November Playlist
This month I’ve been thinking about Time more deeply than I usually have space to. I started reading The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion by Sean Carroll, which I would recommend to any non expert wanting to learn more about the topic without relying on clumsy metaphors.
Even with a hard science approach, it’s difficult not to get philosophical when steeped in these ideas, and with Daylight Savings, I’ve found myself contemplating the way we talk about using time, Save Time, Keep Time, Kill Time, Waste Time, the qualities of time, Down Time, Over Time, Quality Time, as well as ways we measure time, and how those forms of measurement impact our experience of the time passing. In making a list of everyday ways I measure time, I broadly categorized them as either digital or analog, with analog including relational measurements such as
light and shadows,
growth and decay,
chapters read,
candle height,
hunger.
I grew up in Oak Park, IL. We had a very old, very large raspberry patch which felt like my own secret garden. At my small size I could crawl to the center of the patch and pause time, unscathed by the brambles. The most delicious fruit was there, safe from larger animals, leaving the best for the birds, the bunnies, and me.
This is where I first remember being conscious of time as subjective, as something it was possible to lose track of and manipulate. I discovered the power of stillness, of dilating time through deep observation in a way that stayed with me for hours even after leaving the patch.
I remember a book my parents had in our shared bathroom, with a melancholy single figure and single tree on the cover, with a title to the effect of “How to Stop Feeling Like Time is Racing By.” As a child still learning to master the mechanics of their small body, the idea that this was a future worry to be shouldered in adulthood was foreboding, to say the least.
I wasn’t enough of a reader to actually get anything from the book other than the title, but armed with my experiences in the raspberry patch and further validation that time, or at least our experience of it, was variable, I began a series of experiments that I still continue today, as exercises in rebuffing the limitations and stress of the straight arrow of progress thinking, as well as for my own amusement.
These include putting horse drawn carriages on busy city streets, redressing gossiping groups at coffee shops in victorian dress, or in other ways tangle up chronology through creative visualization. This is now such an ingrained habit, it’s one of the first places my mind wanders off to when it gets a chance.
Other experiments that I try to do at least a few times a year include hiding all time telling devices from myself for a day, which includes also avoiding computers etc., walking for extending periods without devices to track distance or even a watch, and any situation I can get myself into that parallels the stillness of the raspberry patch. Today, practicing stillness is the most important and yet easiest to lose touch with part of my studio practice.
This fall, I have been moving closer to my goal of understanding modern midwestern hunting culture, including scent blocking, camos, and tree stand safety. I’m aiming to do a series of drawings and plein air paintings done while sitting with stillness in tree stands this winter. I’ll be sure to share with you in upcoming issues. This all is part of my effort to incorporate deep observation back into the actual production of my work, after returning to Chicago from MA.
And of course, Trapper Keeper is a part of that work, a reminder to consider the time of these objects, tools, ideas, words, as they collect, here. That has felt especially difficult this November, and I am grateful to be making time with each other for this work.
Item Descriptions:
Lensatic Compass
WI Map
Wisconsin Bowhunter Temporary Certificate
Lensatic Compass Guide
Screen Shot from Star Trek The Next Generation
Star Stickers
Screen Shot of Petman testing Camo
Coon Urine (synthetic), used in recent group show Bass Ghost Shop
Collage Element from “Understanding Our Universe”
Driftless Books Book Marker
Podcast Hunting Collective
Collage Element
Paint Scrapper
Paintbrush & Paintbrush holder (cherished gift)
1909 Photo Postcard of Enfield, MA (1816 - 1938)
Fall leaves received in mail from a friend in NH
Cassete Tape purchased from hunter in Indiana, through craigslist, used in recent group show Bass Ghost Shop
Note from Meg Willing, A Clearing
Habit tracker
Found Recipe
