[middle of the woods]
[Knock, knock, knock]
[rickety wooden door opens. but silently]
"Yeesss?" The Sandyman peered out of crow's feet eyes.
"Mr. Sandman?" I said.
"Yeesss?"
"I'm tired," I said.
"Yeesss?"
"But I'm not falling asleep again. And I'm having horrendous dreams again."
"Hmmm..."
[He's got a puckered soft face of flappy old skin]
"How can I fall asleep?"
[He blinks]
[He shuts the door]
Showing posts with label insomnia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insomnia. Show all posts
03 September 2009
02 September 2009
my back to school back pack is packed with an insomnia pack and it's on my back
Again, later than I should be up under the "I will wake up early and do yoga" goal. Especially with four-ish hours of sleep last night. But tonight, after a nice little WomenTalkWomen discussion night, I was thinking about how important it has been for me to write my love letters to the abyssful/wonder-packed universe and so I knew I'd have to revel in that self-conflict çe soir.
Also, I can't sleep again.
Maybe it's because I just spent four months in a bored malaise of trying to finish this never ending documentary. The only mental stimulation I've been able to muster is the occasional stumper of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Well, Chekhov's The Black Monk was really good, too.
I don't normally fall into bored stupors. And now it's back to school, or l'école as some would say. It's a joy. Let me tell you:
Dear Film History,
My heart flutters at thy call.
Love,
Marge
All this talk about what affects film and how film affects the world. La, la, la, lovely. All I could think about for the rest of the day was Val Lewton. Typically, or maybe I should say generically, a series of films are classed by who directed the films, there are only two obvious exceptions that come to my mind, though I'm not the expert. (In fact, you should probably have stopped reading a long time ago to avoid my erroneous information.) One you certainly know: Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars were produced by George Lucas (NOT directed by GL which changed with Episodes 1-3 and you can judge for yourself the result of that. I personally choose to ignore they exist. And at the same time I feel guilty so diatribing the films because more and more I feel connected to those people who worked so very hard...) (all six were written by George Lucas and some others). My personal favorites, though, are the films Val Lewton produced: Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People, The Seventh Victim, I walked with a Zombie and lots a bit more. I'll tell you all about dear Val the next time we're in conversation.
And if you like silent films, we watched a great one today, at least I found it fantastic, but maybe that's because I'm at an impressionable age (mine never ends). Il s'appelle : The Crowd (1928).
Also, I can't sleep again.
Maybe it's because I just spent four months in a bored malaise of trying to finish this never ending documentary. The only mental stimulation I've been able to muster is the occasional stumper of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Well, Chekhov's The Black Monk was really good, too.
I don't normally fall into bored stupors. And now it's back to school, or l'école as some would say. It's a joy. Let me tell you:
Dear Film History,
My heart flutters at thy call.
Love,
Marge
All this talk about what affects film and how film affects the world. La, la, la, lovely. All I could think about for the rest of the day was Val Lewton. Typically, or maybe I should say generically, a series of films are classed by who directed the films, there are only two obvious exceptions that come to my mind, though I'm not the expert. (In fact, you should probably have stopped reading a long time ago to avoid my erroneous information.) One you certainly know: Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars were produced by George Lucas (NOT directed by GL which changed with Episodes 1-3 and you can judge for yourself the result of that. I personally choose to ignore they exist. And at the same time I feel guilty so diatribing the films because more and more I feel connected to those people who worked so very hard...) (all six were written by George Lucas and some others). My personal favorites, though, are the films Val Lewton produced: Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People, The Seventh Victim, I walked with a Zombie and lots a bit more. I'll tell you all about dear Val the next time we're in conversation.
And if you like silent films, we watched a great one today, at least I found it fantastic, but maybe that's because I'm at an impressionable age (mine never ends). Il s'appelle : The Crowd (1928).
01 September 2009
a sleepless assassination of character
It's rare now (as opposed to times in the past when it wasn't so rare) for me to have a plague of insomnia. Maybe 1:31 a.m. shouldn't be concidered abnormal for a 22 year old college child, but can I submit to the jury that I have had mono twice? I'd hate to revisit it a thrice. Bleh.
The purpose of our conglomerating this evening is to discuss a million and one things. Or two. I first would like to complain about my further brain decay. I am losing all spelling ability. It is not for any lack of writing, nor am I any longer studying french, nor do I anymore have to spray extremely strong spider killing sprays (as I have moved into a new and lovely home). But the fact of the mater remains that I started off by spelling first "furst" and am consistently forgetting the letter "i" when it follows a "t" in any word that I write. It might be bad karma from complaining so much about the vocabulary of my phone. It is a particularly handy phone, I should just be thankful.
