Drone In These Dog Days

These days, I try to fill my time during the day. Not with anything, mind you. I want the pages of the calendar to flip and fall to the floor, like in old movies. I'm not depressed--just impatient. Since I cannot catalyze the effects of the stem cell procedure, I have to bide my time and wait.

This is immensely frustrating, and sometimes my toes tap the ground like an impatient kindergartner. My sight still bobs back and forth, so reading is more of a chore these days, and my balance still thwarts my legs at, literally, every turn. So, until my symptoms become more normal, or at least level off after the trauma of chemotherapy, I must wait. And wait. And wait, as the unseen narrator's voice in Casablanca says.

Earlier, I didn't know what to do with myself. Today, as on most days, the afternoon made me sleepy. Luckily, I made a wise choice not to take my Provigil, which is an "anti-sleepiness" pill that really makes it nearly impossible to fall asleep. After I woke up, though, I still didn't know what to do. I could have gone back to sleep, but I'm not depressed, so I actually could not have. What soothed my mind was music, but not of the soporific variety, nor of the histrionic, explosive type. No, it was drone that did the trick.

I refer not to a Don DeLillo-ish, ambient hum that acts like a sedative, but to a sustained buzz that keeps you awake but doesn't annoy you. A good example of this is The Velvet Underground's magnificent, epic "Heroin." It has only two chords (for most of it--there's a third at the climax), but they are more than enough to fill the space. As Lou Reed keeps punctuating the song with them on his electric guitar, drummer Moe Tucker's tribal drumming punches through the chords until it sounds frantic. Of course, there's the more in-your-face effrontery of the band's "Sister Ray," but that song urges you to pay attention, and that's not what I'm going for just then.

Drone music does not have to poke you in the ears constantly for its efficacy to be felt. Instead, it's content to lie back and be, confident that you'll stay awake. Perhaps the standard by which I measure this kind of music is Kraftwerk's nearly 23-minute "Autobahn." It replicates perfectly the phenomenon that any good 15-year-old Driver's Ed student knows as "highway hypnosis." It's 23 minutes long, but it sounds, to me at least, like a whimsical pop song. I don't mean this in the Joanna Newsom sense, because she annoys me. With her caterwauling and erratic shifts in dynamics, I could never be hypnotized by her. Kraftwerk, however, might as well be spinning a pocket watch in front of my eyes, because I get completely entranced listening to "Autobahn."

Both "Autobahn" and "Heroin" drone successfully, but in very different ways. Kraftwerk, like the German literalists that they are, repeat the same figure of notes over the lyrics, "Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn," which I assume countless people have taken to be a Beach Boys-ish "Fun fun fun on the Autobahn." They're wrong wrong wrong, though, and don't realize that Kraftwerk is really saying, "We drive, drive, drive on the Autobahn." Or something close to that. I don't speak German, and I'm too lazy to Google the literal translation, but that's the gist. All the while, an A Clockwork Orange-type sibilation rides on top of, and underneath, the quiet rustling and subdued whistling of the other instruments. The song sounds like, well, driving down a long highway with your windows up, then down, then up again.

"Heroin" opens like a reluctant, blooming flower. It doesn't want to open, but the drums almost overtake the song with relentless pounding. This doesn't happen, though, because each possible crescendo stops abruptly right before it seems to be on the verge of explosion. Instead, we hear a prospective implosion that never comes. Ever time that it sounds like a loud bang is around the corner, the song stops. There's no BANG, but there is a hint of collapse. It never happens, though. Then it starts again. Then it ends, after over seven minutes.

During the day, I prefer Kraftwerk's brand of drone to The Velvet Underground's. This probably sounds counterintuitive, but to me it makes sense, especially with respect to late afternoon and late night. I need a continuous, pulsing stream of sound to sustain me during the day, whereas at night it helps to get poked every once in a while, especially after a day of fighting lethargy.

I wonder if, like Whistler in Sneakers, I could successfully identify a stretch of road by its whoosh. I doubt it, but I might be able to come close.

R