The Time is Always Now (Day 2)
A couple of weeks ago I visited the National Portait Gallery for a ‘late’ that was being held in response to Ekow Eshun’s The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure exhibition. It was a really wonderful evening — I saw my good friend Gabriel Dedji deliver a mesmerising performance on the keys alongside his supremely gifted trio, I heard my boss Tum from TAG Agency deliver some gems, I listened to some great poetry and met some lovely people. Despite the title of this piece, I won’t be reflecting on the exhibition, rather focussing on the importance of the sentiment behind the phrase “The Time is Always Now” to me.
I’ve always been a dreamer. For as long as I can remember, I have had lofty aspirations for my life, something that was nurtured by growing up in environments which affirmed these aspirations. Whether it was to play for Arsenal or to become a feature film actor, I really believed I could do it all. Of course, this is no bad thing in and of itself, I think dreaming is an important part of living an intentional life. The problem for me was that it takes a lot of time to reach the things I’d envisioned for myself, and patience is not something that comes easily to me. I was so used to picking things up quickly, that whenever I’d come up against a bit of friction, I lacked the resilience to power through. As you can imagine, having high standards without the mindset needed to reach those standards is a less than ideal combination of character traits. My desire for excellent outputs without fulfilling the necessary inputs left me in a frustrating position countless times.
My journey with djaying captures the sentiment I’m trying to communicate pretty well. As anyone who knows me can attest to, I love music, so in lockdown I started playing around with some mixing software before eventually getting decks for Christmas. Naturally I was over the moon and spent time getting acquainted with my new toy( you don’t want to hear those early mixes). Fast forward a year or two when I start going out regularly and begin to observe how DJs would effortlessly hold a crowd in the palm of their hands, dictating the mood of the room with a nonchalant flick of the wrist and I couldn’t help but think that one day I wanted to be able to do the same. This desire began to develop into a frustration with myself for failing to reach the benchmark I was aspiring for even though I hadn’t put in the work to be at that level. I was in a crippling cycle of thinking “if I’d started doing this X years ago, I’d be this good” which would only be exacerbated by the more time that would elapse without me dedicating the time to getting to where I wanted to be. Thankfully after complaining incessantly to my girlfriend I finally acted on her wisdom and channelled that energy into working towards where I wanted to be rather than lamenting where I could be if I’d started earlier. Lo and behold, progress has been made – who would have thought. I’m nowhere near where I want to be but the progress is encouraging. There are so many things like this that I wish I’d stuck with, especially as I’ve seen the difference of acting now to make it happen. But I’m no longer allowing that to be a weight that drowns me in self pity.
This is more of a note to self than anything. There’s really no point dwelling on what you could have done if you’d started earlier, neither is it helpful to obsess over what’s to come in the future at the expense of being present in the moment. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is most definitely not promised so the best time to make the changes you want to see in yourself and the world will always be now.
Connect the dots…
Love,
ETP
