Planning to Flee from Calendaring and Clocking
My previous two dispatches introduced two complementary projects in fugitive planning: the projects of “planning to flee from schooling” and “planning to flee from financing”.
This dispatch introduces a third project in fugitive planning that complements the two previously discussed: this being the project of “planning to flee from calendaring and clocking”.
These three projects in fugitive planning along with a fourth project to be introduced in my next dispatch could be said to constitute the four dimensions of the (De-/Re-)Constructing Worlds project.
Indulge me, if you will, and allow me begin this dispatch by citing two etymologies that you may already be familiar with.
calendar (n.) — c. 1200, "the year as divided systematically into days and months;" mid-14c. as table showing divisions of the year;" from Old French calendier "list, register," from Latin calendarium "account book," from calendae/kalendae "the calends" the first day of the Roman month, when debts fell due and accounts were reckoned.
clock (n.) — "machine to measure and indicate time mechanically" (since late 1940s also electronically), late 14c., clokke, originally "clock with bells," probably from Middle Dutch clocke (Dutch klok) "a clock," from Old North French cloque (Old French cloke, Modern French cloche "a bell"), from Medieval Latin clocca "bell," which probably is from Celtic (compare Old Irish clocc, Welsh cloch, Manx clagg "a bell") and spread by Irish missionaries (unless the Celtic words are from Latin).
I cite these etymologies because I feel the need to be precise from the outset about what I mean when I use the terms “calendar” and “clock” and when I write that I am “planning to flee from calendaring and clocking”.
To be brief, taking into account the etymologies above, I use the term “calendar” to refer to the tabular division of concrete sunrises and sunsets, new moons and full moons, equinoxes and solstices, and seasonal life cycles into abstract days, months, and years; and I use the term “clock” to refer to machinic measures of time. In turn, “planning to flee from calendaring and clocking” means (i) planning to live in accord with concrete turns of sunrises and sunsets, new moons and full moons, equinoxes and solstices, and seasonal life cycles (as opposed to abstract tabulations of days, months, and years), and (ii) it means planning to live in accord with metabolic measures of time, seasonally varying circadian rhythms (as opposed to machinic measures of time).
Footnote: I shall argue elsewhere that the term “metabolic clock” is a misnomer arising from a reductive metaphor that tends to obscure more than it reveals, not unlike the term “neural network”. I hold that our metabolisms are no more “clocked” than our neurons are “networked”. There will be more on this in future dispatches. Suffice it to say for now that when Greg Saunier, citing Jack DeJohnette, says that his drumming is more like the stoking of a fire than clockwork, I agree with him and I propose that our metabolisms work far more like Saunier's drumming—that is, far more like the stoking of a fire—than like clockwork.
If my desire to flee from calendaring and clocking seems fanciful, it is only because we have become accustomed living in a deathly world of suffering that unduly privileges machinic measures of time and abstract tabulations of days, months, and years. This begs the question: how and why have we become unduly prejudiced against metabolic measures of time and the concrete turns of sunrises and sunsets, new moons and full moons, equinoxes and solstices, and seasonal life cycles?
The etymology of the term “calendar” is suggestive: “from Latin calendarium ‘account book,’ from calendae/kialendae ‘the calends’ the first day of the Roman month, when debts fell due and accounts were reckoned.” With this etymology in mind, my wager is that the privileging of calendaring and clocking has a great deal to do with the prevalence of domineering capitalist financial statements that take abstract seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years for granted when determining schedules of fees and payments.
When I first introduced the notion of fleeing from calendaring in my dispatch on freeing time, I proposed that calendaring and clocking were appealing to any and every sort of power formation, and not just capitalist power formations. If calendars and clocks are becoming ever more prevalent and pervasive, it is a sign that we are living in a world in which power in general is becoming ever more prevalent and pervasive. That being said, however, a defining feature of capitalist power formations in particular is that they can only sustain themselves by becoming ever more prevalent and pervasive (there will be more on this in later dispatch). Ipso facto, calendars and clocks have become such prevalent and pervasive features of our lives today because of the prevalence and pervasiveness of capitalist power formations that are forever bent on becoming ever more prevalent and pervasive.
As such, it should be no wonder that my planning to flee from calendaring and clocking is integral to my planning to flee from from schooling and from financing. So, if you will, allow me to recap the points of my previous dispatches on fleeing from schooling and financing so as to better articulate the point of this dispatch on fleeing from calendaring and clocking.
Planning to flee from schooling means planning to engage in direct action in order to live and learn otherwise than being schooled.
Planning to flee from financing means planning to engage in direct action in order to make sense of one’s life and learning otherwise than making money.
Planning to flee from calendaring and clocking means planning to engage in direct action in order to measure the rhythm and tempo of one’s life, learning, and sense-making otherwise than calendaring and clocking one’s time.
Thinking of these three projects in fugitive planning as separate and distinct projects is a mistake because these projects mutually condition one another. The failures of the poorly schooled and poorly financed are, almost by definition, failures to manage time and keep pace. The poorly schooled are “slow learners”: their academic failures are failures to learn and to turn in their assignments in a timely manner. The poorly financed are “slow earners”: their economic failures are failures to earn and make their payments in a timely manner.
All this is to say, in other words, that powers determining what is and isn’t timely are part and parcel of the powers that privilege the well-financed and the well-schooled. The well-financed and the well-schooled are those able to live, learn, and make sense according rhythms and tempos set by today’s prevailing power formations. The poorly financed and poorly schooled are untimely for not keeping to the rhythms and tempos given by prevailing power formations but, instead, making their own rhythms (i.e., living, learning, and making sense idiorrythmically) and making their own tempos (i.e., living, learning, and making sense in rubato).
idiorhythmic (adj.): Meaning “according to one’s own rhythm”, from Greek idios "particular to oneself" + rhythmos "measured flow or movement, rhythm; proportion, symmetry; arrangement, order; form, shape, wise, manner; soul, disposition”. In his 1976-1977 seminar at the Collège de France, titled “How to Live Together”, Roland Barthes investigated idiorrhythmic ways of living — collective ways of living wherein, whereby, and wherefore “each subject lives according to his own rhythm”. Barthes writes:
[Idiorrhythmy] has to do with subtle forms of way of life: moods, unstable configurations, phases of depression or elation; in short the exact opposite of an inflexible, implacably regular cadence.
rubato (adj.): Meaning “free in presentation”, short for tempo rubato, literally “robbed time”. The Oxford English dictionary defines rubato as follows: “Of a piece of music: played, or directed to be played, with a temporary disregard for strict tempo to allow an expressive quickening or slowing, typically without altering the overall pace.”
My deconstruction of statements in support of calendaring and clocking shall proceed in and through my deconstructions of financial and educational statements.
Rather than regarding wretched marks for untimeliness in a credit report or academic transcript as marks against an individual's ability to earn or learn, I propose regarding wretched marks for untimeliness as marks against calendaring and clocking systems, and I propose using wretched marks for untimeliness not to reform calendaring and clocking systems but, instead, to determine what artful reparations are owed to individuals for having been failed by calendaring and clocking systems. What's more, I propose that artful reparations in this regard should come in the form of time and resources to conduct experiments in measuring rhythms and tempos of life, learning, and sense-making otherwise than calendaring and clocking time.
With respect to calendaring and clocking, then, I would deconstruct the wretched marks for untimeliness that characterize individuals’ academic and economic failures and then use what remains to (re-)construct alternative statements that would enable individuals to conduct experiments in measuring rhythms and tempos of life, learning, and sense-making otherwise than calendaring and clocking time.
