0:00:02.000,0:00:04.000 This is a recent comic strip from the Los Angeles Times. 0:00:04.000,0:00:06.000 The punch line? 0:00:06.000,0:00:08.000 "On the other hand, I don't have to get up at four 0:00:08.000,0:00:10.000 every single morning to milk my Labrador." 0:00:10.000,0:00:13.000 This is a recent cover of New York Magazine. 0:00:13.000,0:00:16.000 Best hospitals where doctors say they would go for cancer treatment, 0:00:16.000,0:00:21.000 births, strokes, heart disease, hip replacements, 4 a.m. emergencies. 0:00:21.000,0:00:23.000 And this is a song medley I put together -- 0:00:24.000,0:00:43.000 (Music) 0:00:44.000,0:00:46.000 Did you ever notice that four in the morning has become 0:00:46.000,0:00:49.000 some sort of meme or shorthand? 0:00:49.000,0:00:53.000 It means something like you are awake at the worst possible hour. 0:00:53.000,0:00:54.000 (Laughter) 0:00:54.000,0:00:59.000 A time for inconveniences, mishaps, yearnings. 0:00:59.000,0:01:02.000 A time for plotting to whack the chief of police, 0:01:02.000,0:01:04.000 like in this classic scene from "The Godfather." 0:01:04.000,0:01:07.000 Coppola's script describes these guys as, "exhausted in shirt sleeves. 0:01:07.000,0:01:09.000 It is four in the morning." 0:01:09.000,0:01:10.000 (Laughter) 0:01:10.000,0:01:12.000 A time for even grimmer stuff than that, 0:01:12.000,0:01:15.000 like autopsies and embalmings in Isabel Allende's 0:01:15.000,0:01:17.000 "The House of the Spirits." 0:01:17.000,0:01:19.000 After the breathtaking green-haired Rosa is murdered, 0:01:19.000,0:01:22.000 the doctors preserve her with unguents and morticians' paste. 0:01:22.000,0:01:25.000 They worked until four o'clock in the morning. 0:01:25.000,0:01:28.000 A time for even grimmer stuff than that, 0:01:28.000,0:01:31.000 like in last April's New Yorker magazine. 0:01:31.000,0:01:33.000 This short fiction piece by Martin Amis 0:01:33.000,0:01:37.000 starts out, "On September 11, 2001, he opened his eyes 0:01:37.000,0:01:39.000 at 4 a.m. in Portland, Maine, 0:01:39.000,0:01:43.000 and Mohamed Atta's last day began." 0:01:43.000,0:01:46.000 For a time that I find to be the most placid 0:01:46.000,0:01:50.000 and uneventful hour of the day, four in the morning sure gets 0:01:50.000,0:01:52.000 an awful lot of bad press -- 0:01:52.000,0:01:53.000 (Laughter) 0:01:53.000,0:01:56.000 across a lot of different media from a lot of big names. 0:01:56.000,0:01:59.000 And it made me suspicious. 0:01:59.000,0:02:03.000 I figured, surely some of the most creative artistic minds in the world, really, 0:02:03.000,0:02:07.000 aren't all defaulting back to this one easy trope 0:02:07.000,0:02:09.000 like they invented it, right? 0:02:09.000,0:02:12.000 Could it be there is something more going on here? 0:02:12.000,0:02:15.000 Something deliberate, something secret, 0:02:15.000,0:02:19.000 and who got the four in the morning bad rap ball rolling anyway? 0:02:19.000,0:02:23.000 I say this guy -- Alberto Giacometti, shown here 0:02:23.000,0:02:26.000 with some of his sculptures on the Swiss 100 franc note. 0:02:26.000,0:02:28.000 He did it with this famous piece 0:02:28.000,0:02:30.000 from the New York Museum of Modern Art. 0:02:30.000,0:02:33.000 Its title -- "The Palace at Four in the Morning -- 0:02:33.000,0:02:34.000 (Laughter) 0:02:35.000,0:02:38.000 1932. 0:02:38.000,0:02:40.000 Not just the earliest cryptic reference 0:02:40.000,0:02:41.000 to four in the morning I can find. 0:02:41.000,0:02:45.000 I believe that this so-called first surrealist sculpture 0:02:45.000,0:02:49.000 may provide an incredible key to virtually 0:02:49.000,0:02:52.000 every artistic depiction of four in the morning to follow it. 0:02:52.000,0:02:56.000 I call this The Giacometti Code, a TED exclusive. 