Deep sleep

..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.