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(Special Edition: Celebrating One Year Anniversary of Jerry's Swatch of the Month)
Welcome To
May 1997
(Special Edition: Celebrating One Year Anniversary of Jerry's Swatch of the Month)
DON'T BE TOO LATE!
An Essay by Tom Rolnicki
I spotted her across a crowded room. She was sitting among a group of models, quietly passing time. I couldn't hear what she was saying, so I inched forward until I was face-to-face with her. I casually looked down; I didn't want to betray my intense interest too soon. My palms grew clammy. I shoved them into my coat pocket. My breathing suddenly seemed audible. My eyes locked on her hands as they gracefully swept across her face. I smiled nervously, and she looked up and said, "Don't Be Too Late!"
It was love at the first sight. We were inseparable. My ebony beauty always on my arm. Proudly, I took her everywhere. We danced, dined and nearly drowned together on a swift moving creek when our canoe capsized. Through all of this, she never missed a beat. I called her "Miss Reliable."
But like many love affairs, this one quietly ended. Call me Don Juan, call me Casanova, call me unreliable, but a new model captured my heart just one year later. Shamefully neglected, my black beauty disappeared from my daily life.
Ask veteran Swatch collector, and they, too have love story to tell about their "first time." The faces and the name maybe different, but the feeling of being swept away by beauty and beguiled by artistry is universal. But as the first years of this great affair end, the head-over-heels euphoria slowly turns into a down-to-earth realization: "I love you, but I can't keep up this mad-cap pace."
For some, love turned to lust and turned gain to abandonment. For others, love and lust turned into steadfast commitment, a romance for the ages.
From time to time, I ask myself, a collector of six years, "Why am I still doing this? Do I still love the ebony beauty that once graced my wrist but is now inside a display case, no longer dancing, dining and drinking iced mochas with me."
I stop and take my Swatch temperature. I did that on 53rd Street in New York on March 14. I had just walked out of the Museum of Modern Art Gift Shop. Inside, Swatches were on sale. Swatches used to be sold there in the early years, the mid-80s. They were back and I was extremely proud. This great arbiter of good design, art and high culture, MOMA, was telling me, again, "Swatch is back." MOMA was saying " Swatch is art." MOMA was validating something I already knew, but I wanted reassurance of just like lovers want from each other.
I've been taking my temperature a lot lately. On the same March visit to New York, I stopped by the Scarf Shack, the Pop Shop and the Martin Lawrence Galleries in SoHo. There, I got booster shot from Swatch Artists - Kenny Scharf, Keith Haring and Mark Kostabi. No other watchmaker goes to the art world so frequently for design and inspiration as often as Swatch does. I frequently passed the Swatch Olympic countdown clock, highly and prominently positioned in Times Square. It reminded me that Swatch is in the thick of popular, world culture.
My lust turned into "real love" when I stopped counting how many conquests I had made, when I stopped adding up the dollar value of my collection. How many you own slowly becomes irrelevant. Rather , do you love the ones you have, and if you don't, how can your get the ones you desire more? Yes, it's nice to know that the "Hollywood Dream" you own sold in an auction recently for X dollars, but collecting Swatch strictly as an investment or only to turn a profit through resale is the wrong reason to collect Swatch - or anything.
Collect Swatch because it's art, design, popular culture and history presented in a contemporary package that is at once both practical and whimsical. Collect Swatch because it's the one lover who remains true.
Like my black beauty told me in 1984, "Don't Be Too Late!," or you'll miss the ever-changing "love connection" at your local Swatch retailer. And if you've fallen out of love, now, with the release of the "new" Artists Set and the "new" Art Special, is the perfect time to fall in love all over again. After all, it's spring.
(copyrighted, used with permission of Tom Rolnicki)
(Firstly published in Swatch Times a.k.a. Swatch Collectors News Vol. IV, February-March 1996)
(Thanks to Tom Rolnicki and his On Time article, Lynne Cheson for her Swatch Newsletter, and Andreas Wiethoff for the picture)
CD of the Month:
Miles' Landmark Album
Laser Disc of the Month:
Star Wars Trilogy - Special Edition
Long Time Ago in Galaxy Far, Far Away...
Link of the Month:
UpSide is the Financial News Magazine with the Wired-Attitude. Kewl and Hip.
Jerry
S. Justianto lives in Jakarta-Indonesia, married to Rika with four lovely daughters Cinta (love), Cantik (pretty), Ceria
(Happy) and Cemerlang (Bright). This homepage is for personal hobbies only.
Copyright © 1997-2002 Jerry S. Justianto, all rights reserved.
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