Glass Shallot by Adam Baer | Adambaer.com

Never Byrne-d Out

In the course of interviewing David Byrne for this short piece about his design work and music in May's Departures Culturewatch section, I realized that Shallot friend Hillman Curtis had done a really cool commercial (embedded above) for Byrne's joint album with Brian Eno "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." For people who aren't in the know (which could have been me if I had not done this piece, sadly), the album has been freely streamable on the Web for some time. For those who like to hold amazing design in your hands and play with dice, you can still buy a Sagmeister-designed Deluxe (CD) Package that includes an original Hillman Curtis film about the album as well as a full book and other goodies (watch a video that explains the contents here). 

Byrne told me the following about why the duo decided to offer the album in these different forms. "We had both been thinking about the changes the music business has been going through," he said. "There are now many more ways that musicians can get their messages across than before, though the industry typically lags behind. We decided to try some of those out for ourselves by initially selling the record exclusively through our website and allowing people to stream the whole album if they simply wanted to hear what it was like.  It just seemed obvious. I wanted to sing these songs more, so I asked my booking agents to book some tours -- so that kind of gave the project an endpoint -- and the only way to get the music out to people before the tour started was to make it available online.  That said, there are many among us who still love a physical object. A well-designed package can enhance the experience. It used to be that an eye-catching package helped sell a record: it would shout at you like a box of laundry detergent. But I don't think CD package design is meant to do that anymore. Now it's more about adding another layer to the experience. I'd worked with Stefan (Sagmeister) many times before, so he was a natural choice."

Other questions broached in my interview included prompts about the joy of performing.  "At my age and situation, I don't need to tour simply for financial reasons (though I do make money touring)," Byrne said. "Though I would love to believe otherwise, I don't think touring sells many records either. I do it for two reasons: it's immensely pleasurable these days and because I can (immodestly, I can say that I do know how to perform and put on a show). The show we've created -- the band, crew, singers, dancers, choreographers, etc. -- is like nothing I've ever done before, so though half of the show consists of older material, it's been placed in a new context. At some point, performing changed from being a thing that I psychologically had to do into something that was actually pleasurable. Some edge in my demeanor might have been lost with those changes, but songs from that period remain, so the edginess can be dredged back up."

Byrne, as the article points out, also writes the music to the HBO show Big Love (coming back soon), which actually opens with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys's "God Only Knows," so I was curious as to how he might add music to such a thoroughly branded motion picture experience.  "It's an interesting show and doing a score like this allows one to exercise some musical muscles one doesn't always use," Byrne said. "It's good to stretch oneself sometimes, to get out of a comfort zone, which forces some kind of creative response. Initially I thought I'd try to base much of the music on Mormon hymns -- not use them but write in that style. Having seen the 1st season, I sensed that many of the characters felt that their behavior and decisions were based on deep spiritual beliefs -- as wacky and unusual as some of it might seem to us. I therefore imagined that hymn-type chord progressions and melodies would hint at this spiritual underpinning without saying it out loud. The hope was also that this music would also help one empathize with the characters, even, or maybe especially, with some of the more extreme ones. Music can hint at their motivations and justifications, where their hearts are despite what we see them doing. Well, in the end, that approach only worked a few times: it tended to draw attention to itself and to draw you out of the intimate scale of the drama. That music tended to pull you back to a God's eye view of things -- yes, music can do that. So, in the end I had to use other muscles and write some other material that was subtler, more character driven."

Intriguing, especially for film music buffs (of which there are few, apparently). More au courant, perhaps, was Byrne's answer to my question about how he and Eno both influence(d) each other.  He answered: "The process of using the recording studio as a writing tool was something a few of us learned from Brian. Not that he was the only one to do it, but they way he encouraged us in Talking Heads (and myself) to start from zero and create new tracks was something we were ready for...it was the right idea, the right nudge, at the right moment. It wasn't that strange, really, as it basically was taking the writing process, which usually goes on in one's head, hidden, invisible, or little my little with a guitar in hand and some notepaper in front, and it made it all -- the creative process -- explicit, visible, and most important for potential collaborators, available for others to enter into. How did Talking Heads and myself influence Brian? I think we encouraged him to be a little more funky, more groove oriented."

