By Aeron Bergman

I put this mini CD into my portable at the Miranda del Ebro station towards San Sebastian.

It quietly began -- a heartbeat. The core rhythm of human and animal life, it is difficult to reduce this phenomenon to a formal event. I immediately began to regret my rather large coffee intake. As my train began to speed up, its engine roar and track pulse drowned out the CD. By the time the train slowed down, the second track was already half over. The sound was of a ragged yet steady breathing pattern -- another core life rhythm. The train sped up again, and a curious mixture occurred, I heard the CD as if someone were breathing into my ears, I heard my own breath, and the train blasting with both higher and lower frequencies, sandwiching the looping natural rhythms.

This experience reminded me of when I had a headcold, my ears feeling full of cotton, the internal workings of my body, heartbeat and breathing, became as loud as the environment around me.

Track three is a really high frequency sine, around 16000 Hz. It seems to reference a medical event somehow.

Later, I listened to this CD at home, in a less saturated environment. The heartbeat and the breathing makes me feel queasy, like I am standing much to close to a dying man and I am unable to help him.

The CD is a recording of someone running a 5,000 meter track and field event. It is unclear whether it was actually a recording of the WR (world record) holder, the artist, or someone unrelated, nor does it matter really.

Formally, the CD is simple, perhaps too simple-- first the heartbeat increases, then the breathing is added, then the sinewave marks the end. However, it sets several ideas in motion that are quite provoking. I cannot decide whether to overlook its dry, classical format to go into its ideas deeper. On the one hand, it shows almost no sense of humor, and is no light touch. On the other hand the uneasyness of it gives an interesting tension. I don't really want to listen to it again, but this is not a bad thing.