I didn’t sleep well last night. Apart from external disturbances, once I was FULLY awake at 5 am – the fourth time I’d woken up – my mind did its usual trick of rehearsing anything I was worried about. I reflected about my choir (I’m a church organist); had a wee think about an optician’s appointment; wondered – again – whether someone about to revise a book draft had any right to think about sewing a jacket – and mused contentedly about the first of two talks I’m giving this month.
Then, there it was. The second talk – the whole hour of it – there in my mind, Word headings structured down the side and all. It’s a perfectly good paper, and I was happy enough with it earlier in the week. I was still pleased enough yesterday evening.
Or was I?
Yes, I was – consciously, at any rate. Plainly, there was a subconscious part of my mind that was less so.
All it amounts to, is moving a chunk of text, and I can see how to make the link smooth at the beginning of it. I’m just concerned about the other end of it. But lying in the dark, I was warm and comfy – and tired, albeit awake – and nothing was going to drag me down to my laptop at five in the morning.
My mind decided to have a go at something else: the PowerPoint. It’s a lovely set of slides, no problem there.
‘You’re going to have to rearrange the slides’, said my mind, shoogling them about in its imagination. ‘You’re bound to get in a muddle with the order.’
I don’t really think that’s a big deal, though. Just a practical detail, not a conceptual one.
Huffily, my brain metaphorically shrugged its shoulders. ‘Suit yourself. Wanna go back to sleep, then?’
At 6.54 am? On a Sunday morning, when I have to rehearse the choir at 10? Nope, no more sleep. I put the light on. ‘Why is the light on so early?’, asked the other sleepy organist beside me.
So early? He doesn’t know the half of it. And I can’t do anything about my paper until this afternoon.
But it could have been worse – at least I wasn’t Eliza, after a giddy night out!:-
Bed, bed I couldn’t go to bed,
Sung by Eliza in My Fair Lady, by Lerner and Loewe
My head’s too light to try to set it down;
Sleep, sleep I couldn’t sleep tonight,
Not for all the jewels in the crown.
[I could have danced all night …]
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 