Endless Stairways, Giants, and Sinking Time.

Endless Stairways, Giants, and Sinking Time.

In thinking about art that stands out to me in terms of length or elements of time, I first thought of extremes of time in semi-popular song form. Crash and the Boys perform a four-second song in this clip (You only need to watch from second 16 to 20 in the clip). Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven seemed like an endless song when it was played as the last song at every middle school dance I ever attended. It seemed that all the kids who were lucky enough to have a dance partner, or unlucky depending on your opinion, stood as far away as arms length would let them swaying anywhere from eight to twenty minutes depending on the version of the song used. The song seemed like it would never end, perhaps not only because of its length and repetitive use due to popularity, but also the mellow-end-of-the-night-mood reception to the song. I laugh that, even today, it is still often used at dances 20-30 years after my first repetitive encounter. What gives it that staying power? Is it the length, the message or the mood, the “wind down, almost done, reminiscent feel”? Who knows. Here’s a Link to an article arguing it to be the greatest rock song ever, and a link to a little different live version of the song(this one lasting ten minutes and thirty-nine seconds).

Funnily enough, in trying to find just how long Stairway to Heaven actually was, I stumbled upon a different stairway to heaven. The Haiku stairs in Hawaii, renamed the stairway to heaven, and an interesting sight of seemingly endless stairs and stats of the length it would take to climb up and down them. This is definitely worth viewing and a piece of art in photography dealing with length. The photograph of the stairs looks like they disappear into the air.

Next I saw this beautiful painting by Cyril Rolando and had two distinct thoughts. Firstly, the amount of time it takes for ships to sail from one port to the next and how much power water has to “turn the tide” or affect the length of time that the ship is out to sea. Another painting of Rolando’s depicts hourglasses sinking to the bottom of the sea representing in my mind the inevitable loss of time in some way. Unfortunately I could not find the specific names of the paintings but you can access the website here to see this and many more via his site.

In seeing the comparison between the size of the water woman and the sailors that may be on those ships, it made me think about the “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” movies of the early 90’s where every scene that the BIG world came in contact with the small world’s perspective, it was treated in slow motion in order for the audience to handle the action in connecting those two very different worlds. As giants are typically portrayed, they move and respond more slowly than the small world. Gulliver’s Travels is another story that this portrait led me to think about, this big and small world and how distance between the eye level of a giant to a non-giant is so far that those worlds seem distanced by size and speed in how the stories are portrayed. Perhaps the moderation of these extremes would dull the beauty of these extremes when it comes to looking for an admirable piece of work. To pose a “take” on the combination of pieces of significant duration or length and pieces of short duration or length without “stirring the opposites together and losing their individuality” is to be admired and a lovely way to keep things alive.

I’ll close with my first attempt at a 140-character Twitter play. (Alternate between 2 people, or two personalities of one person)

Where’s it gone? You know. Lost for half a year to reappear. Hibernating! What did you do this morn when you heard the horn? What? You know.