This month I came across a book that was exceedingly clever, merging parallel storylines in seemingly effortless ways and making me think hard about a lot of things. Gorgeously, sensitively written, it was also truly funny and often pleasurably steamy. I wanted to throw it across the room once I was finished, in pure envy.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley alternates the tales of a 19th century arctic explorer with that of the daughter of Cambodian refugees who escaped the slaughter in their native country and try to make a life in an England of the near future. She is employed at the Ministry of Time, an administrative government branch that has somehow acquired a key to time travel. Concerned that they might change the history of the world, they pluck a motley crew of people from various centuries who were all about to be dead in their respective environments (trapped in the ice, wounded in the Great War, etc.) and thus unlikely to create a butterfly wing effect. The expats are put under scientific observation to see if adjustment to a different century is possible without lethal cost, and distributed to handlers who will be their bridges to a new life and spend the first year living with them. Cue the experiences and woes of an immigrant across cultures and time, the adventures of human beings treated like lab rats, a love story among the most opposite of characters, and a lot of historical facts sprinkled in that bring the past to life while you read about the near future.
It gets darker, though, imperceptibly first, then at a fast clip, when the narrative explores why time travel has appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, at Britain’s doorstep. Without giving too much away I will just allude to the consequences of ignoring climate change and desperation to retroactively change an unbearable future. The philosophical questions are hinted at, the psychological issues treated in more depth and deftly. For the present at hand: Whether immigration happens across time, or across continents, will the issues of the past, for first and second generations, get resolved? Is trauma so ingrained that you cannot escape it, even if all circumstances are miraculously changed? When do you realize that colonial exploits were nothing to be proud of? Where do you cross a line when experimenting with humans, and how does love challenge ethics (or vice versa?) Importantly, how do you place yourself in a hierarchy of power, finding yourself trapped in conformity and complicity, when power was the only antidote to your people’s history as victims of genocide?
The novel is thoughtful, elegant, and never ever polemical. You have to work your brain a bit to get to the real questions, although you can also read it simply at the level of a historical fiction/romance romp, if that is all you have the energy for – such is the clever construction of all the intertwining strands of narrative.
I was envious because I have been struggling for some time with creating something that reaches across different realms as well, and giving the cross-over some meaning. The core idea was to link pieces of music that I care for and that come from diverse historical eras, with visual capture of something that echoes the sentiment of the music, but is firmly located in the here and now – all landscapes I photographed across the last decades. I wanted to create a bit of mysteriousness when two genres, music and image, as well as past and present, align. I was open to adding the occasional protagonist, if they carry weight in the music, picking those, too, from different centuries, but planting them in the 21st century. Playfulness was acceptable, but only if the musical mood and style was respected in the overall visualization. So how do you mirror Wagner, Beethoven, Ravel, Schubert, Weill, Janacek, Glass or Satie? It’s been an intellectual rollercoaster: Beyond the Tree Line – Musical Tableaux.
I will post some samples across the next weeks so you can see the progress. We’ll start with a suite for violin and piano from 1914 by Erik Satie, Choses vues à droite et à gauche, (sans lunettes), (Things Seen to the Right-and-Left, without Glasses.) The trees were likely around when it was composed, they are carefully tended plane trees in Paris’ Parc de la Villette in the 19th arrondissement. The sculptural elements below them pick up the interlinking characteristics of the fugue.
