Of Love for Stories and Watches

As a frustrated, wanna-be novelist I’ve always been drawn to Story. Of course, I prefer the exploration of the mundane and the deeply personal. When I was younger I used to love science fiction and fantasy but I must admit that my favorite parts were always the quiet moments that protagonists are obligated to have to give the audience some time to catch their collective breaths. I tend to gloss over climaxes because I couldn’t wait to get to the denouements. In between the spectacles of epic battles and earth-ending explosions are the good stuff. At least in my mind. The authors that I love to reread like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams might deal with world-building but their worlds are not what’s interesting to me. It’s the conversations between the characters that are the most memorable: Arthur Dent talking to his daughter about his wrist watch under the stars; Granny Weatherwax feigning being old and vulnerable. While Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five and Breakfast of Champions get all the love, to me my favorite has always been Bluebeard–it’s just the faux autobiography of a regular person who knew how to draw photo-realistically but wanted so badly to be an expressionist. That sort of thing.

When I still deluded myself that I could make a living as a novelist, my attempts were that of space operatic novels set in galactic empires similar to the likes written by Isaac Asimov and Samuel Delany. But I was never good at world-building. I just wasn’t interested, ultimately.

Once I let go of all pretention that I’m a scifi/fantasy geek, I truly embraced the mundane as my canvas and I was happier and more fulfilled with the stories I wrote. They had no audience back then. They still don’t. No publishers were interested but I felt like I wrote for me and I kept writing for me.

The spectacle and the flash do not interested me. So I don’t like Marvel movies and find them a waste of time. I stopped watching all together even if that meant I was left out of hallway conversations at work. Count me as one of the ten people in the world that haven’t watched Avengers: Endgame. No plans of eventually watching either. Derry Girls is my jam instead of Squid Game.

What does this have to do with watches? Well, as a collector or enthusiast or hobbyist or whatever nomenclature makes you comfortable, I found that I was more inclined to not just buy but also to sit and pay attention to watches with personal stories.

Yes, horological history is part of a watch’s story but it’s such a small part, at least for me. Watch history is written by marketers. Sometimes they get it right but most times they’re just trying to sell a watch. So I don’t rely on that too much. Most of the watches that I pine for or swoon over are watches that celebrate the mundane, not the spectacular. And the watches I own that I love the most are watches with an interesting story behind them (at least to me). I also don’t just mean sentimentality, although it’s part of it too.

I have a 1972 Glashütte, for instance, that is sentimental because it was a gift from my ex. But I love it more than its sentimental value. To me this represents a time in a relationship before the bad days, the ugly period. There was so much love there, at least for a time, and now I look at the watch I wonder what happened.

As a Christmas gift, my daughter and I shopped for a Casio A159W. But again, more than sentimentality, there’s a funny story behind it. We were at a mall and she wanted to buy me a gift. She knew I wanted the Swatch D’oh Simpson donut watch but I didn’t want her to spend 100 USD on that. Instead I chose the Casio. I’ve been meaning to add a “God-tier” watch to the collection anyway. It was around 40 USD and was heavily discounted at the time, so it ended up costing maybe 35 USD. As a fatherly gesture I gave her 20 USD, thinking that she would turn it down. This was a gift after all. But she’s 18 and without hesitation took the money. This watch ended up costing her only 10 USD. Roughly, I’m converting Philippine peso to US dollar in my head.

Vintage watches intrigue me because they are inherently full of stories. Or the potential for stories. The vintage watches I’ve bought all have personal stories attached to them. I have a 1930s Hamilton Endicott that I gave to my daughter. But I also bought the matching watch in a rectangular case (the Hamilton Lester) around the same timeframe so that we have a father-daughter pair of watches. Sure, I don’t know where those vintage pieces come from or what they’ve been through over the decades. Their first, second, third, maybe even tenth owners are not known to me. But I like to think that they’ve been through the grand adventure of mundaneness–a celebration of the everyday. Like I said, the potential for stories.

I’ve never found a good story to attach to a Seiko and that’s why I don’t have one. I’ve bought several in the past (just to prove to myself I’m not a snob about brands) but all I had either sold, given away, or gifted. The last one, a 1990 Age of Discovery chronograph/moonphase, I gave to my father–a staunch Rolex snob–a week ago because he’s now getting into the Seiko space having bought a Speedtimer and being incredibly happy with it. He would enjoy the AoD more than me. It was either that or I disown him for liking Seiko now. I’ve only actually had the watch for a couple of weeks.

Again, not just talking about horological history here. I know Seiko’s history is full of spectacle. It’s a disruptor of the status quo, first with the quartz crisis and with the spring drive. It innovates, its history is rich, yes to all of that. I don’t discount those and I don’t disrespect their place in the world of horology. But there’s no story attached to the brand that’s of interest to me.

I love Omega as a brand but I don’t really have any real desire to own the moonwatch. It’s just a chronograph as far as I’m concerned. Good-looking, yes, iconic, yes, great story that’s been marketed to death, for sure. But it’s a story that’s too spectacular for me. I prefer a more grounded story. The Speedmaster that I do own (a 1998 Automatic with a silver dial) is pretty ordinary but I prefer its ordinariness.

Rolex, a brand I also don’t particularly like, is another brand that I’m willing to try. I recently got a 1959 Oysterdate Precision. Mostly because that’s the only Rolex I could afford but also because it’s from the 1950s. Ernest Hemingway wore Rolex during that period. It’s not a spectacular story but it’s a story that I find intriguing. Let’s see if that story is strong enough for me to keep it.

I’ve never been interested in specs. Or I am because I consume watch content all the time now. But they’ve never been deciding factors to buy.

Of course, not all purchases have stories attached to them already. Some stories are formed in the wearing of the watch. The most astute sellers understand and accordingly exploit people’s tendency to buy with emotions and later rationalize their purchase with logic. But the logic comes later. Not everyone will agree to this. There will be those who will insist that they are more pragmatic and smarter than that. They will proudly say that they buy with logic and point to their Seikos and their Timexes as evidence. But I would argue that logic will stop you from buying your second watch. I mean, how many watches do you really need?

No, we buy with emotions and we rationalize our purchases later with logic and only with logic that justify our emotional decisions, not contradict them. We won’t look at the reasons why what we chose was wrong. To me, that logic is the story that I build up in my head after my heart pulled the trigger. If I couldn’t find the right story behind the watch, buyer’s remorse set in and I have to decide whether to sell, give away, or gift. Keeping it won’t be an option, at least for me. I don’t care enough about filling every slot in my watch box. Placeholders be damned.

I should talk about the word “mundane,” which I used a lot here. But if I have to explain what that means in context, you’re just not gonna enjoy my future posts. It’s better if we part ways now before we invest too much time and energy on each other.