like a pair of bottle rockets

25th January 2012

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Like A Pair of Bottle Rockets Mixtape #4: 

Waiting For The Day To Come

I’ve always had a hard time sleeping. As a baby, my mom would play a taped recording of the vacuum cleaner to try to soothe me into sleep. In high school, I’d fall asleep around two or three am nightly, go through the day like a zombie and come home for a few hour nap. Until a few years ago, I made this work. Maybe it was moving to the east coast, maybe it’s New York City, maybe it’s the constant turbulence and uncertainty I’ve been faced with, but something has changed, and I’ve gone from being a night owl to a full blown chronic insomniac. Unless you’ve experienced not sleeping for a whole night, and then the next night, and the night after that, it’s hard to understand the abject despair an insomniac can feel. Reality quickly becomes delusion, thoughts wrap around themselves into infinity, anxiety and fear are given free reign for hours on end. I’ve taken anything I can find, perscription or otherwise, to try to sleep. Sometimes, nothing helps. When you’re down at the bottom of that particular nightmare, music can be the only buoy keeping what remains of your sanity afloat. 

This is a playlist I made last night when I was nearing that abyss. It starts by assuming the worst — that you are far too gone for help and have almost come to enjoy the strung-out suspended animation of your sleep deprived consciousness. But these songs slowly circle back down to earth, to a sense that somehow, eventually, it’s going to be alright. These songs are a womb in which to take refuge and embolden yourself to face down what hides in the hours of darkness. These are songs that, god willing, will lull you into sleep, and not into a nightmare. 

Tracklist:

1. Gowns - Fargo

2. Julianna Barwick - Cloak 

3. Sleeping States - The Next Step

4. Grouper - Alien Observer

5. Iron & Wine - Promising Light

6. Joanna Newsom - Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie

7. How To Dress Well - Decisions (Orchestral Version)

(download)

(please listen in order)

Tagged: insomniamusicwritingmixtapes