Columne_To honour those who are late for the dates
Let’s pass on to in medias res. Ladies and gentlemen, something vibrates. Vibrates? By no means! It doesn’t vibrate at all. It fades. It freezes. Lately I have consumed the God’s gifts in a bar with non-Euclidean microwave. Yes. As the grub looked like antediluvian and I waited for it about an hour. But it’s just a beginning. One always smiling friend has done an almost equilibristic deed at McDonald’s. He stated that there’s no queue to the cash-desk and categorically demanded the staff member not to move so heavily.
I hurry to tell you that: hurry which I have used to write this text is something emancipating. It’s something which emancipates the author and the readers. But for what reason this justification should be made in a hurry? I pay an honour to those who are late for the dates. The deadlines are lost! Everyone who waits for late events should really care for this gratitude. Another opportunity for such idleness could not repeat. The dates are outdated! If life had been a race of the deviants who had nothing better to do than being always on time and so on, how to be sure that the referee in that competition wouldn’t have been Zeno of Elea? A latecomer has an advantage over the one who’s on time. It’s especially visible in a period of monsoons. The deadlines are passé.
Note down (rapidly) this horrifying fact. The man is like the train: begins to be fast, stops to be passenger. Meanwhile the world becomes frantic. We spend our abrupt lives which are as superficially shallow as even Freud could not imagine. Hasn’t our epoch met the fate of Faust whose only hope was that the salvation requires even more effort? And isn’t it insulting to dignity of humane life that we simply spend it?
Maybe it would be better to keep the mind busy with some unprofitable divagation and to receive the royalties in the form of unproductive happiness? Who wouldn’t like to redesign his life into the permanent picnic, at the very least under the national slogans and with the orchestra of the local regiment?
Work slowly as you are in slavery. I remember this graceful slogan, from the period of German occupation, I believe so. The millions of hands, the thousands of hands and to work – all left. And still the one heart bites; though with very slow rhythm. I have a time, but time doesn’t have me. Life is a thing which only those who are suicidal hurry with.
Well, if for some reason you please yourselves with reading this text waiting for late, though deserved ambulance, it isn’t a proof that Marcion that blinking heretic was right. Probably the staff of unhurried ambulance sympathizes with Slow Movement.
What’s Slow Movement? It was created in 1990s in the Northern Italy. It seems an intellectual (or rather doctrinal) frame of the organizations and associations busy with promoting traditional food – Slow Food. It’s easy to have a suspicion that in reality it aims to fill someone’s purse. On the other hand, it should be remembered that nowadays the doctrines accompany all the products on a market. They are something as additional-spiritual-packing. But I don’t feel like talking about the pure want for benefits, which is going to appear in a full shine after uncovering a buy from the box of the false idea. As there are many different ideas.
Slow Movement (not to consider its strength and real political influence) must be seen as a condensate form of protest against spiritual form of late capitalism, which assumes maximal value of humane existence, hyper-productivity without any justification in current life needs. Activists and sympathizers Slow join the work of anti-global, ecological, anti-corporation organizations. They take the actions aiming to shorten the legal time of work, to introduce the prohibition of trade on Sundays and on Holidays and so on. An interesting initiative is surely promotion of a Day Without Hurry in USA on 24 October (Slug’s Day).
Civilisation placing on a pedestal the speed of life is in contradiction with the humane nature conditioned to cyclically changing rhythm. Demand of productivity accompanies every deed: in work and in leisure time; bringing up children and consummation of the meals; reading the books and also (last but not least) having sexual relationships. Slow Movement supports the idea of coming back to the natural life rhythm. Every action has its own particular tempo in which it should be taken. Natural environment of man is a change of this tempo. Who has seen the copulating slugs knows the taste of life. The complete happiness requires the mollusk mucus glands, it’s a fact. Slow Movement doesn’t make us reject all the blessings of civilisation. We have lubricants.
The major theoretic of the Movement is Carl Honoré, London publicist, the author of “In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challanging the Cult of Speed” issued in 2004. Honoré introduces himself as a “former speedoholic” – the man who used to live in the cult of speed. During the journey to Damascus our “speedoholic” experienced the conversion? Further consideration of this question would be an empty inquisitiveness. We can only add that this was a very speed journey.
Honoré advises not even to make the life slower but to keep the right balance in it. Some action should be taken quickly, the other slowly. Our leisure time should be organized differently than the time of work, so that we wouldn’t control the time while resting: look at the watch, check the schedules. Certainly we should put away the phone and e-mail. We should have in our dictionary such ancient terms as “to savour”, “to delight” and “luxuriate”. (Everything indicates that Slow is rather sensual than intellectual.) Honoré proposes to increase the amount of leisure time as much as possible and to fill it with some slow hobby. What does Honoré treat as a slow hobby? Such that it would made one mad if it hadn’t been for therapeutic reasons: yoga, gardening and notorious knitting. The more pleasant aspect of being Slow (with reference to the author of “In Praise of Slow”) would be the feasts. In regard to the parties there is one simple rule: as often as possible and with a huge number of people. Obviously with a group of friends because such a feast, although it should have some links with the tradition, it shouldn’t actually be a tradition of ancient Slavs, which characterized with the fact that the enter doors were much more used than the exit ones. You should know what I mean. An additional imperative was consummation of the local and ecological products but we already know about that. The collaboration of the participants in preparation of the feast is much desired, and after the eating – a common, loyal reclamation of the areas and rooms ruined during the game. It equals to return to the values well-known by the traditional cultures. The main goal of man’s deeds in those cultures was creation the inter-humane relationships. Basic activities-work, meals, play-required the participation of the whole numerous families living together under the same roof. In this way those ordinary activities, in addition to their practical function, it means to satisfy one’s hunger, to satisfy one’s material needs, had some spiritual importance: they supported building the community. Everything indicates that the modern state got rid of whole additional value from our lives. Modern cosmopolite system of work and reposing, together with the all-embracing hurry, promotes the solitude.
Slow Movement pretends to be utopian. It proposes the bucolic fulfillment in the casual social relations. If it really deserves to be noticed, it should be seen as a form of the radical obstruction of the madness based on the culture of economizing time. Is there a chance that (a miserable travesty here) the brotherhood will take whole humane kind? I must confess that my feelings are mixed. The Slow Movement, as it should be predicted, makes very slow progress.
M.K.E. Baczewski
Translated by Monika Jankowska