I was sitting down in the back garden today waiting for a pair of lamb chops to warm up when a thought occurred to me.
It felt just like I had returned to the same “line†where I had last been sat in the garden taking the sun in maybe 2 days ago.
Then it occurred to me that maybe these aren’t so much separated incidents in one “time†as parallel “time lines†i.e. that I can return to the “sitting in the garden line†in an hour, a month, next year – but it’s always like coming back to a particular line rejoining “krossie†in the garden – almost like I never went away!
Could there be similar lines for “krossie writing something to ILP†or “cooking dinner†or “fixing a PCâ€.
Is there a danger of a weird form of determinism being introduced by looking at time as lines of experience – which I would hate personally!
For instance say I want to do something new and original. I set off on a boat to Agadere. Would it be a “novel†experience or would I just put together some ideas of “boats†and “being on the sea†which I already have? Even sailing into this new place – could I just be synthesizing half remembered bits from films and books.
So this view of time could mean you’d sort of “experienced†every thing by age 18 or so??
Krossie - I think the age is a little later. We are told that cognitive development isn’t complete until 21 - at least by those that would keep the US drinking age at that date. We are capable of “experiencing” everything by that time. But at what age we are able to discern all the patterns that we will ever be able to discern, I do not know.
My favorite jazz pianist is McCoy Tyner. He was probably most famous as a sideman to John Coltrane. He tended to play very intricate, complicated patterns - which, upon first hearing him, are just about impossible to make out. All music follows patterns. Excepting some Phillip Glass stuff that no one listens to. Anyway, I think Tyner is a genius, patterns or no.
A few weeks ago, I attended a symphony concert. They played a piece that wasn’t on the program. Adagio for Strings, by - oh christ, I can’t think of his name. Google break. Samuel Barber. The woman next to me, a longstanding season ticketholder, thought the conductor said it was by Bach. She was a musical idiot. No one could mistake this for Bach. Bach “couldn’t” have written it. She was incapable of recognising the patterns. The harmonies. The dynamics, even.
It’s all you, Krossie. You pick up the patterns, or you don’t. That woman enjoyed that piece, though. It was played perfectly. She had no reference point. No idea “what” she was listening to. But she enjoyed it as much as I. You can be smart (IQ is pattern recognition, mostly). Or you can go through life like it’s your first day. She had no choice, I think. You probably do.
Repitition is fragmentary part of experience. So sometimes we repeat an experience because it pleasures our soul and sometimes we repeat because when we did it before, nothing was quite right or we did not learn all that we could. I presume you read a book more then just once. Right? well reading a book more then once enables you to glean more from it each time because, your experiences have changed and or grown. Our what you glean from it could be from your mood.
So in essence while the books words do not change, your perceptions of the words do change. So the book is different each time even though it is familiar. Time lines really only give perception a boost to grow, if you feel you are repeating a familiar time perhaps you should try to get more out of that particular crossing. If you are given a chance, take it.
So the best way to look at these is to see them as a purely psychological view of experiencing things but could it not be a different way of actually experiencing time itself - eg as slipping from one “line” to another?
But that can be really nice at one level - I think especially of me last and, by far, best girl friend - every day is a new one for her - also Nietzsche’s brand of “sentimental hygiene” - the greatness of forgeting…
Krossie - yes. I agree. That woman and I both enjoyed the piece, which is what counts. We do not experience time, for time is not a phenomenon, neither a thing nor an event. (There I go again, with that language stuff.) We experience more vividly that which we focus more closely on, though. But really, memories and patterns and thoughts enter our consciousness with a will of their own, lots of times. We do it, but we don’t always know how or why we do it.
We can say that we are experiencing time differently, but that has nothing to do with time. In the end, I’m not sure there is any difference between psychological experience and actual experience. That doesn’t justify subjectivism, it just means that we use our neurological system to organise experience.
Experience is always plural. We never have just one experience - we have countless experiences at once, all the time. We need an orginisational tool or two. The brain’s function of memory is one of these tools. It is a filter.
