Look Over There
I don't sleep very well. I toss. I turn. I stare at the ceiling. I count sheep. If I do manage to get to sleep, no matter what I do, I can't stay that way for long. The magic number seems to be 3:00 AM--that's the time some part of my brain decides that it has to be awake. This is the sister time of 3:00 PM, when my brain decides that it really, really wants to be asleep, no matter how much work needs to be done. At 3:00 AM I wake up and become mired in self-recrimination. I quietly blame myself for everything. I replay the days events and think about how all my decisions were bad ones. I replay events from years ago and think about them with regret. It's all totally irrational, but automatic. One part of my brain laments while the other thinks about what a waste of time and energy all this moping is. Of course, that conflict just serves to keep me awake. After several hours I'll wear myself out and slip into some vivid REM sleep.
I don't remember much of the dream, if there even was much, but one day this week--after the hour of grief--I had a brief dream which involved several incidents which had the tone of a horror movie. Mind you, this wouldn't have been a very good horror movie, because the really scary things weren't really all that scary, but the anticipatory dread was the same. I would see a medicine cabinet and it would seem to have non-specific supernatural properties. Maybe it was filled with spirits or something else. It's hard to say because the feeling was never resolved. I would just fix on an object and feel horror. This happened several times until my brain finally came up with a way to disarm the situation.
I--or somebody, it's not really clear--would just say "Dance, dance dance" and suddenly everything was peachy. This being a dream, there was no explanation of why; it was just all better. I would continue along until the next object of dread popped up and then I would dismiss it with my new mantra. It wasn't until I woke up covered in sweat that I made the connection to the Joy Division song. Maybe, in fact, there was no connection. Usually if a dream reflects something of real life it will be something that happened in the last day or so, but I don't think I've listened to "Transmission" for several months--probably sometime right after I saw Control. Instead, I think my brain has just assimilated that phrase and made something new of it. To fix just about any bad situation, it told me, just dance, dance, dance.
Unfortunately I'm not much of a dancer.
And now this week's links.
Here's another left channel/right channel comparison of a band's soundalike songs. This week's formula belongs to Linkin Park.
I stumbled upon this piece of software this week. Doing Autotune one better, it seems to have the ability to change the pitch of a single note in a recorded chord. Now Linkin Park or some other furry-legged demon can play literally anything and it can be rearranged later into something catchy and marketable.
And finally a YouTube video:
I don't remember much of the dream, if there even was much, but one day this week--after the hour of grief--I had a brief dream which involved several incidents which had the tone of a horror movie. Mind you, this wouldn't have been a very good horror movie, because the really scary things weren't really all that scary, but the anticipatory dread was the same. I would see a medicine cabinet and it would seem to have non-specific supernatural properties. Maybe it was filled with spirits or something else. It's hard to say because the feeling was never resolved. I would just fix on an object and feel horror. This happened several times until my brain finally came up with a way to disarm the situation.
I--or somebody, it's not really clear--would just say "Dance, dance dance" and suddenly everything was peachy. This being a dream, there was no explanation of why; it was just all better. I would continue along until the next object of dread popped up and then I would dismiss it with my new mantra. It wasn't until I woke up covered in sweat that I made the connection to the Joy Division song. Maybe, in fact, there was no connection. Usually if a dream reflects something of real life it will be something that happened in the last day or so, but I don't think I've listened to "Transmission" for several months--probably sometime right after I saw Control. Instead, I think my brain has just assimilated that phrase and made something new of it. To fix just about any bad situation, it told me, just dance, dance, dance.
Unfortunately I'm not much of a dancer.
And now this week's links.
Here's another left channel/right channel comparison of a band's soundalike songs. This week's formula belongs to Linkin Park.
I stumbled upon this piece of software this week. Doing Autotune one better, it seems to have the ability to change the pitch of a single note in a recorded chord. Now Linkin Park or some other furry-legged demon can play literally anything and it can be rearranged later into something catchy and marketable.
