It is the new year – well 2nd january to be precise – and we are all busy making new years resolutions. Why? A new start a new calander year where we state that it is no longer the year 2009 but is 2010 and that should somehow make some kind of difference. One minute is 2009 and the end of a year and as soon as the clock hits 12 and bang time for a new start. The new start that is the decision that is determined by the changing of a metaphysical significance of no more importance than the one that I am in at the moment that is writing this blog now. If one could tell me the difference then that would be great because quite frankly the cultural semoetics of the western culture and anyother culture is rather non sensical to me. I am all for believe systems and they are for one to gain reassurance for personal gain but the idea of an inforced Christmas and new year celebration are now so bogged down in western commercialism that have become more of a simulacrum.
I have recently written a article that explores the notion of time in performance. The moment of performance is somehow sacrid to practitioners and audience members engaged in a particular performance. Performances can then be immortalised in a period of history that is no different to the now that we know. Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet is considered an important in the interpretation of Shakespears text and I’m sure that David Tennant’s version will have the same verlosity in years to come but the passage of time to be able to say, ‘I was there’ is something that can only be significant to one’s self being there. How is Olivier’s performance significant to me? I didn’t see it, nor did I see Tennant’s interpretation therefore what grounding can I say that these were significant interpretations? I can only through the ‘trust’ that I place in cultural knowledge – where the weight is stacked up against me if I disagree with it.
So to return to the orginal thread of the blog being why is New Year the time to make resolutions? Is it an idea of newness? the beginning of new growth in an ‘evolutionary’ period (i.e. the period we call spring. I struggled for an appropiate word for my meaning of the time of new growth in nature.)? Is this what we mean by the new year? I kind of like it but it does not give reason for the 1st Janaury being that ‘new day’ to which we place this significance of change. Spring as we understand it happens in what we call it – a birth – happen towards the end of Febuary and indeed closer to the actual birth of Christ in chronological terms. It could be said that the 1st January is nothing more than a semeotic for the functions of Western structure of duration and time; the new years resolutions is only a simulacrum for a seasonal change of growth and adjustment.
