I just started reading The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. The story is bizarre but the writing is lovely. In the prologue the premise is explained: this guy comes and goes from the present quite suddenly and without will, travelling in time, while his wife leads a normal linear life. When I read the last two sentences of the prologue, however, I thought perhaps they might have been uttered by an artist who lives so much in and for his or her art that other people are often excluded. Here are the two sentences:
I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.
On a much less poetic note, actually more political, it seems that we are all going backwards in time to an era of censorship and fear. The thought police are visible today. The AP Wire reports
The FCC said an episode of the CBS crime drama ”Without a Trace” that aired in December 2004 was indecent, citing the graphic depiction of ”teenage boys and girls participating in a sexual orgy.”
CBS objected, saying the program ”featured an important and socially relevant storyline warning parents to exercise greater supervision of their teenage children.”
Some perspective is provided in a related NY Times article
Many complaints are lodged in large numbers by organized groups and not by independent viewers