"Creating the Past Experiment. Week Five."

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say,
are just fables that have been agreed upon.
Voltaire

Creating the Past Experiment. Week Five.

“I Is the I”

Within the parameters of our Past Experiment, we aspire to discover strategies of practical actualization. If, for example, we experience a sense of self (what we refer to as “I-ness”) in the moment we call “The Present”, then is stands to reason that we previously experienced a time wherein I was the I. Our current research indicates that may not have (actually) been the case.

“The Fluid Past”

If we met in another lifetime, I’m sure I adored you. If we meet today, I will look you straight in the eyes with all the respect you deserve. If we meet again in some other time, I will recognize you, no matter what format you may choose to occupy.

“Somewhere Outside of Us”

Time spent is not always time invested. Time saved is not always of value. Time wasted is not always lost. Today, in our Creating the Past Experiment, we pretended we had all the time in the world. That worked well for us, under laboratory conditions.

“Mapping A Past”

We get to make the way from this time to another as an act of creating. This is our charge.

“Constructing A Past”

When creating a Past, if may come in handy to utilize a template. Through a series of overlays, it becomes a simple matter to cover over those pesky moments of indiscretion, or those kindnesses unacknowledged. Latent joys can be emphasized, and whole series of events manipulated and redistributed.

History... is an aggregation of truths, half-truths, semi-truths, fables, myths, rumors, prejudices, personal narratives, gossip, and official prevarications. It is a canvas upon which thousands of artists throughout the ages have splashed their conceptions and interpretations of a day and an era. Some motifs are grotesque and some are magnificent.

Philip D. Jordan

This concludes week five of the Creating the Past Experiment.

"Creating the Past Experiment. Week Four."

All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A. Pillow Glasses”

Our relationship with the past often becomes a series of adaptive functionalities. The why of things being equal to the distance of any established duration, while the why not of things may actually be more assertive in its lack of discernible patterns.

“Communion”

A moment grabbed: expanded, tossed in the air. A gift. Not in the amount of time spent, rather in the amount of love shared. Amber encasing a memory. I hold it in my hand and watch the dawn through the golden cosmos that is the beginning of each day. Thank you.

“Early Stirrings (5)”

I developed the habit of tucking bits and pieces of gathered information in amongst the pages of my books as if it provided evidence of a life lived. After the fire, while the soot was being cleaned from the bindings, memories floated blithely to the arrogant ground.

“Movie for Retreat”

Love is a series of notches along the sideboard of time. I found a note in an old blazer. It said, “I will love you forever.” It wasn’t my jacket, but still. But. Still: I took it to heart.

“Step Up”

How much blame is cast upon the arbiters of memory? Pages and pages worth. Countless therapist’s sofas stuffed with accusations and assigned guilt. In my newest past experiment, I will pluck each moment from the fabric of forever and take responsibility as possible.

Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.
Herbert Otto

"Minutia That Influences Us"

I spend a lot of time thinking about how I have been impacted by information. In our contemporary culture, we are prone to lay blame on our formation of self at the feet of our families of origin. I am beginning to understand that while those episodes may make for a good story, the more interesting investigation includes what you are drawn towards. And what you were drawn to.

Jimmy Hatlo

The difference in Revere's and Dawes's achievement and legacy is examined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point, where he concludes that Revere would be classified as a connector whereas Dawes was an "ordinary man".

Malcolm Gladwell was born in 1963.
Jimmy Hatlo died in 1963.

"A memorable feature of Hatlo's panel was the "tip of the Hatlo Hat" that appeared in the lower-right corner of the panel. Hatlo often used readers' suggestions, and always took the trouble to acknowledge it with a drawing of himself tipping his hat. "

Tipping Point, Tipping Hat.
A relationship with History that is neither black, nor white - but rather overlapping and complex. A palimpsest of memories and connections.


Artist Tom Schulz
Summer Studio, 2010. Tryon Palace Project.

"Remembering the Past Experiment. Week Three"

"There is not past, no future;
everything flows in an eternal present."

James Joyce (1882-1941)

“Reaching Past”

I find it interesting that the collage was “invented” at the same time that Einstein was thinking about train whistles and clocks. Cause that is what the Past is like for me - some wacky montage of errant tumbleweeds with no determinable point of departure or arrival.

All aboard.

“Commanomaly / Conjoined”

In retrospect, hindsight seems backwards. I have discovered substantial comfort in aligning those categories that I have heretofore surmised as being disparate.

“Origin of Constellations”

Some folks believe that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh. Which doesn’t make much sense to me for two reasons: 1.) God would never allow Herself to be rushed, when there were so many details to arrange. And B.) Why go to all that trouble and just take off one day? It would hardly be worth the effort.

“1487?”

I have begun to emulate Estes Burrell, from the tree farm. What I am doing of a day, I now do of a night, too. If I saw wood of a day, then I saw wood of a night. If I get stuck in some conundrum of a day, I’ll mire up in the mud to the axle of a night.

“Stylist____Jackie_____”

There is no single moment that bears the weight of radical novelty. We each of us attach significance to time like an ornament on a Christmas Tree. An appointment for a haircut. Time spent reading Heidegger. Or time spent thinking of you.

Next: Perhaps "The Mechanics of Crepe Myrtle". We'll see. One never knows. These things take on a time frame of their own.