The Brooklyn Rail

At exactly 12:00 p.m. the train pulls into the station. It is midday on a Thursday and we are at MoMA to watch the hour kicked off by High Noon (1952) in Christian Marclay’s incomparable The Clock. I am immediately reminded of the importance of time in general and in my own life, in particular: how important it was to be on time for practice, how important it was to use time efficiently, how important it was not to waste time. I visualize the famous clock at Wimbledon, our premier tennis event, striking the hour of 2:00 p.m. as we made our way out to Centre Court and recall how much pride I felt being a part of this fantastic occasion. I even think about all the time I’ve wasted yelling at officials (a story for another time)! And then, my mind jumps to the present as I realize how finite time can be and how every minute of every day can have life altering consequences.

I try to keep up with the rapid pace of The Clock, but Marclay keeps the shots coming one right after the other. My attention is rapt, my mind ticks along. One thing I’ve often wondered since I first saw the film: how much time did it take him to do this? Did he ever think “I don’t have the time for this!”? “Not my job for today,” I suddenly remembered, and then settled in to watch actors when they were young—an evil Johnny Cash in Five Minutes to Live (1961) and a thuggish Charles Bronson in Crime Wave (1953). I watch Burgess Meredith with thick glasses in the Twilight Zone (“Time Enough at Last,” 1959), who at 12:20 p.m. in a bombed-out world thinks he has all the time in the world—until he cannot see (talk about thought provoking). Of course, there were clocks aplenty and many outdated watches that brought me back to another time and gave audiences a free history and cinematic lesson on how things used to be (who under forty has ever heard of Burgess Meredith?), and oh, how things have changed! For me, as for many others, The Clock brought out a nostalgia for my younger days.

When it is time to go, I walk out with my wife Patty and think, maybe Marclay could do another masterpiece with just sports in mind. Because if there is ever a group that needs to be on time and in sync with their inner clocks, it's athletes! Hey, Christian—if you ever get the time again!

I’m chiming in now. Every cut to the hands of a clock communicates not only the time but how it’s always running out. How whatever is supposed to happen will or must happen on time. An execution, a bomb exploding, a train departing, a debt to be paid. The clips are disturbing, beautiful and reminiscent of a world now gone. How many hours did Christian Marclay spend editing and splicing together this incredible synchronized timepiece, a way that keeps the urgency and tension going? The tick-tocking is ever present, whether you can hear it or not.

With each minute passing, are we wasting time watching time? Maybe, but I couldn’t stop. I am a clock lover, a cinephile, and a very good waster of time.

If I had the good luck of owning The Clock, it would run every day in a room in my house and I might never leave. I was a kid who grew up on TV, raised by a single mom. My grandfather fixed old clocks. Old films and TV shows were my teachers and friends when I was on my own. As it happens, I love timepieces and I collect them. I’ve got old Masonic watches, ball clocks. Swedish hall clock that chimes on the hour, a Maarten Baas grandfather clock, and a motion clock with Hansel and Gretel on a swing. It always makes me sad when old clocks don’t run anymore. Like they’ve been left behind. Too much time is agony, too little is heartbreaking.

In music, you need a good sense of time—timing is everything. My last record was called It’s About Time. So many of the songs were about time, but the title was meant to be funny because it had taken me about thirty years to put out another album. But I remember what Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to the young poet: “In this there is no measuring with time. A year doesn’t matter; ten years are nothing. To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless.”