World's Greatest Sleeper
I’ve been contemplating how to organise my thoughts on our current capitalist, materialistic, consumer-creating, profit-oriented model of society. I’m still in a creative pregnancy about it all. As Jamie Oliver would say - the timing and the tone aren’t quite right yet.
I’m having a writing day (this post is a few months old…). I just finished, and scheduled tonight’s piece to be sent out. I wandered outside to the backyard where Jarrod, Halo and Lumi are perched up at the table, painting Easter crafts. It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and the dappled light is softly falling through our big tree, onto their creations.
“Listen to this!” Jarrod says and plays a song by Tom Rosenthal.
It’s World’s Greatest Sleeper.
Listen if you can, though the film clip is sweet too.
I sat in the sleepy rays of sunshine and listened. I was transported to somewhere between the womb and my romanticised view of the 1950’s.
Jarrod often talks about this part in Steve Irwin’s biography, My Steve. Steve always said that the way to stop people from whaling isn’t to go in heavy handed, reactive and punitive, but to help them see the majesty and the beauty of whales. To help people to fall in love. He says that then and only then, would people cease their destruction of this amazing species.
I’ve been wanting to discuss the futile nature of consuming. Of the meaninglessness of the quest for individual abundance. I want to talk about the current ‘self care’ model as clever marketing. Of the mental and emotional toll that activity-heavy childhoods have on kids now. Of the debilitating cumulative effects of hustle culture. All the things.
But Tom created a heart filled masterpiece.
He made a work of artistic comfort in lyric, musical arrangement and atmosphere, that transports you into a spacious and undemanding existence. That plants a memory in your nervous system of what it could be like to just plod along without serving the machine for at least three minutes.
It is so soothing.
I checked the YouTube comments. Everyone agrees.
It was like having a heart massage. Like the smell of rain at the end of a hot day. Like visiting your Grandparents house on a Sunday. Like cancelled plans and a recliner chair by the window.
I have a secret test for when I ask Jarrod how he is and he says, “Yeah I’m good.”
I pay attention to his playlist for the day, and often find the sadness he is struggling to express. Sometimes it’s joy and abundant energy. Sometimes it’s melancholic. Sometimes it’s heavy metal with people screaming in what I can only conclude is unimaginable pain. “Repressed pain,” I tell myself. “It’s just repressed pain…” but I keep a crucifix close in case of urgent exorcism.
Music will always help us back to our centre. Will always find the truth in us.
“Ah music… a magic beyond all we do here,” 1
…as Albus Dumbledore would say.
May your beds be soft, your resistance be sweet and your spirits be free,
Lysette
Rowling, Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, pg 95.