67. Clock
How we spend, versus pass, the time. Finding my way into the story, progress on a vignette, burger-and-martini at a NYC gem.
The waking hours are punctuated by simple needs and organic realities. Get up, because the sun has risen. Feed the animals, for they cry out. Break fast to stoke the body. Work, before the heat oppresses. Eat to refuel. Rest until the day cools. Work until the body gives. Eat because hunger. Sleep because spent.
—Journal entry, August 15, 2015.
February has come to an end. The light doesn’t strike my table in the morning the same way anymore. Everything is changing, all the time.
In the summer of 2015, I worked as the sole farmhand on an organic Tuscan farm. I existed through tasks that needed to be done, in concert with a rhythm that felt more lyrical than percussive. I harvested saffron alone in the slow-creeping shadow of a tree, moving with the sun. The donkeys and the chickens did not send cal-invites. I don’t recall clocks much.
In a fit of nostalgia, I rabbitholed on the evolution of time, and came across British historian E. P. Thompson’s 1967 paper Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. In it, he contrasts “clock time” with “task-oriented” time:
…a community in which task-orientation is common appears to show least demarcation between "work" and "life." Social intercourse and labour are intermingled—the working-day lengthens or contracts according to the task—and there is no great sense of conflict between labour and "passing the time of day.” [To] men accustomed to labour timed by the clock, this attitude to labour appears to be wasteful and lacking in urgency.
I’m currently juggling both essay-writing and animation work, and time for each feels “halved,” or twice as scarce and precious as when I was devoting all my studio hours to one or the other. I feel harried now when I’m on social media, hear of new opportunities and deadlines, or witness the breeziness with I perceive others making decisions. The speed with which I feel driven to work, to be constantly working, always, gives me pause.
This may seem ironic, coming from someone who loves New York City so much. I love the convenience and luxuries of modern life, having access to other weird people. I enjoying moving, “being productive.” I optimize, compete, play the game. I suppose I’m doing my best to balance the present and the future: enjoy where I am now, but eventually shift off the board using whatever winnings I garner, toward something more like those days back in Tuscany. Where doing was driven by the needs of the work until it was done, and time was passed, not spent.
In Issue 66 I mentioned that I’d written an essay. Sooner than expected, it’s been accepted for publication. I’ve signed the contract and it should be published before summer.
Second—I wrote up a rumination as promised on my recent diet detox in the context of mind/body/productivity—but some curve balls came up in the past week so I’m back to experimenting and synthesizing. Stay tuned.
Lastly, I continue submitting to festivals, and threw my hat into the ring with Ottawa. Another longshot but it’s free, what the hell.
Members, read on for what else has been going on in the studio. I share the latest behind-the-scenes of the vignette I’ve been working on. I’m grappling with questions around style and design.
I end with provisions (what’s been feeding me) including an excellent, reasonably-priced burger and martini from a Columbia-vicinity NYC gem, plus a graphic novel about longing.
In the studio
I’m in that phase where I’m looking for the way into my next animated short film—the door into the story I want to tell.
