Materiality + The Continuum of Time

I will never forget the moment: it was a warm September evening. The dusk sky was descending upon us. The rich, Australian outback desert sand was glimmering with fervour and mystery. The gleaning rays from the day began trickling away, as the sun made preparations to bid adieu. Uluru, or “Ayer’s Rock,” as they call her, was sitting there – waiting patiently – clandestinely. Her swollen belly moaned and we could hear the soft whispers of thousands of years of dream-time stories; echoing from within her crevices. Those caves, hidden inside the fissures of that big and beautiful body, were reeling forth something furtive. The anticipation and the enchantment hung in the thick; arid air. 

And then it happened. What seemed as though it were the agonising cry of an expectant Mother – pierced our hearts and souls. Like a great crescendo, the inspired choir rose up from its ethereal surroundings. The outback Sun. The Rock. Both looked at one another… square in the eye: the joining of a spectator’s dance. A beautiful rendezvous began to take shape: Light and texture. Texture and colour. Patterns of shadows; reverberating back and forth… back and forth. From the Sun to the Rock. From the Rock to the Sun. And then back again. The scattered wisps of clouds joined in on the tempo. Waves of colour gleaned in the twilight sky and struck against the surface of her magnificent; undulated skin. The melody being played out before us was truly a feast for the eyes. This awe-inspiring spectacle lasted for only a few moments… but we were struck!

Finally, the Sun drew the curtains on another day… and she left us. And the Rock, once again, sat in silence. Smiling. As a Mother bringing forth new life does and embracing her infant child. Content. She fell asleep. 

And so, from that point, we continued on our journey. There were eight of us, three of which were professional astronomers. We headed out into the darkest part of the desert, so as not to draw any deflection from the city lights. Then we felt it – again – something was emanating. Stirring in the midst. As we began to set up the telescopes, the darkness continued to shift upon the vastness above. One by one, the heavens lit up; as though teams of mystical lamp lighters from the days of lore were meandering through the night sky, igniting the gas with their long lamp canes. Tiny speckles unraveled and the thick, dark blanket lit up like jewels. It was at this point that we saw it. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It was so mystical. So sublime. So beguiling. So uplifting:

It was the milky way. It was the universe... it was our home.

I sat there - in awe. I could not comprehend what I was witnessing. There was something so perfect about this imperfect cluster of luminosities. Whilst the rock dance was breath-taking; this struck me more profoundly. I had no words. I was installed. I just stared. I felt so small. All that mattered at that moment… was that moment. Joy and sadness collapsed upon me. Joy at the wonder of such bewilderment. Sadness that the big and noisy city had been concealing this mystery from our idling, dream-like minds… every-single-day.

Nature, especially the stars, has a way of doing that to us – of suspending time and allowing the “inessential” to become… essential. 

 Ayers rock is estimated to be about 600 million years old. The Sun, about 6.4 billion years. The stars are estimated to be 1 to 10 billion years old. And some of the most beautiful mountains and rivers are said to be in their millions. Whilst some trees are estimated to be in the thousands. And yet, despite their age, they do not grow to be less beautiful, as societal conventional standards would have us believe; but are ever more able to captivate and draw us into the richness of their splendour. 

Nature demonstrates the beauty of the continuum of time.

But why have we, as a culture, yielded to the idea and become obsessed with the notion that beauty is flawless and ageless perfection. The song of eternal youth is the constant beat of the drum carousing our ears; maddening the culture of the day. We see this, for example, with big businesses; making big money, using big celebrities, to sell a big idea: that using various creams and potions will magically stifle the ageing process. We see this notion taken to epic proportions, especially in the last decade, with the explosion of invasive cosmetic surgery procedures. This is seen, most aptly, with the proliferation of social media – having us bear witness to a whole new level of cosmetic perfection. Thanks to the aid of medical operating measures; the ability to become an amateur model has become ever more democratised. What is being granted on these social networks is a most unprecedented ideal, even in contrast to the flawless, Photoshopped and airbrushed models exhibiting our magazines. 

But it’s not just our physical appearance that has become victim to the onslaught of these ideas. Our built environment, too – reflects this plastic perfect ideal. Our cities, once adorned with natural materials, such as brick and sandstone, are being overwhelmed by glass, steel and plastic cladding. We conceal our Real, natural surfaces with cement, and print Natural images on Man-Made surfaces – in order that we might preserve, in the vain hope – of maintaining continual flawlessness. A hopeless attempt, perhaps, in order to take away any deflection that time might erode on a living and breathing object.

But what is at the heart of this sterile outlook on the way that we view ourselves, our world and our built environment?

Juhani Pallasmaa, in his book, The Eyes of the Skin – Architecture and the Senses, says: “The flatness of today’s standard construction is strengthened by a weakened sense of materiality. Natural materials – stone, brick and wood – allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter. Natural materials express their age, as well as the story of their origins and their history of human use. All matter exists in the continuum of time; the patina of wear adds the enriching experience of time to the materials of construction. But the machine-made materials of today – scale-less sheets of glass, enameled metals and synthetic plastics – tend to present their unyielding surfaces to the eye without conveying their material essence or age. Buildings of this technological era usually deliberately aim at ageless perfection, and they do not incorporate the dimension of time, or the unavoidable and mentally significant processes of aging. This fear of the traces of wear and age is related to our fear of death.”