Next I would like to apologize because I swore after my Music Civ class today that I would make my next blog post less pretentious. I got bored as the letter H after listening to high-fallutin' honors students analyzing three paintings of the Virgin Mary and subsequently some music samples. I can't leave off, though, because I seem to believe that words should be played with and utilized not dragged about to explicate soddy...stuff. Even though I will be highly trained in analyzations of every sort of literature, piece of art, work of film, play, etc etc by the time I graduate from this university, it still sometimes makes me gag and I steadily hold firm to what I just read in my documentary class reading tonight: "The late philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that story telling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.*" Therefore we must conclude that my studies are erroneous.
Thirdly, you should all invest in purchasing me some sleeping pills so that you never have to read such dribble again.
Fourthly, I am rather excited that I am listening to a live recording of a Chopin Sonata on Pandora and I know this because I heard someone cough. They just coughed again. I think that person is one of my favorite people in the whole world. Because you know what their tickly throat does? It enlarges the mind, it paints a picture that leads to a world. Not just the world of the cougher, but the world of the stage and whoever is on the stage playing the piano and whoever it was that adjusted the piano before the preformer walked out and how many people must delight in the touch and feel of that piano and where they must be and and whether there's an ambiance and what happened to give that person a cold so that they keep coughing. Those are things I like thinking about. I also like dreaming about the Yamaha piano that was in our recital hall back at home. And that one blessed day of the every other yearly Chamber Music Festival where I played a dissonant saltarello with the violinist and the cellist and how those entire eleven years were worth it, if for nothing else but for that day, those three minutes.
My eleven years of piano lessons were great for more that just that, though. I remember sitting through recitals watching my dad tap his fingers on his knee to the melody of whatever song was playing. It was also great to be driven down to Saturday morning theory sessions and rehearsals in our 1980 something Plymouth Reliant to be instructed on correct stage presence. I still feel like the world is going to implode everytime someone holds down the damper pedal after they set their hands in their lap at the end of a song.
I should end sometime soon before I write the next great American novel in one blog post.
*Karen Everett, Squeezing Reality into Three Acts: What Documentary Storytellers can learn from screen writers. Release Print magazine March/April 2006
The purpose of our conglomerating this evening is to discuss a million and one things. Or two. I first would like to complain about my further brain decay. I am losing all spelling ability. It is not for any lack of writing, nor am I any longer studying french, nor do I anymore have to spray extremely strong spider killing sprays (as I have moved into a new and lovely home). But the fact of the mater remains that I started off by spelling first "furst" and am consistently forgetting the letter "i" when it follows a "t" in any word that I write. It might be bad karma from complaining so much about the vocabulary of my phone. It is a particularly handy phone, I should just be thankful.
Next I would like to apologize because I swore after my Music Civ class today that I would make my next blog post less pretentious. I got bored as the letter H after listening to high-fallutin' honors students analyzing three paintings of the Virgin Mary and subsequently some music samples. I can't leave off, though, because I seem to believe that words should be played with and utilized not dragged about to explicate soddy...stuff. Even though I will be highly trained in analyzations of every sort of literature, piece of art, work of film, play, etc etc by the time I graduate from this university, it still sometimes makes me gag and I steadily hold firm to what I just read in my documentary class reading tonight: "The late philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that story telling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.*" Therefore we must conclude that my studies are erroneous.
Thirdly, you should all invest in purchasing me some sleeping pills so that you never have to read such dribble again.
Fourthly, I am rather excited that I am listening to a live recording of a Chopin Sonata on Pandora and I know this because I heard someone cough. They just coughed again. I think that person is one of my favorite people in the whole world. Because you know what their tickly throat does? It enlarges the mind, it paints a picture that leads to a world. Not just the world of the cougher, but the world of the stage and whoever is on the stage playing the piano and whoever it was that adjusted the piano before the preformer walked out and how many people must delight in the touch and feel of that piano and where they must be and and whether there's an ambiance and what happened to give that person a cold so that they keep coughing. Those are things I like thinking about. I also like dreaming about the Yamaha piano that was in our recital hall back at home. And that one blessed day of the every other yearly Chamber Music Festival where I played a dissonant saltarello with the violinist and the cellist and how those entire eleven years were worth it, if for nothing else but for that day, those three minutes.
My eleven years of piano lessons were great for more that just that, though. I remember sitting through recitals watching my dad tap his fingers on his knee to the melody of whatever song was playing. It was also great to be driven down to Saturday morning theory sessions and rehearsals in our 1980 something Plymouth Reliant to be instructed on correct stage presence. I still feel like the world is going to implode everytime someone holds down the damper pedal after they set their hands in their lap at the end of a song.
I should end sometime soon before I write the next great American novel in one blog post.
*Karen Everett, Squeezing Reality into Three Acts: What Documentary Storytellers can learn from screen writers. Release Print magazine March/April 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
