Brain Chatter...

After a long day of problem solving, sentence crafting, media exposure, day dreaming, stressing, planning, preparing mental scripts, vigorous exercise, and navigating the treacherous stingray infested airwaves of Los Angeles, one simply wants to go to sleep for seven or eight hours. But where the body craves sonambulance, the brain seems to think that a dark room and a fluffy pillow are cues to strike up the entire band. I won't call them voices. That would raise some eyebrows. But the lately the lights-out "chatter" has been especially chatty. Keep in mind the body falls asleep, but the brain, even in a dream state, yammers on and on, going over and over details of the day, the day to come, old memories, new memories, shopping lists, bills, long strings of numbers, moral conundrums, crossword puzzle clues, movie lines, news stories, dinner conversation, wishes, needs, fantasies, failings, fears, fallout, philosophical questions, funny moments, faxes, phone calls, family affairs, filibustering endlessly in overlapping snippets of syntax. It would be exactly like sleeping with three or four televisions on in the room at high volume. Beneath the words, deeper in the brain, is the sense that one is picking at old emotional knots as tight as the laces on a figure skate. Of course, the words and the emotions are constantly shifting, but what glues it all together is the constant friendly ring of tinnitus. A chorus of shrill electronic mosquitoes holding high notes eternally. The effect upon waking is a feeling of profound exhaustion, that quickly fades as the new day begins. Where does my optimism come from?

Somehow the Eno/Byrne track Mea Culpa from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts factors in, but only in the most romantic way.