Costume Jewelry: Acting Myself
This is the Seiko SGF204 with quartz movement. It arrived to my home in the mail in 24 hours from Amazon. I bought it because it is similar to the Rolex Datejust worn by Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross while he gave the demoralizing “Always Be Closing” speech. That character’s monologue is such a powerful demonstration of aggression, competitiveness, and callousness in a capitalist world. Myself, I’m a huge supporter of democratic socialism and workers’ rights. I decided it would be a nice watch to add to my collection as a kind of ironic statement against this force of darkness. People who know me hopefully would recognize that such an outlandish display of faux affluence is in fact hilarious. Maybe they would ask me about the watch and I could tell them that it is in fact a Seiko, an everyman’s watch, from a company with a long tradition of affordable accurate watches.
But then it arrived. I was as excited to open the package as someone who has watched countless unboxing videos on YouTube. I was reaching the climax of the capitalist moment: the anticipation, the moment when the fetish of the object was at its most powerful. Part of me knew this was ephemeral. The moment would pass after an hour and I would return to myself just as one does after an orgasm. Your momentary lapse of ego ends and all the worries and uncertainties come back. I thought when I opened the case I would see all the flaws the pictures online couldn’t show, the misalignment of markings, perhaps an uncentered Seiko marker, or mismatched gold colouring. I was wrong though. This watch was beautiful. It was after all a Seiko, and Seiko is no slouch when it comes to quality and presentation even in their most affordable models. This is why the company has been so successful since 1881.
There was no irony in my enjoyment of this object. Against my nature, I loved the gold and silver two tone colour. The fluted bezel that was clearly a nod if not a rip off of the Rolex looked absolutely fantastic. The silver face of the watch shimmered and the whole watch sparkled. It felt like my first piece of jewelry and I couldn’t wait to wear it.
But how was this? How could I at once love something ironically and yet at the same time I enjoy this display of presumed affluence in and of itself. The watch came to occupy two states in my mind. They were on opposite sides of my moral compass and yet the two places the watch occupied were entangled together like some quantum effect I don’t understand.
Now, I could have avoided this whole contradiction in my brain if I had been a good person, if I had resisted temptation and not bought the watch in the first place. Honestly, I have too many watches, I have about 6, so I need another watch like I need a hole in my head. Maybe a hole would be more useful to peer into my brain and understand why I can’t stop participating in capitalism despite my belief that it is making the entire world a worse place. Consuming a piece of art can give you a similar contradictory feeling, depending on the art. Glengarry Glen Ross is one of those works. You feel bad for Jack Lemmon’s character and want him to succeed, you sympathize for him, and yet what is he trying to succeed at? ripping off people, selling them what they don’t need so maybe one day he can afford that Rolex Datejust.
This Seiko SGF204 resembles a Datejust, yes, but there is another movie that this particular model looks like. The two toned Rolex Datejust that Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale, wore in American Psycho. I was aware of this too when I bought it. Of course it adds to the irony. A watch worn by a psychotic murderer in the excess of the 80s. The movie is an orgy of assholes who get their comeuppance from a character who is arguably best suited to this whole capitalist enterprise.
Before I go on, I want to talk about two other watches in my collection and what they say about me. I also want you to entertain the idea that we all have many costumes we wear from day to day. The first is a Marathon General Purpose Quartz field watch. Marathon is a Canadian watchmaking company that produces Swiss timepieces for many military organizations. The watch I bought meets strict military specifications, it comes in a carbon fibre case, and my favourite feature was the radioactive Tritium hands and markings which made the watch visible at night. Watch nerd features aside, I loved the functionality of this watch. It is quartz so I can throw it on and go for a hike or a walk without winding and setting it. The only problem for me is when I wear it I feel like I’m supporting the military industrial complex directly. I have the highest respect for people who serve in the armed forces everywhere. I do not have a high respect for the companies that profit off of war. So when I wear it I have a contradictory feeling in me, on the one hand I enjoy wearing the gear that a soldier might wear because it is the best gear for the task, but on the other hand wearing the watch is a signifier I am uneasy with.
I want to emphasize that this article is not about my relationship with watches, this is about me performing by wearing things such as watches. With my Marathon watch I would sometimes wear a camouflage shirt that I found to be quite flattering. I’ve had a few compliments on the shirt and that was satisfying because it was one of those shirts I didn’t think I could pull off. The best interaction I had while wearing it was from a woman who in fact commented that she didn’t expect a person like me to be wearing camouflage that seemed to indicate support for militarism. She graciously suggested that likely I was wearing it because I was the type of person that wanted to indicate I was a “peaceful warrior.” I didn’t disagree.
