All thinking, strictly speaking, is done in solitude and is a dialogue between me and myself; but this dialogue of the two-in-one does not lose contact with the world of my fellow-men because they are represented in the self with whom I lead the dialogue of thought. The problem of solitude is that this two-in-one needs the others in order to become one again: one unchangeable individual whose identity can never be mistaken for that of any other. For the confirmation of my identity I depend entirely upon other people; and it is the great saving grace of companionship for solitary men that it makes them “whole” again.

--- Hannah Arendt, "Ideology and Terror"

The New Yorker’s Kyle Chayka has argued that TV shows like Emily in Paris are increasingly designed to be atmosphere diffusers, soothing audiences with color and movement rather than drawing us into a sequence of events. TV now “succumbs to, rather than competes with, your phone,” which is increasingly a site of “audiovisual eloquence” — not stories, but vibes. In his essay on “vibes,” Chayka quotes the artists Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden: “TikTok provides a rebuke to the truism that people want narratives.” This idea evokes corners of the advertising and marketing industries, which have been observing for years that consumers care less about brand stories than brand experiences.

And yet, there is so much more that trees have to teach us about time itself. The first is that it’s circular. We grow not only taller, but wider—circles within circles, every iteration of ourselves contained within, written in the repetition of our rings. We grow both older and younger. The second is that there is a season for everything. Time passes both quickly and slowly, as does our growth. The third is that, like the years of a tree as reflected in its rings, time is defined by both the dark and the light. Without either, we would not be able to read its passage.