The note on my phone reads: “Temporal dissonance [sic]
exists, however there is no rule that it is required to live in one time frame
at a time, the deciders of the dominant time frame” I could not take the time
find the semi-colon, or apparently to spell words correctly, or to finish the
thought before I couldn’t recognize it anymore.
I live in the world by walking and construct the bits of
ideas that I leave for my memory and creative resources in ways similar to sign
posts or intersections or landmarks. They are built with the intention not of
telling me where I am or where I was when I thought the thing, rather they
build for me a world out of images and sounds and references to things no
longer at hand, but frequently retrievable wherein I can locate the trail of
the thought I started to have before I was required to do something like board
the bus.
Also, I forgot my pen. 160 characters do not do very well,
but they can sometimes be made to see reason.
That thought joined the germ of a different but similar
thought that float into the baggage of my travel experiences over the winter.
My traveling companions and I remarked on what looked to us like overlapping
time periods: the clothing and transport of what is usually called a bygone age
next to and frequently in conversation with that of what we think of as
contemporary. They do not ignore each other, they are not isolated from each
other; they exist side by side. I refuse to say that it is comfortable or
without problem. Partly the refusal is sheer practicality; partly it is a lack
of any meaningful experience in the middle of those interactions. Traveling can
very easily befuddle the mind. I was fortunate to travel with very well-defined
beloveds and so escaped many of the flights fantasy offered.
I have found that something like it is a fairly pervasive
thought, not unfed by the kind of conversational statements that remark on how
quickly things move in modern times, or how Mrs. Devonshire down the street
seems stuck in the 20’s or how very chic the living room of the lovely young
couple next door is, and how very 50’s they seem (barring the period’s overtly
represented misogyny and racism as they are a mixed race lesbian couple)(civil
engineers, no less). Nostalgia holds
such a place in conversation and personal definition that I won’t even bother
myself with examples.
Today it was Umberto Eco’s fault. And that, my loves, is
always a good thing. My bus reading was from his collection of essays titled Travels in Hyperreality. Once you get
past the cleverness (which is still brilliant and pointed and thoughtful, but
clever is clever), you find yourself knee deep in Middle Ages glop and
delightful muck.
The essay titled “The Return of the Middle Ages” proposes 10
different ways that the Middle Ages have been and are still defined and used by
various personalities, movements, etc. In it, Eco also reminds us that there
are two different and distinct time periods referred to when speaking of the
Middle Ages (one cool, one overexposed)(my opinion entirely)(but you know I’m
right). The essay is exquisite and I highly recommend its reading.
The passage that got me started pecking away at my dying
qwerty is this:
“Assuming that the Middle Ages can be synthesized in a kind
of abstract model, to which of the two does our own era correspond? Any thought
of strict correspondence, item by item, would be ingenuous, not least because
we live in an enormously speeded-up period where what happens in five of our
years can sometimes correspond to what happened then in five centuries.
Secondly, the center of the world has expanded to cover the whole planet; nowadays civilizations and cultures and
various phases of development live together, and in ordinary terminology we
are led to talk about the ‘medieval condition’ of the people of Bengal while we
see New York as a flourishing Babylon.(74)”¹ (emphasis mine)
Temporal dissonance without a uniquely determined time
period distributed to individuals. I can live in a world without the internet
and with my Snoopy touch tone telephone with its lamp (sorry, my sister, but
after this long, it is totally mine). I can see still dirty and smelling of
horse cowboys in a mall talking on cell phones. A man on a motorcycle can stop
to chat with a man driving oxen pulling a cart. Veiled women walk down the
street talking to women with bare heads. It is not simply a cultural thing, is
it?
We place tradition firmly in a time period. I am of the 70’s
academic world, because that is the tradition that raised me. In this home,
there is nothing sleek outside of the boy cat.
I digress.
The dominant time period. It is a very
giving-in-to-the-notion-of-patriarchy thing to say, and I recognize that, but
as a model, it does provide some illumination. I find the easiest expression of
that in fashion. What time period does your fashion represent? You cannot say
that it is classic, because that is as fluid as hemlines and pant-leg widths.
What time period does your boss’s fashion represent and how successful is that
person in your field? What about your mentor? Your family? Your best friend or
worst enemy?
What about your attitudes? What time period did you dig them
up in? Antiquity. Define it. Post-war philosophy. Which war? And, more
importantly, how do these attitudes work within the context of your day to day
life? Do they and you come into conflict with people dressed in the style of a
different day, behaving with the expectations of a different tradition?
My thesis is still unformed, but it has to do with the
rejection of the dominant time period among those who have the resources to
rebel, and the innate inability of others to participate in the dominant time
period based on the resources available to them and the specific traditions of
their jobs, living places and relationships. It is a very rude thing, after
all, to dismiss the opinions of those who believe themselves better by
declaring that they are temporally meaningless.
¹ Eco,
Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality.
Harcourt Brace & Co., New York
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