Four days a year and all the possibilities are right now. You have an idea of how things will go — what you’re looking forward to, what the challenge will be — but you’re working from archival material. Memory and experience, educated guesses. “2025 is going to be very difficult for me,” a friend said simply the other night, before ticking off all the things she had to do this year: take her business to a new level, think about moving. To me, these things sounded exciting, interesting — the fascinating content of someone else’s life.
We are all sitting here with the same number of days in the year in front of us, with the same calendar. What activities and events will we fill it with? How will we meet the structure of our days? What meaning will we give it?
I recently saw Christian Marclay’s installation “The Clock” at MoMA. It’s a 24-hour montage of thousands of clips from movies and shows, each containing an hour, a clock, a line of dialogue, or some other hour. The film is synchronized with real time, so that each scene shows the moment you’re watching it, making “The Clock” a functional timer in itself. You watch a movie, but you also watch a watch, for hours without interruption.
The museum remained open 24 hours on December 21 for a special solstice showing of “The Clock”, from 7pm on Saturday to 7pm on Sunday. On the way there on Saturday night, I noticed that I was in a hurry: It was 8 pm, I was late! But then I stopped. It didn’t matter when I arrived. People would come and go during the screening all night and the next day. This was an invitation to rethink how I thought about time. “Clock”, like real time, is not a play with a beginning and an end. It happens whether you are there or not. You show up or you don’t. You pay attention or you don’t. You can do no wrong.
Sitting in the audience while three, four, five hours passed and somehow my attention did not falter, I thought about this proposal again. Maybe you could do it wrong. Should I pay attention to the plot of each clip, characters and dialogue or should I pay attention to the clocks? 11:22, 11:23, did I miss the clock on the screen that reads 11:24 because I was trying to figure out what movie that last scene was from? (I would later discover that there was a whole wiki dedicated to “Sat” with each clip’s provenance identified — 11:24 includes scenes from “Shanghai Knights,” “Malice in Wonderland” and “Se7en.”) Can you go wrong with time, paying either too much attention to its passage or not enough?
“Clock” makes you meditate on time, the way we compulsively turn the successive scenes of our lives into a narrative, project cause and effect onto everything that happens, assume that everything has meaning, and decide whether that meaning is positive or negative. We are artists and architects of our own lives, thinking about the day or year ahead and trying to figure out what story to tell. Will this be a good year? Will it be difficult? Who decides?
I stayed in the “Clock” until I began to doze and dream for a while on Sunday morning. Marclay supports falling asleep during the film: “That’s what you’re supposed to do — let yourself go and absorb it and feel like you’re a part of this thing,” he told my colleague Marc Tracy. If I had remembered that, I might have stayed longer. Instead, in the wee hours of the first day of winter, I stumbled into midtown Manhattan.
That was two weeks ago. In the time since then, the sun has risen and set 13 times, one year ended and another began. I try to pay attention to time, but not too much, to notice it passing without getting too attached. This year is spread out before us, a lot is planned, but nothing is certain. It could be difficult, as my friend predicted to herself. And, according to the readers of Jutarnji, who wrote to offer their own best advice — my question is what makes this advice good, as if the idea that things aren’t terrible is a revelation — “It could be great?”
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A WEEK IN CULTURE
Film and TV
CALENDAR OF CULTURE
🏆 Golden Globe (Sunday): The Globes, once the glamorous, boozy cousin of the tougher Oscars, are on life support after a series of ethics, financial and diversity scandals. The show has a new owner (the Hollywood Foreign Press Association no longer exists), a more diverse cast of voters and a new network. But will these changes – and slate A-list nominees — be enough to attract viewers? The ceremony is tomorrow night on CBS and Paramount+.
RECIPE OF THE WEEK
Split pea soup
Suddenly, the holidays are over, and the lively glow of December has been replaced by the pleasant, quiet days of January. That means it’s time to get out your biggest pot and boil Ali Slagle’s split pea soup. Her hearty, fragrant recipe is filled with three different alliums (leek, onion and garlic), as well as carrots and thyme, all of which enhance the thick soup, adding sweetness and depth. Many pea soups call for ham or bacon, and you can use one of those in Ali’s flexible version, or leave out the meat altogether and sprinkle in some smoked paprika. In any case, at the end, be sure to add a little lemon to brighten everything up.
REAL ESTATE
Hunting: In Harlem, two friends joined forces to buy a row house. Which one did they choose? Play our game.
What you get for $1.3 million: Queen Anne House in Denver; top floor unit of a 1916 Chicago apartment building; or 2020 ranch style home in Austin, Texas.
Valuable import: Saffron is difficult to harvest. But in the US, more small farmers and home gardeners they grow spice earnings or simply pleasure.
Platonic romances and AI clones: Experts share theirs predictions for the future of dating.
Not just tights: Some women’s activewear is becoming increasingly popular looser and more comfortable.
Do you want whiskey?: They are luxury brands using alcoholic beverages and sweet treats to keep customers engaged.
TIP FROM THE CABLE CAR
How to (easily) clean the refrigerator
There’s a good chance your fridge has been full, like Tetris, of oozing leftovers since November. To clean up the mess, follow this advice: Mentally divide your fridge into small sections that you can tackle in five-minute chunks — leaving the door open isn’t ideal. Then set a timer and clean each section, section by section, giving the fridge at least 20 minutes to come back up to temperature in between. You can do it all in one day if you want, but for me the real appeal of this approach is that it turns a daunting task into something easily doable in a few days. —Rachel Wharton
New York Rangers vs. Washington Capitals, NHL: As we approach the halfway point of the NHL season, the Capitals are a team to watch. They are atop the standings in the Eastern Conference and have the top spot in The Athletic’s latest power rankings. And Alex Ovechkin, in his 20th season in Washington, has a chance surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time scoring record. Today at 12pm Eastern on ABC.
NOW IT’S GAME TIME
