Hypnagogia
Hypnagogia
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The Story
The Story
Hypnagogia, the song that started this album. Not to be confused with hypnotic jerks, a.k.a. when you feel like you're falling and then startle yourself awake (not to be confused with super contentious hypnotists).Hypnagogia is this scientific phenom where your brain starts to shut down and the gates of your imagination open up. Then your internal monologue goes bananas. You're barely conscious, so the thoughts you begin stringing together are less and less coherent and more and more, "whatever pops into my mind." It's like you lose the filter of rationality, but you're still self-aware enough to be notice what you're saying. Eventually I began researching what I was experiencing and was more than thrilled to discover that, not only is it a common experience, but science has a name for it, and that name is hypnagogia.I didn't plan to write this song or the album. I wrote Dreamland after being unable to process some emotions, and one day for a reason I don't remember, I put Dreamland into an imovie file and as I was moving my curser around the audio, it kept making this crazy looping noise. So then I sampled it and it became this song. When I was done I decided I wanted to do music some more and then I wrote 14 more songs.
Having learned of scientific hypnagogia previously, I thought it would be fitting to name this unsettling amalgam of sounds mixed with deep underwater submarine radar Hypnagogia. One part, because the name made sense, and another because I wanted every excuse to use that word as possible. Hypnagogia was born, and so was Local Insomnia. I planned on keeping Hypnagogia as a sequel to Dreamland. At the time, my logic was that it's another experience... the insomniac starts to fall asleep, but they don't quite go to Dreamland...they go to a bizzare and alternate universe.
But then, I wrote more and more songs, and I decided that Hypnagogia was better as the end to the album, rather than a sequel to Dreamland, because the theme is that the local insomniac cannot fall asleep, so at the end of the album, they should be right about to.At the beginning of this album, the local insomniac is yearning to go back to Dreamland. Then they review their life, remember some things, which in this case, the "things" that they are remembering are the songs between now and Your Local Insomniac...stories of going to islands on airplanes, missing coworkers, that friend who keeps conjuring up excuses, their reflections on convictions about faith, frustration with the way the world is, a bad relationship where both parties know its doomed to fail, etc. Next, they write a song about how they are still awake at 2 am and need to stop reviewing and go to bed. Lord knows when, reality starts to shift away...little fractions of life stop making sense, as the inner monologue starts rambling and the first stage of sleep is right around the corner.I wanted this song to sound as unsettling as the actual experience of hypnagogia. It's chaotic, its underwater in the abyss or in space orbiting colorful planets, and it also closes the chapter. It doesn't completely end the story, however...Hypnagogia is suggestive of a future, a place where dreams might be better...maybe a return to Dreamland, off on another adventure to save the world... there are no limits in dreams.
Having learned of scientific hypnagogia previously, I thought it would be fitting to name this unsettling amalgam of sounds mixed with deep underwater submarine radar Hypnagogia. One part, because the name made sense, and another because I wanted every excuse to use that word as possible. Hypnagogia was born, and so was Local Insomnia. I planned on keeping Hypnagogia as a sequel to Dreamland. At the time, my logic was that it's another experience... the insomniac starts to fall asleep, but they don't quite go to Dreamland...they go to a bizzare and alternate universe.
But then, I wrote more and more songs, and I decided that Hypnagogia was better as the end to the album, rather than a sequel to Dreamland, because the theme is that the local insomniac cannot fall asleep, so at the end of the album, they should be right about to.At the beginning of this album, the local insomniac is yearning to go back to Dreamland. Then they review their life, remember some things, which in this case, the "things" that they are remembering are the songs between now and Your Local Insomniac...stories of going to islands on airplanes, missing coworkers, that friend who keeps conjuring up excuses, their reflections on convictions about faith, frustration with the way the world is, a bad relationship where both parties know its doomed to fail, etc. Next, they write a song about how they are still awake at 2 am and need to stop reviewing and go to bed. Lord knows when, reality starts to shift away...little fractions of life stop making sense, as the inner monologue starts rambling and the first stage of sleep is right around the corner.I wanted this song to sound as unsettling as the actual experience of hypnagogia. It's chaotic, its underwater in the abyss or in space orbiting colorful planets, and it also closes the chapter. It doesn't completely end the story, however...Hypnagogia is suggestive of a future, a place where dreams might be better...maybe a return to Dreamland, off on another adventure to save the world... there are no limits in dreams.
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