Funny Time
I'm supposed to be editing a review I wrote, of the Alabama 3 gig I went to the other week. But I'm putting it off because when I got it out and looked at it the other day, it looked rubbish.
So instead I've been meandering around the internet, catching up on blogs I haven't visited for a while. And I found this interesting post re genealogy, on Hydragenic's blog. And ended up writing a comment so long, it seemed worth creating a blog post all of its own.
It's fascinating to think of all those generations of blood, stretching back in the past to incomprehensible times - yet having some connection with yourself.
But it gets particularly engrossing / meaningful when you turn it on its head and think of it the other way around. Six generations from now, there will (maybe, probably) be large numbers of people who can trace their family tree back to me and my kids (amongst others). Their lives would be incomprehensible to me, and yet in some sense they'll have come from me. And then I get a bit of a jolt. I think I live in modern times. I imagine those ancestors of mine, and how confused they'd be by my life and experience, and there's a patronising edge to my thoughts. Poor unsophisticated old-fashioned folk, bamboozled by me and my future.
I imagine them living in sepia landscapes, where nothing was as colourful as now. But of course it was. They thought of themselves as modern. They will have teased the older generations, taken advantage of their slownesss. And will have seen things around them as bright and new, not faded and old.
Time travel is one of those unobtainable things, but oh how I would love it if it were possible. Both forwards and backwards, near and far, to visit ourselves and our relatives, as well as strangers. I used to fantasise about a 31-yr-old future self turning up on the doorstep when I was 16, and wonder whether I would recognise her or not.
She never came, or at least I didn't see her when she did. She's there now in fact, but she can't see herself.
Funny old thing, time.
___
So instead I've been meandering around the internet, catching up on blogs I haven't visited for a while. And I found this interesting post re genealogy, on Hydragenic's blog. And ended up writing a comment so long, it seemed worth creating a blog post all of its own.
It's fascinating to think of all those generations of blood, stretching back in the past to incomprehensible times - yet having some connection with yourself.
But it gets particularly engrossing / meaningful when you turn it on its head and think of it the other way around. Six generations from now, there will (maybe, probably) be large numbers of people who can trace their family tree back to me and my kids (amongst others). Their lives would be incomprehensible to me, and yet in some sense they'll have come from me. And then I get a bit of a jolt. I think I live in modern times. I imagine those ancestors of mine, and how confused they'd be by my life and experience, and there's a patronising edge to my thoughts. Poor unsophisticated old-fashioned folk, bamboozled by me and my future.
I imagine them living in sepia landscapes, where nothing was as colourful as now. But of course it was. They thought of themselves as modern. They will have teased the older generations, taken advantage of their slownesss. And will have seen things around them as bright and new, not faded and old.
Time travel is one of those unobtainable things, but oh how I would love it if it were possible. Both forwards and backwards, near and far, to visit ourselves and our relatives, as well as strangers. I used to fantasise about a 31-yr-old future self turning up on the doorstep when I was 16, and wonder whether I would recognise her or not.
She never came, or at least I didn't see her when she did. She's there now in fact, but she can't see herself.
Funny old thing, time.
___
Labels: Philosophisering
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