Porches - Prism (Official Video)

lovely places to look at images

http://aubreylstallard.tumblr.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kersti_k/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/104524658@N06/with/14207734971/
http://elisemesner.tumblr.com/

Maggie and Terre Roche - Jill of All Trades

Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - Blues Du Jour (full album)

Joe Gibbs & The Professionals - Bionic Encounter

Deniece Williams - Silly

Deniece Williams - It's Gonna Take A Miracle

Why black man they suffer - Fela Kuti

Robert Wyatt Strange fruit

Archie Shepp - Le matin des noire

curious about this natural remedy stuff in general

http://thepeopleschemist.com/about/

a blog about looking pretty

http://weshedwepickup.tumblr.com/archive

textile outfits

http://www.natalie-ebaugh.com/

the fancy land of cakes

http://www.ayakokurokawa.com/

fun etsy store

https://www.etsy.com/listing/203235413/vintage-1960s-mod-paisley-print?ref=related-1

70's Red leather convert-able roller-skate platform sandals made in Italy by omniac pop wheel VTG buckle wedge roller girl VTG size 8 to 10

The Stooges - Search And Destroy

Zero Waste Life

http://zerowastehome.blogspot.com/p/tips.html

TIPS

Here are my Top 10 tips in eight categories to help you lower your waste at home. Each section is a condensed version of a posting on the subject, so please follow title links for more information on each section. For product recommendations, please visit the store or follow the links.

Before you start:

• Arm yourself with a reusable water bottle, a couple grocery totes, a few cloth bags and reusable jars and bottles.
• Get your 5Rs right: Refuse what you do not need, Reduce what you do need, Reuse what you consume, Recycle what you cannot Refuse, Reduce or Reuse, and Rot (Compost) the rest. 

KITCHEN

1. Welcome alternatives to disposables (paper towels, garbage liners, wax paper, aluminum sheets, disposable plates, cups, etc....): Swap paper towels for reusable rags, swap sandwich baggies for kitchen towels or stainless containers, drop garbage liners all together (wet waste is mostly compostable anyways).
2. Buy in bulk or at the counter (see Zero Waste Grocery Shopping), bring reusable bags (dry goods), jars (wet items such as meat, deli, fish, cheese, oil, peanut butter) and bottles (liquids: oil, soy sauce, shampoo, conditioner).
3. If you cannot find it in bulk, find a supplier (bring your jar to the ice cream shop, a pillow case to the bakery for your bread, or your bottles to the winery/brewery)... or make it (mustard, salad dressing, hot sauce, jams, OJ, hummus, cookies, canned tomatoes).
4. Shop the farmer's market: they'll take the egg carton and the berries baskets back for reuse. Your veggies will also most likely be free of plastic and stickers.
5. Learn to love your tap water.
6. Use bulk liquid castile soap as a dish/hand cleaner, baking soda as a scrubber (in a stainless Parmesan dispenser) with a compostable cleaning brush (a wooden one with natural hair). Purchase dishwasher detergent in bulk.
7. Turn your trash can into a big compost keeper. Use your tiny compost keeper as a trash can (on the market, the sizes for these seem to be reversed).
8. Reinvent your leftovers before they go bad. Go thru your recipe binder/box and only keep the recipes that can be achieved with zero waste in mind.
9. Invest in a pressure cooker (halves the cooking time).
10. YOU CAN ALSO... Reuse single-side printed paper for grocery shopping and errands list, use your lettuce cleaning water to water plants, open your oven after baking in the winter (cool your oven, warm your house)...

