Breaking Rhythm

21 Feb, 2026

I found myself in a soundproof room. The walls were lined with thick foam, swallowing every trace that a different world existed beyond them. In the room there was nothing except a record player and a vinyl already spinning. The needle was down. I didn’t have to intervene. The music had been already playing before I arrived.
Music. What was left of me to do but enjoy it. Well, I didn’t have to make myself enjoy it; it was one of those songs that came naturally. Enjoy it. Maybe I had already been resonating in the same wavelength. The grooves are ingrained in my brain. Brain. You simply didn’t have to think about it. The needle moved effortlessly, just like the melody. The melody. The melody knew exactly what it should do to continue carrying itself forward. The needly knew the path, needing nothing from me. It had no awareness of the enjoyment it was imprinting upon my life. Life. Life. Life.

And with that last breath of life, it stopped playing. I suddenly grew aware of my own thoughts. For a while, I did not notice. The music was still ringing in my head, it was echoing from the depths of heaven and hell. Was it the music? There was never this quiet around here. No music left to soften the noise of being. The air around me thickened. My vision got blurred and the whole light of the world dimmed. Something pressed against my ribs from all the angles I had never noticed before. And my breath returned smaller each time. The space containing me was closing in on me. The space inside me was closing in. The space. The air. I tried to breathe in. But my lungs resisted. The pressure deepened. Deep inside my body. I tried to scream. Was I screaming? The sound didn’t leave my body. My voice box was swallowing the words, erased them before they had the chance to exist.

My pulse didn’t want to leave my skull. It was insistent, and it was heavy, and it was louder than any melody that came before it. A dull rhythm behind my eye sockets, I tried to reach it. Hold it. It resisted.

Only pulse. Only pressure. Only weight.

The weight did not lift off me, but I was no longer feeling it. I was slipping from underneath it. The pulse moved further away. It no longer belonged to me. The struggle faded and my breath loosened. And it was like my limbs dissolved. For a time, my skull was the only part remaining, sounding all hollow and pulsating. Then as I was resting it on the floor, it dissolved as well. I could feel the edges that contoured my body blurring. I felt suspended. The silence was endless.

Then I started hearing the same melody as before. But my senses were playing tricks on me. I wasn’t hearing it. I was merely remembering it. Imagine you have been playing a piano all your life. Then eventually through time and life doing their usual, you stopped. Suddenly you decide you want to check that you still remember. You want to recall your song, or what used to be your song. You begin, hoping your fingers would remember before your mind does. You play the first few notes and, then you think you remember... You gain confidence. But the note is off. You can’t get back in the rhythm, in your old flow. You start from the beginning, again. You are getting the notes wrong. Again.

Just like that, I had been desperately trying to recall the melody, the one which was playing before. In my mind, I was trying to play it from the beginning, hoping that any other gap would naturally be filled. But the notes existed somewhere, forgetting any sense of awareness and intentionality from me.

I started hearing melody again. But I was skeptical this time. No, I wasn’t going to be a fool. I knew better than to trust my body this time. Maybe it was my pulse again. Or my breath was caught somewhere too high in my throat. But no. The sound did not belong to me. I was feeling a vibration, although it wasn’t in my body. It was something that was resisting a movement. I felt a little air resistance, with the little air my lungs could conceive. With the half-sensation I had in my body. Brushing up against the canals of my ears was the sound that I did not know I needed. It was a necessity for me to hear, to listen and to live. But the sound was indifferent to me. As I was moving, it was steady. As I was struggling, it was faint.

The record was still spinning. The needle had not lifted.

It took me a while to understand that the music had not ended. Through my hallucinatory auditions of a song swiftly swung, I recognised the parts that are real. The music was merely interrupted by a scratch on the groove. The needle was traversing a new surface, a surface so new both of us did not get used to, at all. The melody was aggressively (but so naturally) bent out of shape. Such impolite interruptions for a listener like me.

When the sound returned, it did not feel whole again. Notes broke against the ridge like waves breaking into the tetrapods near my childhood home. Nothing could be done to make them whole again. And so, the sound felt fractured, as if it hesitated. And so, the sound did stagger, as if it tried again. I tried so hard to manage, as if I were in charge. And still, where there was music, now there was a gap.

The needle was clueless as to the path it was leading. It followed what lay beneath it, although the path was altered. Sometimes it jumped forward too abruptly, and I, too, understood why it has skipped what could no longer be traversed. Sometimes it caught in the damaged curve and just like the pianist, it repeated the same fragment again and again, without intention. This, too, was music, the needle must have thought. And who was I to contradict that? I was simply happy I could hear my thoughts once more.

The melody was not smooth. It had all the three types of discontinuity. At times, the sound only pauses due to the hollow gap where continuity once lived. At others, the scratch rose like a ridge , forcing the needle to gather all its strengths simply in order to traverse. And then, there were places the needle could not enter at all, unreachable territories sealed by damage.

The needle nearly fell back into the scratch. Sometimes, it passed the ridge quite unsure, hesitant and trembling. Other times it had to recalibrate entirely. But it resumed. After all these discontinuities and turns, the needle began to learn. It was as if it had memory of its own adjusting and combining all the ways just so it could create a sound.

And then I tried to sing along. I knew the notes but somewhere between knowing and producing came a pause. It was a different system based on pauses and fragility. When I searched for my old flow, I found only interruptions, or sounds that came too late. I ran out of breath before the bar even finished. I was searching for words. I was searching for words (words to think, and words to sing) but they came delayed, and it caused me to pause mid-sentence. Mid-verse. Interruption of the meaning. Everything reduced to a single tone. Was monotony all that remained? In order to shape a word right, I had to repeat it again.

Round Round Round

The needle knew what to expect now. It no longer hesitated at the ridge or the scratch. It anticipated the pauses. And to me, they became predictable. So both of us, we eventually learnt to pace ourselves. I was drawing a breath of life into my lungs whenever the pause allowed it.

And so the pauses no longer felt like prison. I no longer feared the pauses. I no longer feared the silence. The needle followed the same wounded path, turn after turn after turn. It did not resist the pauses. It followed the same wounded path, carrying the melody forward in the only way it knew.

And I listened. I was more aware now, of the pauses. And I recognised the effort. But I still listened to this wounded song that now existed. I no longer feared the silence, because I knew that beneath it, there was a pulse and a desire to continue. I no longer feared the pauses, because they were holding the breath I needed.

And I listened to this new melody. More true. More subtle and maybe, more alive. And it was mine.