The War on Sleep?

Ironically the other night I fell asleep while reading Matt Haig's book 'Notes on a Nervous Planet' and in the middle of a chapter titled 'The War on Sleep'.

In that chapter Matt writes about Thomas Edison and the light bulb and how Edison actually believed sleep was bad for you and that too much was likely to make you lazy.
Edison believed that artificial light could cure 'unhealthy and inefficient' people.

Last night before going to bed I saw this story about Elon Musk at the ABC website -
Tesla sheds $US5.4 billion after Elon Musk admits job stress getting to him

"Shares of electric car maker Tesla have tumbled about 9 per cent after CEO Elon Musk conceded in a newspaper interview that job stress may be getting the best of him.

In an interview with the New York Times Mr Musk admitted the past year had been the most "difficult and painful" of his career.
The newspaper reported that during an hour-long telephone interview Mr Musk alternated between laughter and tears, acknowledging he was working up to 120 hours a week and sometimes took Ambien to get to sleep."

Like Matt Haig writes at the end of that 'The War on Sleep' chapter -
"We live in 24-hour societies but not 24-hour bodies.
Something has to give."

Matt Haig being interviewed by Sarah Kanowski
 at the BWF

Matt also points out that the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, believes sleep - not HBO, not Amazon, not any other streaming service - is his company's main competitor.

Matt also mentioned it in his talk that I went to at the Byron Writers Festival.

This is the podcast link to the talk pictured above -
Matt Haig on the anxiety of modern life

I couldn't help thinking of Heath Ledger's death when I was reading that chapter and how his quest for sleep resulted in what some would call "eternal sleep".

"According to the police, Wolozin, who had arrived early for a 3:00 pm appointment with Ledger, called Ledger's friend Mary-Kate Olsen for help.

Olsen, who was in California, directed a New York City private security guard to go to the scene.

At 3:26 pm, "less than 15 minutes after she first saw him in bed and only a few moments after the first call to Ms. Olsen", Wolozin telephoned 9-1-1 "to say that Mr. Ledger was not breathing".

At the urging of the 9-1-1 operator, Wolozin administered CPR, which was unsuccessful in reviving him.
Paramedics and emergency medical technicians arrived seven minutes later, at 3:33 pm ("at almost exactly the same moment as a private security guard summoned by Ms. Olsen") but were also unable to revive him.

At 3:36 pm, Ledger was pronounced dead, and his body was removed from the apartment."

Spontaneous Combustion? I Am Heath Ledger Depicts a Soul That Burned Too Bright?

It was probably because I ran into the lead singer of 'Powderfinger' at the Byron Writers Festival that made me think of Heath's death and quest for sleep -
Cuttlefish are the Rockstar Aliens of the Sea?
'Powderfinger' songs make up a lot of songs on the soundtrack to Ledger's movie 'Two Hands' including the song 'These Days' in the above You Tube video.
WARNING: Lots of f*cking swearing in the trailer below if you don't like F Bombs.

The crow I saw as I used an ATM in Byron Bay

It's funny how little things start coming back to haunt me in hindsight that make me think of the line Eric Draven says in 'The Crow' and which I've had for years on my blog sidebar -

The bird on the docket is a seagull,
 if you were wondering 

I had just bought a heap of books on the Thursday before the writer's festival in on my walk around Byron Bay and went to withdraw some cash from an ATM so I had money in my pocket for food and drink the next day to use at the BWF.
As I get to the ATM a crow landed on the sign above me and I snapped off a few photos, as I see the crow as my spirit animal (just humour me if you don't believe in "spirit animals" and cosmic signs please:-).

The crow I saw as I used an ATM in Byron Bay

It wasn't until I went to a book-talk a week or two later and saw a crow painted on a power-box in Vulture Street at West End that I thought about the crow that greeted me on the Thursday before the writers festival in Byron Bay.
The Dance of Chance for an Avid Reader?

The crow on a power-box in Vulture Street,
West End

"The title of the album was taken from an iconic street in the inner southern suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland, the city in which all Powderfinger members grew up."

Ah ... sunsets, singers and shamanism?
The Shamanic Artists of Byron Bay: The Medicine of Karuah and Sean O'Shea

The books that I ended up buying on
the Thursday in Byron Bay

The thing is that until the Thursday I was down in Byron Bay I didn't know who Matt Haig was, or what he had written.
I had originally considered seeing a talk called 'Gold from Stone: Spoken Word Artists' but changed my mind and saw Matt's talk instead on the Friday.

I bought Matt's book 'Reasons to Stay Alive' on Friday after his talk and brought the book I bought on Thursday of his along and asked him to sign both.

The only book I had intended to buy on Thursday was Bri Lee's book 'Eggshell Skull', because I had penciled her talk in to see on Friday and thought I would save some time by buying it Thursday instead of Friday.
I tried to get tickets to her book talk in Brisbane before the Byron Writers Festival, but the tickets had sold out when I went to buy one.

But I got to hear the talk later on the ABC podcast 'Big Ideas'. 

You can hear Bri Lee talk about the book at this link -
A woman's journey through the justice system

Bri Lee in conversation with Ailsa Piper at the BWF

And on the subject of abuse, lack of sleep and binge watching TV shows, I had planned on going to the Liane Moriarty talk on the Sunday of the writers festival and buying her book 'Big Little Lies', but I had never seen the TV series that the book was based on, so I binged watched the series in my motel room on my iPad through Fox's equivalent to Netflix, 'Foxtel Now'. 

I started watching 'Big Little Lies' and after a few shows couldn't work out why they had shot the show like this, and it wasn't until I was trying to find the last show of the first season that I realized that I had watched the last show first, thinking it was the first show.
Doh!
I really do need some more sleep it seems.
I told Liane how I had binge watched the series that weekend and how the story wasn't making a whole lot of sense to me until I realized my mistake.

Liane Moriarty in conversation with
Jane Hutcheon at the BWF

I have to say from what I have read of the book so far that I like the book better than the TV show.

Another weird thing I just realized while watching Nicole Kidman talk about 'Big Little Lies' in that You Tube above is that my oldest son who shares the same birthdate of June 20th with Nicole (pure coincidence I assure you) got a small lightbulb tattooed on his forearm over a year ago.

My son's light-bulb tattoo

The thought also hits me that I may have something else in common with Nicole when it comes to family anniversaries.
My father was found dead in a nursing home at three in the morning of September 13th, so having spent some time in that nursing home visiting my father I know firsthand just how hard it is to get a nurse to come running in that place if you want help, so realistically he could have died on September 12th, since he died in his sleep.

Nicole's dad died on September 12th, so give or take a few hours our fathers share almost the same anniversary each year now -
Spookiest Nicole Kidman Sync Story of the Year and Everyone Missed It?

But it wasn't the crow that guided me on my weekend in Byron Bay, it was the ibis.

But more on the ibis and the above book in later posts.

An ibis walking in the lake in the grounds of the BWF 2018

What is Ambien?
Time for me to take a nap, I think.

An ibis doing a table dance for me at the pub first day in Byron