Insane Insomniac Inspiration: Literary and Musical

As I sat awake on my bed this morning at 4:17am staring into the darkness, I wondered how many people experience an interestingly horrifying phenomenon: dreaming in music and literary phrases.  As I've made fairly obvious, I'm a music major, and just as evident, I love poetry. Why does this matter?

So glad you asked.

Inspiration comes to me all the time.  In lots of different forms.  But sometimes I sincerely wish it wouldn't.  When I say I dream in music, I mean just that - whatever music has been on my mind throughout the day (during the production You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, that was all I heard in my head for over a month), that is the same music that plays during my dreams at night.  All night.  And sometimes it's only one phrase or motive of music.  And this has been happening as long as I can remember.  At first it was interesting.  Then it was annoying.  After literally a month of restlessly dreaming in the song "Book Report," I felt/feel stark raving mad, and the best I could describe it was something like this:

Dancing with sprites,

Worse than brightest lights,

Constant sound,

Not a moment's peace be found:

Dreaming in music.

And that's not all.  Oh no, not by a long shot.  You know that feeling you get when a friend is going through something hard, or you are going through something hard, or something bad happens to you (or even sometimes something good), and it's just so profound that you can't possibly put it to words?  But you know that it needs to be put into words somehow, just to do it justice?  That happens to me all the time.  My poetry is just my method of struggle against such feelings of injustice.

Apparently there are repercussions for ignoring said injustices.  Last night, I dreamt in literary phrases and ideas.

Imagine looking down on yourself.  Imagine being able to see the thoughts in your mind bouncing around in the dark...but instead of physical manifestations of those thoughts, all you can see are the sentences describing them.  They're like little grey animals in the blackness, gnawing away at your sanity, and not quite white enough to be distinguishable from the darkness itself.

That was my night.

Millions of words,

Few ever heard,

Die in the dark,

Without Inspiration's spark:

Insanity's catalyst.

Upon considering the fact that many normal people will read this blog post (ok...maybe not many...but at least a few), I realize that I sound like a lunatic (in fact, Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano comes to mind...you know, the part where everyone is running around screaming nonsense into the dark?).  I guess most people who seriously write sound that way in their own heads.  A friend calls me a beatnik...and I admit to that title.  Although I'm not quite sure if this is me speaking, or the NyQuil I took last night sometime after 4:17am to drown all the little grey creatures that were eating away at my mind.