Challenge #7: Time Travel. The concept of time travel, of being able to move backwards and forwards to different points in time, is an important part of creative thinking. With a little imagination it can show us the way that something has always been done, or it can give us the freedom to imagine the future and the way we believe it could be done better. In this interpretive weekly challenge, I encourage you to do some of your own time traveling this week. Become a time travel tourist and visit a local historical house or site. You can also do some arm chair traveling and pick up a biography about someone who you admire from a different time period or rent a movie from a different era. Pay close attention to what stories or experiences you find memorable, or what objects capture your attention.
If the past holds little interest to you, travel to the future by sending a postcard or letter from your “future self” to your current self. How many years in the future is it? How old are you? What are you doing? What advice do you have for your current (past) self. (Think Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for this exercise.)
With the concept of time travel as your touchpoint, whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.
This summer, I have been experimenting with time travel.
A popular form of travel mainly occurring in science fiction books, TV, movies, and the DC comic universe, it is also the Big Idea behind the well done radio ad campaign for the non-profit organization Historic New England. With their cleverly designed “passport” guide to their 36 preservation properties in five states in-hand, my time travel adventures this summer took me back to 1940 at the Walter Gropius house and to circa 1890 at The Codman Estate, both in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
With time travel on my mind, it was with some interest that I learned that physicists from Hong Kong University recently announced that time travel is impossible and officially only something that could occur in science fiction. A fan of Jack Finney’s classic time travel books Time and Again and From Time to Time, I was a little disappointed to hear this conclusion, presented in a radio news story as I made my way slowly through traffic on Mass Ave.
While there is a part of me that respects that the speed of a photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light—hereby supporting Einstein’s theory that “an effect cannot occur before its cause”—there is another part of me that holds out hope though, that maybe just like in Finney’s novels, time travel is closer to hypnosis, and therefore just another deeper layer of the mind, rather than an actual place.
Another pin pick to the theory of time travel is English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking’s observation that if time travel was possible, we would have more tourists from the future. While we could surmise that they are very discrete, the lack of time travel tourists seems to point to evidence of it not being possible, or something that is not explored. Based on the number of ostentatious baby blue CSI crime scene booties that I have worn this summer to carefully traipse across the floors of historic houses without further wearing down the carpet—I can tell you one thing, I don’t think that time travel could ever be subtle.
But I like this idea of time travel tourists. It is a perfect expression for the nostalgic pleasure that I experience when I see the house stationery on the desk at The Codman Estate with “The Grange” engraved on the envelope—no need for an address. Or the long built-in desk where Walter Gropius and his wife worked side by side the window before them framing the view of a hill covered with long yellow grass and Queen Ann's Lace in the summer.
While most people on the house tours seem to be interested in the craftsmanship of the floor tile or the rarity of the paintings, I am imagining an evening conversation at the Gropius dinner table with its dramatic lighting. Or what happened to motivate the oldest Codman daughter, whose bedroom is filled with her own watercolor paintings, to ride her bicycle from Lincoln to Marblehead in one day in the early summer at the turn of the century. Was it athleticism? Curiosity? Boredom? Did she start riding and then just keep going? Did she forgo her corset? Did any of her friends begin the journey with her and decide to turn back while she continued on alone?
I believe that the role of the imagination is to create blue prints for ideas, to test them out, to taste them before we make them real. As a writer, my version of time travel inspires me toward new ideas for stories and also helps me see details that may make the story authentic.
Time travel though is also a way to step away from our own lives. Understanding a different time in history can be as inspiring as understanding a new culture. In learning, you open up your mind not just to immediate insights about what you are studying, but also gain insights into your own life, or the reasons behind why you do something a certain way. There are many “departing gates” for being a time travel tourist, from history books, to antique stores, to museum artifacts. This week especially though, I encourage you to do some immersion time travel by visiting a historical house or building in your town and see what it inspires.
All of this is inspiration for the seventh summer challenge: time travel. The concept of time travel, of being able to move backwards and forwards to different points in time is an important part of creative thinking. With a little imagination it can show us the way that something has always been done, or it can give us the freedom to imagine the future and the way we believe it could be done better (this is especially important for innovation—think of Dick Tracey’s futuristic walkie-talkie watch or the Futurism art movement at the beginning of the 20th Century). In this interpretive weekly challenge, I encourage you to do some of your own time traveling this week. Become a time travel tourist and visit a local historical house or site. You can also do some arm chair traveling and pick up a biography about someone who you admire from a different time period or rent a movie from a different era. Pay close attention to what stories or experiences you find memorable, or what objects capture your attention.
If the past holds little interest to you, travel to the future by sending a postcard or letter from your “future self” to your current self. How many years in the future is it? How old are you? What are you doing? What advice do you have for your current (past) self. (Think Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for this exercise.)
With the concept of time travel as your touchpoint, whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.
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