design within

At some point, a guy has to stop buying Eames chairs and thinking he has a superior sense of design. So I asked a few questions of Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan at Apartment Therapy, and his answers ended up in ReadyMade.

rotten bananas and working for a-holes

Ever since I first saw Charles Eames answer questions on design, I knew I wanted to know more about the people who follow at least some version of his career path (how hard is it to make a chair, right?). Anyway, filmmaker and designer Hillman Curtis 's recent film about artist-designer Stefan Sagmeister explains a little bit of the mystery (well, not about chairs, but about design; well, not about design, but about that little issue called life). It also could be Curtis's most illuminating designer film if only because it shows the work of a man who, among rotting bananas and inflatable gorillas, presented the texts: "Don't work with assholes," "Everyone thinks they are right," and "Worrying solves nothing." As for "Money does not make me happy," I can't exactly get behind that one given the current states of mag journalism and American healthcare. But I like the first sentiment, and I definitely get his drift in re: the greenbacks.

See the film.

my so-called stylish life

Whether it's riding a new electric bike, trying to get a better night's sleep at an extraordinary expense, or searching for tennis shorts that don't actually look silly with the help of Tom Ford, there's always time for an editorial contribution to The New York Times's T: Style Magazine.

Why Glass Shallot?
Because it's more fun to go window-shopping in the newspaper.

new goodness

Housing Projects, Good Magazine, September 2007.

Why Glass Shallot?

Because we are lucky to have a home.

my watch is gone, my watch is gone

 

See this watch? Like it? I do. I should. Lina bought it for me as an engagement present, and I adored it the minute it jumped out of its box.  Of course, it didn't jump, but I like to think it did. It's unlike any other watch I've seen, even in a catalogue or magazine. The problem: I didn't initially know the rest of the world loved it so much, too.

Watches and I: We haven't been lovers all my life. Still, as a kid, I always read Esquire and GQ, cover-to-cover, payed close attention to the timepiece ads. There was a recent time that this wasn't something I consciously thought about, but I remember it now, recall taking out the maximum amount of back issues from the local library, each week, gawking at the watch-face images.

Now, it makes more sense, well after I slid comfortably into the carefully considered shoes of a men's magazine writer, often writing a piece or two about an actual object while I pen other items--an essay, op-ed, a script.

I didn't just objectify the images in those ads, though. I thought about what they said about the American man, the culture, marketing. To me, as a silly kid, those pages sold images of a men's life that existed, even in my hometown, where Maybe Mobsters and their entitled children ruled. I, too, might one day be wealthy and sport a big-ass Rolex. I might one day drink J&B. I might wear Bally shoes.

I don't do or believe in any of these things now (hard liquor has gone ultrapremium and craft, of course)--especially after growing up in my anti-consumerist house, fighting my way through a childhood of studying and reading and violin-practicing. I ended up moving in a different direction, even if I now write about objects or even desire one, or 10, from time to time. But I never forgot about my timepiece obsession. I didn't consider it superficial. "Time is the most valuable thing I could possess." I wrote that sentence in a childhood journal when I was 11 years old.

Today, I don't like ostentatious watches, and I basically wear grey running sneakers everywhere. Although I appreciate design, things aren't as meaningful to me as I thought they'd be. Perhaps that's why I lose lots of them. Often things that represent important moments in my life.

They're just carbon, I rationalize. I can always make more money, replace them. Pieces of matter are just pieces of matter. Everything important is invisible. Weightless.

I  stayed away from watches for years--first, because I played the violin, later, because I didn't like anything constricting my left wrist, and most recently for more existential reasons. Still, it's always been apparent to me that I've felt naked without a watch--too casual or unadorned, childishly free. This is nice when I'm at the ocean, or hiking the hills, trying to work up a sweat.

