Dr. Timothy Thomas Norman Clarke is known and revered by all FYP students. He grants extensions, excuses tutorial absences and is considered the patron saint of the program. If Dr. Robertson is the father, and Dr. Brandes the spirit, Dr. Tim Clarke is the son. But who is the man behind the email? The Watch sat down with Dr. Clarke to find out more about our nominee for faculty of the month this February.
SS: What kind of music do you listen to?
TC: Well, everyone, and no one is my favorite. I like Roxy Music a lot right now. I’ve always loved the Velvet Underground. That’s about as articulate as I can be about that.
SS: What do you do in your free time?
TC: I play a bit of music. I’ve played guitar for years, a bit of banjo. I like to do very little of anything. It’s a lot of kind of quiet recovery time when it’s not hideous out. I like to walk around. I love walking to and from Point Pleasant Park. Kind of strolling about.
SS: Who’s your personal favourite philosopher?
TC: Spinoza. He’s my guy. He’s always been my guy.
SS: Any favourite movies?
TC: Maybe I’m exaggerating, but anytime people ask me about movies, I say I’ve seen like, five movies. I really like Modern Times by [Charlie] Chaplin. I like silence. I like black and whites. I just have the taste of a 90 year-old man.
SS: Best place you’ve ever travelled?
TC: I spent a bit of time in southern Brazil, which was incredible. I was in Rio Grande do Sul, and it was the first time I’d ever really traveled. Other than that, I’d never left Newfoundland, except to go to PEI or something. We didn’t go on vacation when I was growing up. It was the first time I’d ever seen the world or anything outside of right where I was. It was staggering.
SS: What was your first job?
TC: I worked as a cart lackey on a golf course. I took carts down from the cart park to the pro shop and made sure they were clean and washed and things like that. So there’s a lot of clearing empty beer cans and chip bags from golf carts that have been out there for six hours. Miserable work. Don’t recommend.
SS: Any guilty pleasures?
TC: I love trash, pop music. I don’t even think of it as trash. I have no guilt about it. Anything that has a catchy melody I will listen to until I get sick of it.
SS: Any examples?
TC: I’ve been listening to the Chappell Roan record for half of the year on repeat to the point that I can barely listen to it anymore. It’s seared into a part of my brain.
SS: What’s one thing about you that you wished more people knew?
TC: That, most of the time, I’m not being serious. A solid nine out of ten times I’m joking, unless I say otherwise.
SS: Do you have any advice for FYP students heading into section six?
TC: Things that might seem like obvious features of day-to-day life, pay attention to how they’re not so obvious in the period. So something as simple as the idea that you are an individual and not something else, that doesn’t come from nowhere, that’s not ingrained in being alive. That’s something that emerges out of a history and out of a series of discourses, and it’s by no means taken for granted in the periods that we’re exploring. It helps for us to not take it for granted in the present.
SS: Favourite thing about King’s?
TC: It’s small. I like that you can walk from one end of campus to the other in like a minute and a half. You see people you recognize every day. It’s one of the few places I’ve ever been that’s actually at a scale where you can remember students’ names. I’m terrible at remembering names anyway, so this helps. I like the scale. It’s intimate, it’s close. I find it very, very, very welcoming, in that sense.
