No such thing as free time, no such thing as down time

[james_haven]

Glancing over my friends' journals recently I've noticed something of a preoccupation with time: how it affects us, how we are slaves to it or not. You could say that the whole western concept of time is probably responsible for more nervous complaints and emotional malaise than anything else. There's never enough time for everything and there's this terrible pressure to make the most of every minute. If you have free time and you waste it then you're made to feel guilty, so I guess it never was free time in the first place. You could play about with this in infinite ways - nothing makes one look more like a boring pseud than when yabbering on about time, because its complex nature means everyone and his wife has a theory - like some smartass streetkid punk with a yo-yo standing there going flip, flip, flip - see all the cool things I can do with this; he just won't go away and you just want to smack him in the mouth and make him stop. Anyway, what was I saying. Oh yeah. There was a study done recently comparing various cultures' attitudes to time, and the conclusion drawn was that technology was to blame for this frantic need we have to account for our time: that is, the notion of free time only exists because of the technology that provides us with the entertainment tools supposedly needed to enjoy it. Nebulous as this is, one thing did strike me. The researchers were in conversation with an African tribe, asking them if they were familiar with the concept of free time, and the response was that they had never heard of the term, nor could they understand it. The only expression they had for the passage of time and the way humans experience and perceive it was "life time". That is amazing and wonderful to me.

Back in London for a bit. Cannes was a blast. Angie's in Montreal and I miss her, and I've just realized I've said rather a lot about fuck all. Now how's that for a waste of time.