You look up at the clock tower and the clock tells you the time and the time belongs to everyone who can see it. The clock tower does not charge admission. The clock tower does not require a membership. The clock tower puts four faces on top of a building and the four faces look in four directions and the four directions mean no one on any street has an excuse for being late. The clock tower democratized time. Before the clock tower the rich had pocket watches and the poor had the sun and the sun was not precise enough for a factory shift and the factory shift needed precision and the precision needed a tower.

The Rajabai Clock Tower at the University of Mumbai was built in eighteen seventy eight and it chimed across the cotton district for a hundred and forty years. The tower played God Save the Queen when the British were there and then the British left and the tower played something else and then the tower went silent because the chimes needed repair and the repair took decades. The silence of the Rajabai Tower was the city forgetting its own heartbeat. When the chimes came back the city remembered what it sounded like when the time was announced out loud and the announcing was a gift the city had forgotten it missed. The clock tower does not just tell time. The clock tower tells a city it is alive.

Big Ben is not the tower. Big Ben is the bell. The tower is the Elizabeth Tower and the tower survived the Blitz because the Germans dropped bombs on the Houses of Parliament and the bombs hit the chamber and the bombs hit the roof but the bombs did not kill the clock. The BBC broadcast the chimes of Big Ben during the war and the chimes meant London was still standing and the still standing was the message and the message was stronger than any speech Churchill gave because the speech required words and the clock required nothing except the ability to keep going and the keeping going was the whole point of the war.

In every small town in America the clock tower was the tallest thing on the courthouse square and the tallest thing was the most important thing and the most important thing was time. The clock tower said this town has a schedule and the schedule matters and the mattering is why the clock is above everything else. The court inside the building had a schedule and the trains had a schedule and the church had a schedule and the schedules were all calibrated to the clock on the tower and the tower was calibrated to nothing except its own mechanism and the mechanism was wound by hand by a man who climbed the stairs once a week and the climbing was the maintenance and the maintenance was the keeping of time and the keeping of time was the keeping of the town.

You look up at the clock tower and the hands are moving and you cannot see them move but you know they move because the time is different than it was when you last looked. The clock tower is patient. The clock tower does not rush. The clock tower moves at exactly the speed of time and the speed of time is the only speed that matters and the mattering is constant. The clock tower will be telling time when you are gone. The clock tower was telling time before you arrived. The clock tower is the only piece of architecture that measures its own age as it ages and the measuring is the function and the function never stops.