Sleep

I pride myself on being a good sleeper. I love my sleep. I typically get 7 or 8 hours every night. And I'll sleep straight through the night. But I'm not one of those people that hates it when someone wakes me up in the middle of the night. I really don't mind. Some people get mean when they're woken up. And some people you don't even try to wake up because you won't be able to.

My friends will tell you that if we start a movie after 10 PM, there's a very good chance I'm going to fall asleep at some point. In fact, just the other night I fell asleep in the middle of a movie. All of a sudden, I woke up and the cute furry Gizmo clones were nasty and slimy gremlins. No idea when or how that happened. I used to be able to force myself to stay awake, but at some point in the last two or three years, I decided to just surrender to it.

Unfortunately my sleeping patterns have been disturbed lately. I like to blame it on the hot weather. Occasionally I'll wake up thinking about something I need to door or simply something weighing on my mind. And getting back to sleep is suddenly a chore.

I was listening to KCPW one morning on my way up to Park City and they had a sleep expert talking about ways to regulate your sleep. She said if you wake up around 2 or 3 it's probably because you're going to bed too early. So I've been trying to keep myself up until midnight. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. The other night I woke up and could have sworn it was 6 or 7 AM and I was ready to go. I was actually disappointed when I looked at the clock and saw that it was only 2 AM.

I missed poem day in June, but it's July 1st, so I'm posting a poem about sleep.

"Sleep"
Charles Anthony Silvestri

The evening hangs beneath the moon
A silver thread on darkened doon
With closing eyes and resting head
I know that sleep is comming soon
Upon my pillow, safe in bed
A thousand pictures fill my head
I cannot sleep my minds a flight
And yet my limbs seem made of lead
If there are noises in the night
A frighting shadow, flickering light
Then I surrendor unto sleep
Where clouds of dreams give second sight
What dreams may come both dark and deep
Of flying wings and soaring leap
As I surrender unto sleep
As I surrendor unto sleep

This is another poem that has been set to music by Eric Whitacre. I think this is the first piece of his that I ever heard on KBYU. As soon as I heard it, I had to Google his name so I could learn more. But it took me awhile because I was spelling his last name wrong. Eventually I tracked him down and I bought the CD of his complete A Capella works. It's a great CD. The BYU Singers recorded the album. The album was actually nominated for a grammy several years ago.

This particular piece actually has an interesting story. This piece was a commission. The lady who commissioned it asked Whitacre to set her favorite poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" to music. The piece premiered in Austin at a National Convention in 2001. Shortly after, the Estate of Robert Frost took legal action. Whitacre, after hearing numerous choruses perform music set to this poem mistakingly assumed it was open to anyone. But just months before his premiere, the Estate shut down any use of the poem, probably because of it's rise in popularity all of a sudden. Whitacre was crushed because it was such a beautiful piece and now he'd have to put it away until 2038 when Robert Frost's poetry finally becomes public domain.

So he asked one of his friends to write some lyrics to his music so it could be heard again. His friend Tony, who had written poetry for his music before wrote "Sleep". His friend had to write something that had the exact structure of the Frost poem. The last two lines in particular are quite similar to Frost's "And miles to go before I sleep; And miles to go before I sleep."