The “5 minute Time Machine” is a simple thought experiment that only takes a few minutes to try, but it can be inspiring and clarifying, and help you get your priorities straight. It is basically a short imaginative exercise designed to help focus on your priorities in life. And more importantly, help you figure out what those priorities are. Here is how it works.

Step One

Imagine you find a time machine in your back yard. It has simple instructions. You can only use it once, and you can choose to go back either 5 years or 10 years in time. Because of sci-fi rules about not changing history etc. the only thing the time machine can be used for is to go back in time and meet yourself 10 years in the past, and you can give yourself one piece of advice.

Or if you a fast-talker maybe a few pieces of advice, whatever you can fit into 5 minutes. It’s basically the plot of Back to the Future boiled down to five minutes!

So, and here is the important part: what would you say to your past self? WHat piece of advice would you offer? What words of encouragement? It is crucial that you actually take 5 minutes and imagine the speech that you give yourself.

Now, what you actually would say to yourself is going to be different for everybody of course! Personally if I had five minutes to talk to myself in my twenties I would have a few words of encouragment. But I would also have some demands: I would tell myself to take more risks, to actually put myself out there and simply DO more. Because when I look back at myself at that age I see a guy who had a lot of great ideas but who wasn’t making enough of an effort to chase after his dreams. I would basically want to tell myself, whenever you have a weird, wild, wooly idea, just start doing it and see where it goes!

You’s could be totally different, of course, that’s just my example.

Step Two

Now imagine that today, as you are going about your business, folding the laundry or whatever, your self from the future, ten years from now suddenly appears and gives you five minutes of advice! Your future self has time to tell you just one piece of advice: what do you think it is?

Actually take 5 minutes to imagine what this talk might look like.

It might even be the same advice that you would give yourself in the past right now! I think the point of this exercise is, when we try and use our imagination we actually kind of know already, what advice we have for ourselves, what we really want out of life, and what our priorities are. This sci-fi imagination experiment just helps us tap into that.

Step Three

Write down that advice you have for youself. And here is the part that takes guts: now actually see what happens if you try to live it!

What if I told you of a magic spell that could make any two people fall in love? What if there was a series of questions that you and any person could ask each other, and then you would  fall in love with each other? What if it was just that simple? What if falling in love boils down to one simple ingredient? (It’s probably not what you think.)

It’s no love potion. It is just a simple list of 36 questions that you ask each other. And then to seal the deal you must stare into each other’s eyes for two-four minutes. (I’ll be doing a post about the power of eye contact here next week.)

It sounds like something from a fantasy novel, or a romance novel spiced up with a bit of witchcraft, no? But this fanciful scenario is real! A psychologist, Arthur Aron, recently developed a list of questions designed to make people fall in love, you can read about it here in this popular NYT article.

I will include the list of 36 questions at the end of this post. They are pretty simple questions like:

#2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

or

# 16. What do you value most in a friendship?

Nothing too fancy in other words, just the sort of questions we ask when having a long deep conversation with someone. According to the NYT article the reporter tried this with a guy and fell in love. (Her article is a little misleading, the original psychologist’s experiment was not to make people fall in love, but to feel “closeness” to each other.) According to the results of this experiment many of the pairs after trying this experiment reported that they felt as close to each other as people reported feeling closeness to their significant others. Which is amazing when you consider that this entire experiment can be conducted in about an hour or so!

Can you really be made to fall in love with anyone!

So why and how does this work? Understanding this experiment gives us insight into how human relationships work.

The questions are designed to become more intimate. They come in three sets. The first questions are just conversational but the questions gradually become more intimate. Questions like “how do you feel about your mother?”, “when was the last time you cried?” it is all about the conversation! Going through these questions with somebody basically takes you through the sort of conversation you have if you meet someone and click so well you just can’t stop talking.

In other words are the questions that people ask when they want to know someone really well. When they are very curious about each other, and go past just small talk into deeper conversation. In this way the series of questions simulates the sort of deep interpersonal knowing that happens in a relationship usually over a much longer period of time.

That is the one secret ingredient I mentioned earlier: curiosity! Genuine, real curiosity about another human being = love potion. (And it seems to work that way for both people, the person who is asking the questions, and the person being asked about.)

Psychology has told us that if you want to feel happy it can be as simple as smiling. Now it tells us that if you want to fall in love, it can be as simple as asking the questions that lovers ask each other. Likewise, when someone is very curious about ourselves, and really wants to try to understand us we feel love.

