Time as a medium not a source of capital
I have been thinking about how I spend my days since I have been freed from most external expectations. This terrified me initially because there was often, and still is at times, a creeping feeling of should. I should be doing this or that, anything other than what I am doing. The should has been there most of my high masking fawning life, but I recently let it go, maybe about a year ago, after reaching a new pinnacle of “success” and feeling it was not a trajectory I wanted to continue on because of the way it shifted my relationship not just to my work and practice, but to how I spent my time in relation to my supposed values. Once I’d achieved the thing I’d been told to want my whole life, it left me questioning what we accept as our goals.
I have the privilege of recognizing the value of time as an abstract medium, a thing of value I use daily in my practice, separate from what capital might be raised or gained in a given amount of increments. Freed from the expectation of generating capital with my time, I have been able to use it differently than someone caught in a linear production model might. I have been able to embrace the more natural rhythms that my body and brain gravitate towards that are outside the time+labor=capital framework and productivity driven life required for most.
Time and art and luxury are inextricably linked in today’s world. Those who can spend their time free from generating capital or worrying about generating capital have the luxury of spending their time dedicated towards higher thinking pursuits. I fall into this category because my husband’s career supports us. Many believe that art is a luxury item because of the price, but the real embedded luxury of art is having the time and autonomy to either make it or to contemplate it free from selling pressures, to have it be around you at all times as a part of your existence. To spend a day looking at and thinking about what humans have created over our history not necessarily because we needed to but because we were driven to is to spend a day without “productive function.” To be inspired by a material and to be driven to use your hands in the pursuit of creating something that doesn’t exist is what separates humans from many other mammals. It is the desire to create that is innate in us. But capitalism has skewed this innate tendency into a desire to improve upon. These are not the same things and too many are now caught in an endless pursuit of incremental improvements that do not deliver any higher level of existence. The market is saturated not with innovation and creativity, but with slightly different versions of the same homogenous options that serve to overwhelm us, not enlighten us. So many people spend agonizing amounts of time trying to form hierarchies of their product options in order to stay on a perceived “ideal” path. We are inching towards a world where function is the only thing that matters and form will be homogenized to meet function and efficiency goals. This is already happening across the design world and in many other spheres. Though variety exists, our scope feels narrower than ever and risks or wide deviations have lessened because it feels the more we know about the “ideal” pragmatic way to move forward, the less we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable by admitting we can’t meet it, that we aren’t ideal. But time has no concern for function or ideals. Time marches on without hierarchy or improvement. Time is consistent even in its relativity. It is one of the only true equalizers and cannot equalize anything unless people begin to realize its inherent value once again. People must remember what has been stripped from them during their work days and fight to add value back to their time that is separate from capital.
Unlike time, capital is a human construct that does not really exist within the natural world. In the capitalist framework within which we all live, to be unproductive has only two understandings-the first is a negative judgement we place on ourselves and on lower class people when we look at how much we or they don’t have in comparison to a perceived “should.” The second understanding is more complex and demonstrates the hypocrisy of capitalism; Once “enough” capital has been earned, the goal for many is to cease feeling the “should be productive” feeling, ie autonomous time to pursue non capital gain activities. Our society puts on pedestals rich people who no longer have to work. The irony is of course in the knowledge that one could let go of this feeling entirely on one’s one at any point if they simply let go of the idea they need to be approved of by others, have what others have, and that there is only one version of success. But doing this has been deemed socially unacceptable as well, a quitting of sorts that carries a perception of being a loser that many don’t want to take on. Winners get rich and get to quit. Quitters are losers even if they feel rich in our world.
The only way to therefore earn a life of contented ease free from “should” within the framework we have, and still be looked upon positively by others, is to make enough money for others to perceive you have “earned” the choice to produce less either by becoming rich or retiring. The problem is the necessary amount keeps getting higher, and frankly, unachievable for most even in retirement. Many struggle to find ways to spend time in retirement that bring contentment because their whole life has been geared toward an idea that their time is worth a certain amount of money. When money is then removed, they no longer know how to create value and thus validation for themselves and many start to feel useless because they no longer serve a “function”. Society doesn’t like aging and therefore finds it convenient when elderly people shrink back behind curtains because of their lack of function. No one wants to be reminded of our future diminishment, right? Thus, our relationship to time within a capitalist construct is contributing to our overall global feeling of trauma because more and more of us are facing days with less and less agency, fewer sources of true joy, and not enough time to even consider our circumstances in a meaningful way. By the time we do have time to consider our lives, no one wants to talk to us or listen to us or learn from us. Some cling to their positions of power past when they are capable of listening themselves. There is no dignity in aging in contemporary western society. As soon as our time is not capable of making money for others, we are cast aside, stripped of our personhood and role in society, suddenly no longer valued much at all despite all those years of experience and being told each year earned us value. The only elderly population that is valued culturally are those that saved enough capital to pass it on or spend it or have it be stolen from them. Our time here is used against us as soon as it can’t be of capital value to others.
Stay tuned for more…
The images included in this post are paintings made from memory of my back yards from childhood where i spent a lot of autonomous alone time free from judgement. The painted screens shift and change the underlying painting, acting like time and memory obscuring what really happened.