Wait for the Bell
An elevator between floors, where waiting stopped being something you do and became somewhere you live. Eighty-seven seconds, and the button lights up either way.
Lyrics
Interlude
[Low sub-bass heartbeat, slow and heavy.]
[Spoken, close]
I've been standing here so long
the numbers stopped meaning anything.
Down is somewhere behind me.
Up is somewhere I haven't been.
[Pulse.]
I press the button again
just to watch it light.
Like that changes something.
[Distant voice]
It's coming.
[Spoken]
You said that before.
[Distant voice]
I know.
[Heartbeat grows louder.]
Maybe that's all waiting is.
Standing between where you were
and somewhere you can't see yet.
Listening to cables move
behind the walls.
Trusting something
you can't reach
is already on its way.
[Elevator bell.]
[Whisper]
There.
[Doors begin to open. Deep bass swells.]
[Soft sung vocal]
I don't know where this goes...
but it goes up.
[Heartbeat becomes the first beat of the next track.]
Song sheet
How the track is built.
- 52 BPM
- heartbeat pulse at 52 BPM, free time, no drum kit
- suspended and unresolved, patient rather than tense
- suspension ↔ arrival
- an elevator between floors, where waiting has become a place you live rather than a thing you do
- the heartbeat becomes the first beat of the next track
- spoken, close and dry, almost muttered, no singing
- none; one soft sung line at the very end
- none
- none; a single low string swell as the doors open
- sub-bass heartbeat, cable hum behind walls, one elevator bell