For the past few months, I’ve been experimenting with Twitter’s new video app, Vine. I’ve adopted my
bedside companion, a Westclox digital alarm clock as my muse. Each night before bed, I shoot a very short
video documenting my bedtime.
Sometimes I choose the audio first, and other times, I simply match it to my visual idea. Editing happens
in camera, so these videos are usually shot and edited within the space of a minute. The best ones are
often happy accidents, made intuitively without much planning.
I’m doing this mostly to explore the formal possibilities of Vine, but I guess there is also an
autobiographical dimension. I’ve had a conflicted relationship with sleep for most of my life, and this
alarm clock has been with me for years because its nagging loud beep is guaranteed to wake me.
This past year, I turned 40 and am beginning to appreciate the cliche that time seems to move faster as
one gets older. If there is any deeper meaning to my nightly experiments with Vine, it is to express how
I’m feeling about time at the end of each day.
A note about these videos: Vine videos play more smoothly and seamlessly when viewed on an iPhone. The
embedded videos have a noticeable hiccup when they end. Most of my videos are made to play as seamless
loops. So, if you have an iPhone, that’s the best way to watch them.