2020 is just about done, and I can’t decide if it’s been the longest year or the shortest.
Lockdowns and working from home have meant, for a lot of people I think, that our sense of the passage of time has become seriously distorted. Certain stretches of the year – the spring for example – feel like they lasted for months upon months. But then September seems like two weeks ago.
It’s like our large-scale circadian rhythms, the macro-time keeping built into our bodies, has been completely thrown off by the jarring change to everyday life.
It makes me think of Michel Siffre.
Siffre was a scientist who, in the early 1960s, isolated himself in a cave deep beneath the French Alps for two months to see how it would affect his circadian rhythms. He set up camp in the cave, with meagre supplies and artificial light. He slept when he was tired, ate when he was hungry, and read a lot of books to pass the time. He said that he spent a lot of time “thinking about my future.”
I’m sure many of us can relate.
Anyway, Siffre kept track of time by estimating; when he felt that 24 hours has elapsed, he marked down another day. So he was a bit surprised when his team came to get him at the end of the two months, because by his count he still had several weeks left. His sense of time had been disrupted. His team asked him to count to 120 at the rate of one number per second, and it took him five minutes to do it.
If you find yourself in lockdown at the moment, I’d love to help you fast-forward to the end of this spectacularly abysmal year…but unfortunately, this week’s song will only eat up 3 minutes and 28 seconds.
Or, if you’re Michel Siffre, almost 9 minutes.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Yppah, aka Joe Corrales Jr, combines samples and live instruments in a way that adds a human touch to a sometimes robotic genre. His Bandcamp page is a good place to spend your time and money.
2. The opening percussion sounds like someone winding up an egg timer.
3. For most of the song, the bass line steers clear of the root chord, giving the impression that the song could go on forever. It’s only in the final 30 seconds that the bass disappears and we finally find ourselves home.
Recommended listening activity:
Making a holiday paper chain out of Mobius strips.