Longer Than the Top of Toronto (at least)
Of course you must have known it was coming up and laughed to yourself. Your little secret. Your little knife in my back.
I'm talking about the final track of Sgt. Abbey and that infernal, delightful, revelatory, ludicrious repeating loop that (to-date) has already passed 35-minutes in length. To be precise, A Day In the Life (proper) ended as I was passing Sherway Gardens. In the time that it took me to run north on the 427, east on the 401 and pull into the Universal parking lot, I listened to nothing but that hidden track. Nothing but. Through rush hour traffic. Through terrible snow conditions on the highways. Everything.
A curious thing. I can't even begin to remember or piece together the last 45-minutes of my life in any chronological sense. That loop-de-loop has completely broken the primary processing centre of my brain. But here's some of what happened and at least a portion of what went through my mind as I listened to it turn over and over and over and over. In no particular order.
- somewhere around the 2-3 minute mark, I think I started to get really into it.
- I flipped and flopped between excitement and genuine dread throughout the track. The loop was so hypnotic and intoxicating that I wasn't sure how I'd feel when it actually and finally stopped. I was a little worried about that. No, I was more than a little worried. I absolutely wasn't ready for it to stop. And then, of course I just couldn't wait for it to stop. These feelings fought it out for most of the drive. I also had real anxiety over how the track would end; Would it be abrupt? Would it fade out? Or would it sooner or later just stop looping and follow through to its conclusion like a bird that broke out of a cage. (This last option probably would've been too much to bear and I would have driven off the road like a crazy person.)
- I know for certain, and it was pretty early on, that I lost track of when the loop started, how it started, how it might end and whether it ever would. Without any melodrama whatsoever, I actually began to have that disorienting sensation of remembering nothing before the loop. The loop was everything. The loop was the only thing in the world and it was the only thing that ever had been. It was the only thing there would ever be. You could see how a person might go insane.
- Doubt, real honest doubt, hit me that this loop was your doing after all. It occurred to me how funny (in a not ha-ha way) it would be if the loop was entirely the fault of my CD player. It is 6-years old after all, and has seen more than 210K of road. It would be a perfect skip, but not impossible. And after the track passed the 30-minute mark, I felt real skepticism that you would have spent this much time looping the track. After all, this is your CD, not mine. And why you'd want to inflict this kind of mental chicken-wing on yourself with every blitz - well, that just seemed like real self-loathing. Why? Why?
- This is the truth, no exaggeration. I actually began to worry about my life and my health. The track never totally turned into white noise and it began to drastically change my breathing. I felt frantic and out of control for large chunks of the drive. All of this, amid rush hour traffic. I began to wonder if this was the thing that would actually precipitate a dreadful accident on the highway (and I had at least one close call.) My brain was entirely co-opted by the loop and I needed at least some small part to maintain the direction of the car.
- As is the manner of these kinds of loops, the sound byte itself turned and twisted and changed so many times in the half hour that I honestly don't know what I was listening to. It started as a song bit, I think, and maybe the singer was singing/speaking something semi-coherent at one point. But then it turned over and over, and I couldn't remember where the phrase started. And then it wasn't words at all, but gibberish. Consonant sounds actually popped out of the sequence, maintained dominance for a while, and then disappeared entirely. I had a clear idea of what was being said for a period, and then suddenly couldn't hear it again no matter how hard I concentrated. There was a spell there where it turned into something really dirty.
So here's the kicker. Sgt. Abbey is the last CD in the changer. And the track hasn't even ended yet. There might be 2-minutes left. There might be 15-minutes left. I'm inclined to circle the block at Victoria Park until it ends just so I can drop the new CDs into the trunk. (In any other situation, I'd just change them now and re-listen to the song I hadn't quite finished. Not this time, boyo.)
Thanks for making Monday morning interesting.
I'm talking about the final track of Sgt. Abbey and that infernal, delightful, revelatory, ludicrious repeating loop that (to-date) has already passed 35-minutes in length. To be precise, A Day In the Life (proper) ended as I was passing Sherway Gardens. In the time that it took me to run north on the 427, east on the 401 and pull into the Universal parking lot, I listened to nothing but that hidden track. Nothing but. Through rush hour traffic. Through terrible snow conditions on the highways. Everything.
A curious thing. I can't even begin to remember or piece together the last 45-minutes of my life in any chronological sense. That loop-de-loop has completely broken the primary processing centre of my brain. But here's some of what happened and at least a portion of what went through my mind as I listened to it turn over and over and over and over. In no particular order.
- somewhere around the 2-3 minute mark, I think I started to get really into it.
- I flipped and flopped between excitement and genuine dread throughout the track. The loop was so hypnotic and intoxicating that I wasn't sure how I'd feel when it actually and finally stopped. I was a little worried about that. No, I was more than a little worried. I absolutely wasn't ready for it to stop. And then, of course I just couldn't wait for it to stop. These feelings fought it out for most of the drive. I also had real anxiety over how the track would end; Would it be abrupt? Would it fade out? Or would it sooner or later just stop looping and follow through to its conclusion like a bird that broke out of a cage. (This last option probably would've been too much to bear and I would have driven off the road like a crazy person.)
- I know for certain, and it was pretty early on, that I lost track of when the loop started, how it started, how it might end and whether it ever would. Without any melodrama whatsoever, I actually began to have that disorienting sensation of remembering nothing before the loop. The loop was everything. The loop was the only thing in the world and it was the only thing that ever had been. It was the only thing there would ever be. You could see how a person might go insane.
- Doubt, real honest doubt, hit me that this loop was your doing after all. It occurred to me how funny (in a not ha-ha way) it would be if the loop was entirely the fault of my CD player. It is 6-years old after all, and has seen more than 210K of road. It would be a perfect skip, but not impossible. And after the track passed the 30-minute mark, I felt real skepticism that you would have spent this much time looping the track. After all, this is your CD, not mine. And why you'd want to inflict this kind of mental chicken-wing on yourself with every blitz - well, that just seemed like real self-loathing. Why? Why?
- This is the truth, no exaggeration. I actually began to worry about my life and my health. The track never totally turned into white noise and it began to drastically change my breathing. I felt frantic and out of control for large chunks of the drive. All of this, amid rush hour traffic. I began to wonder if this was the thing that would actually precipitate a dreadful accident on the highway (and I had at least one close call.) My brain was entirely co-opted by the loop and I needed at least some small part to maintain the direction of the car.
- As is the manner of these kinds of loops, the sound byte itself turned and twisted and changed so many times in the half hour that I honestly don't know what I was listening to. It started as a song bit, I think, and maybe the singer was singing/speaking something semi-coherent at one point. But then it turned over and over, and I couldn't remember where the phrase started. And then it wasn't words at all, but gibberish. Consonant sounds actually popped out of the sequence, maintained dominance for a while, and then disappeared entirely. I had a clear idea of what was being said for a period, and then suddenly couldn't hear it again no matter how hard I concentrated. There was a spell there where it turned into something really dirty.
So here's the kicker. Sgt. Abbey is the last CD in the changer. And the track hasn't even ended yet. There might be 2-minutes left. There might be 15-minutes left. I'm inclined to circle the block at Victoria Park until it ends just so I can drop the new CDs into the trunk. (In any other situation, I'd just change them now and re-listen to the song I hadn't quite finished. Not this time, boyo.)
Thanks for making Monday morning interesting.
posted by J. at 7:45 AM
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