TIME, March 2023

‘Time’ is a research project dedicated to this one tragic and intangible thing. I am fascinated by the concept of time and how it travels.

In this research video I discuss the nature of Time. I also discuss the concepts of cyclicality and circularity which much of my work revolves on.

There is a temporal nature to what I do - I often creates things only to let them decay. In this way my work embodies the changing land from which it came. It is seasonal - sometimes it is as fleeting as a blade of grass.

It rises and falls with the rhythms of nature - between the constant moving of life into death into light into dark to sunrise to sunset to the inhale through to the exhale and on and on forever.

Put simply - it lives in non-linear time.

The Butterfly Effect

Butterflies are a deep source of inspiration for me, and often make their way into my art practice.

Butterflies represent change - the fact that bad times end and good times end and there is no use getting too attached to either. They flutter about the place, pollinating. They live by the light of their own intuition, feeling the moment in it’s flow. Butterflies must trust their gut when going to drink the flower’s juices. Perhaps it is no coincidence we get butterflies in our stomachs - a kind of flighty feeling, that tells us of something coming.

Butterflies have cocoons - they go through a time of inwardness and hibernation a winter of sorts. They know when it is time to simply sit and listen.

Butterflies, like Time itself, are blurry - we rarely see them sitting still for very long. They are little sparks of inspiration, colours in flight. The fluffy texture of their wings reminds us not to get too caught up in the details - to stay fuzzy, not fussy.

Butterflies have short lives - they do not live very long but their little lives are so fulfilled. They don’t take anything for granted and they just fly and then they die but they cause so much joy, whilst they are here.

It reminds me of the poem ‘Eternity’ by William Blake:

“He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise”

Further, I am interested in what is known as the Butterfly Effect - the idea that everything is connected. That every action, no matter as small as a simple smile, has a ripple effect. If you shined a genuine smile on the person who served you coffee this morning, that person might feel less bitter and maybe smile at the next customer. That customer might feel better and less bitter, too. And maybe he won’t be overly negative on his daily podcast that morning, and instead leave his millions of listeners laughing and smiling. And then the listeners might not loose their cool at their children. And then maybe the children will grow up doing their best, trusting themselves and others, and caring for the place they inhabit.

Maybe I’ll slow down and sniff the grass today, or pet the dog in the park and ask him what his name is. And maybe, I’ll see a stranger filled with genuine joie de vivre, and instead of questioning it, be inspired by it. Maybe I won’t heal my sadness but I might become a little softer. And perhaps there’s a butterfly hiding somewhere in the flowers behind me.

Maybe a butterfly flapping it’s wings won’t effect much now, but maybe somewhere down the line, there are enough happenings and understandings between people and we save enough bees to keep the planet spinning. And continue to birth, and be born. And continue to dream.

But in the meantime, we must watch how we flutter..

Everything is interconnected in one great thread. There is great strength and power in fragility - the wings of a butterfly are proof of this. To be gentle is to hold great power. To breathe is to move mountains.

Perhaps to walk, and talk, is a paradox. Perhaps the secret is in being.

It was the late spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh who first coined the term ‘Interbeing’. Interbeing is an important concept when discussing Time, change, and the constant cycling of all things. He describes it in the following way:

“Interbeing: If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.”

All things blend into one - like the colours of a watercolour painting, or the experience of flying, if only in our dreams. Watching butterflies is quite strange - they move swiftly but they make time slow down, when I look at them.

Perhaps this is what it means to inter-be - to recognise the innate paradox in Life itself. To be strong, I must be delicate. To slow down, I must be swift.

The use of poetry as a metaphor for interbeing here is quite fitting. Poetry reaches outside of itself to make sense of what is. It is a way of crossing boundaries, of moving toward unknown places and finding what could be. Poetry cannot exist without the eye that perceives nor the beauty reflected in it. Everything is eyes, everything is watching. What would the butterfly want me to know? What might he know that I don’t? Poetry becomes a space between, allowing our human selves to catch a glimpse of what another organism might say or feel. Wendell Berry, in his meta poe about-a-poem ‘How to be a Poet (to remind myself)’ he writes:

“Make a poem that does not disturb

The silence from which it came” (Wendell Berry 101).

Poetry and art allows us to gently imagine Other, nonhuman consciousnesses. Through these mediums we step into an entirely new realm. We are only just beginning to brush the surface of the soil.

We are not swinging, to and fro like a pendulum - rather, we are falling apart and coming together at random, haphazardous intervals. Some may call it dance. Alan Watts once said “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

The Butterfly effect is a component of chaos theory - it is the idea that tiny events can add up over time to create monumental change. The butterfly effect, like time, is non-linear and indirect. It is about paying attention, and zooming in a little.

It all comes back, you see, to butterflies.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

―Jorge Luis Borges

In his book, ‘The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible’, Charles Eisenstein describes the chaos as such: “intelligence, order, purpose, and design are illusions; underneath it all is merely a purposeless jumble of forces and masses. Any phenomenon, all of movement, all of life, is the result of the sum total of forces acting upon objects”. The world lacks order, and yet we wish to order it. We try to control the uncontrollable, predict the future, transcend time and space - forgetting, all the while, that every breath we take can be an act of love, if we’d let it.

For Eisenstein, what is within ourselves, is reflected in all life surrounding us. We plant the seeds today. If we seek change in the world, we must look inside: “the transition we face goes all the way to the bottom. Internally, it is nothing less than a transformation in the experience of being alive. Externally, it is nothing less than a transformation of humanity’s role on planet Earth”. We are so small, yet we have infinite life.

The ‘Butterfly Effect’ term was coined in 1972 by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in describing how small changes at one place can lead to large differences and is tied to chaos theory. Source: WikiCommons. 

““Let there be no boundaries. When you lose all sense of self, the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish. Lose yourself completely, return to the root of the root of your own soul” - Rumi.

The butterfly effect, both scientifically and spiritually, speaks to transformation. Interestingly, many ancient cultures viewed them as symbols of change. Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes the story of ‘La Mariposa’, the butterfly woman. In the story, the buttterfly dancer is old, large and unconventionally beautiful - “her back is the curve of Planet Earth with all it’s crops and food and animals. The back of her neck carries the sunrise and sunset”. Butterfly is small, but she contains all. She is the “female fertilizing force”(226).

Estes writes “The self need not carry mountains to transform. A little is enough.. Butterfly woman pollinates the souls of the earth.. she is spilling spiritual pollen all over the people who are there”. 

Butterflies are an important symbol of change, cyclicality and connectedness….