Where are we? Is this post-reality, waking dreams, or dreams of being awake? Or… something else? I don’t know, but I’ve been feeling particularly inspired of late to let “dreamy” be the guiding inspiration for my recordings.
Here’s a dreamy track for you. May it land well, and bring something healing into your week.
The story of this recording continues after the audio player.
Friday night, the kids were just asleep, and we parents were moving quietly about the house, enjoying the moment to be more in control of the direction of our attention. I had just received a new microphone in the mail and was softly playing my guitar with the intention of warming up to record something. I turned on my recording software right at the moment of whispering to my wife “You should play more of that thumb piano” referring to the instrument that had just rung out in perfect harmony with my guitar while she was putting it back on a shelf. I kept that intro whisper in the recording because it sounded so… dreamy.
For most of November, I’ve been going to sleep at the same time as the kids, waking up at some strange, dark hour, and falling asleep again until the first kid awakens near the first light of dawn. My brain has been catching up on a lot of deferred processing, and my dreams have been rather cinematic. From this place, I have only renewed and strengthened my appreciation for the book “In The Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak. He really nailed the essence of dreaming in the art and storytelling in that book.
Friday night was a rare evening where I was awake after 9pm, and my brain – fully in the momentum of being asleep at that time – started dripping out some of the “sleep juice” that brought me to a pleasant in-between consciousness. I could see it happening, and wasn’t going to miss the chance to improvise and record a tune in that mind space.
It was freeing to let go of worrying too much about the composition, recording quality, and performance. What did come through was the overall essence of “dreamy” that I was going for, so it was easy to call it done. I hope it meets you well, and brings some pleasant dreaminess to your wakefulness, or some wakeful inspiration to your dreaminess.
“If I am dreaming, let me never awaken. If I am awake, let me never sleep”
– Mr. Miyagi’s Father from The Karate Kid Part II, 1986
Wishing you a week of peace,
– Alex