So, let’s get right to it…”Hold on tight!”

As we left our last blog post, I asked; “So, are there any Sweet Dreams for adults?” My reply was; “Maybe, but there is something even better……”

I’m not going to make it seem like I have some deep-seated, ancient mystical/psychological revelation here. What I’m talking about is far more simple and inspiring; “Music In The Dark.”

Let me expound.

Many years ago, I used to go to sleep each night with the radio on. I didn’t tune in for “companionship,” I just liked listening to music as it lulled me to sleep every once in awhile . As a young man in 1976, I was especially enthralled with an “oldies” radio station out of Boston, WROR, 105.7 FM. Although they were playing “oldies” from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, so much of the music was new to me. I can still remember on more than one occasion being concerned because every time I thought I had listened to my last song for the night, another amazing song would follow that I HAD to stay awake to hear. I sometimes worried that I would stay up all night and not get any sleep.

Eventually, that small dial radio gave way to a Sony Walkman I employed while in the Navy to drown out the sounds of motors, pumps, fan belts, loud sailors, and the occasional “at sea” sounds of a massive 5-Inch Forward Bow-Mounted cannon 6 feet above me on a steel deck conducting gunnery drills. The Walkman did nothing to silence any of this “noise pollution,” but it was kind of funny when the guys wearing their Walkman the most (not me) would get scolded by medical personnel directly after getting their hearing tested because the doctors could tell precisely how much their hearing degraded in the exact bandwidth from their previous test. Years later, I would often listen to console stereos with a combination radio and album turntable as I drifted off to sleep.

Eventually, working construction and in power plants for 28 years, I was driven to appreciate stone-cold silence each night when I went to bed; no music or sounds at all. Oddly enough, besides wind storms occasionally ripping through my old house, the sound I heard most was 3 miles away in 0 MPH wind speeds; it was the sound of massive cranes from the Port of Providence dropping scrap metal in the holds of cargo ships along the docks.

In this very blog space, I have mentioned before that the best way to listen to new music is driving in the car at night. I continue to believe that.

On occasion, I would listen to music at night on my old sailboat as the waves rocked me to sleep. Of course, this is also how I had the dream one night that I was invited up on stage to sing with Cowboy Junkies despite having ZERO musical or singing abilities. In typical dream fashion, “They” still loved me!!

What does this have to do with a dream substitute? In my mind…..a lot.

My house is filled with “smart devices.” Speakers, lights, switches, timers, etc. This includes several Amazon Alexa devices. On rare occasions, as I crawl into bed, I instruct my bedroom smart device to play a certain song or a certain artist. I also add the “instruction” that the playtime is to last for 5-10 minutes. The other night I called for the Tom Waits song, “I Hope I Don’t Fall In Love With You.” I forgot to add a time limit, so the app selects what it considers similar songs and continues to keep on playing music after the requested song. I don’t think I heard half the Waits song before I was out cold.

Here’s the “dreamy” part. Approximately 4 hours later at 2:39 AM (I looked at the clock afterward), my mind began to register the coolest dream; except it was no dream. The smart speakers were playing Van Morrison’s song “Cypress Avenue” from the Astral Weeks album. Please excuse my sappy references here, but I literally seemed to be floating on some “Astral Plane of Existence” myself; neither awake nor asleep, but my head was mimicking and echoing back the exact lyrics of the first line of the song itself……

“And I’m caught one more time,….. Up on Cyprus Avenue……”

The most wonderful aspect of all of this was not my state of sensory deprivation, but my near maximum “audio euphoria.” The room was exceptionally quiet except for the music while also cloaked in the “deepest darkness.” My eyes were nearly welded shut and my body was dead still; and yet each addictive pulse of the song was pulled from the room, amplified, and channeled straight into my brain as well as down into my soul.

“And all the little girls rhyme something…..on their way back home from school…..something.”

Again, I know this sounds corny, over-melodramatic, and almost ridiculous, but for me, it seemed like an almost “out of body experience;” if such a thing really exists.

For the “aficionados” out there, I am aware that the song I heard was from the studio album, but to me, it seemed as energized as the live version from the album that this very website once called “one of the greatest live albums of all time;” Van Morrison’s 1974, “It’s Too Late To Stop Now.” Nothing has changed there.

On this album, Morrison is backed up by his Caledonia Soul Orchestra. He mixed Rock and Blues, Jazz and Folk. To the disinterested, especially on this one song, the merging of so many odd, reckless sounds and vocals may seem bizarre and uninspiring, but for those of us who love this album, forgive me if I go out on a limb and make up a totally fictitious expression I will now call “musical cubism.” A work of art that, if you view the various elements in a singular frame of ear and mind, may seem dysfunctional and incohesive, but when assembled and presented together, you get a “pure masterpiece.”

“Rainbow ribbons in her hair…..Rain-a bow, Rain-a-bow, Rain-a-bow…..boom!”

Hearing this music in my “nether state of awareness” was so stimulating. I remember thinking about the sounds bouncing all over the place; out of order and totally in sync at the same time. It was up/down, and back and forth, just like my thoughts at that moment. It sounded so incredible and made me so happy. I wanted to sing along, I wanted to “think” along, I wanted to write all about it. My imagination was going wild! As the song flowed on in my semi-sleep state, I imagined myself singing, waving my hands, and tapping my feet; except my core never moved, my eyes never opened, and my consciousness never seemed to twitch. Asleep and awake all at once.

Awesome!

After one last pregnant pause, Van Morrison screams out, to the band’s final definitive crescendo sound;

“It’s Too Late To Stop Now……”

“Damn Straight!!!!!”

The “flying dream” is cool and the “going fast on skis dream” is fun, but I have never had a “Sweet Dream” any sweeter than I did the other night!

I encourage all of you to pop in your ear buds, or put on your headphones; lay down on the bed, or sit in your chair, and close your eyes and listen to something that should warm any music lovers heart for a long time.