Time & Perspective Quote by Terry Riley

Riley’s line lands like a soft alarm bell: the tempo isn’t just fast, it’s been outsourced. “Accelerated time mode” sounds mechanical on purpose, as if time has become a setting on a device we didn’t agree to install. Coming from a composer who helped invent musical minimalism - a form built on repetition, gradual change, and deep attention - the phrasing carries a quiet indictment. Speed isn’t merely a lifestyle; it’s an environment, a system, a meter that keeps clicking whether you’re ready or not.

The subtext is less “people are busy” than “people are being played.” “Everyone seems” gives it the observational tone of someone listening closely, hearing a collective rushing that individuals mistake for personal failure. The sting is in “beyond their own control”: a refusal of the usual moralistic story that we’re all just bad at balance. Riley hints at structural forces - schedules optimized for productivity, notifications that fracture perception, economies that reward immediacy - that turn lived time into managed time.

Context matters: Riley’s career emerged alongside the late-20th-century acceleration of media, work, and global circulation, yet his music often resists that pressure by stretching the listener’s sense of duration. So the quote doubles as aesthetic manifesto. If contemporary life is stuck in prestissimo, his work argues for another kind of clock: one that makes room for drift, trance, and presence. The control we’ve lost isn’t just over minutes, but over meaning.