I don’t remember recording it. I don’t remember exporting it. But every six months, when my algorithm feeds me a vaporwave track or I hear the glug of a coffee maker, I search my memory for that file. I open it in Audacity. The waveform looks like a gentle, rolling hill—no loud peaks, no clipping. And then I press play. bubblilities.wav is exactly 47 seconds long. It starts with a low-frequency hum, the kind you hear in a library when the fluorescent lights are about to fail. Then, rising through the static like a submarine breaching the surface, come the bubbles.
bubblilities.wav was the moment I gave up.
At 2:17 AM, exhausted and slightly delirious, I must have leaned too close to the mic. I was probably drinking seltzer water. I was probably humming a tune from a dream I had already forgotten. I hit record, then stopped 47 seconds later. In my fatigue, I went to save the file and typed "Bubbles" and "Possibilities" at the same time.
Not the aggressive carbonation of a soda, but the reluctant, sticky bubbles of a fish tank filter that hasn't been cleaned in a month. Slow. Metallic. Hollow. Underneath the bubbles, someone (presumably me) is whistling a melody that isn’t quite in tune. It hovers between major and minor—a musical approximation of a shrug.
I don’t remember recording it. I don’t remember exporting it. But every six months, when my algorithm feeds me a vaporwave track or I hear the glug of a coffee maker, I search my memory for that file. I open it in Audacity. The waveform looks like a gentle, rolling hill—no loud peaks, no clipping. And then I press play. bubblilities.wav is exactly 47 seconds long. It starts with a low-frequency hum, the kind you hear in a library when the fluorescent lights are about to fail. Then, rising through the static like a submarine breaching the surface, come the bubbles.
bubblilities.wav was the moment I gave up. bubblilities.wav
At 2:17 AM, exhausted and slightly delirious, I must have leaned too close to the mic. I was probably drinking seltzer water. I was probably humming a tune from a dream I had already forgotten. I hit record, then stopped 47 seconds later. In my fatigue, I went to save the file and typed "Bubbles" and "Possibilities" at the same time. I don’t remember recording it
Not the aggressive carbonation of a soda, but the reluctant, sticky bubbles of a fish tank filter that hasn't been cleaned in a month. Slow. Metallic. Hollow. Underneath the bubbles, someone (presumably me) is whistling a melody that isn’t quite in tune. It hovers between major and minor—a musical approximation of a shrug. I open it in Audacity