It's about time

  • Mike Dewey
  • October 30, 2011
  • 363
                        
SUMMARY: It's something everyone wrestles with, the idea that you can't stop time, let alone turn it back as if it were some sort of computer-generated game. Mike Dewey stares down time, face to face, and hopes for the best. Time, time, time, see what's become of me while I looked around for my possibilities. I was so hard to please. -- From "A Hazy Shade of Winter" Paul Simon (1966) So there I was, many years ago, standing in my friend's kitchen one day in the fall when I happened to glance at the clock hanging on the wall. Well, it was kind of hard to not to notice it, seeing how it was one of those Swinging Elvis Pelvis clocks. You've probably seen them. Instead of a traditional pendulum, they feature The King's plastic, spastic, almost elastic blue suede legs swinging back and forth to an unheard melody, perhaps "Jailhouse Rock." Maybe "Heartbreak Hotel." Or "Suspicious Minds." Doesn't matter. Elvis is the template, the crucible in which was forged the modern Rock Star. Without him, we'd still be listening to Pat Boone and his progeny. A ghastly thought, that. Anyway, my friend -- a musician -- was busy in another corner of the kitchen when I looked at his Elvis clock. "You know," I said, "your time's wrong." He looked up from the scrap of paper he'd been jotting down lyrics or a shopping list. "What?" "The Elvis clock," I said. "It's an hour off." "No it isn't," he said, returning to his scribbling. I may not know much about anything, but I can tell time. "Well," I said, "you might not care, but it's an hour ahead." The whole Fall-Back thing had occurred recently and most of the country had followed the government's mandate that it was time to turn back time for the fall and winter months. It was in all the papers. "No," my friend said. "I don't listen to all that noise." "What are you talking about? Your clock's wrong. So are you." This got his attention. And he smiled. "Man, they've got you nailed." "What," I said, "just because I turn back my clock when they tell me to?" "Exactly," he said, before adding rather ominously, "because you don't mess with time." In the rather foggy conversation that followed, I learned that my friend -- whom I've known since the fourth grade -- simply ignored the whole Fall-Back/Spring-Forward mandate preferring, as he put it, to let time be time. An hour or so later -- time being time -- we were sitting on his front porch, watching the sun go down, and he said something like, "When you're writing, are you even aware of time?" I had to think about that for a minute or two. "You mean when I'm on deadline?" I asked, listening as he strummed chords on his acoustic guitar, conscious only of the sunset and a song that had yet to be created. "No," he said. "When you're into it." And, I have to admit, he had me there. There are nights when I'm writing for you that time just disappears, I mean, when I come out of the trance and realize I've said what I want to say ... it's like I'm amazed that it's dark outside. Or that the Johnny Marzetti is ready to be served. Or that the washer's run its cycle. Or that the words have come, unbidden, from my soul. But then comes the tough part, the paring and pruning and the polishing. Writing is the fun part. Editing is the hard work. Still, my friend's right. I'm never even aware -- when it's going well and the words link and the mood deepens -- that what I'm doing takes time. It's as if, well, I'm outside it. That sounds ridiculous, I know, and I've done poorly in doing my best to explain that fugue state, but I'm OK with that. At least I tried. You know how it always seems that a trip to a place you want to go is faster than the return trip? What was that old commercial cruise slogan? Ah, yes. "Getting there is half the fun." It's when time doesn't matter, when you own life, when no one can tell you what time it is. It is, in a word, Elvis. An anagram of which is, of course, Lives. Or Evils, depending on your train of thought. The King is timeless, though, always gyrating his hips on kitchen clocks around the world, rocking and rolling and getting into a groove, all about the warden at the county jail or being down on Lonely Street or being caught in a trap. You can't go back. My friend, the guitarist, always said, "In six months, your time will catch up to my clock." Which, when you think about it, is a positively poetic sentiment, something even Paul Simon could embrace. Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or written to at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560.


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