10:13pm

Two texts sent exactly 24 hours apart. The first iMessage, sent on Tuesday, April the 21st at 10:13 p.m., reads, “Relaxing to play this one.” It is from my older son, accompanied by a video of him playing an acoustic cover of Meshuggah’s song “Straws Pulled at Random.” The song has a kind of polymeter where the riff turns against the beat and the rhythm and accents are always shifting while a steady pulse remains. “It’s almost hypnotic,” he later tells me. It’s this turning against the beat that I reflect on while listening. Is this life captured in a song — the changing pull of directions, the turning against the tide? My son is playing this song while entrenched in final engineering exams at university. He has four that week, but he is relaxing to play this one. Can life be sweet even during finals? Can a song timed right pull us out of ritual, obligation, and the underlying stresses of life? Can momentary joy be found even while under pressure, making room for art? Can we enter…