A Little Sped Up
Some thoughts on the pace of life
Sometimes I don’t realise that my friend’s voice sounds peculiarly high. Or that a minute goes by much quicker than it should. I listen to voice notes at 2x the speed without even thinking about it; almost like a child who skips to the last page of the book because they’re too impatient to know the ending. I don’t remember when I started doing it, but it feels swept up in the gamification of our daily lives. Another productivity hack to get through the WhatsApp inbox. Tick, tick, tick.
I write this paragraph then spend the next 25 minutes booking museum tickets, looking up plays, requesting forgotten passwords, organising Notion and forwarding friends articles that I think they might like. Sometimes I think that procrastinating is just an effort to make life go faster.
In my twenties, I felt like the world was constantly in fast forward. Everything in motion, nothing staying the same; I would move and so would everything else and it would feel like this dance - a jagged undulation of events, everything simultaneously crashing into me at full speed, yet passing me by just as quick. I wanted everything, everywhere, all at once, and when it came, I met it with my own force, sometimes shyness, but never indifference, and I wonder if I still do the same now, when life seems unusually steady.
As I’m learning, pace is at the heart of TikTok. Their promise is to be a brand that moves “at the speed of culture”; so naturally here, everything is sped up. I’m mesmerised by the levity and velocity that people like Madeline Argy have when speaking to the camera. What might feel like insignificant details become focal points thanks to dramatic monologues, sometimes accompanied by sped up remixes, but not always. I’m fascinated by the amount of twenty-something year old women whose fiery, rapid styles inundate my feed. Where history had once urged women to be seen and not heard, these women (whether intentionally or not) are now part of an online movement of opinionated fast-talkers railing against it.
This might be a generous reading. From a brand perspective, time is money: so the quicker something can be consumed, the quicker it can go viral (and the more opportunity for multiple instances of virality), and the more power platforms like TikTok wield in the digital sphere. But there is something entrancing about leaning into this wild and relentless pace. A dangerously soothing, mind-numbing quality attached to gulping down consecutive bitesize videos on dating fails, true crime and skincare, to the point that I’m actively wishing them to be shorter so I can get through more. This ultimate consumer mentality worries me.
As someone who relishes slowness in real life, I find the online world’s incessant rapidity a perfect foil. I was delighted to find that the sped up remix of Miguel’s song, Sure Thing, was available on Spotify. I listen to it on repeat, wondering if I feel like I need to hear it more because it’s too fast to take in - it keeps slipping through my fingers as I grasp at its lyrics. (The sudden, basic realisation that when it’s twice as quick, it’s also half as long). When I listen to the original, I have time to catch my breath; everything around me melts, and the song is a pool of slow molasses.
I’ve written about impatience in the kitchen before. It’s a place where time slows down for me. Both in the act of cooking, but also in the experience of noticing things around me. In this way, I like that my kitchen is an entirely different space, separated from the rest of my flat. It becomes a narrow sanctuary, where plates made by friends sit next to old coasters from neighbouring pubs. I admire the way my oven rack doubles up as a dish rack; where things stack upon one another, cast iron colliding with wood, and sharp knife edges sidling up to sumptuous carved spoons.
It’s a kitchen that plays host to both fast lunches and slow dinners. When hunger strikes there’s instant ramen bubbling away in small saucepans, fish fingers defrosting in the toaster, crisps being hoovered up straight out of the bag, toast being slathered in butter. On slower afternoons: pots of brothy beans, coffee percolating on a low heat, a ragu finishing off in the oven, or a chicken roasting in its juices. I’ve not quite mastered the art of eating slowly especially when I’m alone. I am often voracious, not simply hungry. But the preparation and the cooking is languorous. I think that’s why there’s a distinct absence of food and cooking on my TikTok FYP. I don’t want to see something that I love sped up and stripped of all the little details.
On that note I’ve vowed to stop listening to voice notes at 2x the speed. There’s always enough time to hear the people you love record unnecessary and epic podcasts about their lives in real time. I’m learning that they’re the perfect accompaniment to time spent in the kitchen anyway.