But while I'll never completely dress up like the Esquire Man, I do, sometimes, have to attend "events"--work meetings, screenings, concerts, weddings, etc.--that require me to look somewhat stylish. And, oh, fine: I think that I do have and attempt to sustain a certain, accepted style, if I may admit this in HTML. I look like me, and rarely am I innappropriately dressed in a notable way--even if, since moving to LA, I have dressed down in denim, T's, and other Los Feliz-wear. (Note: I come from a family that puts on a "nice" shirt and pants ["nice" is questionable when we're talking about solid Nautica button-downs and pleated khakis bought at Marshalls] to eat supper at a Long Island diner where low quality food is served at $24 a plate, and the most stylin' man in the room looks like Paulie Walnuts).

Given this history with style, I have been both drawn to and repulsed by watches for a long time, especially the garish ones that brag about one's bank account. But the scale has tipped in the former direction over the last few months. It has something to do with getting older, I think. It concerns wanting to get on a track, focus myself. Really narrow down what matters and stick with it: Get a few objects--things I can feel with my hands--and hold on to them.

So when family members offered to buy me a watch last winter, I became excited. Then, instantly, I couldn't decide on one. It seemed like nearly--just nearly--as big a commitment as something human--say, taking on a mate.  My watch would be my watch--at least that's how I would want it--and I would never attempt to purchase more than one. (How wasteful.)

Moreover, I wanted something that might make me look a little more respectable in my selvage legs. That way, I could dress down to a lunch meeting with an editor or producer and still seem somewhat serious. (LA, if you don't live here, is full of people who dress supercasually but usually wear one serious piece of something to remind you they're not homeless--or, on the other end of the spectrum, that they're fabulously rich. The fun, I think, is never completely knowing the difference.)

This sent me searching for a watch. And when I say searching, I mean hunting (like, with weapons and scopes and anxiety about accidentally shooting a living thing). I looked at the men's mags, I looked in J.C. Penny. I looked at men's wrists at restaurants, often receiving strange turn-glances I couldn't shake for an hour. (No: I didn't want wrist inplants.)

Still, I couldn't find anything I appreciated, admired. I was as turned off by the expensive heavy lifters as I was by the Citizens. The middle of the road pieces were equally boring. I wouldn't get a watch just to get a watch. Maybe all watches were inherently less than ideal. Who needs the time anyway? "Suckers" with 9-to-5 jobs? I was better than them, living my freelance live. Poorer, possibly, but better. Ok, not so much better, but a little more...hedonistic. Or childish. I forget the direction of this path, now feel like I'm just digging myself a deeper hole.

Then, however, I found it: The Watch. The one that I had imagined even before making a conscious attempt to search for it.  The neatly designed guy at the top of this page. The Mondaine evo chrono. Based on Hans Hilfiker's 1940 design for the Swiss Railway, it wasn't a "Swiss Army" watch with clunky and "Manly" Eddie Baueresque touches. Nor was it something too fancy or overpriced. I appreciated its utilitarian design. I loved the way its red second-hand jumped forward before each minute. I loved the stainless steel case, its circular solidity, its lack of jewelry, the straight lines, and those  other little circles clicking around, making sense of the universe in ways I could not fathom.

I'm now told the thing gets people into the London Design Museum for free, and that it's revered by watch-seekers, even those who throw down thousands to own an IWC that looks like a Timex.  I liked it before I knew any of this. I considered it indubitably clear, loved how light it felt on the wrist, its simple black band. This was a watch I could wear all the time. And it said just a little about me: That I appreciate good design. That I consider clarity an art.

Which is why I was floored when my fiance Lina read my mind--after learning all about how nuts I am concerning what I put on my wrist--and actually gave me the watch I privately loved for our engagement. I hadn't expected an engagement gift. I didn't know prospective grooms received anything other than a story to tell others about buying The Ring. Maybe others don't; I do appreciate how lucky I am.

But I am also now saddened in the wake of what happened last Friday, when at 300 Medical Plaza, Los Angeles, the building that houses the practice of a haughty UCLA doctor, in Westwood, my watch was lost. Maybe forever.

