WHAT IS TIME but a measure of motion? We know time by the movement of things, by our own motion within them. Nothing stays the same, everything changes. Some time ago – or, in terms of this explanation, at a point in the motion – the thought occurred to me that nothing exists. I mean this in the sense that absolute existence must necessarily entail the cessation of all change, of all movement. Yet things move over time. Is this continual change random and thus without purposeful meaning? I’ve come to the conclusion it is not. The implication being that time – motion – moves toward something. The behavior of water is a good analogy. It flows with great determination, always toward a state of complete rest. That is the meaning of its motion. The meaning of universal motion lies in its movement toward a state of existence.
These observations may seem like so much wordplay. That’s undoubtedly due to the limitations of my ability to express them. But words are tools we use to stem the motion, to stop time. To say what is. Of course, nothing is. Everything is instead moving toward a state of is-ness. And that statement is just another attempt to corral the motion. Wordplay, indeed!
BUT AS I WAS playing with these words, I began to think about God. Not God in the conventional sense, but God as ultimate meaning, as the endpoint of universal motion, the end of time. If the meaning of motion, its direction, is movement toward a state of existence, then God presently does not exist but is in a condition of becoming. Admittedly, this is wordplay that games the ontological argument, itself a clever bit of wordplay. But I confess I find it comforting, because it gives my own motion, my time, meaning.
How so? Well, I consider myself a contributor to the evolution of God. This sounds wildly grandiose if one considers God to be an all-knowing, omnipotent being, residing at some remove from humanity. But that is not my understanding of God, as I said. So how do I contibute? Let me explain.
We humans have a unique capacity to contain contradiction. Put simply, we can be entirely rational, but we can also accept wholly irrational ideas. Religious beliefs are an example of this latter category, while scientific data are evidence of the former. It seems clear to me that the rational and irrational are part of the demiurgic equation – a buzzy way of saying they form an important part of the motion toward a state of existence, toward the realization of God. The irony, though, is that they very rarely coexist.
Except when it comes to art.
Artists, it seems to me, have the unique ability to combine the rational and irrational, to contain contradiction. How else to explain a person who will invest a lifetime in the serious pursuit of an activity which in a very real sense has little or no utility? I mean no offense, but as Andy Warhol said, "An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need." At the same time, artists differ from priests in that their creations, be they corporeal or metaphysical, exist on the rational plain. Even though you may not understand it, you can pick up a piece by Joseph Beuys. Artists are also unlike scientists in that their work produces results that are intentionally non-replicable and follow no laws other than their own. This work, The Clock, is just one example of that reality.
MY CONCLUSION? Art, or the activity of creating what we call art, is an essential element in the evolution of Divine Corpus, of the movement toward a state of existence, of God. That does sound self-serving, but in my five-decade search for meaning in my life, I've come to that conclusion. Plainly stated, we humans contribute to the universal motion toward a state of existence, toward the realization of God, through our ability to contain mutually exclusive modes of being – the rational and the irrational. The making of art is simply the most efficient expression of this conjunction. And that's how I contribute.
And to the point, the foregoing argument is itself a prime instance of this uneasy comingling.
But enough wordplay. Let me tell you about the genesis of The Clock.
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I loved going through my dad's bookshelves. Some of his books had illustrations, and one in particular intrigued me. It was a book he'd had when he was a boy, a 1915 edition of "The Wonder Clock" by Howard Pyle. It consisted of 24 tales, one for each hour of the day, with marvelous drawings in Pyle's neo-classical style. Dad would occasionally read one of the stories to me at bedtime, and later, when I learned to read, I would often revisit the book's hours myself.
In 1999, I began work on a complex artwork called "Psalter." A central part of the piece was to be a clock with two sets of hands that ran in opposite directions – a metaphor for the end of time and the cessation of universal motion. Due to technical limitations, though, I had to use separate timekeepers, one running forward, the other backward. I was, however, still drawn to the idea of a single mechanism that could perform both functions.
To that end, I began researching clockworks online and found plans for a wooden movement on Etsy that I thought might be modified to support opposing hands. I downloaded its CAD file, added additional gears and had the pieces laser-cut from sheets of MDF composite. To assemble the works, I used a 125-year-old tall clock built by my great grandfather as a guide. Its movement was a 200-year-old wooden mechanism from the early days of clock manufacturing in New England.
At the same time, I started writing short stories. One of the first was based on an adventure my brother had when he was a teenager; others were variations on experiences of my own from childhood to the present day. It wasn't long before I noticed a possible correlation between these stories, my wooden clock and Pyle's “Wonder Clock.” Following his formula, I created a separate tale for each of the twelve combined hours of my four-handed timekeeper. They would form a kind of embellished personal history that moved through time while capturing moments of transcendence through the merging of the rational and irrational.
BUT HOW TO PRESENT these elements as a coherent whole, an engaging artwork? The clock I decided should have a Biblical setting – the Garden of Eden. The works would be an extension of the Tree of Knowledge and would be flanked by sculpted figures representing Adam and Eve. The clock's drive weight would be the fateful apple – the fruit that through a single bite awakened an awareness of time, the start of motion. But because the clock would register time moving both forward and backward, it would also represent the end all motion. To drive home this point, I added a skull, giving it a look of cold permanence through a metallic patina.
What about the stories? Pyle's tales were accompanied by his fine pen-and-ink illustrations, but I decided my narratives would be "illustrated" by presenting them as articles published in existing periodicals. To that end, each would be displayed as a separate "artwork," framed and hung in the conventional manner. But their texts would also be available digitally for viewers to actually read, a departure from the usual constraints of the typical gallery experience. The stories would move through time, their central characters aging slightly with each new narrative, and though they would be different persons, the collective arc of the stories would delimit the motion of a universal protagonist toward a state of existence. The tales would also, as mentioned, trace my own history.
Clearly, no small task for twelve stories!
Although I shouldn't really include Hour 12/12, this webpage, in with the others, because it's not really a story but rather a visual timeline for the creation of The Clock itself. The video at the top of this page covers its evolution over a six-month period as it itself moves toward a state of existence. As an additional nod to my own history, the "ticks" of the video’s soundtrack come from my great grandfather's tall clock.
SO, THAT IS the story of The Clock. If the foregoing is more than a little arcane, the stories can be enjoyed merely as stories, and The Clock’s works are hopefully pleasing to the eye, regardless of their raison d'être. And that might just be good enough!