OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Time and memory — no use arguing aesthetics

The so-called memory plays of directors like Alfonso Cuaron (whose 2018 film “Roma” was a meditation on his childhood in Mexico City) and Kenneth Branagh (whose recent film “Belfast” similarly explored his childhood in Northern Ireland) might be perceived differently by audiences with different perceptions of black and white cinematography.
The so-called memory plays of directors like Alfonso Cuaron (whose 2018 film “Roma” was a meditation on his childhood in Mexico City) and Kenneth Branagh (whose recent film “Belfast” similarly explored his childhood in Northern Ireland) might be perceived differently by audiences with different perceptions of black and white cinematography.


In 1962, a French speleologist — a scientist who studies caves — named Michel Siffre spent two months living in total isolation in a subterranean cavern in the abyss of Scarasson in the Ligurian Alps on the border between France and Italy, without access to clock, calendar or sun.

He went into the cave in July, instructing his team to come and fetch him when the experiment was over. In the meantime, he meant to keep himself occupied by reading and keeping a detailed journal of his experience.

In September, they dutifully went into the cave to tell him time was up. He was surprised. He'd attempted to keep track of the passing time in his journal; by his reckoning he had only been in the cave a month. In the absence of time cues, his body, he realized, had acclimated to a 48-hour cycle rather than the "natural" 24-hour cycle dictated by sunrise and sunset. In a very real way, he had slowed down time.

Over the next decade, Siffre repeated the experiment more than a dozen times with other subjects, and himself spent six months in a Texas cave in 1972. All the experiments confirmed the results of the initial one. Spending time in isolation, without any external prompts, tended to compress time by a factor of around two.

Siffre's experiments laid the foundation for what is called "chronobiology" — the study of how time affects biological systems, and how sentient beings perceive time. A lot of it is concerned with the way circadian rhythms can be manipulated by things like light and melatonin, but there's an interesting philosophical component to it as well. Siffre's experiments suggest that time collapses in monotony, that it passes faster for those deeply wedded to routine.

Joshua Foer, writing about Siffre's work in his 2011 book "Moonwalking With Einstein," put it this way:

"Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next — and disappear. That's why it's important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives."

We might all intuitively understand this, having lived through these past 20 or so months. We have been fettered by a pandemic; certain options have been foreclosed. It may seem as though we do the same thing every day; our rhythms beat deep as we lean into our work and worry.

The days really do seem to blend into one another, leading us to perceive them as dead zones, unmarked by any events of note. This is counterproductive to living a subjectively long life, and perhaps counterintuitive: Don't the empty minutes seem to drag by?

Maybe, but they are quickly forgotten. Without memories, time evaporates.

SLIPPING ONE'S MIND

Another thing Siffre noticed was that very soon after going into his cave, his memory began to deteriorate. He had no one to talk to and little to do — nothing novel to impress upon his memory. No markers of his experience. He became essentially amnesic — he couldn't remember what happened the day before because nothing had happened the day before.

Maybe the moral is to keep allowing things to happen. To keep manufacturing memories.

I sometimes get frustrated at the nostalgia industry, at the way cultural products of the past are regularly refurbished, remastered and re-issued in order that they may be bought again by the generation that coveted them when they were young. Every 50th anniversary edition is suspect — whether it's a new Blu-ray of "Harold and Maude" or a six-disc version of Frank Zappa's "200 Motels." We spend money and energy commemorating the way we were in this country, and I wonder if we mightn't be better served by investigating new art rather than comparing outtakes from "Sticky Fingers."

Yet I am completely captivated by Peter Jackson's "The Beatles: Get Back," even as I understand it is only providing the illusion of intimacy. And I've been playing the 25th anniversary edition of R.E.M.'s "New Adventures in Hi-Fi" regularly since it was re-released a couple of weeks ago.

I tend to cringe when I hear my friends talk about how they no longer listen to any new music, but the truth is I hardly listen to any new music either, unless it's new music by an artist with whom I'm familiar or it comes to me vetted by trusted gatekeepers.

Up until a few years ago I was voting in national polls for the best albums of the years (a silly enterprise, but they paid $25 for every one of your one-liners they used in their notes); now I read these pieces and can claim some familiarity with maybe half the artists represented.

And I guess that's OK, because, as Paul Simon said, every generation throws a hero up the pop charts, and God knows my generation dominated the field for a long, long time (and we still represent on soundtracks and radio), but it's ridiculous for anyone to pretend they can grasp more than a sliver of the content.

Those old songs provided the structure for my life — I think of riding in the back of my grandfather's pickup when I hear Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Down on the Corner." The Beatles' "Get Back" — a song I've recently watched the birth of — is the smell of a freshly tarred Georgia road. Bowie's "Young Americans" transports me back to baseball practice, the snap and tang of leather as balls fly through bright air.

This is the way I've ordered my life — as evanescent as pop songs can be, they can serve to fasten memory.

MATTER OF BLACK AND WHITE

Recording technology lets us freeze moments and remove them from time — to place them somewhere beyond time. Slip in a disc and open a can of 1971.

If you don't remember 1971, the experience is still there — only it's something other than nostalgic. Black and white movies feel differently to people who grew up in an HD world; black and white has a different authority for us who grew up watching Walter Cronkite or Roger Mudd on snowy screens.

I remember trying to teach college students something about Leni Riefenstahl's "The Triumph of the Will" — there was a percentage of the class that simply could not reconcile themselves to the cinematography. It read as boring and alien to them.

So maybe the silver-burnished memory plays of famous directors like Kenneth Branagh (this year's "Belfast") and Alfonso Cuaron (2018's "Roma") land differently on younger audiences. Perhaps black and white cinematography feels corny to them; it might feel like a director trying too hard. We all are formed by what we consume; we develop tastes and want what we want. The subjective is just that. There's no use arguing aesthetics.

Most of us have a sense that time moves faster as we get older. There's a lay mathematical theory that seeks to explain this in the simplest way possible: As you get older, each year represents a smaller and smaller percentage of your life. Your ninth year represents fully one-tenth of your life, but your 99th year equals 1%. So no wonder it sometimes feels like we're accelerating into oblivion.

But it's not that way always, is it?

TIME AFTER TIME

Sometimes the 15 minutes before dinner guests arrive at your house can seem like hours, while an hour in the morning before the working day begins can feel like no time at all. Time is a psychological phenomenon, it is elastic, it can feel differently at different times. I started writing this column at 7 a.m. — it is past noon now. It feels like I've been at it a few minutes.

Ultimately, we might all agree that the amount of time we have is less important than the quality of that time. And it is encouraging to think that quality time seems to pass slower than the dull stretches. Because we can always be open to receiving interesting ideas — to investigating novel concepts and re-examining old favorites — and having new experiences.

Maybe it feels like we've been in a cave these past 20 months, but the truth is we have our windows on the world. We can pump in all kinds of sunshine, all manner of strange and wonderful things.

We can keep learning, growing, living. We can arrest time and make it our servant.

Email: pmartin@adgnewsroom.com


Upcoming Events