The moment we realize that there is a present, it turns into past. So is our present a universe shaped by formations of memories, ours, those of others? Are we constantly shuffling around what we remember and does this make us blind for the world around us? Will the future be a present shaped from our memory gathering process? (Yes, dear anonymous… let’s start with your comment… or a version…)
Can we see the present? Here it was, just became replaced by the next present… and the next… could what we would like to pinpoint as a present just the process of current events becoming past, filled with the anticipation of things to come. (And in our jumpy, ballistic minds also a string of relevant events, glimpses of relevance, memory triggers.)
We very often see the present as a confirmation of all of our learned experiences. It is rarely that we actually realize that there is a stream of new and pure time flowing through us, completely, aging every cell in our bodies, transforming us back into the planet.
The moment we are born, we are destined to die. We might be the only species here that has the ability to express this awareness of finality common to each and every one of us. Culture is a way for us to help forget that we are so very incredibly mortal.
We are constantly moving… ahead, backwards, sideways, in memories surrounding us, lika a cloud, a bubble… some of them personal, some of them collective…
Based on these memories, on these preprogrammed filters for our world experience, we base the way we see the world…
We need mutations in perception, from time to time, to wash clean our eyes, to extend the horizon, to revisit, to redefine… to help see again…
Art is supposed to help here… but it is also man made, part of culture, the shy attempt to overcome mortality… so much of it just grasps to what is there, bases itself on what “works” not what might open new paths, avenues, or maybe old ones, those that have been closed because they did not fit in an image that might have been somehow correct in a mind? in a time? is it now?
layers upon layers upon layers upon layers, moving…