Is a clock a clock if it does not work?

A deliberate intervention prevents the mechanism from having the potential energy to move the hands, the batteries are removed, maybe it is just broken. My pal did this with a nice timepiece, a carriage clock his mother owned that she was bequeathed from an ex employer. Why? He remembered how much it annoyed him and his mum when it did operate, the chiming four times an hour was too much to bear. But is it still a clock now that it does not tell time?

We describe things some times as what they are, and other times for what they do, a clock is that thing which tells you the time, a knife is that thing which cuts, milk is a substance that comes from animals that nurtures their young (show me the tit on an almond!). If the saw has no teeth then it is not a saw it is merely metal because now it cannot saw, but we may still make the mistake of referring to it as a saw because that was it’s purpose. If the knife cannot separate one thing from another is it still a knife? At what point does erosion make the rock a boulder, or a pebble? How much sand is a heap? Yet a natural substance is always that, it’s just the things we make where the descriptive name can be an issue. If I built something that looked like an axe but was not an axe, say I made the handle from metal and the head from wood, then would you agree that, just because I said it was an axe, it was one? I certainly wouldn’t be able to chop anything with it. If I made a piano shaped cake that made no sound, would you say it was a piano, or that it depicts a piano? We could go on all day…

Interestingly, my pal set his non functioning clock to 11.58 on the dial, two minutes to midnight, or midday. Now this is either that he means to represent the doomsday clock, lunchtime, he’s a fan of the Iron Maiden song, or this particular time has a significance to him for some other reason. There is a reason, I would argue that it’s not accidental, that it must mean something to the person who did it. When we intervene we may not know the why of our intention in a deep sense, but there is one, one that makes the outcome different to every other thing it could have been. Of course we could say it’s as likely to be random as any other time it could be set to, but we see patterns and symbols and we use and replicate them. I suppose that could just have been the time when the machine stopped functioning. The most interesting part of this post may be the time represented, why that time, and how it may give us insight into the person who selected it?

Some people believe that nothing is random, that we only think we do not know why we act the way we do because we do not understand ourselves well enough. Dave set this time for a reason, and I intend to find out what that reason is before I publish this (it’ll be at the end).

I have my own clock story, I can’t have a clock that ticks. My partner likes a big clock on the wall, I don’t, so we compromised, we got one that makes no sound (they do exist). There’s a reason… I’ve never been bored as an adult because there’s always something to do, some book to read, some online video to watch, or some thing in nature to look at and think about. I don’t remember what it feels like to be bored, but I know I have been, mostly as a child. Parents leave the kids round to grandparents, and I used to be a kid. Along with my brothers, I was deposited at the grandparents on Sundays. My grandmother was a fire breathing Methodist who wouldn’t allow games or TV or fun on the lord’s day. The pool table in the shed was out of bounds, the football didn’t come out, the TV didn’t go on. Like I say, I can’t remember the feeling of boredom, but I do remember the tick of the clock on the mantle that seemed to be able to make time drag much slower than possible, almost like it had stopped.

Once you realise that time is the most precious resource you have, it changes you. A person could have all the riches in the world and have no time, and they might feel badly off, but if you had time in abundance you can almost do without everything else other than the basics, and everything you have in the end you would give away just for a little more time. This makes us, this realisation when it happens, stop chasing more stuff and stop wasting moments. It can make us more selfish, but not in a bad way. I’ll explain that one.. focus on the self is not solipsism, on an aircraft the instruction is to fit your own oxygen mask first because if you don’t take care of yourself first you can be of no use to anyone else. By putting yourself first you may diminish your ability to be a participant, or your value as someone else’s tool or method. Time works like that too, if you do not give yourself enough time to take care of yourself then you are a weaker participant in other people’s lives.

Em (my partner) feels bad about feeling like she should put herself first, but then she also feels selfish if she does, I think I know which of those conditions should win out. As you pass into different stages of your life, the realisation that time is more precious than effort dawns in degrees. A different perspective comes to mind, and in many ways it feels like the right thing to do to cease participation in those things that are going nowhere, the rubble. Often we tire of the repetitive, the drudge, the rubble of conversations that you’ve had many times over, of that hobby sport you never got that good at, the political hopes that never came to fruition, the advice never taken that your sick of offering. Less is offered because results are not forthcoming, you’ve made your position clear and nobody is listening, and everything you have ever achieved has faded as if built upon sand, now replaced by the faux talents of tik tok content creators who dance and mime over someone else’s song, or just stand there being young as if their talent is simply to exist.

That one bothers me more and more over time, the obsolescence of achievement, like I’ve never done anything worth a shit because now what I do is easy because the skill of it has been mostly pre-packaged. I feel like one of the four Yorkshire men from the famous sketch “when I were a lad”. Time and innovation have made the modern version of me, a systems tech, into some sort of administrator that sits at a console and wears a tie, asks AI, and writes policies nobody ever reads. My gen of tech had to learn a programming language, be able to solder intricate wiring, change system components, use an oscilloscope and a fluke, drill holes, pull connections through buildings, make cables, use the CLI on a phone system or a modem, and be the last point in figuring out why some shit doesn’t work. I am the dinosaur that has forgotten, through non use, about 80% of what is admittedly now no longer applicable. Time can be a bit cruel on one’s pride that way.

I said I’d reveal why it was 11:58 on the clock – The film The Watchmen, one of Dave’s favourite movies. I think, I cannot be certain, that Dave recognises some truth in that physical representation, where humanity is far too close to destruction for comfort, yet seems to be perpetually unable to do anything about it. Personally I think it is a hopeful perspective, that those that would ignore this warning are those that are not ready to do anything but be entertained in the interim, and won’t prepare so to be be ready for the aftermath. Recognition is, in an Albert Camus nihilistic way, where destruction is the necessary catalyst for something better, a first step on the path towards rebuilding. Put the battery back in, wind the fucker, fix the mechanism, whatever it takes to get it to tick again.

Paul S Wilson