When he started on his cross-country motorcycle trip with his son, Robert Pirsig was most certainly not wearing a Rolex Daytona. He was driving a Honda Superhawk–not a luxury bike by any means–and in general lived a modest life as an academic and philosopher. However, the lessons he derived from this trip now help me make sense of the true meaning of a watch.
Pirsig found inspiration in fixing his motorcycle, so much so that it melded with his underlying quest for a metaphysical philosophy, which eventually resulted in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values. According to an obituary of Pirsig published in the LA Times, the book sold 50,000 copies in the first three months it was available, was translated into 27 languages, and has sold five million copies since. I would imagine Pirsig could have picked up a Daytona after those sales, should he have wanted one.
I first read the book after graduating from high school. It wasn’t until James Cox let me borrow his Daytona–a watch that effectively replaced the “Paul Newman Paul Newman” on his wrist after James auctioned it to benefit the Nell Newman Foundation–that Pirsig came back into my life. I’ve been more of a Seiko 5 kind of guy for a long time, given that I’m a teacher and a child of children of the great depression, which has made me just a touch frugal. When James sent along the Rolex for me to try, it forced me to return to my own perspectives on value and quality. Hence back to Pirsig and the ‘inquiry into values’ in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Romanticism, Classicism, and Quality
I needed to mount a pretty significant search to find my copy of Zen and the Art. After going through a lot of boxes still unopened from our not-so-recent move out of Boston, I finally caught a glimpse of that distinctive pink cover inside a box in the basement. When I pulled it out, I could feel the plastic I had used to laminate the cover, and as I opened it up I could see that I had made notes on important passages in pencil, notes that are now three decades old.
In rereading the book, I was reminded how much there is inside, from the story of the trip to overall musings on philosophy. What struck me as most relevant now was Pirsig’s need to find an additional idea to accompany romantic and classical ways of looking at the world. I was reminded in the text how the classical works focus on how things work, the underlying features that make things go, like the gears, springs, and balances of a watch. A romantic view, in contrast, focuses on the story and feelings that relate to an object or experience. Pirsig looked for a larger idea that would encompass these, and settled on “quality” as a distinct overarching concept that provides more philosophical integrity: things can have high quality or low quality.
To really understand what Pirsig was saying, I’d suggest consulting books written about the book that do it more justice. But for my own journey with the Daytona, I realized that reading Pirsig was helpful. Yes, Rolex is literally a storied watchmaker, and the underlying craft that went into making its beautiful and effective gears spin with astonishing accuracy is hard to comprehend. The question for me, however, came back to quality, and it helped free me from the pretzel knots of money and prestige and exclusivity that swirled around my wrist when I started wearing it.
The Freedom from Buying and Selling
I’ll admit that at first it was a challenge to wear the watch without being concerned about what it was worth. The MSRP is daunting, and what people pay for these things on the secondary market invites a level of analysis I don’t have space for here. Suffice it to say that I didn’t want to damage it, as I could not have afforded to replace it, and these models aren’t even available to purchase for someone without an authorized dealer on speed dial with whom there is an extended purchase history.
I realized, though, that I was never going to purchase this watch, nor was I ever going to sell it. It was an object to me, an object lent very generously for me to experience and understand. With that in mind I felt a bit freed, so I started wearing it.
A Thirty Year Watch
In my podcast interview with James that led to the lending of the watch, I was struck by how matter of fact he was about the memory of getting the original Daytona from Newman, and then putting it on his wrist and wearing it for 30 years. In hindsight, it is easy to be baffled by this knowing that it sold at Phillips for almost $18 million. He wore it while doing construction. Really. The thought of pounding nails and raising roof beams with that legendary object is enough to make any horologist shudder.
James described looking at it in the evenings and appreciating how beautiful it was, and how much it meant to him. As the years passed he continued to wear it for virtually all of his life’s endeavors.
I admit that I found myself, late at night, looking at the black dial Daytona James had lent to me, seeing how the light reflected from all of the incredibly subtle and beautifully shined surfaces. Even more, it made me think about James, and Paul Newman, and how an object can start to take us on new and unexpected journeys. I had no idea that this black dial would lead me on a trip out Highway 55 from Minneapolis, a road I take to work each day, to find the pump that Pirsig used on his first rest stop. The pump is now gone, but I rescued a bit of moss from its now overgrowing site, and am keeping it in a terrarium. I met the woman who lived across the street from the site, and thought a lot about my own sons and our adventures together.
The watch wears like a solid steel sports watch, and at 40mm and 12.2 mm thick, it’s not large or overly apparent. By actually wearing the watch regularly, I realized that if you step outside the hype, the external messages of value and monetary value, it is the kind of watch you could put on your wrist and take off 30 years later. This model, more than others, could obviously be a “one watch,” or a life companion, like the original was for James. And in many ways for Newman himself.
Value, and Values
I’ve worn the watch for a couple months now and can say that to me it is an object of high quality in the Pirsigian sense, but I don’t believe that this results from the brand and the aura that surrounds it. I was pleasantly surprised that no one stopped me to ask about it, or gawked at it. Most people didn’t notice it or care, and rightfully so. The only exception was when I had coffee with Jason Heaton, one of the most prominent personalities in current watch culture. He certainly noticed.
Possibly some of this inattention is because it is a black dial, and the red “Daytona” lettering is not highly visible as it is on the white dial versions, like Newman’s. I also don’t work or live in a place where luxury watches are a regular topic of conversation. I was grateful for that because it helped me become comfortable that it was a “Rolex,” a brand that has gone a direction in the public consciousness that has many unfortunate features. But to me it is an object, an object with high quality and beauty, and with a story of relatedness that brought me back to asking about who and what is important to me, what it means to be open and generous, and its presence on my wrist constantly brought me back to one particular quote from Paul Newman: “When you see the right thing to do, you’d better do it.”
The Meaning of a Watch
Why this sentiment and quote? I’m not actually sure. It is part of the mystical nature of objects and associations. They often form passively, in a part of our consciousness that escapes notice.
In the end, this particular Rolex Cosmograph Daytona 116500LN is an object to which I ascribe quality outside of the confines of the market. It has quality because of how it is made, how it functions, how it appears, but more importantly that it has a story behind it linked to people, ideas, and questions that are important to me.
Ultimately, life is not about watches anyway. To say that we don’t need them anymore is simply restating what others have said more eloquently than I can do here. They can, however, be important symbols, talismans, and icons that hold meaning and value. I learned that putting on a watch, or thinking about the value of any object or experience, can take us on a journey that helps us consider, like Pirsig did, where we might be able to find even a little bit of quality in this world.
