When I'm really overtired, I often find myself falling into a series of intense dreams or nightmares as soon as I fall asleep. My uneducated guess (only semi-supported by a brief internet search) is that it may be more likely you'll fall almost immediately into REM (rapid eye movement) sleep when very tired. Interestingly, dropping straight into REM is typical in narcolepsy. Which I'm pretty sure I don't have. Normal sleep patterns involve 1-2 hrs of non-REM sleep before going into the first REM stage. And non-REM sleep is thought to involve little or no dreaming, or perhaps less intense and less narratively based dreaming. It's still a pretty mysterious field of study.
When I realise it is happening, I am desperate to wake up and break the cycle. Sometimes it's hard to break out. Most recently I got to the last dream in the series and it was me lying in bed trying to turn the bedside light on but I couldn't make it work. Of course this wasn't real and after a struggle - probably just a moment in real time - I woke up properly and turned on the light. At this point I generally feel both scared and annoyed, because I know I'm overtired, I've probably made the effort to go to bed early, and now I'm losing the chance to catch up on my sleep and am not willing to slip back into sleep too soon.
I recently watched season 3 of the addictive Mr Mercedes. For the new season there was a different theme song, Series of Dreams by Bob Dylan.
Like pretty much anyone spending enough time listening to western popular music, I'm familiar with plenty of Bob Dylan songs. But I've never really paid serious attention or listened to his albums - though it always seemed like I would one day.
Because I'd been thinking about these nasty falling-asleep dream sequences, Series of Dreams immediately grabbed my attention. It was recorded in 1989 but didn't actually make the cut for that album, and came out a couple of years later on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3.
The lyrics aren't about nightmares, necessarily, but the song does capture that trapped feeling, with lines like "nothing comes up to the top," and "there's no exit in any direction." And of course the whole feeling of moving from one dream to another, when perhaps you'd rather wake up or just move into restful dreamless sleep.
It was not just the lyrics: I also instantly loved and recognised the sound, and was not surprised to learn it was produced by Daniel Lanois, who also collaborated on one of my favourite albums, Wrecking Ball with Emmylou Harris. I remember when the Boss gave one of his later albums the same name. I couldn't quite understand why he felt ok with that. Doesn't he know that's Emmylou's masterpiece?!
And all this talk of dreams reminds me of one of my favourite songs of 2021, Canyon by Charm of Finches.
Not only do the lyrics talk explicitly about dreams, but in their 'Inside the Song' video Mabel and Ivy talk about how they mined their own dream journals for ideas. It's such a beautiful song.
