Ever Fallen into a Time Warp? Here’s the Soundtrack

The French philosopher and Nobel laureate in literature Henri Bergson divided our perception of time into homogeneous time and duration (“durée”). While he understood homogeneous time as a measurable linear sequence of moments, he described duration as a subjective, inner experience—a flowing stream of consciousness. Bergson criticized how language and thought often treat time like space, breaking it down into fixed points. In reality, however, time is movement, a continuous transition that cannot be captured in isolated snapshots.

This fluid, ever-shifting nature of time is something Canadian singer-songwriter Tess Parks seems to capture in our song of the day. The hypnotic instrumentation and ethereal vocals of “Happy Birthday Forever” create an atmosphere where time feels expansive and elusive. Repetitions and blurry sound structures cause past and present to dissolve into one another. Even the song’s title plays with the contrast between fixed moments and continuous flow: While a “Happy Birthday” usually marks a singular point of celebration, an “eternal birthday” suggests an unending cycle, mirroring Bergson’s concept of time as an unceasing movement rather than a series of distinct events.

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• 2020s
• psychedelic
• rock