It is 4:47 a.m. I woke about twenty minutes ago, with the cord of my earbuds running under my shirt and down to my iPod, which was resting between the couch cushions as I slept. My heart was pounding. The song was Paul Oakenfold’s mix of Paul van Dyk’s “Words (For Love),” from Tranceport. I put that album on to fall asleep, and I did for a while, but now all I wanted to do was combust in place, and die happy. Instead I lay in darkness, opening my eyes but not seeing anything, breathing deeply, meditating. I could feel the blood coursing through me as each song climbed to the slow plateau of clarity and then flung itself upward and off the peak, into ecstacy. I guess that’s trance for you: as close as you can get to doing drugs without doing anything but listening.
When I finished Tranceport, my iPod shuffled to Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans, an album so hinged on his delicate vocals and banjo plucking that it must be the complete opposite of trance; not ecstatic but measured and careful, and the perfect music to bring me down. Now the sky has lightened and I can hear the first birds reveling in their morning ecstasy, the way humans can’t or won’t. And I can’t go back to sleep. All I can think is how grateful I am for music.
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