This Much Counts as One · Track 9 · middle
A Red Hair's Breadth
A Red Hair's Breadth — the machinist's smallest named unit — still in daily workshop use. Volume: I. BODY. ANGLE: TRIPLE-LOADED, and every line must stay deniable. (1) the shop-floor unit for a gap too small to name politely, (2) the hair itself, (3) 'a hair's breadth' — how close you came and didn't. The joke is the SWEETNESS of the delivery, never the wording; sung innocent and straight-faced by a bright soprano who appears not to know. Closes the BODY volume by proving its whole argument: the last body-derived unit anyone still uses, and it is this one. Sing the person or animal inside the unit, never the definition.
No audio yet — generation pending.
Lyrics
The digital readout is bright on the mill, The micrometer locks at a decimal flat. But the hand on the dial has a memory still, For the moment the turning pushes right back. We gave up the cubit, the stride, and the span, We traded the warmth for a rational plan. But what is the space where the cylinder binds? The gap that the blueprint just barely defines? When the fraction is useless, the tolerance tight, And you hold up the block to a sliver of light. How close did we come, before we both left? Just a red hair's breadth. There's a Starrett steel rule in a smear of way-oil, And a ghost in the spindle that the numbers ignore. The machine only measures what friction can spoil, But the flesh always knows when it needs a bit more. The thumb reads the drag before the mind reads the dial, We pretend it's all science, at least for a while. But what is the space where the cylinder binds? The gap that the blueprint just barely defines? When the fraction is useless, the tolerance tight, And you hold up the block to a sliver of light. How close did we come, before we both left? Just a red hair's breadth. The kings are all dead, and their elbows are dust, We surrendered the palm to the shadows and rust. But deep in the shop, where the surface is ground, The oldest gauge in the world can be found. When the calipers fail and the zero won't set, We reach for the last piece of human we kept. Such a delicate thread. Just a fraction of copper and red. How close did you come to a beautiful fit? You almost touched it. You almost did.