I’m working on an audio essay with a few short essays and some random thoughts. This is part of it, let me know what you guys think.
My dad collects clocks. Thats not to say hes obsessive. Its more along the lines of an average reader buying books. If you happen to find one you like you wont be one to turn it down. To date there are 35 clocks, 37 counting the over and microwave in our kitchen, the haven for the timepieces. There are all sorts of clocks, from the tiniest robot with a clock in his chest resting on the windowsill, to the more massive clock modeling the famous scene from Safety Last! where Harold Lloyd hangs off an L.A. skyscrapers clock. There are several that make noise on the hour, some animals, and some instruments. There are the quirks, vegetable clocks, backwards clocks, clocks in different languages and a clock showing how the earth is currently shadowed. I think of them as characters in a play my dad is writing, all with their own personalities. After years of living with them they become part of him.
Sometimes I sit in here instead of watching TV while I eat breakfast. Its the rhythm that keeps me in. All the mechanics running at infinitesimally different rates is like hundreds of timid drummers. Its a din thats deafening to my cat and inaudible if I think loud enough. Its a really obvious metaphor for something but it cant grab my attention for long enough to tell me what that something is. Ill sit at the chorus and wait although I have the feeling it can wait longer.
A while ago my dad had a heart attack but it wasnt severe enough to stop him in his tracks. He went to the doctor a few weeks later complaining of leg pain, and when they told him if he stalled another couple of days to go in he could have died I was in my kitchen listening to the clocks. The coocoo clock stopped working a while ago and I just hit the pendulum to make it go again. I dropped the phone because I thought: I cant do that with dad. When he goes Ill have 37 screaming children to take care of. Its weird to call that his legacy but when my children ask who he was its not a bad place to start.