Time's Mechanics

Brian Eno.

Times shown are British Standard Time; Calculations are made on the assumption that the Gregorian Calendar will remain in use. The Gregorian Calendar errs by one day in two thousand years, thus posing a dilemma for performers of the distant future.

from "Untitled (British Standard Time), 1968" reproduced in Visual Music p. 86. The dates for the performance of the work range from 1968 to 2512. Reminds me of the Halberstadt performance of Cage's long work Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible). Eno's remarks about the Gregorian calendar bring to mind a section from Garry Thomas Morse's The Untitled (13) where the poetic voice muses about the recalibration of the calendar in idiosyncratic terms.

Today (being Monday)
is my Friday and the
start of my weekend!

& I am wishing
myself a happy
weekend that's
schizophrenic -

I do not do justice here to the elegant typesetting by Glen Lowry. You have to imagine the text set off from a cascade of lines and occupying a block aligned close to the right margin - like a voice intruding.

Garry Thomas Morse is also the source for this next passage inviting mediation on the marking of time. It is from Transversals for Orpheus.

May the mystical
arrange existence
in the calendrical
dead to impromptu

Time passing. Time captured. The pressure on "impromptu" is to be alive to the prepared in readiness, the planned for an eventuality. If the calendrical is dead to impromptu, then can existence sabotage the mystical, defeating all attempts at arrangement? Time captured in passing. In the modes of a matrix. Impromptu resurfacing as cell-hopping... at play with the prepared for however long.

So pushing some parsing, one is able to read the mystical arranging existence in the space between the calendrical dead and the impromptu: as in the road from one to the other. You really have to go slow or you miss the place. There's some algebra magic in the mechanics: arrange Y in the A to C. Diagramming. Take as long as you like.

And so for day 1167
22.02.2010

Insets

It is a prolonged meditation and puzzling over the relation of insets and calendars that has led me to lay down the following tracks.

Third stanza of "In The Country Where They Have No Maps" by Sandra Kasturi in The Day I Ate Jupiter (and other poems) Kelp Queen Press, 2002.

in a stone room scattered with crumpled parchment
the king strives to know his land
he tries to map the transmogrifying coastline
while telling me of tourist attractions of note
and landmarks that must be visited
his directions are always found to be wrong

And for some reason this excerpt from Sandra Kasturi resonates with a passage in Charles Bernstein's essay "Optimism and Critical Excess" in A Poetics

Maps — these schema so many of us love to create — have their primary value as imaginary constructions. Since art is not a fixed subject, it does not have a fixed group or series of objects, such as land masses, to chart. Our critical maps make various possible configurations seem real; it's almost as if the dynamic, shifting field of the works is frozen by our icy projections unto them. Potentiality is taken for actuality.

And so I taken back to try and understand what used to appear in a signature block. (E.g. see this posting to the Humanist discussion list.

A calendar is like a map. And just as maps have insets, calendars in the 21st century might have 'moments' expressed in flat local time fanning out into "great circles" expressed in earth revolution time.

"Calendars" and "insets" are not terms that mesh well. The Great Circles reference hints at time zone and one can well imagine an "insert" or pop-up window that provides information about conversions. The revolutions in time can also follow lunar tracking. Some calendars have useful insets showing the phases of the moon. And there is the trusty legend: a calendar marked up for the city's schedule of recycling, compost and garbage pick up — similar to pay day calendars. Still the notion of inset seems static for a rendering of the passage of time. And it seems to easy to confuse inset with legend. Yet there is a potential of different scales sitting side by side in the view that appeals to certain aspects of calendrical practice: "time fanning out" equivalent to an ecological concern where all directions transmute into preoccupations, and insets are always in step.

And so for day 964
03.08.2009

Embedded Interactivity

The encyclopedia entry (Americana, Canadian Edition 1960) contains its own how to instructions. How to build a table to illustrate seasons and months.

Revolutionary Calendar, a calendar adopted during the French Reign of Terror. It was decreed on Nov. 24, 1793, to commence from the foundation of the French republic, Sept. 22, 1792. The 12 months were Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, Germinal, Floréal, Prairial, Mesidor, Fervidor or Thermidor, and Fructidor. The first three constituted autumn, the second three winter, the third spring and the fourth three summer. Napoleon I restored the old system Dec. 31, 1805.

Notice how the entry writer avoids "third three".

Autumn:	Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire
Winter:	Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose
Spring:	Germinal, Floréal, Prairial
Summer:	Mesidor, Thermidor, Fructidor

I like how the suffix indicates season. And no traces of Roman emperors (July and August).

And so for day 352
01.12.2007