It’s goddamn 3.30 in the morning and I’m deprived of reality after 5 and a half hours of sleep.
It’s been a very long time, since I woke up this early and felt that familiar ache of tiredness and consciousness meld into one surreal experience.
It’s difficult to describe the sensation of craving sleep, yet be unwilling to submit. But that is what I’m currently going through now.
I know I should sleep, but I just can’t.
I don’t want to. I’m too busy thinking about something and nothing at all.
As time ticks on, and on and on … I keep thinking to myself: Why bother going back to sleep?
So the hours crawl by, time is omnipresent and completely ignored by me. I refuse to play to its’ tune. I’m too absorbed in my own existence to acknowledge it.
It’s always around this time, I feel these desperate urges.
I crave Food. Water. Sex. Music … all the darker, base instincts that I normally don’t indulge in are now rushing to the fore, and I can’t stop them washing over me.
I’ve been reduced to a less thinking state, and have become more primeval. All that remains of me, is my stubbornness to sleep.
I’m not going back to the realm of unconsciousness.
This is also the time where I really enjoy some of my darker music taste.
Ominous, rhythmic bands like HEALTH or Massive Attack really help me channel these primitive urges in a sensory manner, stopping me submitting too much.
No, I don’t need that drink.
No, I don’t need to watch porn.
No, I don’t need to go to the fridge.
No, I don’t want to punch everything in sight.
I’m OK, just staring off into the digital world, as these contradictory musical sensations blast at me from every angle.
I say they are contradictory, because they often have the most hauntingly beautiful voices, that clash with the crazy, angry, infernal melodies.
It’s the perfect way to describe how I feel at this very moment.
I want to fall into the depths of my carnal desires, but high above it all, is this perfect line of consciousness and reality that I refuse to let go of.
This rope of surreality is what makes this whole experience so interesting, so compelling that I am willing to sacrifice my health for.
I think more clearly than I have ever done before. I can remember the smallest details. I can genuinely create and envision ideas in my mind. It’s the path to a place of creativity that I often don’t get to access.
It doesn’t happen at 0330 in the morning.
No.
I can’t just wake up this early to be creative. That is artificially creating the sensation.
It has to happen organically.
I have to crave sleep, close my eyes occasionally, before snapping them awake again, the moment I feel the touch of sleep on my mind.
All I can hear right now, is the perfect song, Angel by Massive Attack.
It’s grunge, it’s slow, it’s disturbing and aches of something indescribable.
As I fight all the contradictions that fight inside of me, I can feel myself rebelling against everything outside.
It is bitterly cold, but I am warm.
It is lonely, but I am not alone.
The world is asleep, but I am awake.
I’m fighting against everything. I don’t care what it costs me. I just want to exist in this state for another few hours, deprived and thriving.
Even this very creative exercise, writing …. doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. My thoughts are sporadic, and random, but completely focused on how I am feeling right now, right here, as the sun rises, the darkness retreats and I slowly comes to term with the consequences of my rebellion.
This is self-induced deprivation, sensory and sense-wise.
You would think I would know better. I got a long day ahead of me, an active day.
But I just couldn’t sleep after those 5 hours. I didn’t want to.
I wanted to be alive, no matter how dead I felt.
Yawns are coming in hard and fast. My body doesn’t agree with this creative situation. It’s trying to shut my mind down, but music, digital lights and my stubbornness hold it back.
I can hear myself groan in weariness. My shoulders hurt viciously, from lying on my side for too long. Every time my mouth yawns open, tears of exhaustion streak down my cheeks.
I almost want to sleep now. It’s 0730 in the morning. I’ve been awake in this surrealist bubble for 4 hours now. But it’s getting harder to resist the arms of Morpheus. The ancient God needs to claim his slumber from me and the tears won’t stop pouring.
I think I’m done. I’m can’t stop resisting any more … I need just a tiny bit more slee-
~
It’s 0900 in the morning.
I ended up taking a nap, my body slumped in my chair, my headphones on, Massive Attack’s Love Me, Love Me … lyrics echoing in my head.
Not much sleep, just an extra hour, and even then it wasn’t even that deep, because my alarms were interrupting me throughout the entire thing.
Still consciousness wave-riding even when I need sleep.
Throughout that nap, I imagined all sorts of things. From messages that my friends would send to me in the future, to reading a passage from a book I’ve never seen before.
Lucidity was not on the table, as I went through so many strange scenarios and thoughts. Random memories would pop in, conversations that were intriguing, confessions that didn’t make sense, people that meant a lot to me, but were now lesser …
I’m fully awake now though. Back to my regular self, with my brain chemistry normalising with every minute. The clock has been switched back on, and is running at its normal rapid pace. I can sense time is slipping away from me, and I have to work hard to catch up.
I’m me again, civilised, and in control. No longer a slave to baser instincts and dark desires. Devoid of that surrealist rope and arguably healthier for it.
Hell, even as I am writing all these thoughts out, there is a coherency to them, a natural self-reflectiveness that was lacking in the initial start of this ramble. I’m articulate again.
But it is definitely a strange, fascinating exercise, to be creative that early in the morning, where the angel wants you to sleep and the devil inside of you flat out refuses.
The things I do to feel creative …
~ Damocles.
Damocles' Journal 