Reflections on the concepts of time, emotions and home when writing a memoir
Casting back into memories, discovering feelings of
nostalgia, joy, overwhelming sadness at the realisation of the passing of time
is all part of writing. But stop there. What is this passing of time? A recurrent theme in the description of
psychedelic trips with the mind expanding drug, LSD, was the timeless quality
of the experience. On those trips, we had loosened ourselves from the world as
we knew it – time no longer existed. Another example of the loosening of those
bonds between me and time is when I am with horses. Anyone who has had a
meaningful interaction with a horse knows that it is a truly humbling
experience – horses see through to your core. Of course, it isn’t always a
rewarding experience – negative emotions, distractions, concerns can get in the
way. But when I am open, when I let go of everything else then time ceases to
exist when I am interacting with a horse.
I promised myself that when I wrote this memoir I
would not let any academic habits creep in – I would just write. But when I started
thinking about the concept of time and how it relates to both my LSD
experiences when I was younger and also my ongoing experience of the expansion
of time with horses, I had to do a little research. It was heart-warming to
find that Carlo Rovelli in his book ‘The Order of Time’ acknowledges that ‘It
only takes a few micrograms of LSD to expand our experience of time to an epic
and magical scale’. He has written that statement in a book on quantum physics
and time. He also credits his LSD trips with having a positive effect on his
intellectual journey. Many other well-known scientists, artists, writers, and
film-makers recognise that LSD contributed to their creativity.
Carlo Rovelli prompted me to think about emotions in
relation to time. There is a whole list of emotions that I felt when I was
tripping: joy, sadness, fear, happiness, ecstasy, surprise – in fact most of
the basic emotions and more besides. But where does nostalgia come into this?
Many people write that nostalgia is a complex emotion that relates to the past.
But surely that can only be true if we accept the concept of time always plays
a part in nostalgia. Rovelli challenges the whole concept of time ‘If I observe
the microscopic state of things then the difference between past and future
vanishes’; later he suggests that ‘perhaps the emotion of time is precisely
what time is for us’. It fills me with joy to read that emotions can enter into
a discussion of quantum physics – of course they can.
There is a song ‘Sea of Joy’ by Blind Faith – one of
the most beautiful songs of the sixties era. I don’t listen to the song often
but when I do it sweeps me back fifty years to Blind Faith playing in Hyde Park
– hearing the music echoing across the water, sweeping through the grass and up
into the trees. Pure nostalgia! Rovelli suggests that ‘A song … is the
awareness of time’. The complex emotion, nostalgia, is what I am feeling right
now while listening to Sea of Joy – it is infused with memories of the past but
there is also a timeless quality about the feeling.
Emotions also played a part when I was wrestling
with the ideas for my thesis on conformity. I have always thought that writing
a doctoral thesis was an emotional journey – ideally, one came up with a new
idea or pieced together old ideas in a new way. Each time the pattern began to
fall into place, there was a tightening of the chest, a feeling deep within the
stomach, and then the excitement came bubbling through. As I come towards the
end of this memoir I feel the same excitement. But before I finish I need to
tackle one final piece of the puzzle – the concept of home.
I didn’t expect to be writing about home – but as
with any writing you never know quite where it is going to take you. The first
time I noticed that I was questioning ‘home’ was when I was still a teenager
and had ceased to call my mum’s house home. I didn’t have an alternative place
to call home but I was very conscious of the notions of shelter, security and
warmth as was evidenced when I was on the LSD trip by the Irish Sea. Shelter
and warmth are ideas that are often linked to the concept of home. But does
home need to be a place? In Hyde Park in 1969 Blind Faith’s ‘I can’t find my
way home’ released me from any ties – I didn’t need a home. This was the pure
hedonism and short-sightedness of the 1960s; we hadn’t lived through war or
bombing – we were the privileged generation. During those LSD trips in the
early 1970s we wandered the night streets of New Brighton and Brighton and only
headed indoors or home when the need to listen to music became too strong. Home
was fragile and fluid in those days.
But does home become any less fluid as we age? It
was during our trek on horseback across England that the concept of home really
came to the fore. Where is home? Here is my list: A copse of trees above the
Chattri near Brighton, Keymer Post on the South Downs, New Brighton beach near
Fort Perch Rock, a field near Cropredy village, an old bivouac tent, and a
cottage by the woods. Interestingly, my partner on the horseback trek up north
also believed that the small canvas tent that we slept in for twenty three days
was home.
The notion of home had already been raised by
journalists in 1975 when reporting our trek. As we left Brighton the newspaper
reported ‘Moving home on horseback’. Throughout the trek I had serious doubts
whether I was heading for home – in fact, the further north we travelled the
less it seemed like going home. But the front page of the local newspaper
announced ‘Hoofing it home…’. Home is a taken for granted concept but can be so
ethereal. Maybe some people do have strong concepts of where is home for them.
And doubtless being uprooted from your home rather than leaving voluntarily
changes ones perspective on the concept.