And finally a YouTube video:
31 Comments:
I loved that Orera clip. Excellent find. Now if we could just find a copy of this.
Though here's a nice blog post about them with some music. That blog itself has some other cool stuff too.
Cool software. Thanks.
.......................................................................................................................................................................................ditto.................................................................................................................................................................................................................... . . ...
ditto.........
i hate it when i remember my dreams. one weird dream can put a david lynch spin on my whole damn day. that being said, i read an interesting article on the Psychology Today magazine web site concerning a new theory about nightmares. the thinking is that nightmares may be programmed sets of mental exercises that enable us to plan for how to deal with unpleasant or even terrifying situations in the real world. if you want to explore this, i found the article through reddit.com, where it should still be archived. i would just send you the link, but my computer gives me nightmares (sorry).
I read that article, but I'm not sure how it would apply to this dream, unless my dream was just preparing me for some non-specific threat. I guess that's possible.
maybe a semantic thing on my part as i tend to define any uncomfortable or disquieting dream as a nightmare. as dreams are almost always allegory and symbolism and of course highly subjective only you could tell if your medicine cabinet dream was a nightmare. i probably would have thought of it as such.
maybe vague, uncomfortable dreams prepare us for a sometimes inexplicable world?
I went through a phase where all I would dream, was the day I had just had... from beginning to end. That was a nightmare of sorts. It was all so familiar and there was a sense of things being terribly wrong. I was a heavy lucid dreamer for a while as a kid. I would force myself to dream about certain things. Now, I am one of those incredibly fortunate people who enjoys the psychotic stimulation of SLEEP PARALYSIS .. which is one of those afflictions responsible for sending people into asylums and onto stakes in centuries past.... It's an interestingly dismal thrill.. sometimes associated with narcolepsy... and geographical location... All you can really do is accept it, and enjoy the feeling that someone dosed you, is trying to get you off and wants to kill you all at the same time while being paralyzed. So.. there is that.
Now that I think about it, I remember a time in my childhood, when I would wake up at the same time every night. I would try to trick myself into looking at the clock much later than I wanted to.. but still managed to look at the same moment. Around this time, I thought I was psychic because I could guess aloud the song about to play on the radio... It wasn't too hard to figure out really... Same 15 songs on 79Q or whatever.... I'm one of the lucky ones who escaped thinking we were capable of such super mental ability... My little brother on the other hand...... gone.
I've been told that I don't really sleep at all. Which would mean that I really DON'T snore.
I've had episodes of sleep paralysis. It hasn't happened in several years, but it would usually happen after my second phase of sleep, just before I would usually wake up. I eventually figured out a way to jump start my ability to move by twitching my head, since that is the only thing that I can move. Sometimes, though, I would have multiple levels of "waking up." That is, I would become lucid and not be able to move and would twitch to wake myself up, but I would still be asleep, so I would have to wake myself up again with the twitching. It's sort of like those horror movies where the person having the nightmare sits upright repeatedly, coming out of several levels of nightmares.
Did you have auditory hallucinations? The loud as fuck-in stereo-in your head kind? I am able to break out o fit with a yelp easier than moving. Creepy stuff... The Predator upon you in the privacy of your own home...
I don't recall any specific hallucinations associated with the sleep paralysis. Sometimes I will get in a state where I drift in and out of the sleep state, and the images from the real world mingle with the images of the dream world, but the dream images never seem real and almost always melt away as soon as I realize that I'm in bed. I have, on the other hand, been startled awake by loud noises that never happened. This is really rare, though.
Somewhat similarly, real noises can make their way into my dreams. This only happens when I'm really, really tired because I am otherwise such a light sleeper that any noise will wake me up. For example, I once woke up with a short yell because in my dream I heard people noises. I live alone, so noises mean that somebody is in my home. The half asleep me decided to scare off the intruder by yelling. Once I did, it slowly dawned on me that I was in a hotel room and not at home. Hilarious.
I have, on the other hand, been startled awake by loud noises that never happened.
