Cole Porter's Clock

Cole Porter's Clock

Maybe I shouldn't even own a clock- but sundials are impractical in an apartment. Now there's a bad joke.

Clocks are for bricklayers and streetcar conductors and schoolteachers, to rouse them out of bed, nudge them to their next appointment, a helpmate for a quotidian schedule. But how can you write a song with the clock haunting you?

Oh yes, the old riddle, what has two faces, four hands, and two running legs? A man in a train station, looking at a clock. Well, that's not a bad joke, but I'll forget it before I can slip it into a libretto. Where's my pen? How can I remember anything with that clock glaring at me?

Adoration is not a secular word. But how else can I describe how I feel about that woman? Adoration doesn't tell the half of it. She's part of the warp and woof of my life. (Oh, that's good- can I use that?) Like, well, THAT CLOCK. Tick. Tick, Tick.

The painting of my grandfather, endlessly appalled that I would choose music for a career, forever glaring in at me from the foyer, he's got nothing on that clock. Grandfather is gone. His displeasure cannot grow. The clock grinds on. Every turn of the movement an accusation.

Who was the first madman to promise to write a song on deadline? Newspaper writers can have deadlines. You can put any damn thing in the newspaper, to fill out the fold. You can lie in the newspaper, and no-one would know it. You can't lie in a song. Everyone will know.

Sometimes I wish I was back in that little apartment in New Haven, or even back in Indiana, anywhere but here in Manhattan. Climbing the ladder is all you can do, but the air gets thinner as you rise, each rung brings more upturned faces to the foot of the ladder, peering up, thinking: will he fall? Will he rise another rung? And that clock is just another face, blankly watching.

Oh yes, adoration. She knew enough to leave the flat when she found me grinding my teeth and staring at the clock. She couldn't help, so she didn't stay to distract. I adore her.

The clock stayed.

Adoration should be an easy rhyme. Linda Lee should be too. But it turns out every time like an organ grinder wrote it. And even I don't have the nerve to put an organ grinder in Paris. There's another good joke I'll forget.

People expect urbanity now. Urbanity's just a nursery rhyme that shows a little leg. Hey, wait, that's not bad either, whose mouth can I put that in?

This should be easier. It really should. No amount of effort can write a good song. It's like getting into a good fraternity. Thank God effort has nothing to do with it. It's inspiration I need, not perspiration. And I most definitely don't need THAT CLOCK counting time to the tune I'm not writing.

Now I wish she'd come back. It all falls into place when she's around. I write every song about her, but never mention her. Funny that. I never look at the clock when she's around. Maybe the calendar, never the clock. Hmm. Spring.

And that's why birds do it, bees do it

That's not at all bad. Is that the door? Ah, finally, she's home.

Even educated fleas do it

"You're not going to bring fleas to Paris, are you? That's like coals to Newcastle, isn't it?"

She always tweaks my nose.

Let's do it, let's fall in love