“This article was written in June of 2025”

Something about Art reveals how incredibly important time is to humans.

I have been self reflecting on my consumption of social media, time spent on screens, and relationship to art. Something stuck with me as I became self-aware of the fact I am listening to a podcast at 2x speed. The voices sound high-pitched, and my brain raced to digest the information being hurled at my ears. It all felt so unnatural. Why was I doing this? What is the optimal playback speed? All of it; a race for efficiency.

I took a pause and thought about how this behavior would never enter the realm of consideration when listening to music. Spotify has a playback speed button for its podcasts but not when you listen to a song. All in the same app UI, yet different expected behaviors by listeners for each medium. For music to retain any semblance of its intended aesthetic properties, it has to be listened to at the beats per minute it was produced at.

We also don’t watch movies at 2x speed like we might do with a YouTube video. We watch long form content like movies at precisely the speed at which life plays out. Everything is filmed in real time and producers don’t take it upon themselves to increase or decrease the speed for any reason other than dramatic or artistic effect.

Nobody flips through paintings in a book and runs through galleries as fast as possible. We don’t time ourselves in a race, to see who can get through it fastest. There are no timers, competitions, or scores to achieve. We spend the exact amount of time staring at a piece of art as it demands of us, and as we seem it deserves at that moment.

Art asks us to slow down and soak in the medium. Art asks us to consider each moment that passes while in its presence, the deliberative act of spending time with the art. Art cannot be rushed, because to “rush” art makes the art itself incomprehensible.

Our time is finite and Art makes us respect that truth.