Finally, after three or four days of nearly agonizingly languishing meditation on the fate of my latest song, comes the breakthrough I’ve been lusting after: I had gotten up to go to bed, and the moment took me completely by surprise. And at first, I did not even know that it was the missing piece that I sought.

Rising from my chair and extinguishing one of my last cigarette butts in my desk ashtray, I found that I had a melody already in my head, complete with an accompaniment of washing, ethereal rhythm guitar. It was nothing more than background noise; the blips and bleeps that randomly orchestrate themselves into patterns of thought or waves of sound. The type that usually functions merely as a filter through which to perceive the void in front and behind you as the world, as reality, often taking on the arduous task of giving you a rhythm with which to shuffle your feet forward.

And then it struck me: I had a bit of an interesting thing going on… I wondered if I should take a moment to figure out the melody and the chords underneath, so as not to forget it when I awake, seven hours later and a completely newborn human being all over again.

As I considered how best to record this thing without having to actually turn on my digital multitrack recorder, it hit me once more, as if to carry the point home: what if it goes with the thumping, driving, slow groove I’ve already got? Yet again was I assaulted with more forceful, intuitive instruction from within: Turn the fucking recorder on, you idiot! Do not lose this! It is perfect!

I turned on the recorder, hastily gathered together a few effects pedals (after trying to figure out how best to save the current patches onboard the VS-880EX recorder for the drums, without losing the careful nuances I’d already fine-tuned), plugged in an electric guitar, and ran it through.

It fit. Perfectly. The rising melody, like a siren calling from a forgotten time; the cascading, echoed rhythm guitar burbling underneath like waves upon the ocean; the bass, thumping along like exhausted, yet somehow furiously driven oars hitting the water with a great, unified FLONGT.

[SHIFT]+[STORE]. Save Current? Y.

Must leave, go to bed, reboot, so as not to ruin it with overthinking things. Tomorrow, I will begin again.

Poweroff/Restart? 0.

Thomphsss, sleep now.

Downside (working title), sample 1

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