T he feeling is all too familiar – your eyes open and you feel awake from the inside out. The only hanging traces of sleep being: the taste of mint in your mouth – and the feeling of sandpaper behind your eyes.
It’s just about half past four – and I’m up all over again – after falling asleep at 2. I should really stop doing this – if only by virtue of the fact that it’s becoming an all too typical way of me starting my blog entries. I’d hate to get predictable – but then again, who isn’t.
I’m overcome with an impulse to write – it could be words or it could be music; but the feeling of being awake at this time – is a lot like the time itself.
It’s in-transit. Two steps too far from the night and three steps too close to the morning. Write words – what about? ; And write music – what for?
Unlike most people – I don’t ask myself the big questions when the lights are out. I don’t think I’ve asked myself those ones in a long time anyway. Maybe I’m otherwise occupied. Maybe, I just don’t care.
The special thing about tonight though – was a dream that I had – that was more vivid than most. I remember while I was studying a lot of Philosophy – ‘dreaming’ was a recurrent theme that was used to indicate the fallibility of human perception. “How do you know you’re dreaming/you could be dreaming right now/so how could you know anything?” – anyone whose seen the Matrix has been over the:– “Have you ever had a dream so real..” so on and so forth.
Though I understood the argument in principle, I never did agree with it on a personal level – only because (and this is by no means a logical argument) of a very distinct difference that I felt in the texture of my dreams – as opposed to the texture of reality. This particular dream tonight, however, was as close as I’ve come to being more or less convinced that I was awake.
The setup was simple – I was in a room with two drummers I know [names withheld, I bet no one will ever guess]– one of them was on a kit and the other one was on a piano – and I was standing with my bass. There was music playing through overhead speakers somewhere and I can’t remember what it was now, but the drummer on the kit was playing along with brushes – while I was standing alongside the one on piano – and the two of us were looking at some sheet music trying to make sense of it. All of a sudden, the room begins to get colder – and darker. Rapidly.
I know this room like the back of my hand – so I put my bass down – and I walk to the switchboard and I start hitting the switches. I want to put the lights on and the fan off. I can still feel the plastic on my fingers – the capacity for the human mind to preserve sensation is something that blows my mind every day. No lights come on and the fan won’t go off.
The room’s beginning to turn a shade of dark you cannot find in cities - and I’m stumbling and tripping over things. I tell them I’ll go put some lights on outside and I fumble out. What was an uncomfortable cold breeze of the fan – has become an icy chill. I walk to the next set of light switches and I start hitting at them frantically. Nothing changes – but the fan gets faster. Deafeningly, so.
I’m beginning to fluster and I reach in my pocket for my keys and the little torch on it – I fish it out and start holding the button down like it’s going to save my life. The pocket torch won’t work either and my confusion’s begun to evolve into panic.
It’s beyond pitch black – the fan stops, the music’s gone and my heart’s begun to race.
And then that’s it.
It holds like that for about a minute – and hangs there – with nothing more than an acute awareness of itself;
I finally snap out of it and I'm up. My heart’s not in my chest – if anything, it's beating slow. I reach over and hit the lights. Tonight’s a lost cause.
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I remember watching that movie – ‘A Waking Life; I remember when the protagonist asks one of the experts in the movie how to tell if he’s having a lucid dream; the expert asks him to try hit a light switch.
Why?
Our minds are capable of a lot while we’re dreaming – all sorts of flying and fucking.
However, we never did get a good hold of the brightness controls.
Lighting – it seems – is not our forte’.
You can jump off a skyscraper – but you can’t crank the dimmers.
It’s just something we can’t do.
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It's an hour later than I started.
4am: An empty canvas for your creativity – it’s just no fun if your brushes blow.
