Man's reflection in the mirror of time | Angelo Floramo | TEDxUdine

Time is a total synaesthetic dimension that affects the senses and crosses them, sublimating them, transfiguring them and giving life to them: you can taste it, listen, touch it, smell it. Even see it. It is the cadence of the Latin hexameter, which evokes the heartbeat or the foot pulsed on the ground, that rhythms the step of the shamans' dance; it is the empty space between Adam's finger and God's finger in the Genesis of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo; it is the kiss not given that Keats sang in "Ode on a Grecian Urn".

Let's get enchanted by Angelo Floramo.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

"There is a time to born. A time to die.

A time to love. A time to throw stones.

A time to tear and a time to mend.

A time to make love and a time to part."

And these words were sung a long time ago.

Roughly 2500 years ago.

with a cithara, tuned
with the "Seven Strings",

as the Qoelets cithara was nicknamed.

And each of those strings,
prepared with sheep entrails,

was to be tuned
with constellations and planets.

For the time we experience

is a personal one
that grows within oneself

until it becomes
part of the cosmos' own time.

Defining "Kohelet", wisdom,

has always been a conundrum.

Man has always chased after it,
always looked for it,

always attempted to solve it.

Today, I introduce myself a bit
like an Alice's "White Rabbit".

A small watch in my pocket

that somehow captures
both my time and yours.

Time is mostly a pace.

We understood it

while still in our mother's
amniotic fluid,

as we listened to the beat,

the beat of her heart,
the beat of our heart.

Our ancestors, the Latins,
invented almost everything.

Cultural sponge as they were

of that once great
Mediterranean civilization,

obviously an extremely porous environment,

filled with many stimuli,

which they transformed

into the rhythm
of their "Dactylic Hexameter".

The hexameter was the way

of singing the heart's beat;

it's the verse of Epic Poetry.

But underneath the verse of Epic Poetry,

recorded along the extraordinary
folds of ancient manuscripts,

lies an ancient, primordial music.

And you can hear it.

It's within you right as we speak.

Your heart may beat harder or softer,

but it's always the same.

"Quadrupedante putrem sonitu
quatit ungula campum."

What is it?

It's the beat of a hors ride.

A wild, frightening cavalcade,
an extraordinary advance of riders,

who chant and swiftly cross
the planes of Troy as a hoof,

with a galloping sound,

shakes the crumbling field.

That isn't impressive in Italian,

yet "Quadrupedante putrem sonitu
quatit ungula campum. "

enhances the rhythm even more

and the rhythm turns into a frenzy,
and this frenzy into a song of passion.

In perhaps the most beautiful night
in Latin Literature,

the night described
by Ovidius in "Tristia".

When Ovidius must leave,

due to an emperor’s will

that denies him the fact

that he saw something
which he was not supposed to see.

It is during this very last night,

spent between the arms
of the woman he loves -

and what time is better spent after all-

Ovidius, lost in the curls of her hair,

sang to the beat of those passing moments,

and each grain of sand
that descended in the hourglass,

became a whisper of love

sung for an eternity,
as it became eternal.

"Lente, lente currite noctis eques!"

"Oh, run slowly, slowly,
horses of the night,

because if the night
slips away too quickly,

and if the dawn rises too quickly,

I will have to whisper farewell
to you, my sweet love.

May that moment never come."

It is by hands and feet

that death can be deceived
within a dance.

Within a dance, accompanied
by the shaman's tambourine and cymbal,

we can repeat the rhythm
of that ancient Hexameter.

If you paid attention,

if we were in an estranged time,
if we were in a different place

not too far from here,
within the hills of the Friulian moraine,

and if we found ourselves
around 1568-1570.A.C.,

a musician, necromancer and magician
who we all know well,

Giorgio Mainerio,

The famous Choirmaster
of the Holy Church of Aquileia,

whose patriarchs still reside
within this building, suspended in time.

We can almost hear them.

With bagpipes

in hand and feet clapping,
with the beat of clapping feet,

they would search
for the systole and diastole,

for that pendulum,
which can enthral the moon.

