..such a hideous social faux pas that I’ve been known to clench manfully and sit on it for the entire evening, squeaking surreptitiously, no doubt..
But, back to Sleep. At a dinner party the other night I was obliged to pitch my rock opera, The Jellabad Mutant. It’s a palpable deficiency, given the business that I’m in, that I’m not a pitcher by nature and I’d normally mumble something self-deprecating and gloss over it, but I decided to take up the challenge for a change and managed to give the table a fairly comprehensible précis of the show, (it’s a pretty complicated sci-fi style libretto) – as well as an introduction to its entirely undeveloped sequel, The Cosmic Detective.
I was pretty well prepared as I’ve been in the process of uploading several of our out-of-stock CDs, including The Jellabad Mutant, to CD Baby, an on-line distributor, in the course of which I’ve been listening to the music and reading the background notes I wrote for the CD’s release.
Because the project was never completed, there aren’t any notes for The Cosmic Detective, although one song, We Saw it Coming, was recorded for the Living on a Volcano CD. The Cosmic Detective concerns the Jellabad Mutant still and begins in an imagined Victorian private psychiatric hospital, located somewhere near the Victorian regional centre of Hamilton and based on a real hospital in the ‘70s that ‘specialised in the use of LSD and psilocybin (magic mushrooms), Deep Sleep Therapy and ECT. Deep Sleep Therapy was a treatment where a cocktail of drugs was administered to keep patients unconscious for weeks at a time.’ (ref. Wikipedia)
In The Cosmic Detective, a troubled rock musician, (me perhaps?), checks himself in for Deep Sleep Therapy at this very hospital and it was here that the alien entity (the Mutant) decides to cohabit his brain.
Deep Sleep Therapy was popular amongst ‘prominent people including judges and politicians’ but I didn’t hear of any musicians taking it on. I believe the therapy still goes on in a modified form, so maybe they do these days, but who cares about ancient rock musicians?
Even though it’s largely discredited I imagine the notion’s quite seductive to somebody who struggles with getting a good night’s sleep. I’ve found that, touring aside, keeping regular hours is the best way of getting adequate sleep. That and the occasional night’s sleep enhanced with valerian.
Valerian isn’t a knock out drug like temazepam. I tried temazepam when my late wife Helen was struggling with sleep deprivation – I decided I should know what the drug was about seeing I was responsible for dispensing it to her.
Valerian just enhances the depth of my sleep and while sometimes I awake with a slight hangover, I always feel refreshed.
Anyway, the deal with The Cosmic Detective was that when the musician awoke, he had mysteriously acquired a decent songwriting talent in the shape of the parasitic Mutant, but it was a talent with an agenda. A rock journalist, (the Cosmic Detective of the title), is curious about the transformation and begins to investigate – and what he discovers ultimately leads to a dramatic confrontation with the future of the world at stake.
Damn! That sounds like a good idea! Something else for people to hassle me about besides writing a life and times-type auto biography.