I'm in one of those small streaks of writing that makes me a writer. I mean simply that I actually am writing: for each of the past several days I've worked on the script that is my main project, a play called "Ghost." I'm once again thinking about time scales. There's the question of how many minutes of theatre I've so far orchestrated; the question of how much time has passed in the world of the play; there are the days of my composition ("several"), but there are also the minutes and hours I've spent sitting in front of my computer, adding word after word to the document; then, too, there is the time I've devoted to thinking about the play and its characters when I'm not actually writing.
Is there an insight here? Is there something to say about the time scales that fold over themselves as we live? Do writers grapple with these multiple scales more than other artists? more than non-artists? And is sensitivity to time something one should – or can – value?
I suspect I'd rather have a clear sense of timing than a clear sense of time, or of time's complexities. In chess, which I've been playing a lot of in between my bouts with words, the clock often matters, but one can improve one's game much more by thinking clearly through the order of moves in one's plan of attack than by trying, somehow, to think faster. "Think fast," says someone who teases you and then either does or does not throw you something. But the person who says "Think fast" usually tests your reflexes or catches you thinking too much. An alternative imperative, "Think hard!" does not invoke time so explicitly, but if one says it seriously, one usually means, "Slow down; take stock; consider before you act." I find it a little bit frustrating that neither of these injunctions applies to my writing, to my being a writer. To think fast, I'd have to rely on something like a writing reflex – and wouldn't it be nice if I had one; and to think hard I'd have to postpone the work itself. "Write!" I tell myself, "Think!" – compact imperatives that leave the time scales up in the air.
The greatest AP test question I didn't get the chance to answer appeared, I think, on the 1995 or 1996 English Literature exam. The assignment was to write on the use of time in some seminal work off of a short list. Admittedly, not all of them were actually *English* literature--I remember because I would, hands down, have chosen to write on Jean-Paul Sartre's play _No Exit_ (_Huis Clos_). The action on stage in _No Exit_ is realtime, but the setting is a near-bare room in Hell, and its denizens experience time on a different scale than those still on Earth to whom they are connected by a sort of echo.
ReplyDeleteI wished that question had been on my AP English Lit, but I can't really say what I would have written--I was in 10th grade when I came across the question! Still, I love the use of time in _No Exit_: so much happens without a break and in barely an hour's argument, and yet it would be almost as true to say the play is a whole year's experience.
Funny, I was just thinking yesterday about a comment in the movie _Dogma_ on Biblical use of time, that jumping in time from Jesus's age 12 to age 30 is poor story-telling. I disagree with such an out-and-out indictment: thousands of narratives jump so, and this is (often) in the service of coherence, not to its detriment. Life is "hurry up and wait"--fiction is more paced.
I like the distinction between fiction as paced and life as "hurry up and wait" -- and of jumps as serving coherence. Leap away.
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