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Dreams and Quiet Voices #3

I woke up yesterday haunted by a sweet, sorrowful song that is relatively unfamiliar to me.

Sleep studies have shown a few interesting things in (relatively) recent years, one of which is the idea that while humans naturally sleep for 8 hours, a pattern emerges when distractions of artificial lights and alarm clocks are removed, where the sleep occurs in two four-hour stages, and that it’s a modern invention to think we should sleep through the whole night. This pattern is referred to as Biphasic Sleep.

Album Cover, This Mortal Coil

The theory goes that artificial light, a recent addition to the world, keeps us up long past the sunset, when our natural circadian rhythms start winding us down for bed. A hundred years ago, so this thinking says, it would be quite natural to wake up in the middle of the night, lie awake (relatively) for an hour or two, then slip back into sleep (NIH article).

That hour or two is an interesting time, cognitively. It is a creative time, half-conscious, where ideas come, or we solve problems. Or we spend it making love. I am more curious about what is happening in our minds and consciousness as we bridge the two deep sleep cycles. The powerful dreams come just at the beginning of this waking period. So too do these times when I run, over and over, a song track in my mind. It comes unbidden, and has a life of its own, and I am simply here to understand why.

Which makes this song, ‘Song To The Siren’ by This Mortal Coil, interesting. It’s one I recently added to my rotation, but that’s not unordinary.

Song to the Siren, by This Mortal Coil. Press play to listen

Why this one?

First, it makes the hair on my neck stand up listening to it. I am overcome with a powerful feeling of loss and nostalgia. The halcyon days of youth become a faded dream I just woke up from. Half-memories, half promises; of heartbreak and hardship. I don’t even know the words, but the feeling is always there, as soon as the song starts playing, and long after it ends. A timeless state. Just like the minutes and hours at the end of a sleep period.

The first thing I do usually when this happens is listen to it in the morning, right after meditating. I listened to this one on single-song repeat for hours. Its mystery slowly unfolds though I am still at a loss for why my subconscious singled it out. It begs the question: what is happening in my life that this is a message for me now, from my deeper self? I am on my own in a foreign country, dealing with the vagaries of noise pollution and a community that cares deeply about some good things, but not at all about things like health standards, building codes, or peace and quiet.

Sometimes it is just a feeling, a mood. Nothing more.

This song came to me through a MasterClass I was watching by David Lynch, talking about the creative process and filmmaking. He wanted to use it for ‘Wild At Heart’ but it was out of his budget… but he loves this song, so I listened to it. And it is very Lynchian… moody, mystical, dark but soft.  I am in pursuit of my own creative forces, particularly in writing fiction, and I have been practicing thinking about mood in new ways. During my photography career I was very focused on concept and technical skill, but not so much on mood. I am trying it on as a worthy pillar for good fiction and good storytelling. So I have set myself up to try to feel it, like David Lynch does. He talks about ‘falling in love’ with an idea. I guess this song is the memory of that love. It resonates with me as I emerge from a yearlong period of mourning for the end of my own marriage.

What is it we lose, when we forego this period of trance-like deep creative half-dream? I believe this is the time we integrate our conscious thoughts with the deep well of subconscious information processing we do all day, every day. We clear out the garbage, tidy the house, connect our will to circumstance, and ask ourselves for help. This series about dreams and quiet voices is an exploration of my own trance state, and what I can learn, and how I can benefit from paying attention to it.  For now, I will simply feel the ethereal, moody dream that I seem to gravitate towards at this time in my life. I will give it time and space to be. So it is!

More from this series:
Dreams and Quiet Voices #2
Dreams and Quiet Voices #1

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Dreams and Quiet Voices #2

I have learned to listen to the songs in my head. They are my subconscious telling my conscious mind some truth about how I feel, at the most fundamental level. The song running around like a wild horse in the fields of my mind all night, in my dreams, was a cover of ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’ originally by the Police, covered by Jacob Collier, aka, DJesse.

The song is such an enthusiastic and upbeat declaration of love, of the magic of feeling in love, or an expression of the muse, the experience of the muse in the life of an artist. For me, this has been the paradigm of what love is, since childhood. The poets speak of it (Rumi, Browning, Yeats, St. Cloud); musicians sing about it especially rock, in modern times. The idea of love or romantic love has been reinvented in living memory, through pop music and pop culture, fetishized, enshrined, pedestalized, and worshipped as we look for something to take our moral center in the absence of organized faith.