BATHROOM

1. Use 100% recycled and unbleached toilet paper individually wrapped in paper (if you have solar you could install an electrical washlet to your toilet seat).
2. Use an alum stone or straight baking soda as antiperspirant.
3. For shaving, (re)use a safety razor and shaving soap (any rich soap, such as Alep soap will do).
4. Refill your bottles with bulk shampoo and conditioner. If your hair is short, you also have the “no-poo” option: rinse your hair, massage baking soda in, then rinse, with vinegar for shine. Or use a shampoo bar. Instead of hairspray, switch to lemon water in a spray bottle (see Recipes). To go longer between washes, substitute dry shampoo for cornstarch (in bulk).
5. For body/face soap, find a package-free solid soap. To exfoliate, use bulkbaking soda. For a mask, use bulk clays (French, Kaolin, Bentonite, etc...), mixed with water or apple cider vinegar.
6. Switch from toothpaste to homemade tooth powder (see Recipes), in a glass parmesan dispenser. Use a wooden compostable toothbrush.
7. Reduce your cosmetics and consider homemade substitutes such as cocoa powder as bronzer and homemade balm that works on eyes, lips, hair and nails (see Recipes) and in lieu of disposable feminine products, invest in menstrual cup and reusable liners.
8. All you need for your nails is a nail clipper, stainless steel file and the homemade balm for moisture and shine.
9. Forget about Q-tips, they are not good for you anyways. Do your research.
10. YOU CAN ALSO... compost hair and nail clippings, put a brick in your toilet tank, collect water in a bucket while your shower heats and water your plants with it, and use zero waste cleaning: microfiber cloths for mirrors, vinegar for mold, baking soda as scrub, a mix of baking soda and vinegar as drain cleaner (see Cleaning and Recipes)...

LAUNDRY AND CLEANING

1. Welcome natural cleaning alternatives: Castile soap on floors and sinks,homemade all purpose cleaner (see Recipes), baking soda for scrubbing jobs, and vinegar for mildew.
2. Welcome alternative house cleaning tools: a metal scourer on stainless, awooden brush for light scrubbing, an old toothbrush for hard to reach places and microfiber cloths for everything else (counters, floor, fridge, etc… for mirrors and windows, just add water… no window cleaner needed).
3. Sweep your floors with a boar bristle or silk broom, wash with a wetmicrofiber mop and a few drops of castile soap.
4. Use worn-out clothing items made into rags on your un-washable messes (wax/auto grease/glue/caulk).
5. Buy dishwasher detergent in bulk and use white vinegar as a rinsing aid.
6. Let houseplants absorb toxins and clean your air. Open a window instead of plugging in an air freshener.
7. Laundry washing once a week saves time and dryer energy costs, use a laundry detergent sold in bulk, full loads, and cold water cycles as much as possible. Savon de Marseille, dishwasher detergent, chalk, lemon or vinegar work great on stains.
8. Dry on a line when possible.
9. Iron fewer things and use a homemade starch in a stainless spray bottle (see Recipes).
10. YOU CAN ALSO... find a sustainable dry cleaner (one that offers a reusable garment bag and non-toxic cleaners), compost dryer lint and dust bunnies...

DINING AND ENTERTAINING

1. Remember to bring extra jars to the grocery store when shopping for company (including take-out).
2. Make finger foods for larger parties and consider serving tap water with lemon slices instead of fizzy water.
3. Use ceramic dishes and cloth napkins at all times.
4. Avoid the use of serving platters/dishes: When serving straight onto dinner plates, it simplifies, saves water from extra cleaning, and it allows for a plate presentation.
5. Find creative ways to decorate your table with few napkin folding tricks, discarded leaves/branches from the yard, or just seasonal fruit…
6. Reuse empty votive tins (and the wick base) to make new votive candles for company with bulk beeswax and lead-free wick.
7. Stop buying CD and DVD's – download music and videos online.
8. Bring a jar of a homemade consumable, or your favorite bulk item wrapped in Furoshiki as a hostess gift. Give the gift of an experience as a birthday present.
9. Educate your friends about your zero waste efforts (so they don't bring waste into your home)
10. YOU CAN ALSO... bring your own container for leftovers when dining out, use rechargeable batteries for those remote controls, try living without TV for a while...

OFFICE

1. Refuse, and therefore help stop the madness of the free-pen / free-pencil give-aways.
2. Use refillable pens, piston fountain pens, mechanical pencils, refillable white board markers and donate extra office material (paper, pencils) to your public school's art program.
3. Start your personal junk mail war, cancel your phone directories, and sign up for electronic bills and statements.
4. Reuse single-side printed paper for printing or making notepads held by a metal clip, reuse junk mail response envelopes and when buying new paper, choose recycled and packaged in paper.
5. Ditch the trash can, strive to use your compost and recycling bins exclusively.
6. Use, Reuse and Request recyclable paper packing material when shipping (incl. paper tape), print postage and addresses directly on your envelopes, use surface mail, use a return address stamp instead of stickers.
7. Reuse paper clips (available in bulk) instead of staples, or a staple-free stapler.
8. Use your library to read business magazines and books, sell your books or donate them to your library for other people to enjoy.
9. Use memory sticks and external drives instead of CD’s.
10. YOU CAN ALSO... use a power strip on your equipment, refill your printer cartridges, make paper with double-side printed paper, take packing material that you receive to your local shipping center for reuse...

