October 20th, 2009.

My insomnia is an insidious thing. It creeps up on me with an innocuous thought or three and then stays with me through the night. Often it stays with me for a week. Sometimes it’s unwelcome visit is prolonged into two weeks or so of two hours of unconsciousness a night, followed day after day by unwelcome waking. I have a personal pet theory that I’m actually nocturnal, and that my forced diurnal schedule throws my own body rhythms badly enough that I need a personal “leap day” of consciousness. Once every month or so I get further and further up on the cycle, staying awake later and later until I have a day like today where, despite all the needs of my schedule and Life, I’m awake for a full 24 hours+.

*Sunday night we rolled into Louisville, KY and realized our venue was just to the right of Mordor. Who knew? ilyAIMY’s just to the right of evil!*

There are very, very few plusses to the situation. Having a house to yourself doesn’t do you that much good when you’re a guest. You don’t know what the noise tolerances of the rest of the household are, you don’t know if you can turn on the television. In this specific case, the house creaks like a galleon under weigh, screaming protest at every movement. Obviously, guitar is out of the question. Without an internet connection there’s not THAT much work that can get done, and for that work that I could be facing (audio editing with headphones, website revamp) the kind of fatigue that I face during these bouts of sleeplessness makes it very, very hard to focus.

Unfortunately, the Troubadours of Divine Bliss were performing at a house concert so they weren’t hosting their regular night and we had to attend a mere open mic at the Monkeywrench, rather than getting ourselves some churchin’ at Church on the Rocks – but the guest hosts, the Sirens, were just as talented and personable – and charming as Hell. A little bit of a reggae flavour to what I heard of them and we became fast friends… or at least “hearted” one another, which I understand amongst the kids is KIND of the same thing.

And so – the one bonus to the situation is getting to see an absolutely exquisite dawn break over slumbering Louisville, KY. Coastal snobbery will keep most people from ever truly appreciating the beauty of Kentucky, but Louisville is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cities – especially at these cusp moments. Gold is slowly flowing through the streets and the leaves have been turning steadily for the autumn, echoing the silent explosion of colour. It’s no small bonus. It should be appreciated in silent company with hot coffee, perhaps. The company could be human or animal – I could imagine this moment with a dog or a squirrel or a suddenly-statue-still rabbit in the yard – but I get it to myself this morning, and it does little to dull the perfection of it all.

The best place to get a meal in Louisville, at least, from my own limited experience – Lynn’s Paradise Cafe. This was the first time we got to eat dinner here. Oh God yes. I’d be fat and poor if I Lived here. Er. Fatter and poorer.

Most of my friends are kind of horrified by how in-the-moment my mind is. My memory has never been very good and so I write things, moment by moment, in the hope of somehow capturing my Life. I write this now not just to share, but so that when I’m about to hit the stage in 15 hours, after over 30 hours of being awake, after only five hours or so of sleep before that, I’ll remember that there was some good that came from it all.