So that, as Slovenian witches
of that time would do,

it could somehow stop

along the estranged chain
of mountains and hills

and somehow stop for an instant.

"To Enchant", means to chant
from within the real meaning of things,

and to enthral, even for a single instant,

which however can last
as much as an eternity,

the sense of the flow of time,
or at least the memory of it,

so that it may stop time
and deceive Death,

which of course waits in vain
within this dance.

That is all there is to it.

"It's a time to be."

It's a delicate balance

between "Eros", love,
and "Energeia", that is energy,

which they mentioned before
when talking about time and the cosmos,

and "Thanatos" that is death.

In the Middle Age "Books of Hours",

death was portrayed
with a delicate silver crown

and reminds us, without scaring us,

that it will appear
at the end of our existence -

but not to punish us!

It will show up and ask us

if our time was a well spent one.

If the time we invested in our lives

was a time filled
with things, with encounters,

a distilled excitement.

This is what that dark lady will ask us.

And that is it,

within the magnificence of a space,
which also becomes time -

notice how seamlessly
the language of theoretical physics

clings so tightly

to that of art, of poetry,
of anthropology and of philosophy -

it’s that space, that time,

embroiled between a finger that creates
and a finger that was created.

Within a sense of “Humanitas”,

which is related to "humus"
but also "mano" [hand].

It's with our opposable thumb,

that allows us to perceive ourselves,
maybe for the first time,

as creators or sub-creators
that shape structures and meanings,

that we are enabled to hold our time
between our grasp.

And that is within a spark
of Michelangelo.

In that very sleepy, dreaming Adam.

He dreams because he still does not live.

And he does not live yet
because he doesn't have a sense of time,

which is all wrapped
within the mystery of our origins.

Who existed before Adam?
After Adam, who will exist?

Adam, the man who gives names to things
and steals the soul of the world,

who makes himself a grain of time
and eventually returns to a grain of dust

within the meaning of things.

This might be my favourite example.

It is my favourite
because within this kiss,

which Greek vase painting

captures beautifully from the first Polis,

we are talking around 8th century B.C.,

within this vase there is a kiss
that has lasted for more than 2000 years.

And it has lasted
for 2000 years, 2800 years,

as this was never traded.

The time of that kiss

becomes an eternal moment
between two people.

Exactly like the finger of God

that descend from the infinite
and transforms the infinite into present,

and gives it a sense and strength
of being wonderful, here and now.

The great poet Keats sang this

in his famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn ”,

and this is that very urn.

But, what does that
suspended time consist of?

I am sure that all of you have ever tasted

the essence of that time,
which precedes a kiss.

For that's when a waft becomes a breath

and a breath turns into "anemos", wind.

And the wind becomes spirit

and those spirits merge
and become a tepid vapour.

And that tepid vapour becomes an emotion

and that emotion is meant to be shared,
yet distilled slowly.

Like Rostand once said,

the bee sucks the honey
from the flower's corolla,

but before this moment can even happen,

that's where all the sweetness
of the honey is found,

in a kiss that wasn't given,

which will last in the course of time,
which will last forever.

And so, Horace, inspired by such a style,

during a winter's night,
when time seemed endless,

he tells his love Leuconoe,
with long black hair:

"Loosen, loosen them for me
in this very instant,

allow dreams to remain suspended
below, your eyelashes,

near the border of your eyes.

Do never worry about the time
that Zeus could have granted us.

Don't ask yourself how many more winters

will tire Adriatic's enraged waves.

May this moment, this very instant,
which precedes our kisses,

be our time for all eternity.

Generously pour into the cup
the Sabine wine

than let's share this wine,
along with our love,

which by lasting the whole night,
will essentially last forever.

And John Dowland,

one of the great poets
of the Elizabethan age,

in this dimension of music,

which repeats the sense
of Qoelet and Jewish cithara.

Within a musical structure
which speaks of life, love,

instants, fleeting moments

and emotions and afflicting worries,

we sings intertwining in his scores

a wonder, which is once again
the wonderment of a song,

it's his "Come Again."

