Liquid silver, crystal voices

For those of us who cannot sleep, the night is very long, isn't it? There is a quietness to it when we learn to surrender and realize that worrying about "if I fall asleep now, I'll have gotten X hours sleep when the alarm goes off" is a lose-lose game, only adding anxiety to an already too wide-awakeness. For me reading doesn't help because I'll become engrossed in what I'm reading and before long I hear the early morning birds begin. Or even praying can sometimes get my mind going about possible solutions for people's various problems…and then before long the light is on again and I'm writing. Television can sometimes help if I can find a movie with the right equation of boring, quiet or gentle enough not to become consumed in the story line.

Once I'd thought foreign films would do the trick, but nope. Even worse. I find myself listening and straining to pull up languages learned years ago to understand what's being said behind my closed eyelids. One thing, though, I've gotten my understanding of French, Spanish and Italian back in fairly good shape! And I cannot fall asleep to German. Too harsh sounding. (sigh)

It really is about surrender. Sink into the mattress. Don't worry about what time it's getting to be. For me, anyway, all those "sleep hygiene" things do not work. The advice about, "if you're not sleeping, get up and do something until you feel tired enough to sleep" wrecks worse havoc for me, personally. I'd be up all night cleaning or active at some other pursuit and get ZERO sleep and no rest on top of it. See, for me it's not about not being tired enough. It's some weirdness about just plain not being able to get to sleep. It's part of a constellation of issues I have which I won't go into here as they're really not relavant to this post. Because it's not about whatever it is behind it, it's just the not sleeping part.

A few months ago I heard the four-time Grammy award nominated choral group "Conspirare" sing an acapella piece which sounded like pure, liquid silver. Together their sound was like the most crystalline cool water being poured gently on the warm and welcoming weariness of sleepless skin. "Conspirare" is Latin for "to breathe together". They are simply amazing. The song I heard was the most serene arrangement, with a smidge of Celtic influence (mainly the presence of a delicate Irish penny whistle quietly in part of the refrain) of a Dolly Parton song I'd ever heard, or could even imagine! What a remedy it might be for someone searching for sleep.

It's only fitting that as I write, it's 3:40 a.m. and will try to embed a video of the group "Conspirare" singing "Light of a Clear Blue Morning". You may have to click on it a few times to get it to play but be patient. It really is worth it. Drink it in. And if you're a member of the Insomniac Club, I hope it may help to lull you to that magic place where sleep begins.

"Light of a Clear Blue Morning" by Conspirare from KLRU / Conspirare on Vimeo.