Fluid Time

Kendal Mountain Festival with Tibetan flags flying - 10x10cm collage

Castlerigg Stone Circle, Keswick 10x10cm collage

I’ve been thinking a lot about time this week.

Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1916-1995) once said “A week is a long time in politics.”

For me this week, time has been incredibly fluid. I started my journey last Thursday and will end it today, Sunday.

During those 7 days on the ground in England, I have packed in travel, art and discovery, as well as buying a motorhome for us to live in for our UK adventures next year.

I was researching the idea of time being fluid and it turns out it is actually a term used to describe specific cultural thinking paradigms.

For example in a ‘controlled time’ paradigm, time is considered to be finite and precious, not to be ‘wasted’. This means adhering to deadlines, being productive within a defined period of time and goes hand in hand with a capitalistic view of the world.

Fluid time is considered to be variable, flexible and adapts to the needs of the individual and their circumstances. Many cultures adhere to a more seasonal, relatable concept of time, depending on the weather, events and unforeseeable situations arising. 

Standard time, introduced for consistency of time keeping, was not introduced until the 1880s. Systems of measurement were standardised in the 1960s where the base unit of time measurement is the second.

I’ve been raised in a very time determined culture which now seems to be ‘running’ at a future based pace – fast food, fast check-ins, fast living. Yet this fails to allow for the fluidity of time when it flows in and around you, allowing for everything to adapt to the time you give it and amazing coincidences (!) occur within that ‘no time’ space.

Einstein said that the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, has rebranded it to be ‘Meta’, where the concept of ‘timelines’ are becoming ‘multi-dimensional’ in the meta universe. In other words, all things happening at once throughout fluid / virtual space.

Which brings me to this week which was filled with plenty of train travel, long walks through London and discovering new artists in fantastic art exhibitions. Along the way I got to experience people talking about the benefits of being in nature at the Kendal Mountain Festival, the joys of shopping in Marks and Spencer in London with their ‘meals for one’ and created my own daily artworks to chronicle each days events.

I even was able to revisit one of my favourite stone circles, Castlerigg in Keswick, which is in many ways a portal into ‘deep time’. This stone circle is ne of many which pre-dates Stonehenge and was created by ancients as yet unknown to us.

Now I’m looking forward to once again entering the ‘no time’ space of air travel, crossing time zones, gaining and losing days and generally having permission to enjoy watching non- stop movies for free. I’m going for the entire collection of Harry Potter movies this time around. I’m in for a treat.

Castlerigg stone circle revisited this week. Ancient time, deep time, a portal of time.