Alas, poor Sleep, I knew him
The beginning of a new year and I’m resolving to sleep less. Well, not sleep less, per se - but resolving not to resolve to sleep more. I understand that it’s important, but I face the creative quandary that to sleep is to sacrifice other essentials - prayer, writing, music, physical disciplines. When you’re not getting any younger (which will happen to you, I assure you - naturally - and yes, I’m being facetious), you need to sustain your critical disciplines by sacrificing other, superfluous, comforts. For me, sleep seems to be the one.
My wife is a wonder, when it comes to morning discipline. She rises at an unseemly hour. I’d call it ungodly but, she spends quite a lot of it with God, so it’d be nothing short of a misnomer. I, myself, have a limited capacity for such early exertions. It’s not that I don’t respect, or desire them. It’s making peace with a plain and simple truth that my own disciplines are best actualised in the solitude of the evening.
This is complemented by the reality that one of us needs to be up, aware, awake and parenting whist the other is undertaking her somnambulatory preparation for her morning edification. That, as well as the aesthetic congruence of some creative acts that only seem fitting for night. Diving into the sonic landscape of a given guitar pedal, to find the textures and nuances it offers both the player and the listener? Night. A solitary outing to the shed to grapple and toil beneath the bar? Night. Spiritual reading and prayer in the silence only possible when your eleven kids are asleep? Well, that could be morning (as my beloved, long suffering wife proves) or night - but I know myself, almost as well as I know her - and know that the night is only option at this point in our lives. For me, anyways.
Thus, sleep, yes, you were wonderful. Our occasional dalliances have likely kept me both alive, and sane, and for this, I could never thank you enough. But alas, it’s not you - it’s me. And the blank page. And the breviary. And the tape delay. And the barbell. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again.