Whither Sleepy?

Why, in the name of all that's wakeful, would I want to do a show about being sleepy? (This is the sort of argument I have in my head all the time.) (I lose those arguments more than I win them.) (Which doesn't say a whole lot about my sense of self.) (I get a little carried away when I use parentheses for asides.) I mean, for Peter & Paul's sake, isn't my show on a Friday afternoon? Aren't people getting ready for a long, conscious, alert, drug-filled weekend? Why would anyone coming home from work after an exhausting week want to listen to songs about being sleepy?

Very good questions from my head. I have no very good answers. My show ideas come to me like spitballs from my enemies in 7th grade. (You guys know who you are.) I let them smack me in the head & sometimes they stick. A few weeks ago, while sitting at work & being astonishingly groggy for no good reason, I thought to myself, "What is this thing called tiredness? Do people really write songs about it?"

Sleepy can happen when you've just awoken or for a while before you go to sleep. But sleepy seems so innocuous compared to tired - tired is what you are after a long meeting, or after mowing your lawn, or after a conversation with your significant other about "where this relationship is going." Tired is sleepy times ten, & sometimes can't be helped with sleep. Sometimes a pint of whiskey will drive tired down to sleepy. But tired is nothing compared to exhausted.

Exhausted is one of those words that sounds like it feels. Exhaustion makes you thinks of the exhaust that comes out of tailpipes - you're so exhausted, you might have just been broken down to your component chemicals in a hot, nasty internal combustion engine & all that's left is the smokey, polluting haze of what you once were. Exhaustion isn't cured by sleep, but by your body completely, utterly shutting itself down. Exhaustion makes you put yourself into a coma. Hell, when I'm exhausted, tired seems like a vacation in San Francisco.

Of course, there's good exhaustion, when you choose to push yourself to your limit, or when you're having too good a time dancing to care about your fuel gauge. But even then - exhaustion > tired > sleepy (the > means "greater than" here, you algebra dropout), with each "greater than" an exponential factor rather than a geometric gradient.

Don't those words just make you want to nap? Sleepy, tired, exhausted. Whew.

I can promise you, however, that Friday's show will be full of information & energy, not a show celebrating the state of sleepiness but a wide-awake examination from an afternoon point of view. So don't be afraid my show will put you to sleep - any more than normal, that is - but instead tune in to find out, musically & in my airbreaks, what this sleepy feeling is all about. Hopefully it'll give you a virtual rest so you'll be able to stay up later for the weekend.