score | 9 set | 9 singular | 9 six | 9 slowly | 9 small | 9 sphere | 9 stage | 9 struggle | 9 takes | 9 though | 9 un | 9 university | 9 various |
be together in the same space and the same time… and interestingly enough, we are here today to perform a dialogue on Time. I: And as always, we have kept the promise: we are doing it right here and right now. But to be perfectly honest, as you can see, we are actually not exactly together in the same space and the same time… B: Maybe it is important to say…this impossibility of being together for real was, once again, a result of a very banal set of coincidences. I: You mean me getting pregnant and you getting a new job. B: Yes, something like that. Our lives are always made of multiple temporalities that are sometimes difficult to overlap… And one always has to make choices because we simply cannot be in different places at the same time. I: But then, the wonderful thing about this “impossibility” of us being together in the same space at the same time for longer than four days in a row is that it gives us a real “problem”. And when we have a problem, we also have a promise of a project, something that we can really share, that we have to take care of together, and something that we will potentially never manage to solve. As long as we don’t solve it, this problem gives us a future. A future together… with you.
I: Working no more than eight hours a day and preferably no later than six o’clock in the afternoon. B: Maybe occasionally after nine in the evening… on Skype. I: 45 minutes from home to this place, or more precisely 16 metro stations, with three changes. B: Four hours from home to this place, or more precisely 700 frequent flyer miles, flying nonstop, plus some taxis. I: Eighteen kilos of food of different sorts, which, if we calculated correctly, comes to two days of non-stop eating together. B: Five liters of coffee, which represents more or less 1,634 minutes of “coffee breaks”… if we don’t include going to the toilet afterwards. I: 530 hours of reading, mostly on planes, trains and other public transportation. B: 2,093 minutes of audio-visual material, viewed either on your or my personal computer. I: Countless hours of time spent on the Internet B: In total, at least 15 days on which we were supposed to work together that we canceled. I: Hours of shows made together – none. B: Books written together – none. I: Proposals made together – plenty. B: Minutes of synchronous public appearances – none. I: Should we take a break? B: Ok, let’s do that.
(pause: we stand up, make one step, turn towards each other)
(two minutes of break) (break: holding hands; after that, go back to chairs)
B: This time I might count.I can trick you.
I: OK, so let’s talk about the Deadline. B: How personal shall we get? I: I think we can get quite personal here, because we are all in a more or less similar situation here when it comes to deadlines. We have been looking at the percentage of emails in the Sent sections of our mailboxes that start with: I: Sorry for the late reply. B: Sorry for the slight delay. I: Sorry for getting back to you so late. B: Herewith I am finally sending you the text you asked me for some weeks ago. I: I do hope I am still in time. B: I do hope the sending of this email still makes sense. I: I sincerely hope that this late reply hasn’t caused any damage to your project, but I had a very busy week. B: I apologize for my silence I: I apologize for my absence B: I apologize, I took some days off on holiday.
(afterwards go back to chair) I: OK B: OK, speaking of the promise, here is a small inventory of times necessary to complete a promise of being Finally Together On Time. B: Twelve steps to reach the chair. I: Three steps to disappear. B: Seven days to write this dialogue. And 45 minutes to perform it. I: Nine months to create a life. B: Never more than seven days staying away from home. I: Eight years of collaboration to come to this point. B: 376 hours of work for which nobody paid us. I: 36 hours of work that we officially counted and that we did get paid for. B: Maybe this time I got paid a little bit more than you.
13 0 PR OJEC TE D TE MPO RALIT Y