Making friends with night

Tilda Swinton performing Cornelia Parker's The Maybe, 1995

Drums in the night. Poom Poom Pom. You wake up and someone is sitting on you who shouldn't be there at all. But no, their voice is in your ear yet they're across the room, at the foot of your bed. It's a shadow. A buried memory seeps from the skin, it's of an old lover sleeping beside you. Forgotten but not forgiven. You wake up again, desolate big bed, empty on every side. Outside, thank god, the sky is the colour of 5 o'clock. It's time to get up.

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I am friends with the night

when I sleep beside someone I love
when I am drinking
after I've been drinking
after the house has been full of people and rhythms all day
when I'm not worried
when the sky is clear

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How I sleep

First of all, I have favorite clothes. Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly bad I sleep without a shirt on. My own skin comforts me. I leave one curtain blind up, so that I can see out the window. I find it impossible to fall asleep in a completely curtained room. Some people say that the morning sun bothers them, but I love it. The moon comforts me, when she's out. She looks so wise and lonely up there. The stars I love. I've always loved them. One day I'll get some tattooed on me, when I learn to be friends with the night. I sleep on my back, towards the left of the bed. I wrap my arms around myself and put both hands above my heart, one on top of the other. I hate to be held in bed, but I love sleeping beside someone. Once I woke up with my cat stretched out bodily across my neck like a living ermine scarf. I sleep very well when I have a pet in my room, especially with a cat in my bed. When he was alive mine used to curl up right in the small of my back. But I had a habit of rolling over and squashing him, so he only did it when he was really feeling like company. So with two hands above my heart, I close my eyes and try to slow my mind down. If I'm well, it takes what I estimate to be only a few minutes to lose consciousness. Otherwise, I am at it for hours, feeling like I'm driving a car up a very steep hill. Sometimes I chant a Buddhist prayer that I've known so long I can't remember where I learnt it. It's one my greatest personal resources. Here it is:

Namo tasa bhagavato arahato samma sambudhasa [3 times]
(Lord Buddha the enlightened one, the compassionate one)

Buddham saranam gachimi (To the Buddha I go for refuge)
Sangham saranam gachimi (To the monks I go for refuge)
Dhammam saranam gachimi (To the teachings I go for refuge)

Repeat these last three lines 2 times, with each line of the second repetition preceeded by 'Dutiyampi' (for the second time), and the third repetition by 'Tatiyampi' (for the third time).

Sometimes I do up to a hundred or more. Sometimes it fails. When I was younger, just before I fell asleep, it seemed I sometimes heard a great echo of my chanting, as if I was being joined by (or was joining) a whole hall filled with prayers. An image would occur in my mind of a great room with many monks sitting in it - all in robes of saffron and red. I'd usually sleep very well after that.

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Sometimes I am very tempted to call someone and ask them to come over to sleep with me. In fact tonight's certainly one of those nights. No, nothing like what you're thinking, just sleeping. Really sleeping. Maybe one day I'll do a performance by making myself available for sleeping with. It would be called: making friends with night. Would you participate?