It might be of some significance that I had been nervous to see this doctor. Not because of what he might decree. But because he probably wouldn't have anything to say. These days, I get sent to lots of doctors who can easily read test results but don't like to interpret them. I find this frustrating, but I guess they aren't bound to say anything unless it's so obvious it smacks them in the face. Wouldn't want a lawsuit on your hands, or worse, a patient who might ask follow-up questions. This is an age when doctors don't have to ponder if the out-loud thinking could be used against them in a court of law. That doesn't apply to many of them, of course. I've had excellent doctors. But lest we forget, doctors, and there are a lot of them, are just people like you and me, and many today, like a scourge of Americans, simply don't want to work very hard. Or take responsibility for making a mental leap. Or experiment when the road ahead isn't strikingly clear. Going to medical school doesn't make anyone inherently different than, say, skipping it for a career in, oh, rare watch dealing or writing essays. Someone's either special--communicative, and willing to go the extra mile--or he's not. Humanity, insight, and accomplishment in our meritocratic culture often don't go hand in hand with anything else.

Pardon the tangent, but this is what was consuming me as I left my latest unproductive appointment with a world famous specialist: when I forgot to put my watch back on after the exam as I trodded out the room with loosely tied shoes.  I didn't realize I had left the watch there until an hour later as Lina and I ate lunch in a restaurant, calming our nerves with artisan cheese.

I nearly regurgitated the food when the thought hit me. My watch. Not here.  I spazzed. A wanna-be starlet at the outdoor cafe scoffed. I sipped some ice water and cleared my throat. I looked at Lina squarely. I gargled without trying, eggplant still in the throat.

"It's gone. My watch. I lost it."

"You lost it?"

"At the doctor's office. I left it there."

"Oh, god. You got me worried. I'm sure it's still there. Wait, are you sure you left it there? They probably have it. It's probably at the desk. Someone turned it in."

"I know I left it there," I said. "Remember how when I signed out, I didn't have it on my wrist to tell the time?"

"Yeah," said Lina. "And I also remember you having it to check the time on your way in."

"It's been so nice not to have to look at my phone to tell the time anymore."

"You lost your watch."

"I lost my watch."

"We'll go back."

"I'll call."

"You'll get it back, don't worry."

"Ok," I said, realizing only too well what the watch signified, how I'd feel if Lina had left her very expensive diamond ring anywhere but on her finger.

Did this seem like I didn't care about our engagement? About staying on the new path? That I took the whole thing all too lightly? Or worse, did it seem like I might not take it lightly but that I would drop it anytime some smug doctor with four important degrees on his wall would take the time to look me over? Shouldn't a Man, as definited by the great magazines, be more impervious to nerves? How could I have a family if I couldn't remember my watch after even an important doctor's appointment? Even-keeledness was a prized virtue. I was seeming to lack it.

Then, in Lina's eyes, I saw a tear.

I had lost the closest thing to an engagement ring I had ever received -- from the only woman I would ever want it from. I would get it back, though. Or would I?

Cut to: Driving hurriedly across Wilshire. Calling all kinds of automated machine-people at UCLA who couldn't, wouldn't connect me to a person. Checking the floor of my bag a million times to make sure I wasn't crazy. Racing around the medical campus' circular driveway, jumping out of the car and almost tripping into a closing elevator door.

[Note: The following change of tense must be accepted, because you're reading a blog. Don't phone the edit-police. They have no jurisdiction here...]

I'm in the basement of the building now, galloping into the doctor's office. I slow down, calm myself, so no one thinks I'm crazy (hah, this is neurology).

I explain the deal to the lady at the desk. She takes me to the room I used. The examination table flaunts fresh white starchy paper. The doctor is gone, the halls empty.

"It's not here," she says as she checks the floor. "It wasn't turned in."

"Who else was in here besides the doctor?"

"He saw you," she says, "then moved to another room."

"Who cleaned the room?" I ask.

"I actually cleaned the room," she says. "I didn't see it. And it would have been turned in if you left it here."

"I definitely left it here."

"Then it would have been turned in, or I would have found it," she said.

"Maybe the doctor has it?"

"Maybe. I'll have him call you when he returns. Maybe he took it and forgot to drop it off."