CLOSET

1. Stick to minimal wardrobes, shoes and purses.
2. Only shop a couple times a year to avoid compulsive buys.
3. Buy second-hand clothing 
4. If you must buy new, buy quality with minimal tags (leave the shoe box at the store).
5. Be ruthless on fit, if it fits well, you're most likely to wear it.
6. Bring a reusable bag for your purchases.
7. Donate unworn pieces.
8. Keep some of your worn-out clothes for rags and label the rest as "rags" for Goodwill to recycle.
9. Learn of few sewing tricks (like shortening a hem or darning).
10. YOU CAN ALSO... take it to the tailor for a better fit so you'll actually wear it, and keep a handkerchief in your purse/bag...

MEDICATION

1. Keep only a minimal supply, so you can see what you have.
2. Ask your pharmacy to reuse your prescription jar. It's illegal for pharmacies to refill them in CA, but your state might allow it.
3. Choose tablets (pain reliever, for example) in a glass or at default a plastic jar (usually a recyclable #2), instead of the tablets individually wrapped in aluminum/plastic.
4. Do not buy jumbo size medication jars, they expire way before you can finish them.
5. Choose metal tubes instead of plastic.
6. Invest in a Neti pot: Great to clear out your sinuses with just water and sea salt.
7. Consider a few natural alternatives: a corn silk tea for prostate relief, a senna leaf tea for constipation relief or an oatmeal bath for skin relief.
8. Clean cuts and scrapes with soap and water, forgo the plastic band-aids and let air-dry.
9. Do not use everyday antibacterial products, they make bad bacteria stronger.
10. YOU CAN ALSO... reconsider your true need for vitamins (as opposed to a healthy varied diet) and use sunscreen moderately (you don't want skin cancer or vitamin D deficiency)...

GARDENING

1. Use drought tolerant and native plants, replace your lawn with short native grasses.
2. Make room for compost. Pee in your citrus and compost. Consider a worm composter for liquid fertilizer, a separate pet composter for your dog's feces.
3. Return plastic containers to the nursery.
4. Find bulk seeds.
5. Give away plants (also, landscaping rocks, fencing, irrigation piping, etc…) that you do not want anymore. Post them on the free section of Craigslist.
6. Find a bulk garden center, and refill reusable sand bags with dirt, rocks, compost, etc.
7. Consider investing in an irrigation controller with a rainwater sensor.
8. Install rainwater and gray water catchments (check your city ordinances for the latter).
9. YOU CAN ALSO... Keep a minimal and quality tool selection made of metal and wood (which can be repaired more easily)...

Treat Insomnia with the Fisher Wallace Stimulator®

website to look at pretty things

http://ffffound.com/home/oscarestrada/found/?offset=25&

scream

I opened the door and screamed, not at anyone in particular, not at anything in particular, there was really nothing to scream at and nothing seemed to be the problem. The issues was that there simply were not enough things to scream over.  Humans need to scream.  I almost got hit by a van the other day, the driver was simply not looking where he was going.  His head was turned to look over his left shoulder.  The man sitting next to him in the passengers seat was also not looking where they were going.  Yet the car accelerated, it just speed up.  I didn’t feel as though I was going to get hit, it didn’t seem like that was going to be the case, and I wasn’t sure if this feeling was an intuitive sense of safety, or if my body, confronted with the possibility of a real death, refused to believe.  This would be similar to dreaming, when you wake up just before the point of death.  Death really is so foreign, it really does feel like we should keep surviving, there is so much expectation that we will.  As the van started to speed up I screamed at the driver ‘What the fuck!’, I screamed like  a horn.  I related to him the same way another person in a car would get attention. ‘Beep, beep’ basically ‘what the fuck!’ sounding the alarm and trying to convey quickly the message that I was not interested in dyeing at that moment and the thought of getting hit seemed very unpleasant.  I do have to say though, that having a reason to scream allowed my adrenaline to race, and my animal instincts were finally put to use, rather than being in control all the time, I was able to simply react, and watch the reaction as one would in a mirror, as though I finally saw myself without make-up, the making-it-up-all-the-time needed to fade, I needed to be terrified.  Of course this was not pleasant, but then again, life isn’t. 

