Time, in the Time of Corona
Doesn’t it feel like time has been acting peculiarly these days? I’m often surprised by how slowly or quickly time seems to pass. In the midst of the Corona Crisis, it can seem as though we are either racing or crawling through the days and weeks. Weeks sometimes feel like months - and other months like weeks. How do we describe this fitful passage of time? So much is happening and yet, at the same time, it can feel like nothing is. To say we are living in a frantic standstill seems to be an oxymoron and an insight at once.
Talking about time is funny. There’s something troubling to the realization that time itself is not perceivable. Time as such is not felt. Instead, we construct our sense of time’s passage from experiences and how they relate. When we say time moves in a certain way, we are saying something about other experiences and how they relate to one another. A day may seem to pass quickly if it is filled with a variety of short activities. In contrast, boredom prompted by lack of activity or monotony can make time seem slow.
We can borrow some conceptual language from the sociologist Hartmut Rosa. He theorized that different aspects of life have different temporalities. For example, day to day life has a temporality, but so too does the social world. If I speak about society and culture and say “It’s hard to keep up”, I may be describing the temporality of something other than what I describe when I say “My days have been passing quickly lately.” In his terms we may call the former the ‘pace of social change’ and the latter the ‘tempo of life’. Someone adrift at sea has a slow tempo of life. A working mother of three may have a fast tempo of life. Societal change on the other hand, refers to how cultural, economic, and social trends change. The pace of social change in 12th century Europe was slow, whereas in the 18th and 19th centuries it was faster.
We can imagine now how Covid creates this seemingly contradictory combo of temporal experiences. At one level, our tempo of life slows to a halt, while at another, social change accelerates. As movement is restricted and we travel and socialize less, our day to day life decelerates. With days and weeks passing alone in our rooms, we can feel like the sailor adrift at sea. Simultaneously, the crisis which caused this slowness, also causes rapid and dramatic social, political, and economic developments. Governments pass new laws, many businesses go bankrupt while a few expand, and culture continues to evolve online. Together, a slower pace of life and faster social change may be what leaves us with the signature Covid dissonance. Our daily lives slow to a crawl while politics, the economy, and culture tumble onwards.
It may not be so simple, though. Researchers are finding that experiences of time are not uniform. For each who feels life is slowing, there are others that feel their life is going faster. With more time spent online, in front of screens, in chat rooms and zoom calls, switching between tabs and programs, even devices, it can feel like a lot is happening even though, in another sense, little is. Psychologically when our brains are swiftly switching between tasks and redirecting attention, time does seem to disappear. Multitasking shrinks the time we spend on any given task continuously. Thus, while some do feel that their days pass faster. For others it may feel slow. Paradoxically, frantic constant scrolling, intrusive messages, and the instantaneity of the internet can feel inert.
Time, Music, and Life
A musical analogue can help us make sense of this apparent paradox. The tempo of a song is usually measured in beats per minute (BPM). Pop music today usually has a BPM ranging from 115 to 140, whereas a sad acoustic song may be in the 70s. Within a certain range of tempos, musical notes can be strung together to make a melody. To do so, they must succeed one another within the period of time we perceive as the ‘present’. If too much time passes between notes, they will seem unrelated. The same principle applies to letters and their ability to form words. If a note follows another one minute apart, at a BPM of 1, we won’t perceive them as related.
Metrónomo, Paco - cc lincense flickr
Likewise, when notes occur too quickly, we won’t be able to differentiate them. Imagine a normal song played at a BPM of 5,000. Would we hear a melody? Certainly not. Instead, we might hear the many sounds, scrunched together, make a new sound, a pitch. When too much happens at once, it can seem as though only one thing is happening.
If we say our experiences ‘blur together’ maybe we are like a listener faced with sounds too rapid to distinguish. In the realm of psychology, researchers are finding that many feel as though time is passing quickly under these conditions, but that they are not forming as many memories. The rapid passing of brief events creates indistinguishable and unmemorable periods of time.
The Slow Race of Lockdown
During lockdown, some certainly do live lives like the sailor adrift at sea. Others, with attention fragmented by myriad distractions may be living like one listening to a song at a high BPM. Meanwhile, social change has a tempo of its own that seems to care little for how our personal lives are transformed. These observations challenge us to think seriously and systematically about what we mean when we feel like time is either ‘dragging on’ or ‘racing by’ - or even both at once.
Though scientific findings are still unfolding, a conceptual question persists. What about our experiences makes us feel as though time passes in a certain way? How can what’s fast seem slow? How can we be so confused when it comes to time? Since we cannot grasp time itself, we will have to settle for analysis of the events from which it arises. Time is tricky like that, and perhaps trickier now in the time of lockdowns.