Felt Time

This is an excerpted transcript from the second episode of Are.na Radio, an audio experiment with Montez Press Radio where four people share their Are.na channels, describe what’s been collected, and reveal the threads of thought therein.

“My name is Tess Murdoch and I’m going to take you through my are.na channel, “Felt Time” — this recording becomes almost a durational piece in itself, akin to a living fossil. 

“I started this channel almost four years ago exactly, when the world was in the first stages of being devastated by the pandemic. In Brooklyn, the soundtrack of our days was the harrowing blare of ambulance sirens from dusk till dawn.

“That summer, time folded in on itself, weaving between endless, unfurling ribbons that tangled into knots. Time became perceptible, even tangible. 

“This exercise of reflecting on a specific channel, especially one about time and its infinite qualities, is itself a kind of chronesthesia. Like a flicker of light bouncing through faceted glass in a sunlit room, my memories ricocheted back to me, these blocks constructing a delicate web of my moments in between. As Patti Smith wrote in her 2015 novel M Train, “Perhaps there is no past or future, only the perpetual present that contains this trinity of memory.” I reflect on Smith’s concept of memory often. 

“The perception of time, often referred to as a ‘sense of time,’ is a complex cognitive and sensory experience, rather than a direct sensory input like sight or sound. But that summer, time’s flattening became audible and formed, and if I grew quiet enough, I could even trace its edges. 

“I began this channel as a way of arbitrarily connecting loose ideas about time and memory across history, in forms ranging from poems to novels to imagery — anything that sparked nostalgic stirrings. These threads between blocks are wiggly at best. 

“Even though we are now fully immersed in June again, a longing for elsewheres brings me to this short stanza from Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem ‘Long Distance,’ written for her mother, from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, published in 1995. 

“This block reads: 

“Although this stanza falls midway through the poem, it reminds me of the steadying of a bell after it‘s struck. 

“Another block showcases a picture of a sculpture by Nicolás Lamas from his 2021 exhibition titled Times in Collapse. The image is of a wristwatch made of those familiar silver links, but instead of a traditional watch face, an iridescent, spiral-shaped ammonite-like shell of complex septa sparkles in its place. 

“The combination of materials is jarring at first, yet silly and satisfying – a dichotomy that you can sink your teeth into.

“Memory, consciousness, and time are a trinity that can undulate infinitely in meaning, a trinity that is alive, charged, and ever-evolving. Terms like ‘relativity of time,’ ‘biological time,’ ‘cultural and social time,’ ‘psychological time,’ and ‘philosophical time’ — when we consider them, time seems to be a multifaceted concept encompassing objective measurements, subjective experiences, philosophical inquiries, and scientific principles. It remains one of the most intriguing and complex phenomena in human understanding.

“Moving into thinking more deeply about layered memory takes me to a text block containing an excerpt from James Baldwin’s essay, ‘My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,’ taken from his 1963 non-fiction book, The Fire Next Time. 

“The block reads:  

I don't know if you’ve known anybody that far back; if you’ve loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father’s face, for behind your father’s face as it is today are all those other faces which were his.

“To freeze a moment… one can do this with language, music, or through visual manifestations. This brings me to an image of a sculpture by the artist Arman. Called ‘Tulipes’ and executed in 1994, this sculpture is an accumulation of silk tulips, dyed in warm whites modeled with red, fiery oranges, and shocking yellows, all embedded in polyester resin. Though they were not living flowers before they were cast in resin, the metaphor here can be interpreted as a refusal to surrender to the irreversibility of time. A silver wristwatch with an ammonite shell as its watch face.

“This idea of fixed memories we bump into over and over again reminded me of a conversation between Ocean Vuong and Amy Rose Spiegel for The Creative Independent, originally published on May 16, 2017. Vuong responds to Spiegel’s first question with the following…

The Italian philosopher Vico had this theory that time moves more in a spiral than it does in a line. He believes that’s why we repeat ourselves, including our tragedies, and that if we are more faithful to this movement, we can move away from the epicenter through distance and time, but we have to confront it every time. I’ve been thinking about trauma—how it’s repetitive, and how we recreate it, and how memory is fashioned by creation. Every time we remember, we create new neurons, which is why memory is so unreliable. I thought, “Well if the Greek root for ‘poet’ is ‘creator,’ then to remember is to create, and, therefore, to remember is to be a poet.” I thought it was so neat. Everyone’s a poet, as long as they remember.

“It’s always a treat to read or listen to Ocean Vuong — his wisdom and candor provide a kind of salve for the overworked mind. To speak about remembering, I can’t help but bring up another block containing a poem by Billy Collins entitled, ‘This Much I Do Remember’ from his fourth collection of poetry, Picnic, Lightning, published in 1998. 

“I recommend watching Billy Collins read his poems aloud, because although it can be challenging to accept the irreversibility of time, humor and tenderness seem to be great equalizers, transcending all. 

“This block reads:

This Much I Do Remember by Billy Collins

It was after dinner.

You were talking to me across the table

about something or other,

a greyhound you had seen that day

or a song you liked,

and I was looking past you

over your bare shoulder

at the three oranges lying

on the kitchen counter

next to the small electric bean grinder,

which was also orange,

and the orange and white cruets for vinegar and oil.

All of which converged

into a random still life,

so fastened together by the hasp of color,

and so fixed behind the animated

foreground of your

talking and smiling,

gesturing and pouring wine,

and the camber of your shoulders

that I could feel it being painted within me,

brushed on the wall of my skull,

while the tone of your voice

lifted and fell in its flight,

and the three oranges

remained fixed on the counter

the way stars are said

to be fixed in the universe.

Then all the moments of the past

began to line up behind that moment

and all the moments to come

assembled in front of it in a long row,

giving me reason to believe

that this was a moment I had rescued

from the millions that rush out of sight

into a darkness behind the eyes.

Even after I have forgotten what year it is,

my middle name,

and the meaning of money,

I will still carry in my pocket

the small coin of that moment,

minted in the kingdom

that we pace through every day.

“I often tear up when reading that last stanza because it feels like a clarion call to us all — to remember to not take life’s quiet moments, the in-between ones, for granted, for they can be the most significant. 

“I will leave you with this meditation from Virginia Woolf’s 1931 novel, The Waves – a favorite novel read during an electric summer many years ago. 

“The block reads:

Happiness is in the quiet,

ordinary things. A table, a

chair, a book with a paper

knife stuck between the

pages. And the petal falling

from the rose, and the light

flickering as we sit silent. 

“And with that, I can’t help but believe, that it is sometimes in life’s mundane moments, in-between the rarer novel ones, that gratitude spirals out to meet us.”

Thank you to my lovely friends, Sonia Feigelson, Chris Unico, Jacob Olmedo, and Jess Gonzales, for your valued insights. And thank you to Meg Miller, Are.na and Montez Radio for including me in this wonderful exercise.