Insomnia

I couldn't sleep last night. Once again. It seems like the sleep department, which is the brain section situated right between the dream factory and the loathsome collection of cells whose sole purpose seems to be 'waking you up in the middle of the night, leaving you staring at the ceiling, wondering whether you need to go to the toilet - or not', hasn't been too active lately, as if they're all dozing off up there. Which sounds a bit paradoxical, doesn't it? I tried to put an end to these sleepless nights - not touching alcohol before hitting the bed, drinking just a few trappist beers, finishing a whole bottle of wine, knocking my shitfaced self completely out - but nothing seems to work. Last night, I started wondering: could it really be that I am an insomniac? That would be pretty scary, as this could change my life rather drastically. And then again, unless I'd decide to take up flugelhorn classes, it probably wouldn't affect other people's lives too much. But this could have been completely different in a parallel universe...

I mean, imagine I were born in 1888, under the name of Irving Berlin. Now that would have changed the shape of your life: working yourself through the Christmas shopping list might have been possible without you having to focus on keeping under control that overwhelming desire to violently decapitate random supermarket customers, driven to an almost murderous insanity by the seasonally adjusted elevator music flowing through the speakers like maple syrup through a newly openend squeeze bottle. Listening to the radio during wintertime might even have been possible without feeling to urge to find the nearest toilet, wanting to barf last night's meal through the sewer. For I, widely considered one of the most important American songwriters to have lived the planet, would simply not have dreamt about a white Christmas. Not even about a standardly rainy one, let alone a peep of hot chicks in red sexy outfits, curling up their smooth seductive bodies against my naked skin. I wouldn't have been dreaming at all. I would have been wide awake, listening to my snoring wife roaring her way through a forest the size of an average European capital. Pretty sure that this would not have been that good a song title...

It could have been different in the other direction as well. Imagine yourself in Washington, August 28, 1963. The Coca-Cola company advertising its first diet drink, the free-wheelin' Bob Dylan blasting through a set of crackling speakers, surrounded by thousands of black brothers and sisters eagerly awaiting one of the most well-known speeches to be held in history. A speech which changed the whole concept of taking a bus in the States, as the colour of your skin suddenly no longer determined your position. Your position on the bus, that is, not in everyday life. But can you envision a world in which I, Martin Luther King, entered the stage - salty pearls launching themselves from my sweaty face to my white shirt, a throbbing vein on my forehead revealing my nervosity, my slightly shaking hands holding tight to a jug of strong smelly coffee, my bloodshot eyes overlooking a massive crowd of people holding on to their breath - only to end up addressing the world with the words: "Brothers and sisters, erhm... Sorry guys, I really couldn't sleep last night."?

I'm telling you, not being able to sleep can be both a dream and a nightmare of its own...