The Songs in Sleep

So, occasionally I will have this weird, but basically cool thing happen: I will fall asleep, sometimes dream, though not always, and wake up with a song-fully formed-written in my head. I have learned to keep paper and writing utensils handy so as to make record of these sleep-songs, because if I just go back to sleep thinking I'll remember them in the morning, I wont.

These songs are always at least as good as what I can write when I am fully awake and engaged in the songwriting process in earnest. Sometimes better. It happened to me all the time when I was a child, but I didn't have the presence of mind or musical language to translate these songs into anything permanent. Sometimes I would wake up crying at how lovely and necessarily transitory they were. Now I have the means to capture them and I'm struck by something else: they're always happy, too.

Anyone who's listened to my body of work knows that this is, in itself, unusual. My frame of mind, intellectual and emotional propensities, and singing voice all lend themselves more naturally to down-tempo minor key songs about... well... that one guy. Even Aria pointed this out to me the other day as I was writing a song. Her grandmother asked what it was about and Aria said
"Probably the same thing ALL her songs are about." to which I replied,
"Oh, yeah? What are all my songs about?" she rolled her eyes
"_____"
Oh. Right. Him. Although, as it turned out, I managed to make that one about a flood instead. Uplifting stuff!!

But last night, in the cradle of slumber, after having some WHACKED OUT dreams, I woke up with the first verse of a song, sweet and cheerful, twirling in my head. So I wrote it down. And I like it already. It makes me happy to sing it. So, I guess I do care if I sleep. There is some good it can do. And I have the Red Paper Flowers to prove it....