"Come again, sweet and kind love,

[translates]

so that my night isn't restful,

but full of dreams"

And what are we, as echoed
by his famous countrymen echoed,

if not a collection of dreams,

a mixture which seams our lives.

A dream can appear long a lifetime to us,
as long as an undefined time.

And life can be short and sweet,

like only a dream can be.

It is the waiting,

it is the waiting that can allow us
to transform memory into will,

that allows us to give sense and meaning

to the things we experience.

All literature and philosophy
play with the concept of waiting.

Waiting does not mean wasting time:

it means having the opportunity
to savour it all the way.

Today we have no time.

We run after this "Moving contraption,
with its toothed gears,

as it grinds up the day
and chops it down to hours",

Ciro di Pers, our Ciro di Pers,

who probably dwelled here
long ago, singing his times.

We fear waiting.

Our waiting rooms are a place of misery.

We have transformed our lives

into waiting for something
that will never arrive.

Transforming our present into nothing,

trapped between the idea of a future,
which still does not exist yet

and a past that no longer exists.

They have no meaning

if not in our meek present,

which swiftly transforms
the future into past.

Through memories we can discern
who we truly are, who we aspire to be;

and most importantly,
how we choose to become that person.

And this here, is the flash
of a myth, of a ritual.

Within the Cueva de las Manos, in Mexico.

This man from 12000 B.C.

left a trace of time,
around the colour of his hand.

The excitement,
because you are allowed to,

of placing your hand on that print

opens some sort
of spacetime fascination,

where these 12000 years are recapitulated
in the touch of a shadow.

A hand’s shadow, that reminds us
of something very important.

That we are human beings,
just like he used to be,

and we crave for passion;

we have an insatiable need
to experience a dimension through time,

which is only ours,
because we can perceive it.

Incredibly, some trees
are 10000 years old,

with leaves that grow centuries
apart from each other -

and yet, they retain
no memory of themselves.

By placing my hand on this hand

I sensed that 12000 years
are only a moment,

just a heartbeat, an instant.

And so we ask ourselves,
much like the psalmist used to sing,

“Watchman, what is left of the night? ”

How long will we have
to simply stand and wait?

We should learn to savour the night

to imagine it by listening,
surrounded by the shadows around us,

the humming of each strand
of grass, as they grows,

the whirring of the stars
as these cross the borderless sky,

which is maybe the very whir within us,

the creak of the bench we sit upon.

And never get tired of asking:

"Watchman, what is left of the night?"

Because sooner or later,
it will be overtaken

by a feint glimmer,
which appears from the East

and which signals us
that perhaps our time has come.

Pay attention, because even now
my time is slipping away.

Because this is
what time is, the "Kairos".

Represented this way by the Greeks.

It is a fleeting moment;
it always flees behind us.

It passes us by
before we can even know.

However, it has a long curl,
which rests upon its forehead

and that's where we must be careful enough
to seize it, grab it when it passes by,

welcome it and avoid
being caught unprepared.

"Kairos".

You can find it on the coasts
of Dalmacia, at Trogir,

perfectly represented there,
as it was 2000 years ago.

Grabbing that special moment

means thinking that our life
is filled with time,

as in, "life must maintain
that fullness of time".

In Seneca's words, "Do not hope
to add years to your lives.

Instead, hope to add life to your years."

You may get well beyond 100,

without "living" a single second.

You may live 30 years,10 years,
one month, even just a single hour,

and that time can be
an untouched, wonderful time

which leaves you with a sense of wonder.

So like the great Faust,
who gazed upon an endless sky,

after having made a bargain
with our inner Devil.

And each of us has a demon
with whom we must come to terms.

Let’s ascend to the tallest

and most solemn spire of our castle,

and seeing that the first lights
of dawn are arriving

and signalling to us the end of our time,

we too can say:

"Oh fleeting moment, stay a while!
You are so lovely!”.

Thank you. Thank you.

(Applausi)