La Ligne Floue

Lyrics

Remember Sendai? The station platform.
You braced for the shudder.
The lurch that always comes.
But it never came.

They gave us a world of switches.
One, or zero.
True, or false.
The slam of a door, the click of a lock.
A logic of brutal edges.
You are in, or you are out.
The train is stopped, or the train is moving.
No room for the becoming.

But this is the precise logic of imprecision.
A truth with degrees.
The Hitachi H-series gliding from the station.
Not a jolt, but a long, slow bloom of motion.
This is the fuzzy line, my love.
The grace of 'almost'.

It was 1965.
A man named Lotfi Zadeh, out in Berkeley.
He tried to tell them about the space between.
They wanted crisp answers, hard numbers.
They laughed at the name.
But in Japan, they listened.
They built it into the washing machine that doesn't tear the silk.
Into the subway that doesn't spill your coffee.

And this is the precise logic of imprecision.
A truth with degrees.
The Hitachi H-series gliding into the station.
Not a jolt, but a long, slow bloom of arrival.
This is the fuzzy line, my love.
The grace of 'almost'.

How tall is a tall man?
When does a pile of sand become a heap?
Are you happy?
The answer is never just one.
It is point-seven on a Tuesday morning.
It is point-three with the evening news.
You are not a switch.
You are a dimmer.

The doors open.
No shudder.
We were always arriving.
Just a little.
And a little more.