Time as a Tool
We’re obsessed with time. We track it, analyze it, parse it, pile up heaps of data about how efficiently we use it. We’re always trying to bank it somehow, as if we can save up time to do what we enjoy by hurrying up and getting things we don’t enjoy over with. We rush. We rush through our meals, our vacations, our leisure time.
As artists, we covet our time to focus, prepare and create. We balance work and sleep hours against creative hours.
And, as “Top 30 under 30” lists, social media and just about every publication or film incessantly remind us, there’s an expectation not only to “succeed” visibly, but to succeed by a certain arbitrary time in our lives.
Time — our concept and use of it — is powerful. It commands attention. It dictates terms.
Time is also something that artists wield. It’s an element in the creation and experiencing of our work, and it’s a tool we use in every stage of creation — even when we’re not aware of it.
The term “slow art” is already used in the appreciation of art, and its application is something all artists should champion. By this definition, slow art is focused engagement with art, distraction-free, selfie-free, noise-free.
Today, let’s look at the idea of slow art as applied to the artist and the process. First, we should examine how artists employ time as an element in their work.
Time as an Element
We know time is required for the creation of art. This can be the time it takes for oils to dry, for photos to process, for kilns and crucibles to do their work. It can be the time cinematographers spend waiting for the right light, that writers spend between creation and editing, or the quite literal time used by composers and songwriters — divided into time signatures and bars.
But artists also use time as an element within the art itself.
Andrew Goldsworthy’s ephemeral field sculptures made of leaves, ice, sticks and rock are created specifically not to last. Some are built at low tide to wash away as the water rises.
Mineko Grimmer’s piece, The Dialogue, uses time in the form of pebbles trapped in a block of ice. As the ice thaws, the pebbles drop into a wooden sculpture wired with guitar strings, hitting notes and essentially creating a self-playing instrument. Néle Azevedo also used ice when she created thousands of tiny ice men and left them in the sun to melt.
Art film is famous for temporal manipulations. Douglas Gordon’s 1993 24-Hour Psycho stretched the Hitchock classic into to a 24-hour experience by slowing it to two frames per second. This piece spawned a number of experiments with time in both film and music (Leif Inge’s 24-hour Beethoven’s 9th), and even showed up in the Don DeLillo novel, Point Omega. Performance pieces like Taylor Mac’s 24-hour concert or Robert Wilson’s early long pieces can run like spiritual endurance tests that often end in a combination of exhaustion and exhilaration.
This is not a particularly recent phenomenon, however. Artists have played with time for centuries, including the impressionists and the cubists. Humanity’s earliest sacred structures were created to honor, track and use time by tracking the sun, the moon and the stars — this is a global tradition.
A Tool for Slower Art
There’s another way artists can embrace time as a tool in the creation of art.
We can slow down.
Slowing down today is a transgressive act. It’s revolutionary (or maybe counter-revolutionary?). It’s an act of wresting your own power from the culture of speed.
The art of slowing down our art begins at the creative impulse. We live in the era of hustle culture, of the hot take, the tweet fired off in the heat of the moment, the easy reaction fueled by heightened emotion. I personally feed off this energy and find myself hurrying to create and, far worse, hurrying to finish so I can get it out there. And that, friends, is death.
But if I begin to insert space at the moment of creative impulse, I am already working toward a better final work. I must give myself time to interrogate what it is in the catalyst and in the impulse that pushes me to the page. Better understanding of the initial “why” of course enhances the eventual “what.”
Time for a disclaimer: the endorsement of slower art isn’t meant to discount the value of the impromptu, of the improvisatory impulse or happy accidents. I hope, rather, that slower art might help us more fully embrace these things by holding room for them within a larger, more copious space of practice. Also, this isn’t about becoming a perfectionist. It’s as important to know when to press play as it is when to press pause.
We need to expand the space in our process. Taking a breather when the inner critic comes knocking, stopping for the day when we know what the next step will be, allowing breathing room for real life to enter — not distraction, but living. As artists, we are always working to some degree. There is no real work/life balance. But there is quality of life, and that requires a fierce embrace of the quotidian. Helping your child with homework, emptying the dishwasher, walking the dog, talking to a parent on the phone, these are all as vital as working on the Great American Novel, Song or Painting— more so, even, because the quotidian is the stuff of life. Art is always, ultimately in some manner, its reflection.
Creating slower art requires the fortitude to push against our contemporary impulses. Our lust for easy shots of dopamine, our need to feel recognized, our need for everything in the world right this second.
Rather, we have to embrace the craftsperson’s patience. The patience of the vintner and the bonsai artist. The patience to wait until something is ready. The patience to work slowly and methodically.
This is not news to you. You already know this. It’s the foundation of good art. But most of us don’t practice it.
Personal Case Study
I’ve noticed a certain set of overarching themes and images in my work that at first seemed to develop in 2020, but upon further investigation really started in early 2019. In January of 2021, I hit upon their common thread and understood how to gather them in one collection.
Almost immediately after this realization, I saw a submission call for poetry chapbooks that this would be perfect for. The deadline was very soon, and I threw myself into revising and organizing.
It was a disaster. Nothing held together, and the more I poked at it, the more it fell apart. It occurred to me that these writings had been gradually accreting around these common themes for more than a year. Perhaps they deserved more than a couple of days to turn into a longer, more cohesive piece?
Once I gave myself permission to avoid submitting (for now) and instead focus on shaping and finishing a truly complete work, ideas began to flow. In fact, the piece spread outside the written word and new music came into the picture. The scope of the work has expanded. So has the timeline, but I’ll get my head around what this work is before I decide when it should be done.
Take the Time, Organize the Time
We also must dedicate the time to do deep work. Set aside the space and time and keep it sacrosanct. This is extremely difficult. As we’ve discussed here before, sometimes that sacred time and space is the kitchen table after the kids are asleep, or on our lunch break.
This weekend, I’m going to a writer’s colony for a two-day retreat with the sole purpose of giving real shape to the written part of this work. I don’t expect to leave with it finished, but I do have a goal of leaving with some kind of roadmap and with enough knowledge to know how much farther I have to go.
When we’ve taken the time, developed the work, edited and revised and tweaked, we hit the final temporal element — the deadline. If you want to put the work into the world, it’s important to have some kind of goal or signifier to let you know when a work is done, even if it’s “I just know.” It needn’t be a strict or difficult deadline, but it needs to exist. It can be as simple as “before summer,” or as hard and fast as “by March 1.” But it must be dictated by where you are, and what you want to accomplish.
Here’s the thing. There’s no expiration date for creativity. And there will never be a moment when we don’t need more good, deeply human and deftly crafted art. There’s no need to rush it through. (Yes, some of us have external deadlines and timelines to meet at certain parts of the process, but we’re generally already pretty far along on whatever piece that may be by that point.)
Take some pressure off yourself. Breathe. You don’t have to get it out today, this week, or even this year if it’s not the right time. Your only responsibility is to the quality of the work. To a consistent, dogged practice that knows when to step away and when to put nose to grindstone.
Your work deserves your patience and consideration. So does your audience.
Forget hustle culture. Instead, create a culture of consistency.
Nobody needs more half-assed, shallow, derivative art. Everybody needs more good art. We need stories and images and sounds to move us to the next moment as a society, to help each of us feel seen, heard, less isolated, more connected. That comes from work made with intention, with depth and with time.