0:02:56.000,0:02:59.000 No, feel free to follow along on your Blackberries 0:02:59.000,0:03:01.000 or your iPhones if you've got them. 0:03:01.000,0:03:04.000 It works a little something like -- this is a recent Google search 0:03:04.000,0:03:06.000 for four in the morning. 0:03:06.000,0:03:08.000 Results vary, of course. This is pretty typical. 0:03:08.000,0:03:10.000 The top 10 results yield you 0:03:10.000,0:03:15.000 four hits for Faron Young's song, "It's Four in the Morning," 0:03:15.000,0:03:19.000 three hits for Judi Dench's film, "Four in the Morning," 0:03:19.000,0:03:23.000 one hit for Wislawa Szymborska's poem, "Four in the Morning." 0:03:23.000,0:03:27.000 But what, you may ask, do a Polish poet, a British Dame, 0:03:27.000,0:03:30.000 a country music hall of famer all have in common 0:03:30.000,0:03:33.000 besides this totally excellent Google ranking? 0:03:33.000,0:03:38.000 Well, let's start with Faron Young -- who was born incidentally 0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000 in 1932. 0:03:40.000,0:03:42.000 (Laughter) 0:03:42.000,0:03:48.000 In 1996, he shot himself in the head on December ninth -- 0:03:48.000,0:03:51.000 which incidentally is Judi Dench's birthday. 0:03:51.000,0:03:54.000 (Laughter) 0:03:54.000,0:03:56.000 But he didn't die on Dench's birthday. 0:03:56.000,0:03:59.000 He languished until the following afternoon when he finally succumbed 0:03:59.000,0:04:04.000 to a supposedly self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 64 -- 0:04:04.000,0:04:09.000 which incidentally is how old Alberto Giacometti was when he died. 0:04:09.000,0:04:11.000 Where was Wislawa Szymborska during all this? 0:04:11.000,0:04:15.000 She has the world's most absolutely watertight alibi. 0:04:15.000,0:04:20.000 On that very day, December 10, 1996 while Mr. Four in the Morning, 0:04:20.000,0:04:23.000 Faron Young, was giving up the ghost in Nashville, Tennessee, 0:04:23.000,0:04:26.000 Ms. Four in the Morning -- or one of them anyway -- Wislawa Szymborska 0:04:27.000,0:04:32.000 was in Stockholm, Sweden, accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature. 0:04:32.000,0:04:37.000 100 years to the day after the death of Alfred Nobel himself. 0:04:37.000,0:04:39.000 Coincidence? No, it's creepy. 0:04:39.000,0:04:41.000 (Laughter) 0:04:41.000,0:04:43.000 Coincidence to me has a much simpler metric. 0:04:43.000,0:04:44.000 That's like me telling you, 0:04:44.000,0:04:47.000 "Hey, you know the Nobel Prize was established in 1901, 0:04:47.000,0:04:52.000 which coincidentally is the same year Alberto Giacometti was born?" 0:04:52.000,0:04:56.000 No, not everything fits so tidily into the paradigm, 0:04:56.000,0:04:59.000 but that does not mean there's not something going on 0:04:59.000,0:05:01.000 at the highest possible levels. 0:05:01.000,0:05:03.000 In fact there are people in this room 0:05:03.000,0:05:07.000 who may not want me to show you this clip we're about to see. 0:05:07.000,0:05:08.000 (Laughter) 0:05:08.000,0:05:10.000 Video: Homer Simpson: We have a tennis court, a swimming pool, a screening room -- 0:05:10.000,0:05:13.000 You mean if I want pork chops, even in the middle of the night, 0:05:13.000,0:05:15.000 your guy will fry them up? 0:05:15.000,0:05:17.000 Herbert Powell: Sure, that's what he's paid for. 0:05:17.000,0:05:20.000 Now do you need towels, laundry, maids? 0:05:20.000,0:05:23.000 HS: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait -- let me see if I got this straight. 0:05:23.000,0:05:25.000 It is Christmas Day, 4 a.m. 0:05:25.000,0:05:27.000 There's a rumble in my stomach. 0:05:27.000,0:05:29.000 Marge Simpson: Homer, please. 0:05:29.000,0:05:31.000 Rives: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. 0:05:31.000,0:05:34.000 Let me see if I got this straight, Matt. 0:05:34.000,0:05:36.000 (Laughter) 0:05:36.000,0:05:39.000 When Homer Simpson needs to imagine 0:05:39.000,0:05:42.000 the most remote possible moment of not just the clock, 0:05:42.000,0:05:46.000 but the whole freaking calendar, he comes up with 0400 0:05:46.000,0:05:48.000 on the birthday of the Baby Jesus. 