Noise du Jour’s Sleep Deprivation: “Am I Awake” by They Might Be Giants

It is in the spirit of this week’s Noise du Jour theme, Sleep Deprivation, that I make the flagship post: too late, too little, and fobbed in with dolorous haze. I cannot recall when or where I posted this before. I am posting it now.

I am only dimly conscious of this being a Tuesday, though I typed this in the late-night-Monday continuum, club-wise (bass grinding my girders and garters at the Glas Kat, natch). Which is exactly the sort of music to which we are not listening, in this post. Here, They Might Be Giants do something beautiful en regard staying awake.

Let us chew over that ectoplasmosis is, in fact, the name of a disease. Literally translating, the office chair scholar would assume something sneezy and spiritual, but the writers here (New Scum and Old) have not been vaccinated, and manifest unghostly symptoms.

For example, my adopted, bastard brother, Qais Fulton, suffers from debilitating chronoxysms, during which he sleeps little, or too much; remembers little, or too much; and nightly wrestles with somatic terrors and blisses. Qais reports that he “loses time”, a classic symptom of encroaching Multiple Personality Disorder. The stabbing kind.

My own affliction, experienced maybe trimonthly, takes the form of twelve-hour blackouts packed around intense dreams. The dreams portray the basic cast, characters, and set dressings of my waking life, but coaxed into scenes still more believable, and enjoyable, than the smoked-quartz window of “reality”. Osmotically, dreaming and waking life reach equidistance, and I waver through bifurcated days.

Ross’ sleeping habits, like his parentage, are obscure. I hesitate to question the dreams of a man who contributes to such dark journals as the Weekly Geek. I assume he is at least burdened with insomnia, or hypersomnia, and probably a full set of shining groinal pustules (itchy).

As for my dearest Florian, nee’ Brownlee, his phlegmy slumber is well-documented, webcam-wise, from a trip we took to Tokyo. He jams his fez on, cinches the sash of his smoking jacket, and is snoring within seconds. I had to sleep in the hall, where maids politely trod on me with their tiny Japanese feet.