Is time a tool to read reality with?

Olga Tokarczuk in "Bizarre stories":

"It's not that the word has changed.  

It's us whose brains became so scuffed 

that we don't catch time as we used to."

I like that.  Instead of bitching about the world out there perhaps we should take a closer look at our pathetic and shrinking selves.   Another aspect of the quote that I like is that it leads to time as the element which makes or breaks our well being.  For example the information explosion is really the assault on our sense of time. 

The place of an image

Richard Shusterman quotes/translates in "The Adventures of the Man in Gold" Laozi describing the Tao:

“As a thing the way is shadowy and indistinct. Indistinct and shadowy, yet within it is an image. Shadowy and indistinct, yet within it is a substance. Dim and dark, yet within it is an essence. This essence is quite genuine” (D 21). (道之為物惟恍惟 惚。惚兮恍兮其中有象。恍兮 惚兮其中有物。窈兮冥兮其中 有精。其精甚真。)

At first I though it was a cascade: the unspoken contains an image, that image contains a substance, that substance holds an essence. And the essence is genuine. So we go deeper and deeper till we reach that which is.

However grammatically it's a series of approximations that try to explain that which is shadowy and indistinct. Or is it? I need a solid English consultation here.

As an image maker I would prefer the former way of reading the quote. In it the image is a necessary step into that which is. In the latter it's just one of many possible ways to grasp that which can't be grasped.

Is all political?

From an interview with Agnieszka Holland:

Q: And the artist's duty?

 A: Artists don't have duties.  That's the difference between a journalist and an artist.  A journalist, like a doctor, is a job of public trust.  An artist is not.   Artists have the right to make mistakes, to fantasy, to provocation, even to narcissism.   Artists are those who expend the borders of imagination, push on description of reality.  They can introduce an element of chaos, which may turn out to be creative.  

I have a social approach and a more political temperament, but to many creators that's irrelevant.   To them what's important is the vibration of a spider web in the sun. 

(from an inteview in "Gazeta Wyborcza", September 28, 2019

Exposure

This is a soon upcoming documentary about Richard Shusterman, or rather about one aspect of his vast philosophical interests.   We've been working on it for years.  Previously it was called "The Body Philosopher".  Stay tuned...