I Stopped Chasing the Disappearing Clock

Ruth Belville lived in London and she carried a watch. The watch was a John Arnold chronometer and its name was Arnold 485. Every Monday morning she walked from her home in Maidenhead and she took the train to Greenwich.

She went to the Royal Observatory and she compared her watch to the official clock. The officials gave her a certificate and the certificate told the world exactly how many seconds her watch gained or lost. She walked back into the city and she visited her clients. She had nearly 200 clients and they were mostly watchmakers. They paid her a fee and she showed them the watch. They adjusted their own clocks to match hers and the city stayed in sync.

She did this work for fifty years and she never used a radio signal. She was a single source of truth and her truth was made of brass and steel.

I think about Ruth when I try to find a place to have a drink. She provided a service that stayed the same and people could rely on the schedule. Today we have more tools and we have less certainty. I spend my days playing music for people who are leaving this world and I have learned that they like things that stay where they are.

I tried to explain the concept of cryptocurrency to a man in a hospice ward last week and he looked at the ceiling and he asked me if the hospital was still going to be there in the morning. He wanted to know about the bricks and he wanted to know about the foundation. He did not care about the ledger in the cloud. He cared about the permanence of the room.

The Humidity of the Ephemeral

Durban is a humid place and the air on Florida Road feels like a wet blanket in the late afternoon. Kerusha is the manager of a small bar and she sits at a table in the corner. She takes a photo of a gin bottle and she types some words on her phone. She tells the followers that the bar will be open on Monday and she mentions there will be a DJ. She hits the button and the story goes live.

It is 2:14 in the afternoon on a Friday. The sun is bright and the street is busy. Kerusha feels like she has done her job and she puts her phone in her pocket. She has communicated with the world and she believes the information is now public.

The story stays on the internet for twenty-four hours and then it is gone. It disappears at 2:14 on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday night a man in Umhlanga wants to go out on Monday but he does not know if the bars are open for the holiday. He opens his phone and he looks at the bar's page.

He sees a post from 144 weeks ago and he sees a link to a website that does not load. He looks at the Google listing and the listing says the bar is closed on Mondays. He looks at the Facebook page and the last update was in 2021. He does not see Kerusha's story because the story died while he was sleeping. He decides to stay home and he watches a movie instead.

The bar is actually open and the DJ is ready. The lights are low and the beer is cold. But the room is empty and the staff stands around the counter. The DJ plays a song and the only people listening are the barman and two tourists. The tourists did not look at Instagram and they just happened to walk past the door.

This is a problem of documentation and it is a problem of ego. Businesses believe that activity is the same thing as information. They post every day and they feel busy. They see the views and they see the likes. But they are building their house on sand and the tide comes in every midnight.

The Solid Weight of 1847

They have no record of their own lives and they have no archive of their own rules. When Kerusha eventually leaves the job she will take her phone with her and she will take the history of the bar's schedule. The new manager will start from zero and the Google listing will still say the bar is closed on Mondays.

In the year 1847 the railway companies in Britain decided they had enough of the chaos. Every town had its own time and the time was based on the position of the sun. Bristol was ten minutes behind London and Glasgow was even further off. The trains were fast and the local clocks were slow.

The Railway Clearing House issued a decree and they told every station to use Greenwich Mean Time. They printed a book and the book was a timetable. It was a physical object and it stayed in the station. You could touch the paper and you could trust the ink. The trains ran on time because the information was persistent and the information was verified.

A Tax on the Public

We have moved away from the timetable and we have moved into the era of the ghost. We rely on the ephemeral and we expect the customer to do the work of a detective. This is a tax on the public and it is a tax on the loyal. If you are a queer person in South Africa you already have to think about where you are going.

You have to think about safety and you have to think about the crowd. You might drive thirty kilometers to find a specific venue and you might spend money on fuel that you cannot afford to waste. When you arrive and the gate is locked because of a "private event" that was only announced in a story you missed, you do not just lose an evening. You lose a sense of belonging. You feel like the community is a secret club and you do not have the password.

I have spent a lot of time looking for places where I can take my friends. I want to know that the drag show starts at 9:00 and I want to know that the cover charge is 80 Rand. I do not want to scroll through a feed of pictures of half-eaten burgers to find the one image that contains the truth. I want a directory that has been checked by a human being.

The work of verification is a quiet work and it is not flashy. It is like the work of Ruth Belville. It involves calling the number and it involves checking the address. It involves asking the manager if the Monday special is still real.

When you find a resource like Gay South Africa you are finding a piece of the old railway timetable. You are finding a place where the information does not delete itself at midnight. The hours are listed and the events are confirmed. It is a service for the traveler and it is a service for the local who is tired of being stood up by a ghost.

The hospitality industry is tired and the margins are thin. A bar in Durban or a club in Cape Town cannot afford to lose twenty customers on a Monday night. They cannot afford to let the DJ play to an empty room. But they continue to use the tools that fail them. They trust the algorithm but the algorithm does not care about their rent.

The algorithm only cares about engagement and engagement is a hollow word. A "like" on a photo of a cocktail does not pay the electricity bill. A person standing at the bar with a glass in their hand pays the bill.

The light of the screen dies but the lock on the door remains heavy.

I stopped looking at the green circles on the top of the app. I stopped believing that a photo of a DJ meant the DJ was actually there. I started looking for the records that stay. I want the information to be there when I wake up and I want it to be there when I arrive.

The world is full of things that disappear and my job is to watch them go. I play the guitar and the sound fades into the walls of the hospice. I know that the music is temporary and that is why the music is beautiful. But a business is not a song. A business is a service and a service needs a schedule.

The Sidewalk in the Rain

If you run a venue you should think about Ruth Belville. You should think about the people who are walking toward you from a long way off. They are carrying their own clocks and they are looking for yours. Do not make them guess. Do not give them a puzzle to solve. Give them a fact and make sure that fact is still there tomorrow.

The internet is a very large place but it is also very small when you are standing on a dark sidewalk in the rain and the only thing you can find is a deleted story. We need the truth to be documented and we need the truth to be verified. We need to know where the heart of the city is beating and we need to know that the door will be open when we get there.