Still Time

A gallery softly draws its curtains, and keeps an audience suspended…

The decade which began with one confused year blurring into the next, halts a hectic world on turbo mode. An extended period of pause, with several awkward attempts at starting up again—the engine put-putting slow exhaust, ready to rev up, only to collapse back into parking.

Daring not to join the frantic race, we rear back, and evolve into a void.

Stuck inside, arrested, we accustom to repetition, every daily dose of numbness, silent objects all around us, with death all but abounding.

Our private dens are now a place for profit, designed for speculation. Transactional, become our bodies. So much distance from a figure, so familiar are the screens that dull our rhythm. We indulge in cottage industry distractions, axing familiar practices, passing days perfecting our performance enhanced hobbies. We learn to cook, become duo- trio- quadri- lingos, get fit or fat, we all age—the plebeian doom, for the online bride and groom.

Every passing day, an alarm not set to wake us, another call that breaks up, distant timezones feeling local, online spaces being standard, shows and gigs that get rescheduled, pushed forward ‘til they’re no more, and tomorrow feeling older than the days that just passed us, the month that snaps in seconds, and the season that is stagnant, and the other that just happened in a flash.

Suddenly September, at last, an Indian summer.

From zero to a hundred, we swiftly defrost our frozen attention spans; our blurred vision still prevailing. With only dreams left to stir us, our fractured memories betray us… when we sit in silence, all the while remembering, time still remains our constant

Photo Credit: Romain Darnaud