Sleep

(Unconscious state)
As Requested by Guest Reviewer Debbie



JAMES says:

It takes up more of our life than anything else, unless we’re Yuppies or ‘Beats’, and great recording artists such as Marion, Heavy Stereo and Suggs have been inspired to write songs about it. But how much do we really know about sleep? Sometimes when I was drifting off to sleep, in that odd between time, I used to think that no one ever actually fell asleep, they just lay there unmoving but conscious all night, until we forgot about it each and every morning. But I was wrong, obviously.

There are two types of sleep. Evening Sleep is the big black void of sleep, and it is vitally important to relationships to have similar Evening Sleep patterns. No one likes lying awake in bed while their partner luxuriates in the soft velvety luxury of a deep sleep, but on the other hand no one likes being wakened in the middle of the night to be informed by their significant other that unlike yourself they can’t get to sleep. Surely this news can wait til morning?

Morning Sleep is a different beast, especially when hungover or having a lie in. Here you drift in and out of consciousness, with strange lucid dreams. In fact, most of my best creative ideas come from this period. Or at least ideas which seem great at the time but in the cold light of day unfortunately turn out to be garbled nonsense that would make David Lynch look at you with a mixture of confusion and pity. On the other hand, sometimes you can fall into the most hideous morning sleep traps of all, getting a song trapped in your head, which you only actually know a few lines of. After one particularly heavy session I spent about half an hour in the morning with one verse of ‘Living La Vida Loca’ by Ricky Martin going round and round and round…

Still, sleep is great. When I was a moody teenager I used to think I enjoyed sleep more than anything, and to this day I still try and set aside a good eight and a half hour slot each day for me to catch my z’s within. The effect it can have on your waking life is immense, and the world can seem a simply ripping place with a good stock of nap behind you. On the other hand, as Leonard Nimoy noted in his seminal ‘Spock Thoughts’, ‘do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue.’

Therefore, Hooray for Sleep!

7.8/10