When I Can't Sleep
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Artist:
I have a love/hate relation with Sleep. I would love to sleep but Sleep just hates me to death... I envy people who can find sleep at will. Nothing I do will coax Sleep toward me. I'm morbidly curious about everything to do with sleep: I bought "The House of Sleep" by Jonathan Coe only because its title bore the fiven letter word. I went to see "The Science of Sleep" for the same reason. Then there is the infinite vortex of the i-web which shows me things like this bed.
The Lomme Bed is the future of bed. It's literally a capsule which a touch of a button generates a protective field, blocking noise and glare to substitute those enemies to natural sleep with serene light and soothing sound. I almost forgot. It's got an iPhone interface which allows you not only to play music inside your cocoon but also control all its features. -- Click here for more details.
Alas, not even the Liechstenteinian slumber wonder will make Sleep fall for me. So I console myself with the music of my "white nights" as the French call them. Nina Simone has a place of choice in my nocturnal listening... Here's another lady who entrusted Nina with the same gift of solace.
Locating MOG account...
Comments (15)
I guess we have another thing in common then. ;) I can't buy a good night of sleep if my life depended on it. Rarely am I asleep for 02:00, and rarely do I fall asleep within an hour, unless I've exhausted myself by staying up until 06u or something, and even then it's not a given. I wonder if the bed would help...
I actually tried falling asleep with music on, not with Joplin or Simone though, might have to give that a go then. ;)
sleep is also an enemy of mine, at times. Not as bad now as it used to be, but still I don't get to sleep like I would like to. When I was younger and told to go to bed at a certai time by parents, it would result in my laying there in bed, hours upon hours upon hours. Now, since I'm a Big Boy and able to put myself to bed, I just stay up until I'm finally too tired to go to bed.
I saw somewhere that some people, if they were able to live in a place with no visual cues to time, naturally fall into a 28-hour cycle. I've often wondered if I'm one of them, and since the day is too short, I have to live in a constant state of sleep deprivation before I can fall asleep at night. Then I spend all the next day tired, until sundown when I start to wake up again. bah.
Poor little boy bleu! How about a nice hot cup of herbal tea? When I'm restless at night sometimes I listen to "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns 'N Roses... weird I know, but for some reason it distracts me from my daily troubles and puts me in a good mood for drifting off to dreamland.
P.S. I have never heard the Nina Simone version but "Little Girl Blue" is one of my favorite Joplin songs :)
Welcome to Club Insomnia....
I also have shared your malady in the past, and will probably be revisited by it in the future. Currently, my remedy is to down a grappa, pop a melatonin tablet and do a crossword puzzle (distracting the mind with something pointless) until slumber beckons. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm fucked.
By the way, a perhaps-telling slip in the original post: you referred to "sleep" as a four-letter word. I know your math skills are impeccable, so the amateur shrink in me is wondering what that might mean....
I rarely suffer from insomnia, but when I do I put on some hypnotic kind of music (no lyrics), stuff like Stars of the Lid. Perhaps you could try that.
Try exercise, no stimulants or sedatives, and John Tesh, for a couple of years, and get back to me.
Also, if you can't afford one of those swish Swedish foam beds (and who can?), a pad on top of your bed makes it sumptuous. And invest in a good pillow. I just got one that's designed specifically for side sleepers (among whom I number myself), and it's genius....
When I lived alone and had troubles sleeping I would throw on Moby's Play: The B Sides and that would often help. The music is interesting enough to be pleasant, but is generally lacking vocals it has nothing to really gab your attention so you can just turn your brain off and drift into unconsciousness.
i opened my second ever MOG post thusly:
i have always maintained that a lot of good art out there is owing to sleeplessness. we fancy our artists to be smoldering smokers and driveling drunks (and thank drugs for everything good out of the '60s) but i imagine they're simply some very sleep-deprived and sleepy people.
[my own sleeping disorder] falls along the lines of what Wikipedia tells me is delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS), which is “characterized by the inability to wake up and fall asleep at the desired times, but not by inability to stay asleep.”
SA: Nights are best kept awake...
Groon: I too believe that our post-industrial societies do not abide by the natural rhythm of our bodies... I always feel better when left to drift along my own timing.
HoneyD: Thank you for the kind words. "Sweet Child of Mine" has been known to soothe even the most savage beasts. So why not lulling some tired mind at night... Here's the original by Nina:
Nina Simone - Little Girl [4:15]
Mistee: Is that a name for one of your band
Ivy: Thank you for the kind advice. Will test your pad soon. Right now, I'm skint -- I hoped no one would notice the 4 letter typo/slip
Levek: Merci bien, mon ami. I'll check out your Stars of the Lid after this.
Spike: I think that must be it. It need to exercice and enjoy life more... Sleep will come in due time
Democlez: I also like drifing into unconsciousness...but setting sails to the sea of slumber is the hardest part.
Poe: You open such a vast field with discussion. That said, innumerable works of art have been dreamt before coming into materialisation from Caedmon to R.L. Stevenson, artists have also fed on Sleep and his sister Dream.
nicely contrapuntal, dear boy. i must've fallen from Morpheus' good graces right when i wrote what i wrote. i wonder if a human sacrifice would suffice to make him grant me Sleep again. (;
There was a wicked parody of dear Janis on 30 Rock recently. Also, I'm a total insomniac at the moment. Doing some physical exercise during the day helps. There is no charge for that medical advice.
Still battling against fair Insomnia?
(Good gravy! ... guess that "Insomnia Strikes Again" mixtape did you no good after all...)
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think you and I suffer from the same condition when it comes to sleep.
Maybe a warm cup of herbal tea before bedtime might help.. oh and I read (somewhere) that some exercise as well (not for me, tough -- been there, done that) ...
(Free tip: some hubba-hubba before sleep will get that slumber machinery working perfectly!)
*though