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The Liberation of Motion Through Space
Feral Faun
Time is a system of measurement, which is to say, a ruler, and
authority. There is a reason why, during many insurrections, clocks have
been smashed and calendars burned. There was a semi-conscious
recognition on the part of the insurgents that these devices represented
the authority against which they rebelled as much as did the kings or
presidents, the cops or soldiers. But it never took long for new clocks and
calendars to be created, because inside the heads of the insurgents the
concept of time still ruled.
Time is a social construction which is used to measure motion through
space in order to control it and bind it to a social context. Whether it
be the motions of the sun, moon, stars and planets across the skies, the
motions of individuals over the terrains they wander, or the motions of
events across the artifices know as days, weeks, months and years, time
is the means by which these motions are bound to social utility. The
destruction of time is essential to the liberation of individuals from the
social context, to the liberation of individuals as conscious, autonomous
creators of their own lives.
The revolt against time is nothing if it is not a revolt against the
domination of time in one's daily life. It calls for a transformation of
the ways in which one moves through the spaces one encounters. Time
dominates our motion through space by means of "necessary" destinations,
schedules and appointments. As long as the social context which produced
time as a means of social control continues to exist, it is doubtful that
any of us will be able to completely eradicate destinations, schedules or
appointments from our lives. But on examination of how these modes of
interaction affect the ways one moves through space could help one create
a more conscious motion. The most notable effect of having to get
somewhere (destination), especially when one has to be there by a certain
time (schedule/appointment), is a lack of awareness of the terrain over
which one is moving. Such motion tends to be a sort of sleep-walking
from which the individual creates nothing, since the destination and the
schedule pre-exist the journey and define it. One is only conscious of here
surroundings and how they are affecting her to the minimal extent
necessary to get where she is going. I don't deny that many of the
environments through which one may move, especially in an urban setting,
can be disturbingly ugly, making such unconsciousness aesthetically
appealing, but this lack of consciousness causes one to miss many chances
for subversion and play that might otherwise be created.
Subverting one's motion through space, making it one's own, freed from
the bondage to time, is a matter of creating this motion as nomadic
motion rather than self-transportation. Nomadic motion makes a playful
(though often serious) exploration of the terrain over which one is passing
the essential aspect of the journey. The wanderer interacts with the
places through which she passes, consciously changing and being changed
by them. Destination, even when it exists, is of little importance, since
it too will be a place though which one passes. As this form of motion
through space becomes one's usual way, it may enhance one's wits,
allowing one to become less and less dependent upon destinations,
appointments, schedules and the other fetters that enforce the rule of
time over our motions. Part of this enhancement of the nomad's wits
within the present time dominated context is learning to create ways to
play around time, subverting it and using it against itself to enhance one's
free wandering.
A radically different way of experiencing living occurs when we are
consciously creating time for ourselves. Due to the limits of a language
developed within this time-dominated social context, this way of
experiencing life is often spoken of in temporal terms as well, but as a
subjective "time", as in: "The time when I was climbing Mount Hood..." But
I'd rather not refer to this as subjective "time" since it has no shared
purpose with social time. I prefer to call it "nomadic experience". Within
nomadic experience, the peaks, the valleys and the plateaus are not
created in steady, measurable cycles. They are passionate interactions of
the sort which may make one moment an eternity and the next several
weeks a mere eye-blink. On this passionate journey, the sun still rises
and sets, the moon still waxes and wanes, plants still flower and bear
fruit and wither, but not as measurable cycles. Instead, one experiences
these events in terms of one's passionate and creative interactions with
them. Without any destination to define one's motion through space, linear
time becomes meaningless as well. Nomadic experience is outside of
time, not in a mystical sense, but in the recognition that time is the
mystification of motion through space and, like all mystifications, usurps
our ability to create ourselves.
A conscious, playful, exploratory creation of our own motions through
space, of our own interactions with the places we pass through, is the
necessary practice of the revolt against time - nothing less than creating
events and their language. Until we begin to transform ourselves into
nomadic creators of this sort in the way we live our lives, every smashed
clock and every burned calendar will simply be replaced, because time
will continue to dominate the way we live.