Eugene V. Debs

While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Eugene V. Debs

Understanding Humanity Through Evolution: Richard Dawkins Speech (2004)

Is the Human Species Doomed? Noam Chomsky on Hegemony or Survival (2004)

Kurt Vonnegut College Commencement Address: Speech to Students (1999)

Kurt Vonnegut reads Breakfast of Champions | 92Y Readings

xy

XY

The bar in ballet goes horizontal, the bar in a strip club is vertical, together they form the cross, the x and the y axis.

X Axis

The body of the ballerina tries to lift itself upward as though there is a string coming out of her head. The calves are a dominant feature, all that space between the arms and the legs of a ballerina, the air that she sculpts by the line of her slender body.  Relevé lift, the entire mass balancing on a point, the toes direct the body, the paws of the ape generally ignored by the human, become exoticized, made different and admirable, the body is raised out of the averageness of standing. As the ape rose upward, front paws drew food to the face becoming dominant for their ability to pull the external into the mouth, sustenance brought into the body. The ballerina is upheld in the arms of the man, her prop, she prefers a snug and tight existence without food, her whole body speaks it’s form at once. The foot is returned to prominence again, she extends the pointing, normally reserved for fingers, back to toes. Lift. Weightless. She pretends to be a feather, and the stance of the mind changes the position and weight of the body. She rises.

The Slut

A ballerina is the opposite of a slut. She is so flexible, she is constantly flashing her vulva tucked tightly inside the confines of her leotard, layered under the spandex. But she makes us still, we watch, and the body doesn't think of sex, or strength, we think of air, we follow some story, she is the channel through which the evidence of narrative flows.

'Let us congratulate her now! Lift your glass, raise it high, and touch the air, that which she so deeply dreams to be united with, join it with libations!' -Everyone

We need to notice her.  Like the graffiti artist, the ballerina falls prey to style. All those years, all those hours spent in study of form, musculature, feeling her equilibrioception AKA balancing, proprioception allowing all the parts to move together, interoception becomes refined by practice, all to be a piece of glass, an ornament intended to be gazed through. Perhaps a talented ballerina adds a special flair, a control or an economy of gestures she can manage that no one else has seen before or since, and she exemplifies a moment in time, her life is a mandala, the body erected by form, directing our attention past its finitude.

Y Axis

Along the vertical pole the slut is free to exorcise shame, she is taught yet wild, passive yet in control, the pole dancer. Rather than lifting she tumbles, weight is the aspect of her form. She hovers in the air, pole between her thighs- good god the stunning pressure her illusion creates, the pole lodged between her legs highlighting that tantalizing zone of almost theres. She relinquishes and falls. Her exposed flesh is so present, advertised by the teasing invitation of her garment. Her weight is what we note, the way in which the body sags, similar to a body in bed, hanging.  The exposure of gravity.  Real love is a man's penis, scrotum, resting helplessly on his thigh, and female breasts sliding this way and that like eggs in a pan. The sexual toy is the restraint of sex inside the promotion of it.  Sex is unconscious, the nudity of the stripper reminds us of our own collapse, when we literally fall on the lover, metaphorically growing in and towards the one we desire, the double weight of it all. 

Hustle

The poll dancer punctuates our sagging with a sales pitch, she is a presentation, she shoots a glance as her ass sticks out, her back arches in, and her head tilts upward in the performance of sexuality. When the stripper kicks open her legs it is not to reveal the air cast between her sculptural thighs, but admits to the flesh that frames it.  She is similar to the child lifting up her skirt, thrilling in the admission of her body, exclaiming that she was born an animal desiring to expose, to be both literally and metaphorically revealed. The tight tuck of the vulva, this time, is to include your sight as the watcher through exclusion of the reality of her body. Like the Greeks who allow the drama to happen offstage, the inclusion of imagination reveals the actual trope at hand- the viewer always desires themselves.  The strip of sparkles that rests so snugly admits to the presence of watching in all desire.  You never want the other as much as you desire the adaptation of selfhood.  The other is there as a drug to stimulate and transform the average day into the language of arousal, the symphony of adulthood with its many musicians, sonatas, concertos, the echoes of the previous scores writing the dream of our current experience. Oh the X and the Y- the rise and the fall of a body! She moans. The voice travels like a wave. Up and down. Up and down. Up and.... We can never complete. It would spoil the song. Rather, rattle on, the drums timbre, the boom and clack.