0:05:48.000,0:05:51.000 And no, I don't know how it works 0:05:51.000,0:05:55.000 into the whole puzzling scheme of things, but obviously 0:05:55.000,0:05:59.000 I know a coded message when I see one. 0:05:59.000,0:06:00.000 (Laughter) 0:06:00.000,0:06:04.000 I said, I know a coded message when I see one. 0:06:04.000,0:06:07.000 And folks, you can buy a copy of Bill Clinton's "My Life" 0:06:07.000,0:06:09.000 from the bookstore here at TED. 0:06:09.000,0:06:12.000 Parse it cover to cover for whatever hidden references you want. 0:06:12.000,0:06:15.000 Or you can go to the Random House website where there is this excerpt. 0:06:15.000,0:06:17.000 And how far down into it you figure we'll have to scroll 0:06:17.000,0:06:20.000 to get to the golden ticket? 0:06:20.000,0:06:23.000 Would you believe about a dozen paragraphs? 0:06:23.000,0:06:26.000 This is page 474 on your paperbacks if you're following along: 0:06:26.000,0:06:29.000 "Though it was getting better, I still wasn't satisfied 0:06:29.000,0:06:31.000 with the inaugural address. 0:06:31.000,0:06:34.000 My speechwriters must have been tearing their hair out 0:06:34.000,0:06:37.000 because as we worked between one and four in the morning 0:06:37.000,0:06:41.000 on Inauguration Day, I was still changing it." 0:06:41.000,0:06:44.000 Sure you were, because you've prepared your entire life 0:06:44.000,0:06:48.000 for this historic quadrennial event that just sort of sneaks up on you. 0:06:48.000,0:06:49.000 And then -- 0:06:49.000,0:06:51.000 (Laughter) 0:06:51.000,0:06:55.000 three paragraphs later we get this little beauty: 0:06:56.000,0:06:59.000 "We went back to Blair House to look at the speech for the last time. 0:06:59.000,0:07:02.000 It had gotten a lot better since 4 a.m." 0:07:02.000,0:07:04.000 Well, how could it have? 0:07:04.000,0:07:06.000 By his own writing, this man was either asleep, 0:07:06.000,0:07:09.000 at a prayer meeting with Al and Tipper or learning how to launch 0:07:09.000,0:07:12.000 a nuclear missile out of a suitcase. 0:07:12.000,0:07:16.000 What happens to American presidents at 0400 on inauguration day? 0:07:16.000,0:07:18.000 What happened to William Jefferson Clinton? 0:07:18.000,0:07:20.000 We might not ever know. 0:07:20.000,0:07:23.000 And I noticed, he's not exactly around here today 0:07:23.000,0:07:25.000 to face any tough questions. 0:07:25.000,0:07:27.000 (Laughter) 0:07:27.000,0:07:29.000 It could get awkward, right? 0:07:29.000,0:07:31.000 I mean after all, this whole business happened on his watch. 0:07:31.000,0:07:33.000 But if he were here -- 0:07:33.000,0:07:34.000 (Laughter) 0:07:34.000,0:07:38.000 he might remind us, as he does in the wrap-up to his fine autobiography, 0:07:38.000,0:07:41.000 that on this day Bill Clinton began a journey -- 0:07:41.000,0:07:43.000 a journey that saw him go on to become 0:07:43.000,0:07:45.000 the first Democrat president elected 0:07:45.000,0:07:48.000 to two consecutive terms in decades. 0:07:48.000,0:07:50.000 In generations. 0:07:50.000,0:07:53.000 The first since this man, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 0:07:53.000,0:07:56.000 who began his own unprecedented journey 0:07:56.000,0:07:59.000 way back at his own first election, 0:07:59.000,0:08:06.000 way back in a simpler time, way back in 1932 -- 0:08:07.000,0:08:08.000 (Laughter) 0:08:08.000,0:08:09.000 the year Alberto Giacometti 0:08:09.000,0:08:10.000 (Laughter) 0:08:11.000,0:08:13.000 made "The Palace at Four in the Morning." 0:08:13.000,0:08:17.000 The year, let's remember, that this voice, now departed, 0:08:17.000,0:08:22.000 first came a-cryin' into this big old crazy world of ours. 0:08:22.000,0:08:46.000 (Music) 0:08:46.000,0:08:48.000 (Applause)