Dear Reader,
The Studio community this month has been engaged in inquiries around our relationship with time and so my awareness of the off-beat rhythm of this newsletter has been heightened. Matt and I try to offer something of value to your inbox, predictably, a couple of times a month - but I don't seem to struggle any less with deadlines now than I ever have at any point in my life. Maybe that's why I find the topic so interesting, and the world beyond the linear ways we typically use time to mark our days (and feel guilty when we don't keep up), so curious, and inviting. I wrote a little piece about that which is posted over on Substack, if you'd like to read it.
The piece includes an excerpt from our recent Guide Line conversation with Lisa Goddard who invites us to question our usual paths through time, and the ways that we mark it - and reflect on what other ways we could learn to see it, and feel our way along.
Many members have been reflecting on the ways that time rules their days and wondering together about how things might be different, and maybe better for children (for us all) if we found new ways to interpret and perceive our experience. As we began the month, Matt shared some memories of our relationship to time at Opal School:
When visiting teachers came to Opal School, they often remarked on what they felt was an openness of time. A soft expansiveness. Abundance.
That was a little ironic to me, given that Oregon has one of the shortest school years in the country - and the US has a shorter academic year than many countries people were visiting from. In clock hours, there were almost certainly more minutes tallied in the school they came from than this land they were visiting.
So, what was it about the quality of time they were observing that shook something loose for them? What might it tell us about how we make time rather than just spend it?
Absolutely one part of it was a sense of flow, which Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. And new ideas emerge.”
There also was a sense of multiple time arcs being invoked simultaneously. There was what the children were involved in at the moment, and there were traces of what had happened at other times everywhere around them - images and words captured the previous day, week, or even years earlier. And that past artifact would easily find its way into conversation: you’d hear a child referencing something their friend had said that offered new insight into the topic at hand, and then you’d realize that she had said that several years ago - a time travel supported by the tangible record on the wall.
That’s looking back in time, but it perhaps also worked going forward: There was always a welcoming of serendipity, of new possibilities, of wild imagination that unrooted the experience from the challenges of the day.
So little was dictated by needing to be in one spot at the moment that a second ticked or a bell rang - so little danger hanging over what would happen if that deadline wasn’t met.
I don't imagine there is any danger here, either, for not having met my own self-imposed deadline for getting this email finished last week. We are grateful to be invited to share some space in your inbox, and would welcome, always, any thoughts you have to share.
In playful solidarity,
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This month in the Studio
TIME
How do we make time for the right work? What is the relationship with time we want for ourselves and our children?
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Guideline: Lisa Goddard
All members can enjoy the full recording of our discussion with Lisa Goddard earlier this month. Inspire and Transform level members have access to the full archive of Guideline conversations.
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"My takeaway....is how 60 seconds can change you. 'Pay attention a little more differently and a little bit longer in those 60 seconds.' This also stood out for me, 'Time is just a concept...construct. It's the meaning that we attribute to time and to the time that passes that gives it its value, not because time itself has some inherent value.' It has helped me reframe my thinking around time and to ask this question for myself: What would time look like in the absence of all the instruments we use to document it?" (Studio member)
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The Language of
GRAPHITE
Our Studio Mentor Kathryn Ann Myers has created an experience involving the exploration of graphite in order to reflect on the conditions that support a state of flow. Kathryn Ann's material invitations are available to Inspire and Transform members and part of our Institutional membership.
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WATCHING, LISTENING, READING
Good things:
Collage created by teachers in attendance at our recent event hosted by the San Diego Roundtable.
We've been working through these time practices in The Studio - they're beautiful and have been fun to explore together.
I finished this book this week and got a chance to hear the author in conversation about it at Powell's Books. It has the potential to spark necessary interest in this important topic.
We appreciate the work Cathy Belgrave is doing with her podcast and hope you're following her!
I have bumped into so many references to the work of Brian Massumi and Erin Manning recently - their TEDx talk is worth a listen in case you need an introduction to them, too.
“When we attune to the pulses within and around us, time can become an experience of kinship.”
— Emergence Magazine