Comfortably Numb: Pink Floyd Meets Gregorian Chant

Three am. The wind is winding, screaming like a thousand ghosts in a Dies Irae chorale.  My cat scampers across the living room.  And I dread going back to sleep, afraid I might see my shadow again. I tire of these late nights. They hawk me – I feel an eye follow me through every corner of my psyche – which is more like a cornerless maze of spirals centrifuging my prefrontal cortex  down, down, down…  [Narrator note:  Erliss does not yet understand about spirals; they go both up and down, around and through. It’s never “either” – “or.” But we will let her be here for now.]

I am in despair.

Where is my self?  My core? Hello…is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at all?

 I used to listen to Pink Floyd all day as a teen, mostly after I got clean and sober. They never brought a smile to my face, except for Another Brick in The Wall. “How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” They mostly reminded me that I was not alone in my crazy mind, after all, I needed nothing to make me comfortably numb –my body could do that all by itself.

I don’t want to use or drink, I just want to…disappear.  I am good at disappearing. I have been disappearing since I was a child, and no one would notice. It was like magic – and the “abracadabra” was some kind of uncomfortable tension, a weird smile, a certain stench, or a touch. And my face would  tingle, my arms and legs numb out, and

I

would

forget.

Such beautiful anesthesia we have in our bodies, this ability to self protect.  “It looks like the tiger has me in its teeth,” the brain says, “So chemicals, you know what to do.  Let’s play dead. It’s our last chance at survival, and if we get eaten, we will at least not feel it.”

I need a musical interlude… here you go…

https://youtu.be/KC86ZCtV6tI

 

Comfortably numb.  I think that’s why I am still here, why I never got eaten alive.

I feel dead.

Sometimes I play dead for hours. It has never brought a smile to my face.

I lay my head on the pillow, and sense a hand pushing the side of my head into the ground. I smell smoky stale carpet, and hear diabolical laughing. My cheek burns. My breath shallows. I no longer am a part of my body, it is someplace else. I am floating, floating, floating…

Then I wake up in a whirlwind.  Where is she? Where did she go? I want to go home. No, don’t, please don’t…tell me where I am…where did she go?  I do not know what I am talking about here, it’s some kind of madness in another place in my brain.

Now it is 3:30 am, and I am listening to the wind, wondering about deadness.

Dies iræ, dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.

Day of wrath and doom impending.
David’s word with Sibyl’s blending,
Heaven and earth in ashes ending.

Here is another interlude. I have known this melody since I was a little girl.

 

https://youtu.be/Dlr90NLDp-0

 

Gregorian Chant. Eerie and beautiful. Like the wind. Sounds just like the wind outside. Sounds like the wind inside. Inside me.

I should get myself back to bed.

Thank you for listening, my dear ones.

Much love,

Erliss, The Monkey Whisperer