Lately it seems I do not need a watch, as my mother likes to say, but rather a calendar and a keeper. I breezed down to Pioneer Square last week a good half-hour early for an arts-organization-space groundbreaking ceremony at the Tashiro-Kaplan Building, only to find I was a day late. I showed up at the wrong museum for the Seattle Art Museum anniversary. And let's not begin to list the things I clean forgot to attend at all.

Which is why arriving only an hour late for the Christian Marclay lecture and reception last week was, all things considered, pretty good for me. (I would like to take this opportunity to say that I used to be a punctual person, even an early one. Possibly my metabolism has slowed way, way down--it certainly would explain why my jeans no longer fit.) It means I missed seeing the slides of most of Marclay's work, but was in time to see a short video from 1995 called Telephones, which isolated scenes (from a lot of movies and television shows) of actors dialing the telephone, saluting, conversing, and hanging up. Hearing the phone dialed over and over again allows you to reflect on what has been lost--that satisfying whir and click--in the age of touch-tone.

Focusing you on what something sounds like is what Marclay is very good at. He was in town as a kind of teaser for a survey of his work--which at first glance looks to be excellent--currently at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, which will go up at SAM in February. An inspired choice for Seattle, as his recurring theme is music and sound, as in the objects of music (broken and reassembled records, collages made of album covers), the instruments of music (usually warped, distended, and obviously unplayable), as well as performance (including one with two other DJs and 75 turntables).

Marclay turns his attention to all aspects of the aural made visible--not just the theoretical, but the nostalgic and fanatic as well. You might remember, from EMP's LP Show last year, an installation both affectionate and absurd featuring multiple copies of Herb Alpert's classic Whipped Cream & Other Delights, as well as other albums that ripped off (excuse me, paid homage to) the design. (This is also the guy who crocheted a pillowcase from cassette tapes of the Beatles' complete works, which is very, very hard not to love.) Marclay has also done some Fred Wilson-style rifling through museum collections, and in one museum filled a hallway with shipping crates--in which the exhibit's other work had arrived--which he then turned into wind-up music boxes.

This was all very exciting, but at the little coffee reception afterward, everyone looked tired and dragged down, with the exception of Eric Weisbard from EMP, who seemed full of energy. "Marclay would be perfect for next year's pop conference," he said enthusiastically. "Don't you think?"

emily@thestranger.com