Point of Cross

The body is always absolutely right and wrong. It sings itself at the start and close of day, it clamors itself at every conscious instant, and as such, of course, we must escape it. What is living if not the desire to flee. The ballerina and the pole dancer, the air and the flesh, the line and the curve, the rich and the poor, the body united at the center of the X and Y.

Bill Nye Destroys Noah's Ark

Climate Change

22-09-2014

Leonardo DiCaprio Leads Celebrities in People's Climate March

Susan Sarandon and Brad Pitt marched in NY, Emma Thompson, Vivienne Westwood and Peter Gabriel joined UK campaigners

Hollywood stars as Leonardo DiCaprio, Susan Sarandon, Brad Pitt, Evangeline Lilly, Edward Norton, Sting, Mark Ruffalo, Paul Bettany and Fisher Stevens led the People's Climate March in New York, billed as the largest march for climate action in history.

Leonardo DiCaprio's 2014 UN Climate Summit Speech

Broken Sleep- http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/why-broken-sleep-is-a-golden-time-for-creativity/

Broken sleep

People once woke up halfway through the night to think, write or make love. What have we lost by sleeping straight through?

by Karen Emslie 2,400 words 

• Read later or Kindle

Photo by Michael Lewis/Gallery Stock

Karen Emslie is a Scottish writer, artist and photographer. She has been car-jacked in Barcelona, lost in the Alps, and harassed by fake police in Cuba, but still loves the adventurer’s life. She is based in Spain.

39

9165

1930

219

It is 4.18am. In the fireplace, where logs burned, there are now orange lumps that will soon be ash. Orion the Hunter is above the hill. Taurus, a sparkling V, is directly overhead, pointing to the Seven Sisters. Sirius, one of Orion’s heel dogs, is pumping red-blue-violet, like a galactic disco ball. As the night moves on, the old dog will set into the hill.

It is 4.18am and I am awake. Such early waking is often viewed as a disorder, a glitch in the body’s natural rhythm – a sign of depression or anxiety. It is true that when I wake at 4am I have a whirring mind. And, even though I am a happy person, if I lie in the dark my thoughts veer towards worry. I have found it better to get up than to lie in bed teetering on the edge of nocturnal lunacy.

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If I write in these small hours, black thoughts become clear and colourful. They form themselves into words and sentences, hook one to the next – like elephants walking trunk to tail. My brain works differently at this time of night; I can only write, I cannot edit. I can only add, I cannot take away. I need my day-brain for finesse. I will work for several hours and then go back to bed.

All humans, animals, insects and birds have clocks inside, biological devices controlled by genes, proteins and molecular cascades. These inner clocks are connected to the ceaseless yet varying cycle of light and dark caused by the rotation and tilt of our planet. They drive primal physiological, neural and behavioural systems according to a roughly 24-hour cycle, otherwise known as our circadian rhythm, affecting our moods, desires, appetites, sleep patterns, and sense of the passage of time.

The Romans, Greeks and Incas woke up without iPhone alarms or digital radio clocks. Nature was their timekeeper: the rise of the sun, the dawn chorus, the needs of the field or livestock. Sundials and hourglasses recorded the passage of time until the 14th century when the first mechanical clocks were erected on churches and monasteries. By the 1800s, mechanical timepieces were widely worn on neck chains, wrists or lapels; appointments could be made and meal- or bed-times set.

Societies built around industrialisation and clock-time brought with them urgency and the concept of being ‘on time’ or having ‘wasted time’. Clock-time became increasingly out of synch with natural time, yet light and dark still dictated our working day and social structures.

Then, in the late 19th century, everything changed.

Thomas A Edison's Patent Application for an incandescent light bulb, 1879 Photo courtesy National Archives

The lights got turned on.

Modern, electrical illumination revolutionised the night and, in turn, sleep. Prior to Edison, says the Virginia Tech historian A Roger Ekirch, author of At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (2005), sleep had been divided into two distinct segments, separated by a period of night-waking that lasted between one and several hours. The pattern was called segmented sleep.

Sleep patterns of the past might surprise us today. While we might think that our circadian rhythm should wake us only as the sun rises, many animals and insects do not sleep in one uninterrupted block but in chunks of several hours at a time or in two distinct segments. Ekirch believes that humans, left to sleep naturally, would not sleep in a consolidated block either.

