Music nonstop. All through the night, until unfortunate sunrise.

Now I am certain it is real. I have not been hearing music from another apartment, or from a car parked outside. At times it sounded like Levon Helm hurling “Evangeline” into the San Francisco Opera House. At other times it was a nondescript vamp of Robert Plant wailing over a Zydeco band (which would be a hell of a sound, by the way). At no time was it so perfect a version of a song that I could trust it for what I wanted it to be. It sounded like something to which one or all of the stuffed animals would dance. This, I thought, was the music they played when I was asleep or not around. But I was present and wide awake, so they lay idle as the music played on, out of their control.

I might understand what causes this. The music is formed by a combination of devices: a Honeywell air filter, a Lasko box fan, and another room fan bequeathed to me by the woman who used to live upstairs. The last fan is intended to stand on a pole and revolve at about a 45º angle, but the pole broke so the fan sits on the floor. It is not attempting to revolve, so that potential of the decapitated fan grinding against the surface of the floor contributes nothing to the phenomenon.

The phenomenon is this: If any one of these devices is turned on it causes vibrations in the air and on the surface of the floor. These vibrations create droning sounds. These alternating drones intermingle, rubbing against each other and creating intervals of tones and random pitches. I don’t know precise pitches but the fans and air filter seem to stay pretty close, within a range of about a major 6th. I don’t think it reaches a major 7th, since I don’t remember hearing any leading tones or unresolved dissonances. These pitches bump and grind against each other, creating genuine music.

I proved it by turning off all the devices. With the silence of no devices turned on I wrapped my head in a pillow. I heard nothing. No droning pitches or contiguous, non-dissonant shuffling of notes at play, independent of each other. I heard no approximately-formed melodies of Cajun standards or Bluegrass hits.

This silence might sound divine for someone trying to win some sleep for the first time in days but that silence opened up the wall between sleep and what can make it impossible here: Instead of music I heard everything the fans and the filter are there to obscure: occasional car horns honking, people running past screaming, the rough and tumble sleep-thrashing of a neighbor upstairs or downstairs.

When I turned even one of the fans back on I wrapped my head in a pillow and the music resumed. With only one fan active it took a form of a cantus firmus. The Lasko box fan in the hallway sang and (in my mind) danced, waiting for the Honeywell air filter on the far side of the room. I turned on that filter and polyphony returned, this time sounding like music for a rave or a mosh pit, not that I would recognize those musical genres from clubbing experience.

It is impossible for me to sleep through or ignore this ephemera because that the music actually becomes louder when I wrap my head in a pillow. You would think the pillow might mute or at least muffle the sound but it somehow works a conductor. I also think my ears themselves have some aural contours that further bring out the sounds of the vibrations, like I have a radio transceiver in my head.

My goal is not to let this drive me insane. Instead I intend to capture it. I don’t know how to make the field recorder or any of my suite of microphones do my bidding in this pursuit but I’ll start with simply placing a protected set of mics next to my ears and under the pillow wrapped around my head.

Alan Lomax would be proud, but only if I can pull this off.

This music is real. I was wide awake enough last night to prove it. Now I want to capture that sound.