Five Song Friday: Big Boy Slumber Party
This Week: Swedish Mysteries, Just Say No and White Voices
I’m trying hard to make sleep my very best friend.
I used to lie awake and worry about the world until I added one thing to my nightly routine that changed everything.
Yes, I’m aware how hyperbolic and ridiculous that sounds, but it’s also one hundred percent true. I’ll tell you what I did and how you can do it too.
I fall asleep quick as a baby now, whereas once upon a time I languished for hours in a limbo of worry and mental story time.
And they weren’t the good kind of stories that could be made into novels or screenplays. Nope, they were just horrible doomsday scenarios that ran inside my head like true-crime reenactments on an endless loop.
What if my house gets swallowed by a sinkhole? What if two tractor trailers sandwich me going 75 mph? What if a freak gust of wind catches that old tree and sends it into our bedroom?
What if that weird sound downstairs really IS Gary Busey in the kitchen?
I had enough. I needed my brain to shut up.
Sleep is important.
When I was a kid I remember hearing that New York was “the city that never sleeps.” I thought, how is that possible? Everybody needs to sleep. I thought there were actual laws in the city. Of course, when I got older I realized it was just the 80s and there was lots and lots of cocaine.
My sleep was important, so I decided to take action.
And by “take action” I mean order a book from Amazon.
Yes, I’m the guy who read THAT sleep book and wouldn’t shut up about it.
I tried to tell my daughter how vital sleep is for the teenage mind. I implored my wife that eight hours can do wonders for our health.
But my daughter just rolled her eyes and called me “low-level obsessed” and every time I’d go to bed early, my wife would punch me in the arm and call me a nerd.
Maybe I was a little heavy-handed in preaching the sleep gospel, but in my defense, there are a TON of scary statistics that had me rethinking my relationship with bedtime:
The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.
The brain begins to fail after 16 hours of being awake.
If you have three nights of bad sleep in a row, you are at risk of your heart spontaneously exploding and your bones turning to dust.
Scary stuff.
It turns out that reading just gave me more to worry about.
The noise in my head got even louder.
At this point I was getting desperate.
My pillow used to be the soft, safe cradle for my oversized skull. It was a fluffy place for my brain to shut down and let the screensavers kick in while the cleaning crews came through to vacuum and empty the trash buckets.
I needed peace and quiet, so again, I decided to take action.
And by “take action,” I mean finally listening to advice that my wife had been giving me for months (maybe years).
I silenced the chatter in my brain with… more chatter.
The sleep hypnosis meditations came first.
These brilliantly corny apps and podcasts required a massive suspension of disbelief and a willingness to let myself be guided by overly serious narration and new age soundtracks.
But they worked.
They knocked me out every single time.
What’s worked even better is audiobooks. One in particular gets me from point A to point Zzz (sorry) faster than any other.
Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything tackles nothing less than the hardest hard science and most puzzling unsolvable mysteries of the universe.
I’ve found that these massive concepts do a brilliant job of distracting my brain so that my other systems can shut off and my body can power down for the night. It’s like throwing a tiny dog a cartoonishly big bone.
Maybe I’m not smart enough to wrap my head around the Big Bang and my mental computer just freezes up. Maybe the number of times Bryson talks about the insignificance of humans in the grand scope of the universe humbles my dumb monkey mind into submission.
Or maybe it’s just that the British narrator has some kind of narcolepsy-inducing lilt.
Either way, I’m out. Every single night, without fail.
So maybe if your brain doesn’t turn off when you try to sleep, just give it something impossibly big to chew on.
As a bonus, I’m hoping that repeated listens will somehow make me smarter.
No luck so far.
But a man can dream.
Sincerely,
DJ CrankyPete
Quick Favor Time
If you have a second and are so inclined, please let me know…
Five Song Friday 057
“Eyes” - Wine Lips
I haven’t had wine in a long time, but I remember wine lips. And wine teeth. And the dark purple tongue that comes from a long night of gulping merlot from a jelly jar. What I DON’T remember is how I ended up asleep in the cloak room of this fancy hotel with blood on my tuxedo and a face tattoo that reads: “Don’t Trust the Swede.” I’m going to need some time to sort this out.
In the meantime, enjoy this music from Toronto garage-punk-psych-rockers Wine Lips off their album Mushroom Death Sex Bummer Party.
“Crack of Dawn” - Paul & The Tall Trees
FACT: Staten Island musician Paul Schalda played guitar in Charles Bradley’s backing band, The Extraordinaires. Also a FACT: See previous.
“Got You ” - Amyl and The Sniffers
You ever hear of a drug called amyl nitrite? It’s a chemical inhalant more commonly called “poppers.” Well, like most drugs, it’s bad for you and should be avoided. Please stay in school and just say NO unless you are trying to be more open in life and say YES to new opportunities, in which case, say YES to most things but not drugs.
The only reason I’m even bringing it up is because in Australia they call poppers “Amyl,” where is where the name of this band comes from.
“Maybe October” - Dekker
History is full of iconic and important men who are defined by their hats: Abraham Lincoln. Slash. That kid from Fat Albert. You can go ahead and add UK musician Dekker to that list because his signature straw hat goes with him EVERYWHERE. I’m not saying that it sleeps at the foot of his bed every night, but I’m also not saying that it doesn’t.
“OYAHYTT” - The Coup, LaKeith Stanfield
Great song from a super cool and kooky film about telemarketing, selling out and creative rebellion. If you haven’t seen it, you may have noticed a vague emptiness in your life. A nagging void that can only be filled by hearing Danny Glover use his “white voice.” You are welcome and/or I’m sorry.
Listen on Spotify
Listen on YouTube Music
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!
“The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.” ― Milan Kundera