Psychic mechanics of a recorded track

“…Prince alone in the studio It's 3 am.
Prince hasn't eaten in 18 hours
Dinner's burned on the stove
But Prince, he doesn't even know
Prince alone in the studio
It's 4 am.
And he finally gets that guitar track right
And it's better than anything any girl could ever give him
Because Prince is alone
Prince is alone
Oh Prince, you are so alone
And when it's all complete
He feels like a hunter on the street
And when it's all complete
”He feels like a hunter on the street.”

Smog, Prince Alone in the Studio

Within the stark solitude of the headphones, in the somewhat agonizing confines of the dry room and the acoustic partitions, in that sonic void that conveys a disquiet so similar to the sensation of flying, the musician awaits the moment to enter and record. A well-placed first note is essential for the song to continue. If the intro is poor, everything starts all over again before it has even begun.

All his efforts are now focused on tuning his mind to a crystalline frequency, synchronized with what he needs to touch at that precise moment. He avoids the muck, those interferences of the ego as subtle as the flapping wings of a small, faded insect, along with the whims of being just another face in the crowd. He searches within himself for that crucial concentration of the marksman or the athlete, that ability to become both arrow and target, to hone his aim without losing fluidity, letting go, without ceasing to enjoy the unique moment.

The musician hopes that a certain kind of honesty will surface in the few seconds or minutes of his performance, flowing imaginatively alongside the background music, composed by the other musicians. He hopes it will ripple, laden with artifice, like a river carrying living and dead things after a flood. There's a sensory highway in this unnatural search for naturalness, in this pursuit of grace—that's just how it is. It manifests as something rising through the veins, from the gut to the brain, taking over one's inner space, then dissolving, and one must begin again to conquer it. There's a meaning to existence there. Something that answers the question, "Who am I?"“

Outside, on land, ten thousand leagues away from that underwater world, from that capsule lost in infinite space, the other musicians and the sound engineer chat, more or less attentive to what's happening to him inside, trying to remain indifferent and bored, hiding their impatience with the solitary fellow in there, with their jokes and conversations about any other subject. Someone hums the song being recorded, tinkering with it on any instrument, preparing for their turn, their alpha and omega moment, searching for new ideas that hadn't occurred to them before. That's the other routine that recording an album becomes. The process of making a take usually seems much longer than it actually is. The goal, the idea of completion, exists, but it's best if it remains outside the recording studio. Prepare the track, do one take and another take and another track and double-track…

In the headphones, the click track ticks off the waiting bars, another countdown. It's very strange because the sound that now sends shivers down our musician's spine (even provoking a certain voluptuous tremor) is perceived simultaneously as something accidental, instantaneous, and ephemeral, yet somehow destined to remain suspended in the air forever. We don't know if that will actually be the case (or if, as they say, the echoes of a recording studio eventually fade away completely, absorbed as heat by the walls). But, if this is the good take, it will be recorded and perhaps later become a small piece of an album launched into the vastness of the world. In doing so, it will achieve a certain contemporary form of eternal weightlessness. Yes, it's very strange, and there's still no consensus on what's happening in there. The most plausible explanation is that it's simply two different times overlapping.