there's a song i can only hear properly at 2am. i've tried it at other times. it doesn't work.
it's not a sad song, exactly. it's not a late-night song in the obvious sense. it's just a song that requires a specific state of consciousness that 2am reliably produces and noon reliably doesn't.
what 2am does to listening
at 2am, the critical faculty is tired. the part of you that evaluates and categorizes and compares — that part is running on low power. what's left is just the receiving. you hear things you don't hear during the day because you're not busy deciding what to think about them.
i've been thinking about this at this blog — the relationship between state of consciousness and what you're able to receive from music. it's not just about being tired. it's about what tiredness removes.
the recording that knows
the song i'm thinking of has a specific quality in the low-mids that i can only hear at 2am. during the day, it sounds slightly muddy. at 2am, it sounds like warmth. same recording. different ears.
the sound experiments has been working on this kind of thing — the way recordings carry information that only becomes audible under certain conditions. it's not mystical. it's just that our perception is context-dependent in ways we don't always account for.
the songs that know what time it is
some recordings are made for specific times. not intentionally, necessarily — the maker might not have known. but the recording knows. it has a time of day built into it, the way certain paintings have a light built into them.
i've been trying to make something like that. something that only fully works at a specific time. i don't know if i've succeeded. i can't tell from the inside.
more on this at culture and the work — the places where i'm working through what it means to make something that knows things you don't.