So love has become something of a mystic and holy state, in the minds of our poets and artists. And me, apparently. I take it as a good sign that I am moving past 2 years of heartbreak, the end of a long relationship and marriage, and the new awakening to the fact that all things are possible for me except the one I had committed to for the rest of my life. This happened against my will. But so be it, such things shape us, and, after many months of spinning in circles, eventually I got so much more out of doing the work to get here: clear on goals, strong and fit, and working on my passions and my own goals, both material and immaterial. I am loving my life right now.

So, even though this was in my head for a brief time, and it was a song that is in my rotations (meaning I listen to it semi-daily), it is still a sign that I am strong, and that possibilities are opening for me. I have come through my long dark winter of heartache. I am in touch with the joy of excitement about the world, and about amazing people I can meet. I am once again able to see the delight in getting to know another person, deeply. Like another song about this says, ‘I Will Survive‘ Halelujiah!

More from this series:
Dreams and Quiet Voices #1

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100 q’s: Think like Da Vinci

Good things from the 90’s #1

As part of an ongoing project to find good and useful information in books written before smartphones, social media, and the widespread internet, I’ve been reading an old book ‘How to think like Da Vinci‘ by Michael J. Gelb. Like the whole series, this one is a bit dated, first published in the 90’s. In other words, a different world, but perhaps one that we would do well to remember. In this other world, appropriately read from print on paper, we are reminded to be better and that we are responsible for our own experience of reality.

Da Vinci is held as a pinnacle example of enlightenment thought, the quintessential ‘Rennaisance man’ or homme de Renaissance. Interestingly enough, Da Vinci was a secular, non-partisan intellectual, and was just as happy offering his services to brutal militant leaders like the Medici’s, as to the Church, or even foreign nobles from France, considered enemies of his home cities in Italy. For this reason, perhaps, his works were less finished, and less acclaimed in his lifetime, though he was recognized in his day.

I just completed his first principal: Curiosita: the idea that we can understand and learn by asking questions, even if we do not have the answers right away. This exercise consisted of writing down 100 questions, all in one sitting. Whatever pops into your head. Of course some of them will be mundane, or even funny. “How much longer do I have to do this’ is a perfectly good question to write down. In fact, the first 20 questions tend to be obvious, and therefore not the most profound. The middle section of 21-80 yields some gems, and themes emerge. And then, 81-100 can get deep, and tend to be the most soul-searching.

After the 100 questions, the exercise tells us to pick our top 10. Pick based on themes, but the key is to get down quickly to what matters most. These then are recorded and become a resource to remind you of what you are most interested in, and keep your mind engaged.

The exercise goes on, and the practice of writing down questions turns to a large physical phenomenon, such as ‘birds in flight’ or ‘the body’ or other rennaissance themes, then you choose your own. Then you journal in a day about a theme, noticing things related to that theme, for example: my body in contact with the physical/material world.

I do not believe that there is an App for everything. I think certain things are antithetical to the experience of working with your smartphone. Meditation is one (and yes, there are good meditation apps but I question if the user actually gets the same benefit through an app as through a retreat), and these longer-view intellectual exercises are another. So, in the spirit of transparency and authentic discovery, here are 10 best questions taken from my 100:

‘What will happen if I allow my mind to fully come into it’s own (not just turn it off)?’

‘How much joy is it possible to fit into the life that remains for me?’

‘What can I get rid of in my life to be more successful, full of joy, and fulfilled?’

‘How can I write a book as good as “The Overstory” by Richard Powers?’

‘Will Humanity survive the next 100 years? The next 1000?’

‘What are the things on my death bed, that I look back on to say I have lived a full and good life, and touched greatness?’

‘How do I experience the nature of all reality, that it is all impermanent?’

‘How can I stay connected to the highest truth, even in a chaotic life?’

‘What does everyone else know for certain that I know isn’t true?’

‘What cause outside of myself can I willingly give my efforts to, without resentment or reservation?’

‘What are the mythologies for older men that remain open for me?”What does it mean to age?’