culture, history, musings

The Fluidity of Time

Turning clocks backwards and forwards always leads me to believe that time is arbitrary — an agreed-upon method of segmenting the day for common reference despite whatever natural inclinations the body might have.

While timekeeping has existed for millenia, standardization of time across the globe is a relatively modern practice. Up until the late eighteenth century, precise schedules were not kept. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century and the industrial revolution with its vast rail and communication networks that standardizing and synchronizing time across large regions became a necessity of doing business.

The history and practice of daylight savings is well-documented, and there is no need to cover it here. Read Seize the Daylight and the story of DST will be made clear.

What’s more interesting is the concept of time itself.

To the ancients, time was quite often literally and figuratively fluid.

While sundials that relied on celestial bodies have been in use for millennia, water clocks — used by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese and other cultures — seem somehow more important as these devices could measure time at night.

Anyone could look to the sky and know approximately when it was — between dawn and noon, noon and dusk, dusk and night — simply by the position of the sun. But knowing the hours that would pass between the dusk and dawn? That took ingenuity. And water.

Water Clock Water clocks were usually simple stone vessels with slanted sides that allowed water to drip at a nearly constant rate from a hole in the bottom. Others were bowl-shaped containers designed to slowly fill up with water coming in at a constant rate. Another version consisted of a metal bowl with a small hole in in its base that when placed in a container of water would fill and sink in a consistent manner that could be measured (as is the case with the bowl seen here).

In the measuring of time with water, there may even be a deeper religious meaning known to the ancients: that of gods and goddesses associated with water also being somehow connected to the passage of days, months, and years. The Egyptian god Thoth, for example — seen as a god of  wisdom and the measurement and regulation of events — is often depicted as having the head of an ibis: a water bird. Many gods associated with the passing of time, like the Chinese Shou Xing, carry water. Indeed, it would seem that associating water with time transcends religion and is in our very psyche; it would explain the fabled fountain of youth — waters sought by explorer Juan Ponce de Leon and conqueror Alexander the Great. It would explain why a sip of water from the Holy Grail could grant immortality.

“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current.” — Marcus Aurelius

Measuring time with water seems only natural then if water that is supernatural can be a restorative element against the ravages of time.

And if in your part of the globe you participate in the ritual that is the return to standard time, keep in mind that although your clocks may be turned back, you can not turn back the tide of time.

music

Listening to Sirens: Gary Numan and The Tubeway Army

Cover photo of Gary Numan's Splinter
Gary Numan: Splinter

With the release of Hesitation Marks  — Nine Inch Nails’ first album in five years — Gary Numan’s new work, Splinter: Songs from a Broken Mind — his first album in seven years — might easily be overlooked.

Numan, primarily known for the 1979  earworm “Cars” (a song used to advertise everything from automobiles to, most recently, Target stores) , rode the crest of the nineteen eighties new British invasion. His success was bolstered by a then burgeoning MTV — which following its launch in 1981 only had about 200 videos to cover its 24/7 rotation; the result: clips like “Cars” were shown at least once a day. It also helped that the single had one of the catchiest bass riffs ever, complemented by the then still relatively new technology of two moog synthesizers.

Numan, however, working in the late seventies with his band Tubeway Army, was no “one-hit wonder” in his homeland; previous releases were quite successful: 1978’s Tubeway Army opens with the unforgettable “Listen to the Sirens”; 1979’s Replicas, which includes the stark and sinister classic “Down in the Park” also spawned a #1 hit single in the UK with “Are Friends Electric?”

Combining the synthetic sounds of synthesizers with the acoustic punch of a solid rhythm section, Numan’s quite deliberate pop sensibility stood in stark contrast to the themes of a cold, dystopian future revealed in his lyrics and embodied by his often emotionless, robotic voice.

Inspired by the works of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard as was (the far superior band of the same period) Joy Division,  Numan and others found themselves in the wake of punk but before the dawn of “college” or “alternative” rock.  They were the “new wave” — a label rarely used by the bands themselves but quite appropriate seeing as how their literary idols Dick and Ballard were known as part of the “new wave of science fiction” in the late 60s / early 70s just as filmmakers  Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were referred to by critics of their time (the late 50s and early 60s) as La Nouvelle Vague. Seems there was always some new wave in art; why not let the critics assign the label. What did it matter?

Numan himself referred to his work as “machine rock” — a likely antecedent of  the “industrial rock” moniker applied to bands like Ministry, KMFDM and Nine Inch Nails a decade later. But even among contemporaries, these labels favored by critics were the stuff of comedy and competition among the artists themselves.

Ian Curtis, for example — the  enigmatic genius who fronted the brief but brilliant Joy Division — seemed unimpressed by any labels assigned by music journalists — as well as any forced comparisons among diverse acts; when asked by a reporter who compared Joy Division to Gary Numan and wondered what Curtis thought of Numan’s claim that “machine rock is the future,” Curtis replied:  “No disrespect to Gary Numan, but what we do is what we do.”

Perhaps the label that fits best, then, is the one used by writers for Sounds magazine in the mid to late seventies: post-punk. In the wake of the spirit of DIY, aggression and rebellion that was punk, a new movement emerged. To paraphrase an astute observation made by someone uncredited in an April 2005 issue of Mojo Magazine writing about Joy Division, this movement, instead of saying “fuck off” said “I’m fucked.” Thus is summed up the aesthetic for many of the British bands of the late seventies and early eighties (the Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, and [the band that rose from the ashes of Joy Division] New Order — just to name a few) — an aesthetic even evident in the more accessible work of Gary Numan: the paranoid “here in my car, I feel safest of all / I can lock all my doors” quickly turns to the lonely plea of “will you visit me, please, if I open my door?”

Intentional isolationism. Losing one’s self in the machine. These were among Numan’s major themes. And he’s still going strong. Go to garynuman.com to check out his latest work.

By Christopher Michael Davis