It's Sunday this morning. I spent most of the night unable to shut off the ol' brain and trying to convince my body that it wasn't actually awake time-- it's not, brain! it's not! Now, SLEEP. DO IT.-- even though it gives me serious side eye and says, if you say so... Body and mind finally relented around 4:00 which-- and I knew this would happen-- translated to a "nap" to my brain and I was up again at 7:30. Cuss. I told Sean I woke up playing an arrangement of a song from Jurassic Park. Like, I took a theme and was playing some kind of stupid harmonic line or accompaniment if someone were ever to want to sing a solo of it, and, wearily expressing my incredulity and exasperation, said to him, "that's... not what I want to be working on. That is not a project i want to pursue." Like, why? Why, brain.
(Also, I am reminded of this video clip I once saw)
Sean then told me that sometimes he lies awake at night planning something, mostly designing or constructing a thing, and he has to put a stop to it in order to allow himself to fall asleep. He has to somehow let his brain know this is NOT something it needs to remember, so he'll intentionally direct himself down a bad road. He says he sabotages the project by, for example, putting a Mickey on it. Like, a Mickey Mouse. And then he'll be like, well this is stupid, and he can walk away. This tickled me immensely, because, what a freak. And, what freakS. It could be different with music, but I'm going to try to implement this tip. So the next time my brain is fruitlessly pursuing something at the cost of sleep I'll just start, I dunno, pounding up and down on the piano up or something. Or maybe continue the arrangement but on, like, a recorder.
3 comments:
One word: accordion.
Posts like this make me realize that I am most definitely NOT an artist. But it made me laugh.
Also, I thought EVERYONE had insomnia the same way I do-- obsessing over the worst/stupidest things I've ever said to anyone I've ever met! That's not what you do??? In fact, there's a line from Third Eye Blind's "Narcoleptic Slide" that sums it up perfectly:
And there's a demon in my head that starts to play
A nightmare tape loop of what went wrong yesterday
That's me when insomnia hits. Fortunately, I'm so perpetually tired these days that this is rarely a problem...
Insomniaaaa! I think I have said enough stupid things in my life that I can more easily let them go in the wind like a floating stupid feather never to be seen again. For me, i just can't get my brain to switch off. What I'm thinking about can be so random but there's something about nighttime brain that is a special kind of demon that i know wouldn't bother me were it daytime. (speaking of demons) Last night I woke up at 4:00 because I had a crazy apocalyptic nightmare and then thought I heard Julian crying (which wasn't real) and that sent my brain down all kinds of weird paths to keep me up for hours. yay.
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