all about it, if only for a day.’ But I won’t forget about your photograph.
Thanks Nigel. My photograph doesn’t illustrate any time … it only invites our perception of time and then screws with it a little by presenting nonsense from those faces we trust … or somesuch. I’m not entirely sure I’ve had enough coffee!
Love the photo of the clock faces 🙂 Time is an illusion, for sure. I like the theory that the past, the present and the future all exist together – an eternal string that is positioned in space and which can accessed from all points if we have the right key 😉 I think I have that right – must confer with my friend Einstein – haha
I thought you would confer with your relative Einstein 😉 (I crack myself up!)
hahahaha – not bad 😉
Relatively speaking of course 🙂
Love the image (and that quote in Petra’s post)
The time stuff plays with my head too – always found Dr Who so fascinating for that reason (the Time Traveller’s Wife book played with that concept well too)
Have only just found the way to put your blog in my reader…will be here more often now!
x
Hey Ally,
welcome (again!) I love Doctor Who … bends my mind … can’t wait for the next series.
I like the quote too … Petra has great quotes! Mind you, I haven’t gotten around to reading the book yet though it’s on my list.
x
exterminate, exterminate! hahaha (sorry to interrupt) – I have a keychain with the dalek ‘exterminate’ eminating from a button (also have a tardis external USB hub that makes the noise of the tardis departing) 😉
A colleague at work has a model of the TARDIS containing jelly beans suspended above his desk … it makes the characteristic sounds when opened 🙂
I’m both attracted by time and appalled by it. I used to have a great sense of time (ie, knew what time it was almost to the second) and then somehow it all went and now I lost track of it very easily. Hours pass like minutes. I suppose it’s a mark of being engrossed in what I’m doing.
I’ve subscribed to your blog by RSS feed, by the way. Love what I’ve seen, so far.
Time as I said … is a slippery thing! I get what you mean about the increasingly rapid passage of time. I might have to revisit this in a future blog post!
Marvellous photo – I think it’s the fact of our mortality that gives time its shape in our perception
I think I need a glass of wine to even begin to unpack that one! Thank you and welcome to Pictures with Words 🙂
The dust of time… Great capture and perfect effect. LOve this one.
Have a nice day.
Glad you like it too 🙂