rock me to sleep

for several years i’ve been having trouble falling asleep. i can be completely exhausted, to the point where i can hardly keep my eyes open, and when my head hits the pillow i am suddenly wide awake with my mind running in a million different directions. maybe this isn’t a recent phenomenon – i remember having the same problem in high school. back then one of my favorite remedies for sleeplessness was to put on my headphones and listen to music, and usually i would drift off as it played. of course, the headphones weighed about 90 pounds and were on a curly cord that stretched tightly across my bed from the stereo on my desk – i couldn’t really move my head or they would fly off. and when side one of the record was finished i had to stumble out of bed in order to turn it over. ahh, the good old days.

thankfully, we now have the ipod. a few years ago i discovered that even if i lay in bed and read until i’m virtually dozing off, i often still need the ‘musical sleeping pill’ that i discovered in my teens. and oddly enough, i’m still listening to the same albums to help me fall asleep. through exhaustive (no pun intended) research, i found that listening to current music, as much as i love it, doesn’t have the same effect, because i find myself perking up and paying close attention to all the minutia in the songs – in a sense, i’m listening too hard to relax. it only works if i take one of my tried and true, life-long favorites that i’ve heard a million times. i guess because i know them inside-out and outside-in, they are both familiar and comforting and take no effort on my part to hear.

usually, i lay in bed, pick the album i want, push play, and close my eyes. and even though i haven’t played these albums on vinyl for who knows how long, i still find myself thinking “side one is almost over and you are still wide awake! relax!”. the first song from side two will start, and the next thing i know, i’m groggily reaching up to figure out what is wrong with my ears. then i realize the music is over, the ear buds are still in place, and i have no recollection of the past 4 or 5 songs. i carefully put my ipod on the table by the bed, and fall back into a deep sleep. amazingly, this happens night after night and never ceases to surprise me.

lately i’ve started wondering: what happens with all those songs that are piped into my head even though i’m dead asleep and have no memory of them later? after a life of listening to side two in my sleep, am i building up some subconcious repository of musical information that will burst forth unexpectedly?  i mean, i already know these songs inside and out. maybe i should get some mp3s of french lessons and learn that instead. would i one day wake up babbling in french? right now it seems like the best i’ll get from my subliminal experience is the ability to spontaneously relate everything i see to a joni mitchell, carole king or laura nyro song. oh wait, i already do that. maybe now i know why.