Stewart Brand was on The Colbert Report last night, mostly talking about his conversion to the notion that nuclear energy is a viable option for getting human beings out of the current environmental/energy crisis; but at ~4:30 in the time code Colbert asks him about the Clock of the Long Now.
I first met Stewart Brand at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, after a staged reading of my play The Sequence produced by the Magic Theatre. To my later shame I had no idea that this was the founding publisher of The Whole Earth Catalogue and the originator of one of the first and most famous electronic bulletin boards, the WELL. My friend and mentor Richard Rhodes introduced us, we chatted briefly about my play , then Stewart handed me his card and informed me he was building a clock in the desert that will keep time for ten thousand years.
People say a lot of strange things to me after readings, but this rated easily in the top ten. I went home to Seattle, ordered his book The Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility from the library and proceeded to learn more about this project. By the time I had finished reading I was hooked.
The brainchild of Brand, composer Brian Eno, and supercomputer inventor, Daniel Hillis, The Clock of the Long Now is intended to provide a counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set, promoting instead “slower/better” thinking by keeping accurate time for 10,000 years: ticking once a year, booming once a century and “cuckooing” every thousand years. The very act of contemplating how to design, build and maintain such a device forces everyone involved to re-think their relationships to time, technology, community, culture and the planet. How should the clock operate given its unprecedented life-span for a machine? What should its power source be? Should it be located far enough from the mainstream of civilization to avoid any possible concomitant destruction, or close enough to allow its significance to be absorbed by normal people? Should the clock require “winding”, or should it be able to hum along through the millennia with no need for human interaction at all? These questions and many others are only just beginning to be wrestled with, as the full-sized clock’s construction has not yet begun.
Soon after reading his book I contacted Brand and offered my services as a playwright, explaining that theatre, while ostensibly foundering in today’s high-tech culture, is nevertheless one of humanity’s most robust and enduring art forms: perfect for accompanying a clock through the millennia– introducing and illuminating “deep time” ideas to audiences, while also evolving itself through the epochal duration. Brand and his fellow Long Now board members decided my proposal had merit, and charged me with assembling the wherewithal and funds to conceive, draft and produce such a play. In other words, they loved the idea, but were not about to draw precious resources away from the Clock’s construction. Eventually I landed a grant from the City of Seattle and Washington Ensemble Theatre offered to produce the play based on some early pages. In May of 02008 the first 19 ticks of The Ten Thousand Things were performed. (You can learn more about The Ten Thousand Things, and even purchase a digital copy of Tick 19 here.)
To follow is a short excerpt. I will buy a drink for the first person to spot one of the “ticks”. There’s at least one in there. Maybe more. (WET production members are ineligible, though heck, I’d happily buy any of youz guys a drink, too.)
* * *
PLAYWRIGHT: People have been predicting the imminent end of the world since the beginning of the world.
PRODUCER: I’m not just people. I’ve made a few fortunes predicting stuff. Trust me: we’re toast. a few decades tops.
PLAYWRIGHT: I can imagine even you being wrong now and then.
PRODUCER: You’re right. Assume I’m wrong. Tell me about your play.
PLAYWRIGHT: Forget it.
PRODUCER: No, really.
PLAYWRIGHT: No, really, forget it.
PRODUCER: Stop. I wanna know. I really am asking nicely.
PLAYWRIGHT: Are you?
It’ll be a clock.
PRODUCER: What? The play?
PLAYWRIGHT: Yes.
PRODUCER: The play will be a clock.
PLAYWRIGHT: Yes. From the beginning I’ve known that the play has to change though the ages like the clock. It can’t just stay still, frozen in time while the clock ticks on; but how does the play change? At first I thought it changed with time.
PRODUCER: Isn’t that how all things change?
PLAYWRIGHT: Well, yes, but hear me out. At first I thought it changed in ordinary time, time like a clock keeps, ticking like a clock ticks..
PRODUCER: Okay.
PLAYWRIGHT: But after a lot of false starts and blind alleys I’ve come to realize that the play has to keep time like only a play would or could.
PRODUCER: And how is that?
PLAYWRIGHT: It has to keep theatric time.
PRODUCER: And what is that?
PLAYWRIGHT: Well, in the theatre, time only passes in front of the audience. No audience, no time. So I decided a very simple solution. The play ticks once a performance.
PRODUCER: It ticks.
PLAYWRIGHT: Yes.
PRODUCER: Explain that please.
PLAYWRIGHT: It ticks a word.
PRODUCER: It ticks… a word.
PLAYWRIGHT: Right, and if, say, the play were exactly ten thousand words–
PRODUCER: Sounds long.
PLAYWRIGHT: Actually it’s only like a third of Hamlet.
PRODUCER: Okay–
PLAYWRIGHT: And a single word changes every time it’s done, then the theatric clock ticks ten thousand times, just like the actual clock chimes once a year.
PRODUCER: Okay. And who changes the word?
PLAYWRIGHT: Anyone.
PRODUCER: Anyone?
PLAYWRIGHT: Except me.
PRODUCER: Anyone except you?
PLAYWRIGHT: That’s right. An actor, the middle, an audience member, the light board operator– I don’t care– anyone.
PRODUCER: Except you.
PLAYWRIGHT: Except me.
PRODUCER: Why except you? You wrote it.
PLAYWRIGHT: That’s the beauty.
PRODUCER: I’ve seen prettier.
PLAYWRIGHT: What? It’s perfect. Something will happen. Then something different. For a little while I’ll even get to watch, maybe. Who could ask for more?
PRODUCER: You’re willing to just hand over a huge amount of your work to someone, everyone, else to change.
PLAYWRIGHT: That’s basically what playwrights do anyway.
PRODUCER: More’s the pity. They’ll obliterate you.
PLAYWRIGHT: It’s only one word at time.
PRODUCER: Yeah, like Chinese water torture, they’ll take you apart.
PLAYWRIGHT: I’m hoping they won’t.
PRODUCER: But they will. That’s what actors, bananas, audience members, board ops, other people do. Trust me.
PLAYWRIGHT: Stop saying “trust me.” It’s a bully’s trope.
PRODUCER: Okay, let me ask you this: what happens if some one comes along and purposefully tries to ruin your play?
PLAYWRIGHT: You know? I think I might want them to purposefully try and ruin my play.
PRODUCER: All right. What if– worse– they make mundane, meaningless changes, simply for the sake of honoring your demand that they change it?
PLAYWRIGHT: I think I want them to do that too.
PRODUCER: What if they wind up not caring at all?
PLAYWRIGHT: And that would be so different from now how?
