Bodies in Motion

There is something about the swing of a pendulum or the sweep of a second hand. You know that there is a machine at work, but it’s still relatable. After all, we’ve chosen to call the pointy things on analog clocks “hands”, not “pointers” or “indicators”. (I might have chosen to call them “arms”, since they’re much longer than they are wide, but no one asked.) Those kinds of clocks have faces, too.

Lots of things have anatomical names: tables and chairs have legs and a back (OK, everything seems to have a back—it’s usually on the other side of the front), hammers and nails have heads, bread can have a heel, bolts can have shoulders and roofs can have hips. It’s easy to think that when we needed to name these parts or features, perhaps the thing that came to mind was the body part it reminded us of. Everybody knows what an elbow is, so if you’re looking through a pile of plumbing parts…

Digital clocks are minimalist information displays: compact and efficient. Four or six digits that change abruptly, a little punctuation and maybe an “AM” or “PM”. No second hand, whether a continuous sweep or discrete movement. No movement through space, however confined, to trace the passage of time. No face, no hands—no features that I would be tempted to name after a part of my body or anyone else’s. (No, “colon” doesn’t count. And stop giggling.)

We have an intuitive grasp of mechanical movements, since we are very much physical beings, and we can often imitate them. We have an appreciation for the qualities of acceleration and speed, precision and tempo because we recognize them as desirable.

But a mechanical clock or analog gauge isn’t an organism. It’s something less than a tree, but something more than a carefully placed stick casting a shadow on the ground. It’s sophisticated and tangible, and we can see something of ourselves in its features and behavior, even if we have no need to name it.