"Maybe..."

Was this a viable option, though? Could an Ivy League-educated chief of neurology have taken my beautifully utilitarian and artful watch/engagement gift?

I asked my friend Joe a couple days later, after repeated phone calls to the hospital and no results.

"Why couldn't he have taken it?" he said. "I bet there's a better chance he took it than the receptionist/room-cleaner. Those guys are meglomaniacs."

I agreed with him. My doctor had seemed meglomaniacal, no offense to other doctors I love.

But why would a Neurology Chief -- I imagined he led a tribe -- need a watch like mine? Didn't he make over half a million a year?

"It was a pretty nice watch," Joe said. "It wasn't fancy, but it was beautiful. Some people like to steal. Turns them on. Doesn't matter if they treat people with cancer or ALS."

"It was beautiful, wasn't it?" I said. Surely, a fancy doctor could also get off on stealing his patient's stuff. Or I could have just dropped it in the garbage pail. It's nice to fantasize.

I thought about my history with watches. How I never felt I was meant to have them, but simultaneously desired one. Not least David W.'s yellow swatch in third grade, the one he could take into the pool his stockbroker father had just christened.

I thought about how this one watch symbolized something about me I wanted to share. How my fiance had secretly known this without my having told her, and how she had found it for me. How I had slapped it onto my wrist before she had had a chance to engrave something on the back of it for me, stamping it mine forever.

Something about my impetuosity--my carelessless with objects; my deep reasoning for sometimes, randomly, challenging the world to take away what matters; my anger with people who don't take me seriously; my need to punish myself for continously seeking them out (even in a medical building), even when I know the right people are to be found elsewhere (perhaps in a naturopath's house?)... Something like this had ripped this watch out of my reality.

I no longer had a reliable way of clocking time. I now had to take my spotty battery-dependent BlackBerry out of a pocket. I had to make an effort to get on the same wavelength with the rest of society, to now return to the out-of-it feeling I often walk around with; the half-there, half-gone attitude that always sees me nodding at others while I think about more pressing or bothersome concerns.

This was all somehow wrapped up in choosing a watch, wearing a watch, keeping a watch, and realizing that I had found the right person in Lina, confirmed the thousandth time when she had found the watch I had always wanted (i.e. when she had located for me the part of myself I always wanted to develop as I mature).

My friend Joe joked as he often does that this was yet another bad meta-sitcom script happening as my life. The rich doctor who has to steal your watch.

"Yeah," I said. "In the bad meta-sitcom, I'd return six months later, and he'd be wearing the watch. I'd ask him where he got it, and he'd say his wife had given it to him for his 25th wedding anniversary, how he'd always hated watches until this one, had never wanted to know the time if he didn't have to, had never liked wearing something on his wrist. Then I'd stare at him and he'd stare back with a smirk. A lone clarinet would play. Nothing would be said, and I'd cut to another scene with me driving home and arriving at my next meeting, an interview with a watch designer, late."

"That's exactly what it'd be like on a bad meta-sitcom!" Joe said.

"Yep," I agreed. Then I looked at the oven clock, a digital readout, across my kitchen to see what time it was. I had a men's magazine article due. A piece about some object for a periodical rife with ads for objects.

"Can you buy yourself another?" Joe asked.

"I can," I said. "Thankfully, the thing didn't cost 10 grand. And I didn't have the one Lina bought me for soooo long, right? I could get another now, re-write my memory like a hard-disk or flash memory, and in twenty years never even remember this mess. In the end, it's just something you wear on your wrist. It doesn't mean anything, right?"

"Sure," he said.

"Sure," I repeated.

Then I realized my oven clock was late. I had fifteen minutes to write an ode to another piece of matter to which someone else could attach meaning, fetishize. The bad meta-sitcoms lack satisfying conclusions. Here was something I could count on.

 

Update (January, 1, 2011): The replacement watch my wife purchased for me (!) was lost today in New York City, possibly in the garage below my brother's apartment. Mondaine no longer makes this specific model. My wife forgives me, and I wear a $30 Timex that receives compliments daily.