Intimate and aesthetic relations with boats appear to constitute slightly different time, the legitimacy of which stems from the sensory aspects of wooden boating. Might such time be called slow? Or is it rather a playful coexistence with the neat material of wooden boating? As a third understanding, I would suggest a bodyaesthetics of wooden boating in which the proper rhythm and pace of sanding, sawing, masking and painting reflects the human body, in contrast to the rhythms of external pace-keepers such as curing and fixing times.
Finally, the time of the dedicated and dutiful stewards of wooden boats is quite specifically but also rather differently organized. In this context, boats are not material for aesthetic play but figure instead as part of a common heritage entitled to receive good care and maintenance. Hence, they call for disciplined and skilled actors. Committed stewards may be well informed about the history of a particular boat, and understand it emotionally as well as in terms of a more objective language of heritage. Providing such practitioners have relevant skills, they face a growing list of things-to-do. In identifying this temporality I offer a partial explanation for one especially puzzling phenomenon: the practitioners of wooden boating experience extreme stress and pressure in pursuing the cherished goals of replicating an unhurried past or of materializing and realizing specific forms of aesthetic play. This is a temporality that I have previously called localized busyness (Jalas 2006b).
Discussion: Reflections on Object Relations
In this chapter I have maintained and substantiated the argument that the physical world, including materials and objects, is intertwined with human temporalities. Such temporalities can be thought of as scripts that guide human action, establish particular rights and ways of acting and preclude others. However, the case of wooden boating clearly shows that scripts are not inherent in the physical material but are, rather, continuously rewritten on that material. For example boats built as short-lived tools or racing experiments are now treated as priceless parts of common heritage. Rather than carrying pre-given scripts, objects such as wooden boats represent physical matter with which humans can play, on which they can demonstrate skills and by which they can be carried away.
This description of boat-relations and boating moments positions them as a form of addiction, involving compulsive behaviour and loss of control and agency on the part of the human participant. However, one can also argue that such processes are much better controlled than this account suggests. Allowing, imagining, cultivating and communicating romantic sensibilities regarding the agency and spirit of objects serves obvious purposes of social distinction and, on the other hand, it seems to provide a means of resisting a dominantly instrumental orientation.
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• Mikko Jalas