The Clock

The first train with an open seat wasn’t for an hour. Two tall cans in the waiting room, in front of the TV blaring game shows, drunk on Bret Easton Ellis. The ride, thirty-seven minutes, dragged an extra five, pulled into the station.

We met at the front doors, walked the steps down to the subway. Two transfers, fifteen minutes, another five up the hill to the museum. The doors were shut but the lights were on, a few patrons idled on couches. Through the parking garage we followed expensive cars, found the evening entrance.

Just before ten o’clock we stepped into the Black Box, some fifteen hours into The Clock, a film collage by the American artist Christian Marclay. The cuts slipped French cinema in between Hollywood blockbusters and old black and white love stories. The lives of the fictional characters marched on then off the screen, back to other DVD players, computer screens, and someone’s dad’s old bata tapes, somewhere else in the world, in another time zone.

To the fool who watches the full twenty-four hour episode: a packaged product, the Mona Lisa. For us, a special cut and casting. Liv Tyler, Winona Ryder, Edward Norton, Sarah Jessica Parker and double Matt Damon. Shia Labeouf and Carey Mulligan, definitely separate, not together. Actors never to be seen again, Bollywood dance scenes. The clock always ticking.

Wrist and pocket watches, car stereos, alarms blinking blue in the mid-nineties. Time slipped forward, as the seats filled beside us and the tiny theatre glued its eyes to the second finger. The scenes got darker as it rolled towards midnight.

There was a countdown but no shriek of Happy New Year. Big Ben exploded at the climax, then a father hugged his daughter and told her not to worry. We snuck out the exit as the sound of explosions burst above our heads. Under the Louise Bourgeois spider, New Year fire works broke in front the Hyatt.

After that, everything was quiet.