Looking back at our shadow selves ...

Today's post is a page from the Time Traveler book I contributed to the Sketchbook Project back in 2012. I was thinking the other day about how long an idea can stay with you before it finally surfaces in the form of art and/or writing.

The first time I thought about shadow selves was about 30 years ago ... my 22-year-old self was having lunch with a group of friends in a hotel restaurant in the town I grew up in, but where I hadn't lived since I was 12. We'd driven 125 miles, from the town we all currently lived in, to consider renting a house together in this new location, and I hadn't told anyone that I'd once lived here.

Through the restaurant window I could see the elementary school my 8-year-old self had attended. Since it was lunch time, the school field was alive with active, noisy children playing games that probably hadn't changed much since I'd been out on that field myself. It was like looking back in time, and what came to mind was a particular sports day when (not being athletic) my 8-year-old self volunteered to help the teachers organizing and handing out ribbons and water and bandaids. I remembered the day very well, and at lunch time on that day, I'd been sitting at a table putting ribbons in order, facing the very restaurant my 22-year-old self would someday be sitting in.

And if that wasn't odd enough, my 12-year-old self had taken music lessons in one of the hotel meeting rooms, so now there were three of my shadow selves, all within easy reach of each other. Even at 22, my awareness of this overlapping of shadow selves made an impression on me.

The second time I thought about shadow selves was while traveling in New Brunswick in my mid-30's. I'd made a trip back east to meet my parents' families, and at one point was traveling by bus from one small town to another. I was dropped off at the pickup point (a gas station) to wait for a bus that might be along in anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. It was a pleasant sunny day, and the gas station had provided a comfy, sheltered bench outside for waiting passengers. I did what I always do in times like these ~ I took out my journal. I started writing about the people and places I'd seen so far, and a half hour later the bus came and I got on board. If there's one thing I learned 'back east', it's that hurry is not in the vocabulary. The bus was not in a hurry to get on the road ~ we were there for at least another half hour. In that time, other people arrived and boarded, and I continued writing. From my seat in the bus I could see the bench I'd been waiting on, and I saw myself there, on the bench writing, and I was now, on the bus writing. I was thinking how unlikely it was that I was there at all (so far from home in BC) about how insubstantial all these past selves are, and since I was writing, I wrote about it, mentioning not only that current experience, but looking back on my 22-year-old awareness of it as well.

Fast forward another 20 years, and in my journal I'm making page after page of notes for the Time Traveler project, realizing we all travel in time, we just do it one day at a time. And in every second we leave ghost imprints of ourselves wherever we go. I was thinking about this: where are we most solid and what does this tell us about ourselves? What can we learn from where my shadow selves have been? Can we go back there and relive our experiences in other times? Of course we can ...

From deepest darkest space, it's ...

 

Somebody had *way* too much fun designing this SF pulp fiction cover creator over at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual. There are so many eye-popping image and text options that you could spend all day tweaking and and grooving on the grungy goodness, but it's so easy-peasy that it took me a whole two minutes to create this fabulous retro-fun image to celebrate my return to blogging. SF geekiness meets design smarts in the blazingly fast world of the internets. Big props to my brother for pointing me to this addictive little tool ~ it's way cool.

The future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed ...

"The future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed." William Gibson (apparently) said this in an interview in 1993, although he prefaced it by saying that he'd said it often before, and I'll take his word on that. In any case, I think I can attest to the truth of it, in fact, I think I can quite comfortably state that I don't think the future was ever evenly distributed. Even after 25 years of living in the city, I still think the movies I see advertised on TV won't be available in my "local theatre" for at least 3 months (as was the case in my childhood in the remote wilds of BC). Not that I go to the theatre (cinema? movies?) anymore ... I just wait the "usual" 3 months till they're on TV, and I can enjoy the same advertised films from the comfort of my own sofa, with cheaper popcorn, and (thanks to modern technology) I'm also able to pause the film if the phone rings, or some other interruption occurs.

I was thinking about this today because I was suffering from some kind of ennui (which is not my usual state ~ must be the rain) and I chose to fight back using all the modern technology I have at my disposal. Granted, most of this "modern technology" was actually the net ... but never look a gift horse in the mouth (and I'm pretty sure people don't do that anymore).

Anywho ... here's what happened ... I began with the latest edition of Radiolab ... and if you haven't made Radiolab one of your usual webstops, I highly recommend it. Their latest offering "Loops" lived up to my expectations, and while I listened I sat by the computer sticking photographs together for an art deadline this weekend. Dum de dum ... listen, listen, stick, stick ... see ... feeling better already ... and then I suddenly stopped, and listened more closely ... the young woman being interviewed was relating the story of when her mother had Transient Global Amnesia (a usually brief state of mind when you completely forget your immediate past and remain unable to form any new memories for the duration of the attack). I'd actually read (and clipped out) a fascinating case of TGA while we were in England this year, so I was aware of the condition, but what stopped me in my tracks was when the young woman said, "... on the youtube video we made of it, you can see ...". Wait, what!? OK, so pause Radiolab and go search youtube, where yes ... there they are, in the hospital room, telling her mother over and over, Yes, it's Tuesday, yes, it's past your birthday, yes, you were there, yes, this is creepy, and then repeating the whole conversation again every 90 seconds or so. When I'm done watching this, I go back to Radiolab and re-hear the audio of the youtube video again, only this time with the woman's face clearly in my head (which I wouldn't have had if I hadn't seen the video) ... talk about looping.

And then later ... listening to The Enright Files on CBC, an interview with Nick Mount, an English professor at the University of Toronto on the state of academic integrity (i.e. cheating) in universities. I was really enjoying their conversation, and thought some of Nick's answers were among the clearest, most sensible statements about higher education that I'd heard in awhile (not that I spend a lot of my time on such subjects, but still ...). Anyway, at some point in the conversation, Michael casually asks about the role of "entertainment" in teaching, particularly in delivering English lectures to large classes (if I heard right, the class size was somewhere around 500. Really? OMG). Nick says that a certain amount of theatre is involved ... that he remembers his own attention span at that age as being something like 15 minutes, and he tries to keep them engaged in his topic by occasionally introducing something that reconnects with their brains. Michael flatteringly follows with something like ... "I remember seeing a youtube video of a lecture you gave on comics as being quite entertaining." Again, I'm diving for the search button and trying to guess what youtube search terms to use and yep, there it is ... a 55 minute lecture on comics. Well, hot dawg.

So after Michael and Nick finish up, I scoot on over to youtube for another hour of more listening, as well as looking, for Nick Mount's youtube lecture on graphic novels (many of them Canadian!) is filled with examples from the books in question. Of course, as I listened I kept on sticking those photos together ... classic multitasking in the modern age.

This all kind of reminds me of the first time I realized that William Gibson's future had indeed arrived where I was ... a few years ago I'd been rereading Kurt Vonnegut (Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, if you're wondering), an author whose work generates so many ideas while I read that I inevitably wind up reaching for a pen to start writing myself (always a good sign in any writer!), and I wondered what I could find of his work online ... what I found had so many layers of future impossible that I think even Kurt himself would have been amused ... I found a youtube video of a second life interview, where Kurt is interviewed by John Hockenberry of The Infinite Mind, a now-defunct (it seems) NPR radio show. Mind you, none of the people (not Kurt, not John, and certainly not any of the audience were actually together in any way. So if that isn't the future coming to call, I don't know what is.