Some might feel cynical about this experiment, that it is breaking down human emotion into a system of rules, and that is kind of creepy. Isn’t it kind of soulless to try make a script for falling in love? I am on the fence about that. Maybe it is like dancing, throughout history most dances (salsa, swing, the waltz etc.) have been choreographed, but there is still plenty of room for freedom of interpretation.

And after all, how many ways are there to fall in love? Isn’t it all variations on the same story?

But I think there is something deeper at play here to keep in mind. After all what is the real essence of these sorts of questions: but real curiosity. I think that is the thing to keep in mind, whether you are looking to fall in love, or to fan the flames of desire with a partner that you already have: genuine curiosity about the other person is the key to closeness. Asking questions of others, and even just knowing them intimately makes us care more for them. This can be seen in more than just human relationships. The person who is an expert in birds or wine, or movies etc. develops a deep passion for that subject. but what comes first the knowledge or the passion, maybe they come hand in hand. In this way we see that curiosity and love are actually two sides of the same coin!

If you want to genuinely connect with people, to be closer to people, and perhaps even to fall in love, you simply must be curious, ask questions, genuinely try to get to know people. In other words: talk. How simple and beautiful is that?

Here are the 36-questions:

Set I

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Set II

13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

Set III

25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling … “

26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share … “
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

 Here are the notes of something I am developing right now, a project I am calling INCANTATIONS. I just sent these notes to a writing residency I applied for, but I think if you are interested in magic (or poetry) you might also find these blueprints intriguing.

Language, as the poet knows, is also intoxicating. Poetry can make one drunk. Words can elate, inspire, depress, relieve, relive, words can change our innermost ideas and ways of seeing. Therefore they have the power to mold, shape, and change reality.

I became a writer because there is no more powerful thing that one can aspire to be. To shape words well is to shape humanity.

A bookshop is a drug store. An Opium den.

A poet is a wizard, a witch.

A novelist is a magus and a seer.

An essayist is a sort of warlock.

A gas station attendant reading Rimbaud is within and intermingled with Rimbaud. He is Rimbaud.

INCANTATIONS

I want to make a new (or a return to an old) kind of poetry. Poetry as spell. Poems that have intent, peotry that is an object, and visual, and is superstitious & primitive. Here is what I am going for:

1. It has the impact, and pithy focus of a poem
2. It has a visual element. That is, these are poems that are meant to be posted up on walls like paintings. To that end I will incorporate symbols, visuals, colors etc.
3. The incantation shall have a purpose. It has a desire, an aim, like a sentient thing. In other words it has a magical purpose. In the same way that a superstitious or religious person may make some ward or gesture for luck; i.e. the sign of the cross, salt over the shoulder etc. The incantation shall have a magical purpose in other words.

Those are the three aims, from this I believe a new thing can be created. But perhaps it is not so new, it is a return older magics.

After all magic is the wellspring from which all art was born. Picture the ancient rites of the caveman shaman dancing like a reindeer or a wolf before the hunt, for his fellow homo sapiens. Entertainment, culture, art, and religion were born from magic rituals. In these magic rituals were born the primogenitors of music, poetry, song, theater, and from these rituals came the stories that developed into our concepts of society, social mores, justice, history, the gods, and all of the abstract notions that go into making human society.

But I digress.

Ancient man had rituals that were meant to influence the outcome of reality. I want to experiment with making those again.

This idea is really not so strange; it is being tried already by corporations, by architects, and urban designers. The colors in the logo of McDonald’s are designed to stimulate hunger. The tempereture inside of a McDonalds is likewise meant to stimulate hunger (we eat more when we are a little bit cold). There is a McDonald’s in Seattle that pipes classical music outside its doors in order to keep riffraff from accumulating there.

Another example: people have been said to be more relaxed at work if they can see some green plants and trees from where they are sitting, even if it is just a photograph.

There are countless other examples. The point is that we humans can often be surprisingly influenced by our surroundings. We can use this fact to our benefit. We also know that words have a powerful effect on us.

I propose to design large poem/poster things, that are equal parts subliminal, visual, poetic etc. Each of these incantations will be created with a specific utilitarian purpose in mind. Such as to foster: creativity, happiness, peace of mind, energy, etc.

In other words the intent of the incantations shall be pretty straightforward. Sort of like those Mexican candles, Veladoras, that you can buy in taqueria’s that are meant to invoke different virtues, by virtue of different saints.

It is also somewhat akin to the Buddhist concept of a mantra. The innovations being: what if these old concepts of magical thinking can be created on purpose, anew, right now?

Ultimately I would like to make these on posters using a silkscreen, and I may ultimately work with a visual artist to get them looking right. I don’t know what the specific words are for these incantations yet, I just have the general idea of the thing.