A Volume Of Sleep
by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
I will (never) write a
volume of sleep. A Volume Of Sleep. In the tradition of Burton, of Graves, in
the tradition of enthusiasts who have anatomised melancholy, myth, poetry and
all the maggot-thoughts burrowing in their brains. Accuracy in the realm of
fact is a pleasant effect, if feasible, but I will (never) strive instead for
accuracy, absolute accuracy of a kind that is more precise the less it is tied
to mere empirical fact.
My Volume Of Sleep will
(not) begin with a study of literature. I will (not) trace the origins of the
literary impulse in myth, of myth in dream, in sleep. It will (never) be shown
that Morpheus, and not any of the muses, or that oaf Orpheus, is the true
progenitor of all the arts.
The reader shall (never
ever alas) see how the works of the great lost classical bards - now restored
by a special process of my own, in which every literary work ever is (not, oh
no, not at all) painstakingly cross-matched and everything that does not have a
predecessor is (at no point ever to be) further refined and manipulated to
produce the contents of that vast library called The Lost Classics (Yes, this
approach assumes there is no true innovation in literature - or rather, that
there has been none since the very early years of human storytelling - and who
can deny this sombre fact? Would you, would you with a straight face dare to
tell me ‘there is something new under the sun’? Would you? I should think
not!), how the work of the great lost classical bards had its origins in common
dream-types elucidated by Freud and his detractors. I shall (not, my friends,
not in these diminishing days left to us) show how these dream-works are the
seed and nucleus of all else, and how even today those works most closely
inspired by dream, conceived in sleep are slowly preparing to be forgotten.
I will (not) show how
all the finest literature is itself a thing that wakes for a while and then
wishes to sleep.
Yes, but what of the
sleep of animals? do the mammals and the reptiles and the birds and the many
other things that crawl or hop or flit or fly sleep? To answer this question I
will (never be able to, not if I have a thousand thousand years in which to
overcome my ennui and nescience) posit an entirely new and comprehensive
definition of sleep - something which science, that pale fanatic, has failed to
provide. You will (not, not if you wait a million aeons and offer me a million
fortunes and a million years of dominion over this earth and the favours of a
million Helens of a million Troys) learn that sleep is, in fact, the natural
order of all life - that it is so fundamental we need not even have a specific
word for it. The first things to live did not awaken into life - rather, they
fell from the stoic stasis of unlife into sleep.
Sleep, then, is the
fundament.
All our waking hours are
fancies, gambols and games and not of consequence.
Next, I will (not in
this lifetime, and a lifetime is all I am alloted) describe the seven ages of
sleep: the ageless slumber in the amniotic ocean, the sleep of infancy, still
cradled in oblivion to the passing fancies of the waking world, the sleep of
childhood, increasingly a refuge, even in nightmare, the sleep of youth, so
much richer and more sustaining than the lives they are about to embark on in
the diurnal rut, the sleep of midlife, a troubled, parched thing, often doing
more harm than good for the entire organism is so at war with its own nature,
the sleep of the aged, a diminished, unsteady thing, scarred by all the years
of neglect; and finally that sleep from which we all wish we may never awake.
The next section will
(never ever, despite all my efforts) be a collection of segments of
individuals, human and otherwise, sleeping, edited from film, television shows,
documentaries, surveillance footage and spy cameras.
It will (not, no matter
how I wish and weep and genuflect) run for about 24 hours. The idea is to reset
the circadian clock of each viewer and initiate a 48-hour sleep cycle that can
gradually be converted into a kind of annual hibernation schedule with brief
hours of wakefulness every three months to attend to amenities.
Of course (not), the
volume will (not) now offer a detailed plan and schedule for achieving this
salutary goal.
There will (not, not for
all my tears and entreaties) then follow sections on the political, erotic and
thaumaturgical aspects of sleep and appendices on sleep in song and sleep as
described by individuals from various walks of life through the ages - this
last section created by a form of psychic reconstruction akin to the technic of
Edgar Cayce.
Naturally, these last
sections are not (even if they ever existed) expected to be perused by the
reader, who will (not, as he or she does not exist) now be engaged in his or
her own journey into the heart of sleep.
Indeed, much of this
book will (never, for mere wishing and hoping and trying will never make a
thing so which is not meant to be) exist freed from the need to be read; for
each passage is written with a carefully calculated rhythm and sonority meant
to induce its own subject, and if the soporific effects of the prose are not
sufficient, each copy of the book will (not, for it will never be published)
have sedative resins imbued in its pages, vapourised at the touch of a human
hand, and inhaled to produce instant sleep.
Open my book and you (never)
shall sleep, sleep in the hope that this, then, is that final sleep you have
been putting off. Everything is else is just clutter, and padding and facade
and sham.