That shit happens to me all the time.
dance dance dance to the radio. hmmm. maybe the nightmare is preparing you for some dancing in your near future?
Dancing in my future? That seems truly unlikely.
this dreaming stuff is a long story for me, and i wasnt going to get involved in it, but now i've been thinking about it for a while, so i better write it down.
When i was a little kid (4 - 6 maybe?) I would have a recurring nightmare where i was in a parking lot holding to the hand of my mom and a car would come by and hit her and she would be gone and i'd be standing in the parking lot by myself, then moments later my mom would appear as an angel, and i would know she was dead.
This nightmare was so horrible that i would pray myself to sleep every night, just repeating, please god don't let me have any dreams. Eventually I stopped dreaming altogether.
Then around 14 or 15 i started having what I at first called awake dreams, and later on some kind of lucid dreaming, though now I think maybe the sleep paralysis might be more appropriate, based on the link claire provided.
However, I never saw them as any kind of problem. From the first time, when I was watching TV and the couch suddenly turned into some kind of natural rock water slide, they have been mostly enjoyable experiences that i wish would happen more often and that i could recreate on command.
That first one on the couch lasted what seemed like a second, but as they developed over time, they got longer and longer. At first my mind would just wake up where ever i was and just get out and start walking around. Around this time (thanks to Mr. Castaneda) I started to think of these as some kind of lucid dreams, though the transition was always from awake to my mind being asleep though completely aware of where my body really lay asleep.
Later this separation of awake mind and sleeping body become very distinct and I went through a period of time where i couldnt completely separate my awake mind from my sleeping body, and for example my "mental" legs would be floating up in the air while my "mental" shoulders were still attached to my "real" shoulders asleep on the bed. Eventually i was able to detach my shoulders and actually float about the room, then the house and eventually out of windows.
My favorite was one morning in NYC where i floated out the window and all the way to way above the east river where i could see all the morning dock activity going on. This sound like a regular sort of flying dream but it was not, I was perfectly conscious of my body laying in bed and my mind being awake and i was choosing what I wanted to do.
Not all of it has been lovely birdseye views, many times there was creepy stuff, like strange animals outside the window, or people on the streets around my house that i knew were bad people, or strange children that used to live in my apartment, most definitely nightmarish sort of things, but the experience of being "awake" while this "dream" stuff happens always been so awesome, that it sort of always offsets any sort of nightmare quality the "dream" stuff might have.
Though i've always been sort of like that, like the time me and my friend were getting held up by a bicylcle thief with a screwdriver, i was so amazed by what he was doing, that i didnt realize we were getting robbed and the guy got tired of me going, wow, what do you mean you want our bikes? you are robbing us? you are crazy! wow a real robber! so the guy finally ran off after my friend gave him his watch.
So i've always been sort of like that, reality, dreams, life is a dream, its all just pretty fantastic if you ask me.
But i wasnt like that when i used to have that dream about my mom when i was a kid.
***
anyways, i can go on, but eh, i'm gonna go do something else.
Thanks for letting me share, my name is roberto and apparently i'm a fucking hippie.
I enjoyed this post. Thank you.
My boy has been waking up every morning at 3am on the dot. You and a two year old have much in common. He's not very happy either, at that time.
When I was about 5, roberto the hippie, I also had recurring nightmares about the front of a building that had fallen off in this giant earthquake and me and others were on the 4th floor, or so. The only way we could get down was to pound the floor so that it fell to the next floor. And everybody was out front waiting for us, including my Mom. I was pretty terrified especially because I, for some reason, wasn't helping to pound down the floor. I was too scared, but still.
I think experiencing the type of dreams where you fly around are very interesting. I only had that once, when I was awake, and mushrooms were involved. And I definitely was not in my body but I was laughing too much to tell anybody about it.
So, there, I'm a hippie too.
But others have had that night time thing so I wonder what would happen if you did that when you died. Or would that happen anyway?
Hippie S signing off...
