Can’t Sleep

This text was first performed as part of a Slow Stage as part of The Palace Art Residency and is currently being used in Organized Chaos performance: Experiments in Disappearing.

You are on the edge of sleep.

Standing by the frayed carpet edge of darkness.

Your eyelids are sliding down your eyes.

You hope that they will meet the bottom of your eye this time.

You know any interruption will reset the process.

A process you fight with every night.

You try to sleep in a room between 16 and 20°c. A room optimised for sleeping.

Clutter removed. Feet facing the door as suggested in a book you read about Feng Shui once.

Sleep eludes you. You are on the edge of forgetting yourself for a night. You are about to head of to blankness. To the blissful state between awake and dreaming. The nothingness. The infinity of imagined space. The drowsy abyss.

But thoughts keep interrupting:

How many miles are in a kilometre? Or is it the other way round? There were no lemons at the supermarket. Am I safe in this house? Is it time to change to the winter duvet? Who played Hunny Bunny in Pulp Fiction? Do I have the ingredients to bake an apple pie? What time is my meeting tomorrow? Am I even alive? What is a dream? Is the tired idea of living in a simulation really so tired? Would I take the red or the blue pill? How do I know this isn't a dream. What was my my teacher's main point about metaphysics? Or were they talking about romantics? Do I spend too long doom scrolling? did you know that in northern italy pasta is made with eggs but in the south it isn't? what would have happened if i didn't give up playing the saxophone? Do you remember where you lost your virginity. Is that something I have forgotten? Is that normal? I think I was 16, but was it 15? Was it in a bed? Was it in England? Was it with two guys or one? Do I remember their names? No. Should I book a doctors appointment. Was leaving London the right decision? Am I a bad person? Are dreams inherently boring or is that just something people say about hearing about other people's dreams?

You just want them to stop.

But they don't. You become painfully aware of the privilege you have. You have a bed. You have this bed. This big soft cushion. This place that supports your whole body. You have a series of different linens that you wash and change lovingly. You saw a photo of a bed in a lifestyle magazine with scatter pillows on it, and decided to imitate it, your bed now looks like an alter, a shrine, a place to worship padded items and patterned sheets. You find the scatter cushions infuriating every night, they serve no purpose other than decoration but you lovingly restore them to their place every morning. As you lie there, enticing sleep to come to you, you picture one of the scatter cushions. One, obnoxiously decorated in a faux William Morris pattern, above your head. You fantasise about it. About it falling onto your soft pink cheek. You inhale deeply and smell it. Then you imagine sleep to be a person. The person is in training to take over as the grim reaper. They gently begin to push the cushion on to your face. At first it feels good. Then they push it more. It begins to hurt but you tolerate it as sleep is so tantalisingly close. They push it more and more and you can feel yourself drifting, drifting, drifting. You're about to reach the climax but then you feel a hundred feathers in your throat. You cough and splutter. They tickle and scratch your throat. You urgently need water. Water. Now. Your eyes flick open and the grim reaper hides again. You down a glass a water. Fuck. That is going to haunt you later. Since turning 37 your ability to sleep on a full bladder has dwindled.

You are swimming in the purgatory between awake and asleep. As you come close to the surface of wakefulness you half remember a quote about dreaming, and residue, and yesterday. But you cannot remember who to attribute it to. You think it might be some great thinker, but when you look at the words in your mind you think that the logic of the sentence seems too basic, too pedestrian. You hate it when people talk about their dreams on the proviso that they are boring, but when you search deeper in yourself you manage to dig up feelings of envy. Jealous of other people's interior dreams. Because to dream one must first sleep. There is, indeed, the rub. The eye rub. Why can you not achieve this? As if, even in sleep, the thing that seems so instinctive and easy, you are a failure. Perhaps the quote was Freud. You never really liked that school of thought anyway. You are more pragmatic than that. You want dreams to organise your memories and help you learn, you don't want them to be your therapist's pocket liner. You preferred Jung. You suddenly remember your college boyfriend talking to you on the edge of the bed. His dumb but handsome face, still blessed with cheekbones, and a fuzzy stubble, that accentuated his jawline quoting his philosophy books to you. "Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." He says, feigning profoundness. It is one thing to parrot a quote, it is another to have your own thoughts, you think, but you don't say anything. You know that you don't actually care about his first semester philosophy class, you are here for more embodied practices. You remember then how he said the words 'look inside'. He did not mean 'look' inside. He meant to fuck. You remember the awkwardness of college sex, you miss the novelty of experience, but you do not miss the lumbersome way you both entwined each other. Is it even valuable to dream? What does it bring us? You remember his jawline, his arms, his hair, and the vein on his neck but you have forgotten his whole look.

You have shared this bed with both lovers, and friends. One night you invited a friend over to watch movies and drink wine. You stayed up all night talking about Almodavar. You said you wanted to be in the high contrast world that he invented. To be in Spain. To be over the top. To be Penelope Cruz. Your friend asked why you didn't just move to Spain and you shrugged the question away as if it was absurd. An unattainable dream.

There has been a change in temperature. The pressure has dropped and you can feel it in your sinuses. In your bones. The night has gone from hot and humid to crisp. You think this could be your chance. Your eyes are already closed but you picture another set of eyelids behind them closing again. And concentrate. Think. This. Is. It. Sleep will come.

You go through a series of rehearsals; the side, with one hand under the head, the same, mirrored, flat on the back, arms to the side, no, arms behind the head, no, the left side with the arm out straight, no stomach down, head, to the left, no, the right. You try every possible combination. Eventually you give up and go to the window, you open it slightly. You stand at the window and contemplate the curtains. It reminds you of that time you went to see a show with a friend and the performer asked the audience how they dress their windows. At the time you laughed at it as an obscure, almost pretentious and stupid question. But, now you are here, at stupid o clock in the morning contemplating exactly that question. The cold breeze flows in and meets your skin. Goosebumps form in a pleasant way. You slide back between the sheet and the duvet. Close your eyes again. Just go to fucking sleep.