His arguments are based on 16 years of research during which he studied hundreds of historical documents from ancient to modern times, including diaries, court records, medical books and literature. He identified countless references to ‘first’ and ‘second’ sleeps in English. Other languages also describe this pattern, for example,premier sommeil in French, primo sonno in Italian and primo somno in Latin. It was the ordinariness of the allusions to segmented sleeping that led Ekirch to conclude this pattern was once common, an everyday cycle of sleeping and waking.

Before electric lighting, night was associated with crime and fear – people stayed inside and went early to bed. The time of their first sleep varied with season and social class, but usually commenced a couple of hours after dusk and lasted for three or four hours until, in the middle of the night, people naturally woke up. Prior to electric lighting, wealthier households often had other forms of artificial light – for instance, gas lamps – and in turn went to bed later. Interestingly, Ekirch found less reference to segmented sleep in personal papers from such households.

For those who indulged, however, night-waking was used for activities such as reading, praying and writing, untangling dreams, talking to sleeping partners or making love. As Ekirch points out, after a hard day of labouring, people were often too tired for amorous activities at ‘first’ bedtime (which might strike a chord with many busy people today) but, when they woke in the night, our ancestors were refreshed and ready for action. After various nocturnal activities, people became drowsy again and slipped into their second sleep cycle (also for three or four hours) before rising to a new day. We too can imagine, for example, going to bed at 9pm on a winter night, waking at midnight, reading and chatting until around 2am, then sleeping again until 6am.

In the dead of night, drowsy brains can conjure up new ideas from the debris of dreams and apply them to our creative pursuits

Ekirch found that references to these two sleeps had all but disappeared by the early 20th century. Electricity greatly extended light exposure, and daytime activities stretched into night; illuminated streets were safer and it became fashionable to be out socialising. Bedtimes got later and night-waking, incompatible with an extended day, was squeezed out. Ekirch believes that we lost not only night-waking, but its special qualities, too.

Night-waking, he told me, was different in nature from waking during the day, at least according to the documents he found. The third US president Thomas Jefferson, for example, read books on moral philosophy before bed so that he could ‘ruminate’ over them between his two sleeps. The 17th-century English poet Francis Quarles rated darkness alongside silence as an aid to internal reflection:
Let the end of thy first sleep raise thee from thy repose: then hath thy body the best temper, then hath thy soule the least incumbrance; then no noise shall disturbe thine ear; no object shall divert thine eye.

My own night-waking confirms this difference between night- and day‑waking; my night brain definitely feels more dreamlike. When dreaming, our minds create imagery from memories, hopes and fears. And in the dead of night, drowsy brains can conjure up new ideas from the debris of dreams and apply them to our creative pursuits. In the essay ‘Sleep We Have Lost’ (2001), Ekirch wrote that many had probably been immersed in dreams moments before waking up from the first of the two sleeps, ‘thereby affording fresh visions to absorb before returning to unconsciousness. Unless distracted by noise, sickness, or some other discomfort, their mood was probably relaxed and their concentration complete’.

Ekirch’s ideas about segmented sleep derive from old documents and archives, but are supported by modern research. The psychiatrist Thomas Wehr of the US National Institute of Mental Health found that segmented sleep returns when artificial light disappears. During a month-long experiment in the 1990s, Wehr’s subjects had access to light for 10 hours per day, as opposed to the artificially extended period of 16 hours that is now the norm. Within this natural cycle, Wehr reported, ‘sleep episodes expanded and usually divided into two symmetrical bouts, several hours in duration, with a one- to three-hour waking interval between them’.

Both Ekirch and Wehr’s work continue to inform sleep research. Ekirch’s ideas were the subject of a dedicated session at Sleep 2013, the annual meeting of the US Associated Professional Sleep Societies. One of the biggest implications to emerge was that the most common insomnia, ‘middle-of-the-night insomnia’, is not a disorder but rather a harking back to a natural form of sleep – a shift in perception that greatly reduced my own concern about night-waking.

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It is 7.04am. I have been writing for nearly three hours and I now am going back to bed for my second sleep. I will work again later in the day. It is only because of the way that I have made my life (no children, self-employed) that I can be a segmented sleeper.

But I have also had to fit my sleeping habits into periods of nine-to-five work, and the two are hardly compatible; few sounds are more dreadful than the buzz of an alarm when you have spent several hours in the night awake and have only just gone back to sleep. It is the clash between ‘natural’ sleep patterns and our rigid social structures – clock-time, industrialisation, school hours, working hours – that makes segmented sleeping seem like a disorder and not a boon.

