Time is not measurable in my mind. It is a theory, a practice that a community agrees upon. Theater works in much the same way. When a play is well done the actors create a reality that the viewers believe and for the duration of that ritual the performer/s and audience engage in their own time. They play with time. I too am playing with time. I am playing with stories from my memory and finding new stories that may create present and future stories - and perhaps interrupt or interpret past stories.
I told my uncle, my father's elder brother what I am doing.
He said several things...
1. I don't know why you would want to do that.
2. Be sure you want to find things out. I know someone who did something like this and found out his relative was a "madam".
3. After telling him how excited I am about finding the patents he said, "Don't count money you never earned" and started laughing.
My uncle loves me very much and I love and adore him.
We do however think very differently.
xoxo,
Bob's Daughter
This is the beginning of an adventure. Somewhere between play, curiosity, possibility, outrage and a daughter's thought of 'what if?' Last night MyLife.com popped up and asked me if I would like to reconnect with Robert Caigan. It said that I can send him an email. My father died in 1978. Let's see what happens next...
I am struck that your uncle's mystification with your desire to pursue this "project," if you will, is somewhat generational. You are in the process of making art. The art you are making is based in a new kind of inquiry that is interactive and, as you state in an earlier post, makes use of technology that is automatic and beyond our control. This in itself is compelling to you as a scholar-artist. Additionally, I do think it is more in the nature of those who have integrated the Internet into our lives in a very integral way (more than, presumably, your uncle has, as a member of the older generation) to want to ask these sorts of questions, engage in this sort of inquiry and see where it leads. This endeavor is intellectual and artistic, and it is also something of a mystery. How can one ignore the challenge of a mystery? Especially one that is so personal?
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