13/2/2018

​A decade before “Forrest Gump” hit the screen and Tom Hanks kept on uttering that now almost colloquial phrase, “Life is like a box of chocolates…”, a man I worked with, who had enough of school after his sophomore year at high school, came up with a similar phrase, one I keep quoting quite often, probably boring people that heard it before to death. 
 In one of his contemplative modes, sitting at the wheel of the official vehicle which it was his job to drive, he went: “You know, life is like a vinyl record. When you put it on the player and let the needle hit the groove, it keeps playing at a constant speed. But, if you take a closer look, at the start it seems like it is playing sluggish. As it approaches, the end it seems like its playing faster and faster. That’s life for you, right there.” I went home and put on David Bowie’s “Ashes and Ashes” right on. He was definitely right!
 I don’t know, maybe as the years pass by you get writing ideas faster, it is just that your hands might be slowing down a bit by bit. But that is not the point I’m trying to make a connection between time and writing. It is that writing is actually so consuming that the thinking process, research and the act of writing itself that once you enter, you get a feeling as if time is put on hold. 
 Writing becomes so engaging that you have a feeling that like in almost every single “Star Trek” episode you get pulled into a wormhole at one point in time and you exit in another. No, I’m afraid writing cannot stop time, but it can certainly preserve it. Whether it is just a few seconds or a series of lifetimes. Makes no difference. It is definitely preserved. And with it, the speed with which the vinyl record plays is not only constant, but seems to be too.

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