Z=Insomnia

Insomnia

Where do I begin? As always, a confession. First, I have to find
something to confess to on the subject of insomnia. Well, I confess
that I do not suffer insomnia as the inability to sleep is not a
problem for me. The disinclination to sleep is sometimes with me, as is
an indifference to sleep too. I spend many long nights not sleeping,
through choice. Therefore, when I write about insomnia I do so as a
tourist attending sleeplessness with only a cursory knowledge of the
terrain. Now. To write about insomnia.

The fail-safe writer may conjure up an atmosphere of noble solitude,
complete with literary etchings of deserted streets full of dormant
houses, leading to touching etudes on the abandoned objects of
quotidian activity. There is always the clich? of the lonesome dog
barking in the distance at nothing in particular. There is even a
litany of cat noises that may reach the insomniac, but I forget what
they are now.

My long nights are not always that visual, or poetic, usually taking in
a writing session interrupted with numerous breaks for cigarettes,
drinks or checking out the news on teletext. These are periods of
self-exile within my own home, time when I am not prone to anything
resembling a demand or an expectation. The demands are entirely mine,
made on myself, to read, to daydream, to learn anew. There are lots of
awkward questions that I can give long attention to. There are the
night fears too, of harm to my children or my girlfriend. These fears
arrive from an internal videostore of primal concerns, in stereo and
with subtitles, to hone an edge of determination onto the ways that I
love. For I need reminding that life is finite, risky and obscure. How
else could I celebrate even the most base ordinary-ness that surrounds
me?

The nights don't seem endless to me, they just sound endless. There is
a hum of fridges, and televisions with the sound off, that is set at
the pitch of time spent alone in the middle of the night. It has a
high-pitched certainty, a ghostly unwavering continuance, that doesn't
happen at any other time of the day. I don't know about insomniacs, but
I cannot bear any intentional noise other than the sounds of the
keyboard, or the stirring of tea, or the signature of a zippo lighter
being flipped open. I need this domiciliary level of sensory
deprivation, I can easier imagine the transcendental states achieved
floating in a saline tank, here in the kitchen where everything
disappears in the blindness of familiarity. Here with the ambience of
fridge hum and the occasional sounds of my habits.

There have been many nights without sleep that completely deny these
misanthropic isolations, nights of interruptions and occurrences
without warning. There was the night, when I was living in a mobile
home on a clifftop, that the news of a certain car crash in Paris came
through. There were several nights when a startling phone call would
set off car trips to London or Dover. There were nights after
skinny-dipping in the sea at three am, when my skin refused to be
placated from it's urgent delicious memories. I remember the sleepless
ordeal of being told " I don't see you like that Martin, I could only
ever be your friend ", a night of smashing up my drum kit and of a
whimpering nineteen-year-old's self-pity at the calamitous loss of so
much romantic obsession in such a brutally concise (and correct)
conclusion. These were not nights of insomnia, but nights of asomnia,
and there were many of them.

Insomnia is the subject, so don't stray. I can't help straying when I'm
alone in the night. Here is the perfect setting for daydreams,
straydreams. I don't need to give these nights a name, like insomnia. I
feel lucky.