ABSTRACT
The past seems coexistent with, yet distinct from, the present. What joins them is awareness of ongoing being; what sets them apart is today’s fleeting instantaneity. The present is malleable, the past absent and immutable. Just to think of “the past” severs it from the present. Temporal twining is the essence of musical experience, the stream of sounds perceived as a succession of segmented instants, each immediate note made melodic by a halo of past retentions and future anticipations. And just as musical sequence enriches immediate experience with memory, so too is cinematic art a temporal flow of the images. Present existence prevents us from sensing the past not only as those who lived in it did, but also as those who before us recalled and reanimated it. Restorers meticulously recreate past scenes and artifacts, even past sounds and smells.
