Time Lines ::: Theater of Memory [vox pop]

Time Lines

Theater of Memory (vox populi)

... next year? I don't think
in terms of years. I think
in terms of movies.

~ Martin Scorsese,
on being asked his
resolutions for the new year, December 31 1997

New Year's Eve. Ten years ago. At a global videoteleconference party, I introduce two people to each other who've never met, but should. They're both executives of nonprofits dealing with the same area, the transformation of the exUSSR into Russia. For nearly an hour they exchange names and places they both know, as if reading each other's mind. Then one of them gets stuck on a date.

"It was .... it was ... " he says, like a broken record, "it was .... it was ... " he says, like a Philip Glass composition, "it was .... ... " he says, his face looking up to the ceiling, his mind groping for a date beyond short-term memory's reach. Then, a remarkable thing took place.

"It was exactly two weeks before the video of Fantasia [1940] came out!" he spurts out.

Bingo!!

The other guy knows immediately exactly what he means. It's a brilliant short-cut / end-run, right to that moment in time on the tip of his tongue. A reference point they both share as commonly as the night someone created a videoteleconerence for the American and the Soviet longdistance telephone operators who got to see each other for the first time ... or the time when the Soviet and the American astronauts first got together ... or the night the fax came through that Gorbachev hadn't been sick but was abducted, from the one fax in Moscow the Citizens' Committee had overlooked confiscating, in the basement of a gymnasium, belonging to a Moscow lesbian association.

And in so doing he verified a dimension of use for a common language we all share.

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Experiment: Time Line

On any piece of paper, spreadsheet, or blank wall, draw a line. Use the line to chart the milestones of your life story (autobiography), or a part of your life story (memoir), or the life story of someone you know (documentary), or a make-believe life story (fiction). [The more different genres you practice, the better you'll become at this art.] In place of dates, use media events such as movie and DVD releases, particular Oscar years, weddings deaths or divorces of screen stars, studio mergers and acquisitions, release of new media technology, etc.

Intermediate-Level Measurement:

Take your Time Line and use it to write a short story. Substitute film references where possible, for ordinary words. Don't say "remember," say "flashback." For significant breaks in continuity, such as for "divorce," "laid off," "died," try substituting just the word "cut." Additional vocabulary hints: "edit," "mix," "cross-cut," "pan," "dissolve," "sound-track" etc.

Advanced-Level ('Pataphysical) Measurement:

To your Life Story (fictional, documentary, memoir or biopic) substitute other Units of Measurement. For example, measure your life in economic terms, since we all dwell in a global market economy: paychecks and bills, investments of time and attention, interest, accounting, etc. Use different colors to represent different measurements: green for capitalism, blue for cinema, yellow for spirituality, red for desire, purple for Chris and Lee, etc.

Also: substitute temporal measurements with spatial ones. And vice-versa
When done, submit your line, notes, sketch, and/or finished picture to The International 'Pataphysical New-measurement Group (IPNG), in care of the COMMENTS feature, below [lower right — alongside the pencil icon]. Authorship of all entries will be held in strictest confidence. Our research team in Mumbai is standing by, waiting to tabulate your sketch along with all others being received as we speak, compiling an interactive graph to be available at this web site courtesy of our Russian programming team, newly graduated from Stanford.

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