We fear our mortality, so we do all that we can in order to stifle the natural process that time wreaks upon us.

This fear has produced in us a creature that is obsessed with timekeeping. To prove this, one need only to observe our general surroundings and attitudes. We have a clock on our watch, dashboard, computer… we have a calendar. We chime in every hour. Every day. Every month and every year. But the animals do not do this. The animals do not fret over passing birthdays. The animals do not fuss over deadlines. They do not worry about wasting time on so-called unproductive activities. As Mitch Albom, in his book, The Timekeeper, states: “Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralysing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”

Time then becomes both our most beloved acquaintance… and our arch-nemeses.

One of my favourite romantic movies, if you can even call it that, is Ps I love you. The story portrays the very real and messy and tragic realities of life. The characters: Gerry and Holly, played by Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler; are a married couple, living in a run down apartment in New York city. Their lives are chaotic and messy. They fight a lot; they laugh a lot - but they are deeply in love with one another and can’t imagine their lives without the other. Holly has big plans for their future; and is waiting to do the right things at the right time. Then in a tragic twist of fate, at the young age of 35, Holly’s husband dies of cancer. What on earth happened? They had so much to do. They had so many plans. They weren’t together for long enough. Why was this man, with whom she had loved so deeply, taken away so soon? They needed more time.

And so, she spends the rest of the movie wrestling with these questions and dealing with the grief that ensues. About half way through, hanging by the pier, Holly and one of her male friends notice an elderly couple. Laughing and embracing one another, they both comment on the beauty of the love between this pair. The friend then proceeds with the following considerations that has never left me: “How we can be so arrogant” he ponders, “how we can be so ungrateful. We do everything we can to stop ageing; not realising how much of a privilege it is to actually grow old.” 

How true.

We can fall for the falsity and pastiche of a “fake society”. We can mask the wear and tear of life with makeup and collagen and plastic. We can put up filters on social media and post the very best moments in our lives – convincing our family, friends and even strangers, that everything is perfect. But beneath the perfect face, with the perfect teeth and the perfect lips; perfect cheeks, perfect chest, and the perfect body – together with the perfect spouse, and the perfect children; living in the perfect house, and taking perfect holidays… is lurking a perfect falsehood. This picture-perfect portrayal is far beyond the pale of the reality and truth of life. Yes, life is filled with joy; but it is also filled with calamity. It is worn by scars. It is replete with both good and bad experiences. And there is beauty in those experiences. There is beauty in the scars. There is beauty in life; but there is also beauty in death.

Our built environment should reflect this: to allow us to confront and share in this existential reality. As Juhani says, “Architecture domesticates limitless space and allows us to inhabit it… it should allow us to inhabit the continuum of time.” The marks and wear of the marble floor, wall or bench, for example, speaks to us. It tells us the story of its geological origins. It tells the story of the hands of the craftsman that shaped and fashioned that very material. It tells the story of the finger tips that have caressed it. The many feet that have walked upon it. The many meals that have been eaten from it. The many conversations and emotions that have been pored over it. It tells us that we are coming and going; and that we are participating in a story. And that story is real. That it is human. That we will leave a mark. And that mark matters. And that we matter. To quote Juhani again, “Buildings and cities are instruments and museums of time. They enable us to see and understand the passing of history, and to participate in time cycles that surpass individual life.”

We must accept that our presence is participating in the continuum of time. There is beauty in the way in which time has crafted us. In what time has done to us. And in what it will do to us. We need to throw away the superficial notions of time; to stop fighting it, to embrace it and to develop a new and healthy sensibility to the beauty of it.

I will finish up by leaving you with some of the most beautiful concepts that I have come across, as it relates to the above. The Japanese, in my opinion, have truly mastered the embracing of this philosophy, as you shall see in the below:

Kintsugi (金継ぎ), or kintsukuroi (金繕い), literally golden (“kin”) and repair (“tsugi”) is a traditional Japanese art that uses precious metals to bind broken bowels and objects. When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandise the damage by filling the cracks with gold. The philosophy behind this idea, is that they believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful. Rather than trying to conceal our scars, they are put on display… beautifully.

In his deeply moving essay, In Praise of Shadows, speaking on Japanese Aesthetics, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki writes, “At the heart of this philosophy is a fundamental cultural polarity. Unlike the Western conception of beauty — a stylised fantasy constructed by airbrushing reality into a narrow and illusory ideal of perfection — the zenith of Japanese aesthetics is deeply rooted in the glorious imperfection of the present moment and its relationship to the realities of the past.”

He continues, “This temporal continuity of beauty, a counterpoint to the West’s neophilia, is central to Japanese aesthetics. Rather than fetishising the new and shiny, the Japanese sensibility embraces the living legacy embedded in objects that have been used and loved for generations, seeing the process of aging as something that amplifies rather than muting the material’s inherent splendour. Lustre becomes not an attractive quality but a symbol of shallowness, a vacant lack of history.”

Disclaimer: The material and advice given on this blog has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for full consulting advice. Always consult with a professional for more accurate information that especially tailors individual circumstantial needs.