The other watch I want to talk about reflects a different me. The watch is a Seiko SARB017, the Alpinist. If I was a sensible man, or perhaps, a man who had fewer aspects to his personality, this watch would, I hope, reflect me best. I bought this watch after my father died. He was fond of the outdoors and passed that fondness on to me. The watch was designed by Seiko for Yama-otoko, or mountain-men. The idea was that this would be a watch that would be suitable for a person who was comfortable outdoors and yet the watches were also stylish enough to be worn in the workplace. This is me, a weekend warrior, one who longs for the outdoors during the week and looks forward to being in the outdoors when I’m free of work.
Again, capitalism is so cunning that even if your desire is to not desire materialistic items, to actually be away from civilization, it has something you can buy, like a ticket away from it. Similarly, there is always something you can wear to indicate who you are. Looking at The Alpinist, I love what it signifies, but in all honesty, I am afraid to wear it in the outdoors. It’s become too precious for me. Because of its meaning, I would be devastated if anything were to happen to the watch while I was using it as it was intended: in the outdoors. In fact when I go out to the woods or trails I wear the functional Marathon.
Let’s get back to the new Seiko SGF204, the Datejust homage, and let’s put aside how capitalism will always fill a need for you. There was a famous scene in American Psycho when Patrick Bateman is talking about his daily cleaning routine. He then talks about there being an “idea of Patrick Bateman” but that he is “simply […] not there.” The idea that deep down, beneath all the characters we play, there is nothing is a little more chilling than the point I want to make about my set of costumes that I use on a daily basis. But this reminds me of a concept I learned in a first year Sociology class: the concept of dramaturgy.
Dramaturgy is the idea that we perform ourselves in day to day life. From Wikipedia: “the self is a sense of who one is, a dramatic effect emerging from the immediate scene being presented.” Since I heard it when I was a young man, it has always made sense to me. I helps me reconcile all of the me-s that I want to be. I can be the Yama-otoko and honour my father; I can be playing a prepared soldier or a “peaceful warrior”; I can support workers’ rights and democratic socialism (ironically); I can even enthusiastically participate in capitalism in order to forget myself momentarily.
The realization is both liberating and sobering. On the one hand I can just relax when on Halloween I finally get the guts to put on makeup and do my hair like my idol Robert Smith, or turn on the Snapchat filter and lavish in the makeup filters, or put on cargo pants and a knife on my belt and make a fire at a campsite. Likewise, I can enjoy when I put on a flashy gold and silver watch and choose from moment to moment if I want to enjoy it ironically or unironically, or when Constant Craving comes on while I’m driving and, for a moment, I become K.D. Lang. And to this day, when I say the word croissant, I always say it like Nicole Kidman in one of her earlier roles, “cwassant?”
But on the other hand, just who the fuck am I? Am I “simply not there?” When am most myself? Is it when I stare vacantly into space, waiting for a situation to create the character for me? When someone prompts me with a question and I have to wake up and remember my line? When is Kevin most Kevinish? Sorry, I have no answer to that. I don’t know if it is me when you are talking to me face to face (depending on the watch I’m wearing). Or if it is me right now in this personal essay. Or is this you? Am I giving you the script right now, the lines for you to read? I hope not. No one says there has to be a script or that you have to stick to one role but some people do: we meet them all the time, people who have chosen their persona, people who say, “I am a doctor, this is what doctors are like,” or “I am a teacher, I’ve got my teacher pants on.”
I prefer people who improvise from moment to moment, “hello, I am Christopher Walken from Pulp Fiction and I will be your barista today” or “I am your mom, Jack Nicholson, from the Shining” (my mom does this sometimes). We don’t always have to play the role expected of us. You are more than a mother, or a construction worker, or doctor, or a capitalist pig-dog. Whoever you chose to be when you know thyself, it’s not written in stone or on a page, you are unwritten.
With this realization you can kind of exist in life with an upper hand. You can critically analyze your go-to responses, maybe even realize where they come from. And if you are interacting with someone, it’s sometimes helpful to try and guess what character they think they are and respond accordingly. Maybe you resist this whole idea, you can do that too, and try to be unpredictable, improvise, try to invent your own character. Whoever you are, always try “to be full of sound and fury” and resist “signifying nothing.”
