Long days, short years

 

Gypsum objects by ROBERT TRUMBOUR, in his "Now. Then. Again'' show at the Cape Ann Museum's White-Ellery House, in Gloucester, Mass.,  at  11 a.m. - 3 p.m. on  Aug. 2

His show is an "exploration of time and memory'' -- perhaps particularly evocative in a building as old as the White-Ellery House, built in 1710.

The museum's blurb  says Mr. Trumbour explores ideas ''provoked by 19th Century philosopher Henri Bergson who, in response to his dissatisfaction with science's framing of time, argued for a theory he called 'Duration':  the notion that time is not quantitative and linear but rather qualitative and temporal and continually informed by the dynamic process of memory. Trumbour’s interest in this site is not concerned with specific memories or histories per se, but rather with the space that exists between memory and the present moment. ''

Marcel Proust's work was deeply influenced by Bergson's inquiries. Proust sought to recapture the experiences of the past through his great seven-part novel, A la Recherche du temps perdu, the writing of which he saw as his justification for having lived.  The novel is hundreds of pages too long, in part because time ran out for Proust, who only lived to 52 and so could not adequately edit it. But it is also one of the greatest literary investigations of the human condition.

And another summer flies by....