Creative people often find ways to live without the nine-to-five, either because they are successful enough with their books, art or music that they don’t need a day job, or because they seek employment that allows a flexible schedule, such as freelancing.

In Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (2013), Mason Currey describes the routines of famous writers and artists, many of whom are early risers, and several segmented sleepers. Currey found that many hit on the pattern of segmented sleep by accident. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright, for instance, would wake around 4am, unable to fall back to sleep – so he would work for three or four hours, then take a nap. The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Knut Hamsun would often wake after sleeping for a couple of hours. So he kept a pencil and paper by his bed, and would, he said: ‘start writing immediately in the dark if I feel something is streaming through me.’ The psychologist B F Skinner kept a clipboard, paper and pencil by his bed to work during periods of night wakefulness, and the author Marilynne Robinson regularly woke to read or write during what she called her ‘benevolent insomnia’.

Some of us are morning people, others night people – early birds or night owls. Currey says that creative people who work in the night are ‘drawing on an optimal state of mind for their work’, governed by personal natural rhythms, rather than choice.

The novelist Nicholson Baker was the only person Currey encountered who had consciously decided to practise segmented sleeping. Baker is very aware of his own writing habits and routines, and likes to experiment with new writing rituals for each new book, Currey told me, so it seems appropriate that he would carve out extra productive hours by creating two mornings in one day.

Indeed, when Baker was writing what would become A Box of Matches(2003), a novel about a writer who gets up around 4am, lights a fire and writes while his family sleeps, Baker himself practised this ritual, then went back to bed for a second sleep.

‘I found that starting and nurturing this tiny early flame helped me to concentrate,’ Baker told The Paris Review. ‘There’s something simple and pleasantly meditative about building a fire at four in the morning. I started writing disconnected passages, and the writing came easily.’

It is this dreamy flow that seems to characterise creative work undertaken in the middle of the night. Between sleeps, there is the stillness, the lack of distraction and perhaps a stronger connection to our dreams.

Blissfully zonked out by prolactin, our night brains allow ideas to emerge and intertwine as they might in a dream

Night also triggers hormonal changes in our brains that suit creativity. Wehr has noted that, during night-waking, the pituitary gland excretes high levels of prolactin. This is the hormone associated with sensations of peace and with the dreamlike hallucinations we sometimes experience as we fall asleep, or upon waking. It is produced when we feel sexual satisfaction, when nursing mothers lactate, and it causes hens to sit on their eggs for long periods. It alters our state of mind.

Prolactin levels are known to increase during sleep, but Wehr found that (along with melatonin and cortisol) it continues to be produced during periods of ‘quiet wakefulness’ between sleeps, triggered by the natural cycles of light and dark, not tied to sleep per se. Blissfully zonked out by prolactin, our night brains allow ideas to emerge and intertwine as they might in a dream.

Wehr suggests that not only have modern routines altered our sleeping patterns, they have also robbed us of this ancient connection between our dreams and waking life, and ‘might provide a physiological explanation for the observation that modern humans seem to have lost touch with the wellspring of myths and fantasies’.

Ekirch agrees: ‘By turning night into day, modern technology has obstructed our oldest avenue to the human psyche, making us, to invoke the words of the 17th-century English playwright Thomas Middleton, “disannulled of our first sleep, and cheated of our dreams and fantasies”.’

Modern technology might have muddied the channels that connect us to our dreams and encouraged routines that are out of synch with our natural patterns, yet it can also lead us back. The industrial revolution flooded us with light, but the digital revolution might turn out to be far more sympathetic to the segmented sleeper.

Technology fuels the invention of new ways of organising our time. Home working, freelancing and flexitime are increasingly common, as are concepts such as the digital nomad and the online or remote worker – all of whom might adopt a less rigid routine, one that allows night-wakers to find a more harmonious balance between segmented sleeping and work commitments. If we can make time to wake in the night and ruminate with our prolactin-sloshed brains, we may also reconnect to the creativity and fantasies our forebears enjoyed when, as Ekirch notes, they ‘stirred from their first sleep to ponder a kaleidoscope of partially crystallised images, slightly blurred but otherwise vivid tableaus born of their dreams’.

7 November 2014

Read more essays on sleep and dreams and stories and literature

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