In that flash of lucidity he became aware that he was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past.

Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude

Rivers have always played an important part in my life. I’ve lived near them, walked by them, photographed them, written poetry about them and, in the case of a particular river and a journey to its source, I am close to completing my first draft of a book about one.

Despite the title of this project being The Flow of Time, I find the suggestion that the flowing of a river is a metaphor for the unfurling of time is a little too simplistic. Time does not progress in a strictly linear fashion. Indeed our human the notions of time, suggested Albert Einstein, are illusory. Time is flexible; it is a relative concept.

However, the ebbing and flowing of water, its branching out and coming together again, has long been used by writers and other artists to explore time, the cycle of life and our individual and collective memories.

So now, with this country and a large chunk of the rest of the world in lockdown, I’ve had to abandon The Flow of Time as the ongoing photographic project I originally conceived. However, as a river-obsessive, I have a large back catalogue of river pictures and a stock quotes about rivers,  many of them about rivers and time. Making use of these. I will continue the project in another form.

In my first sleep
I came to the river
And looked down
Through the clear water –
Only in dream
Water so pure,
Laced and undulant
Lines of flow
On its rocky bed
Water of life
Streaming for ever.

Kathleen Raine – The River

 

Picture of River Dee near Farndon, © Bobby Seal