How to Be a Fish in the Slipstream of Time-Space

by David Scott



In 2003 Harvard and M.I.T. researchers discovered that fish swimming upstream to spawn like the James Brown sex machines that they are, actually piggy-backed rides on eddies, pockets of water flowing against the course of the stream (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Using these natural flows, the little fishies actually used less energy than they would have in more sedate waters. Instead they used the “found” energy of the eddies to accomplish their task, in this case, procreation. Scientist James Liao observed this phenomenon, noting that the flexible muscle and skeletal structure of fish allowed them to bounce from one eddy to the next in an amazing conservation of energy.

Humans too, have their own naturalistic struggles: the desire to find food and shelter…a loving mate…a decent parking space. Perhaps paramount is the need to organize information into meaningful chunks. The greatest existential question is a resounding “Why are we here?” (The second greatest question, of course, is: “Where the hell did I leave my car keys?” Alas, Harvard and M.I.T. still have no answers on that one.) So, while the answers may be unknowable, our central hope for knowing anything resides in accumulating experiences, then reflecting and decoding them. The greatest obstacle to this, however, is the powerful force of the time-space slipstream, to which we are all subject to.

Now you can’t see the current of time ebbing and flowing and carrying you along with the current. But it’s there. It’s visible in its effects on our visual and audio markers. A circle K that we used to buy comic books from when we were 8 is now a seedy tobacco shop. The poetic grandeur of the trees that surrounded Rev. Granger’s lawn have been excised and cut away, leaving only an ugly mob of stumps. Radio waves from 1984, their vibrations devolved into the ether, are reduced to entertaining subatomic particles in your formerly beige carpet. Somewhere out there, there are particles jammin’ to Nena’s “99 Luft Balloons.”

This silver, taut thread of time shoots through you. Tethered, you are pulled towards the vanishing point of the horizon. This is the promise of God. You will not stop. The journey is endless. And the journey, whether you like it or not, will refine you down into your prime factorizations. What is the sum of your life experiences? If all goes according to plan, you’ll never know. This is the merry-go-round of time. Welcome. Here is your complimentary nametag.


Assuming time is a force to make us keep our appointments, let’s also assume time is a force that keeps us from understanding our appointments. As we rocket towards the future, the past speeds from us twice as fast. Memory, both conscious and unconscious is warped by this effect and accumulated insights take greater energy to access. New experience assimilates old experience and what was knowable at one point becomes something all together different at another point in time. This is both exciting and disheartening. These buried memories, if we can dig deep enough to find them are encased in the silt of time, like some Rosetta Stone. If found, each one of us has the power to become Champollion. Fulfilling our destiny to seek knowing. To understand.


Recovering memories by time-travel is no easy task. But we might learn from the fish studied by the Harvard and M.I.T. scientists. Those fish used the counter-energy found in eddies to propel themselves upstream using less exertion than initially thought. Going back in time, an enormous expenditure of energy, to say the least, can be accomplished by finding eddies in the time stream, or in other words, finding currents of energy pointing towards the past. Once found and identified, we can hitch ourselves to these “time-eddies” and access memories hidden in the past.

Just like time leaves a visual reference marker—the visible effects of change—it stands to reason that time-eddies have concrete visual markers as well. Remember, a time-eddy should represent an object or measurable vibration going against the normal current of time. Therefore, if we locate something that has not been visibly affected by the caress of time, then we have found our time-eddy.

Key to this task is locating a physical object that has a strong emotional resonance to it. Practicing on already-strong memories is a good way to exercise your time-traveling muscles. Re-watching a movie that you watched on your first date 16 years ago, for example, may propel you through the time stream so you can fully access the realness of such a moment again. Emotional markers, rarely unchanged by time, make the best vehicles.

When I play my CD with David Bowie’s “Modern Love” on it, I instantly travel to a warm December night in San Diego three years ago. It’s the same now as it was back then: a couple of notes plucked out of some guitar strings, the repetitive metronomic thump of the drums, and the opening line delivered in a rhythmic deadpan: “I don’t want to go out…I won’t stay in…Get things done…” And as Bowie’s voice ascends into a high-pitched, urgent whine, “I catch a paper boy, but things don’t really change…”, I’m back in 2002, taking the 163 back from Old Town. The Pacific Beach fog is curling in and around the palm trees and making everything cool and wet. Me and Shannon are singing along to Bowie at the top of our lungs and we both start to laugh when we’re hit with some of his stranger lyrics. “CHURCH ON TIME!!” we shout, then follow it up with a doubtful “MAKES ME party?” Is he saying “makes me party?” Undeterred, we plow through the goofiness enthusiastically, courageously unafraid to mumble nonsense when we don’t know the words. “It’s not hurrrrmmm-hurmmmm! It’s just La-Hoo-Da-Hurrrm! I’m still standing in the wind! But I never wave BYE-BYE!” Shout it out: “BUT…I…TRY….I…TRY!”

It’s important to note that handling a time-eddy is akin to handling an unstable chemical compound. Too much exposure can result in adverse effects for the user, such as becoming mired in the moments of the past. The intoxicating effects of nostalgia and sentimentality are potent, and potentially lethal. You run the risk of, as U2 famously put it, getting “stuck in a moment, and you can’t get out of it.” This is a true hazard and can actually keep the user from advancing forward in consciousness raising.

So, use time-eddies sparingly, record your experiences, and have fun! If you follow these guidelines, your inevitability will make more sense. I’ll see you on the flipside, little fishies!