Collecting Time
People create all kind of fancy watches and clocks,
never stopping to realize they’re building monuments to the greatest of all thieves.
K. Martin Beckner
I collect watches among other things. I’ve often considered the whole collecting thing as curious and certainly with something as functional as a watch. I understand that if you collect other functional items, say shoes for example, that you will build a collection consisting of different colours and styles. However this does have a certain logic to it. Different modes of dress require different footwear if you are to avoid social faux pas. For example wearing brown Derby brogues with your dark grey city attire will look out of place as will the chap wearing black Oxford toe caps with his jeans and a tee shirt down the local pub. So we can justify our fetish for footwear by blaming sartorial standards. After all, people often judge us by how we are apparelled. I’m not saying this is right, I’m just saying it happens regardless of whether we like it or not.
So how does one wake up one day realising that what we thought to be a light at the end of a tunnel was in fact the glare of Super LumiNova at the bottom of a very deep rabbit hole. After all a watch is an item that has ostensibly a single raison d'etre. That of telling time.
Like shoes a timepiece is a necessary item. Every day we need to be able to accurately tell time. From the mundanity of arriving on time for the train to life and death timings of military operations and of course everything in between. But it’s here that the analogy sort of falls down. We can wear the same watch to work as we can to the pub. Long gone is the time when standards required you to arrive at the opera in your tux and a suitably refined Cartier strapped to your arm. Watches that are considered to be of the tool or sports variety are now fit to grace any wrist on any occasion. Whether you’re dining at the Ritz or cutting a dash at the hunt ball. After all if 007 can wear his Planet Ocean at Casino Royale while divesting his contemporaries of over a hundred million dollars then us mere mortals can manage an evening on the town without having to swap our 1000m dive watch with helium escape valve to our chronograph moon phase on alligator leather with a butterfly clasp.
So back to the rabbit hole. If all watches are accepted in all places how do we manage to justify a collection? They all tell the time and a large percentage of them have round faces, hands and indications of the numbers one to twelve. There are variations in materials but that's about it pragmatically speaking. This is when I, a true believer, detach myself from the practical and go deep inside my heart which, unhappily, seems to have a rather sordid relationship with my wallet. It is through this unhealthy alliance that my heart bypasses my brain and coerces me to make emotional purchases. I’m then left standing there with yet another watch trying to convince myself that I had a completely justified reason why this was a sensible buy, which of course I didn't and it wasn’t. I’ve now strayed from the path of what I need to what I crave, only to find myself teetering on the precipice and staring into the abyss of rabbit central.
The movie industry doesn’t help. Many a timepiece has been strapped to our death defying hero's arm as he shoots, swims, fights and gets blown up through ninety minutes of testosterone laden tension. If the producers have done their job properly there will certainly be an element of product placement throughout and more and more watches will be featuring as one of the products. Sales rise as a result of these placements although I must confess I don’t know why. Buying a Heuer Monaco doesn’t make the owner Steve McQueen or a G-Shock Tom Cruise. But maybe, just maybe, it makes them a little cooler by association. It’s through these kinds of irrational associations that our collection is born or swells.
The mistake I made with my collection was justifying it. Once I had claimed justification for yet another watch and shored this up with hilarious reasons, I realised I was in effect ruining the enjoyment of what I loved in the first place. This is where I eventually had my epiphany. My ludicrous justifications were dictating which watch I could wear. I’m going to work so I need my tool watch. I’m going to the beach so I need my diver’s watch. I’m going out for dinner so I need my dress watch. I was strangling my enjoyment and passion with my own excuses. I have a collection of watches that are as versatile as a Barbour waxed cotton jacket, worn by everyone from the queen to the farm hand without the merest hint of snobbery. Why can’t I wear whatever watch I want whenever I want?
The answer is simple, I can.