I had a recurring nightmare when I was about 9... The head vampire from Salems Lot was chasing my 1st grade teacher, Mrs. johnson, down my street. She was dropping me off at my house, when her car broke down RIGHT AT THE SPOT WHERE YOU ARE DRIVING THROUGH THE SPOOKY GROVE AND YOU DONT NEED TO BREAK DOWN... I was naked in her car, since we were coming from some event at school where all the children were naked... I knew the vampire would emerge from the treeline-the thickly wooded lane that I grew up on... I ran home, my teacher ran behind me. I reached my front steps and turned to see Mrs. Johnson get whacked as she reached my front porch. I had that dream fro 11 months. I called her and told her about my dream and she assured me that she was fine.... Why the hell did the school give me her home phone number?
Ever have a dream that foretold the future in a weirdly accurate way?
And Roberto- I enjoyed your dream tale.. But I gotta wonder... If there was no sort terror involved... I am not certain that you were having a sleep paralysis episode.
Oddly, I have product design dreams. I can design a good product in my sleep but my day job doesn't have a thing to do with that. I can also design seating arrangements in my sleep.
Claire, I dont know if its sleep paralysis or not, but it's not quite lucid dreaming either though it also shares some qualities with that. Maybe it's some kind of combo. in the end though, categorizing and naming the experiences has never been a big priority since i almost never talk about this to anyone and don't find i really need to.
But the wiki description of sleep paralysis rang true on a few counts, esp the stuff about the mind being awake but the body still being asleep. That part of it fits perfectly. But anyways, thanks for introducing me to the concept.
ps - flying dreams are the best. i have em often. most of the time i have to flap my arms to take off, or stay in the air. I'm always thinking that there is no way flapping my arms will lift me up, but it almost always does.
I second the flying dreams - haven't had one of those since I was very young.
Mari's husband has the funniest childhood flying dream story...
He is flying naked around the country side until he spies a lake. He swoops down to the water just close enough to the surface that the tip of his penis gets wet.
He wakes up soon after because he has peed the bed.
I have never been comfortable with seeing the word "penis" in print or hearing it said.
Claire - That rules out a shared pleasure in hearing the great Peter O'Toole line in The Ruling Class.
Oops, hope Peter O'Toole doesn't set you off also.
Kilian,
I can't even remember the plot from the movie I am watching right this second-let alone the fleeting details of an O'Toole flick from the year I was negative ONE. So, it is with regret that I back out of this opportunity to have a whimsical and witty banter centered around my lack of comfort with "the penis" with you. Maybe next time.
I'll take a pass Claire on any future invites RE: a whitty and whimisical discussion of your problems with the _ _ _ _ _, and I mean that from the bottom of my soul to the tip of my _ _ _ _ _.
a whitty and whimisical discussion of your problems with the _ _ _ _ _, and I mean that from the bottom of my soul to the tip of my _ _ _ _ _.
I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat. Is there an "e?"
I just tried to rent The Ruling Class at the video store, but couldn't because someone had put the store's only copy somewhere out on the shelves... IT COULD HAVE BEEN ANYWHERE... so I passed, but I did try.
I want to pull out my discharge but we're at the point where any more sermon on this extremity is headed for misconception.
hey, uh, if anybody can find the orera, that would make my day. Anaconda's original links link to something that won't work for me or is broken. Which is a bummer.
Any O'Toole movie is a friend of mine, except that one from back in the Roman Days involving a fist thrust in a vat of grease. I think that was him. So now, I must try and find this Ruling Class movie too.
hey ramona, i used the megaupload link and i had to do it twice before i got it to work. the mediafire link didnt work for me.
I would say try the megaupload one more time, and if that doesn't work, let me know and i'll send you the songs (i'll post them on a server where you can download them).
I've tried like 6 times! whaaa! If you can find a place to post them, I would love to have them. I'll keep trying the service until I hear from you. Thanks!!
Ramona, I can do it when i get back to work on monday.
Thanks Carlos, but finally, after wasting 30 minutes of my time and $10, I now have these beauties.
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