Fast, Slow, How Do You Know?
What does fast mean? Or slow? Seems like a terribly relative distinction. There is a freak of a star discovered in 1961 by Antoni Pryzbylski (say je-bel-skee, one of the all-time great names) with a still inexplicable elemental nuclear recipe that is "rapidly" rotating. Scientists this spring determined the speed to be one rotation every 188 years. (?!) As always, I’m trying to make sense of this in human terms; for instance, a major league fast ball is 100 mph, so a batter has about 400 milliseconds to decide what to do. Blinking takes between 300 and 400 milliseconds. Super fast. Almost two centuries to pirouette? Slacker star. Who calls that fast?
On Memorial Day this year, I was standing on the roof of Fenway Park with my buddy Wily who flies F-16s for the Vermont Air National Guard. We were up there because he was directing the flyover of planes at the end of the national anthem. As precisely as possible, the words "And the home of the brrraaavve…” conclude with the roaring of four Viper turbofan engines plowing through space. Since the jets are going five miles a minute, it’s a tricky dance, with Wily coordinating the song duration from rehearsal with the tower at Logan International Airport with the lead pilot Dan "Gump” Finnegan, who is doing "an east west bowtie hold" north of Hanscom Air Base.
So it’s a rhythm thing too. We average 60 to 100 heartbeats a minute. The national anthem from the last eight Super Bowls has averaged a minute and 56 seconds, which is about the time frame Wily was working with. If you are doing CPR, don’t sing "The Star Spangled Banner.” Sing "Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees. It’s the correct 103 beats per minute. "Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen is the same tempo. Just saying. Human hearts are fairly slow, but they do have a steady rhythm.
In October 1944, a professor set up an experiment in a lab in Dublin to demonstrate fluid dynamics using a funnel filled with asphalt that looks solid but is actually a very viscous fluid. It has dripped once is 69 years. The goop is two million times more viscous than honey. But hey, rhythm. Seriously boring rhythm. In human terms, no rhythm at all.
What holds all this together? "Man is the measure of all things,” according to the smart guy Protagoras from 2,400 years ago. Stars spin. Bees making that honey have wings beating 230 times a second. Wily and his pals stroll through the atmosphere at speeds over Mach 2 when they are off leash. That's humans doing 1500 mph. I hit 57 once on my bike and it felt like Mach 2. My fast is his pokey. Those fastballs are unhittable unless you are Mookie Betts. Phish sang the national anthem once a cappella in a minute and 37 seconds. Radical relativism is the catch phrase, so let’s just agree: it’s not the tempo but the funky rhythm. It’s not the speed; it’s the heartbeat. Timing is everything. Make your entrance at the proper moment, especially if your ride is a jet. Turn before the tree. Don’t miss that wave. Keep breathing.
