I fell asleep again in the exercise machine while doing my upsidedown back stretches. I woke up with a massive headache. No surprise there considering half of the blood in my body was probably in my head. My feet had long since fallen asleep. I was way beyond the pins and needles stage. I couldn’t even feel them. Anyways, strangely enough it wasn’t the headache that woke me up but the ventilation system kicking on.

While I was sleeping it sounded like strange music in my dream. I had dreamt that I was walking through the woods and came across a large, old tree that had split right down the middle of the trunk. I was noticing how the knots in the grain looked like faces. Slowly they moved, as if to say something. I stopped and concentrated on them harder because I was about to shit my pants with fear. Then one by one the faces in the wood started singing. It was eerie but incredibly beautiful. I’m not sure how to describe it. It was very smooth and melodic like classical but at the same time dark, using scales and intervals I’ve never heard before.

pAfter I awoke I still heard the music but as I slowly regained consciousness I was able to recognize the “music” as the sound of the ventilation system. I closed my eyes again and tried to hear it as the strange music. As I concentrated I could visualize the white noise and pick out different timbres within it. After a while I could isolate the different components of the sound. I’d focus on one until I memorized it then hum it out loud repeatedly. I did this with about four different parts and then stopped because I couldn’t keep track of all the parts beyond that. I cranked the wheel on the exercise machine and pulled myself to the upright position. When I stood up everything went purple and white and I almost threw up. Slowly I staggered over to my desk where I had a digital voice recorder. I quickly hit ‘record’ and hummed the parts, one at a time, into the recorder. After I finished I reviewed them and felt satisfied that I accurately captured them. I stopped and listened to the ambient sounds again and it was gone. I couldn’t hear the parts anymore. My brain had snapped out of it and would not allow me to hear it as anything other than machine noises.

That night I recorded all the parts into Pro Tools using the random and limited assortment of a xylophone, harmonica, acoustic guitar, and synthesizer. When I was satisfied with the parts and played them together for the first time I felt terrified, as if I had just accidentally killed a kitten. Then a few seconds later I calmed down a bit and all of my hairs stood on end. I had recorded the music from my dream. Not sure if it’s Red Quiet material though. We’ll see.

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