Quote of the Day (Henry Alford, Imagining ‘Insomnia: The Opera’)

(10 P.M. A bedchamber, with a balcony overlooking a village square. Enrico is putting on pajamas. He sings at half voice.)

Enrico: “My raccoon eyes and zombie stare
Boldly sing the woes of bodily miscare.
O, hundred-dollar white-noise machine! O, yoga dude named Tevin!
Help me reverse twelve months of 24/7.
Collective woe has ravaged my breast,
America, you put the ‘un’ in unrest.”

(He parts his blackout curtains, opens the window, and addresses the villagers.)

“Hark, twentysomething coder! Hark, seasoned whore!
Tonight’s the night I finally snore;
When might turns to will, and is rises from seems.
I’ve reduced my caffeine and I’m ready to dream.”—American humorist and journalist Henry Alford, “Shouts and Murmurs—Insomnia: The Opera,” The New Yorker, Apr. 12, 2021

The image accompanying this post comes from the 2002 film Insomnia, where Al Pacino plays one of several characters afflicted with this sleep disorder.

Among contemporary practitioners of musical theater—including opera—Stephen Sondheim seems the lyricist-composer most likely to choose a daunting subject such as this—if anybody was drawn to the kind of tongue-in-cheek project that Alford has in mind.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Frasier,’ Demonstrating the Ironic Impact of Sleep Deprivation)

[Much to his disgruntlement, Seattle’s favorite radio psychologist and advice dispenser, Dr. Frasier Cranier, has been scheduled beyond midnight by a new station program director. After gamely trying to subsist on acres of coffee, he and his assistant Roz have both fallen fast asleep in their chairs.  Suddenly, a caller names Phyllis is on the line.]

Phyllis [voice of Carrie Fisher] “People think insomnia is a laughing matter, but it's hell.  If I don't get some sleep soon, I'll just—I'll go crazy!  You've got to help me, Dr. Crane?  Dr. Crane?  Hey, I'm talking here!”

[Frasier and Roz wake up with a start.]

Frasier [played by Kelsey Grammer] (frightened at first before going into his customary greeting): “What?!  I'm listening.”

Phyllis: “So what do you think I should do?”

[Frasier looks helplessly at Roz, who can only shrug. He decides to wing it.]

Frasier: “Well, you know, sometimes these things seem clearer in the light of day.  My advice is to sleep on it.”

Phyllis: “Is that some kind of a joke?!  To make fun of the insomniac?!”

Frasier: “Oh, no…”

[She hangs up.  Frasier sighs.  Roz signals him to go to a commercial.]

Frasier: “Oh, oh, and now for a word from, um, uh, ah [shuffles some papers on his console] I forget, I think they sell paint.”—Frasier, Season 3, Episode 1, “She's The Boss,” original air date Sept. 19, 1995, teleplay by Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano, directed by Philip Charles Mackenzie

Quote of the Day (Loren Eiseley, on Insomniacs)

“I have said that it is the sufferer from insomnia who knits the torn edges of men's dreams together in the hour before dawn. It is he who from his hidden, winter vantage point sees the desperate high-hearted bird fly through the doorway of the grand hotel while the sleepy doorman nods, a deed equivalent in human terms to that of some starving wretch evading Peter at heaven's gate, and an act, I think, very likely to be forgiven.” — Naturalist Loren Eiseley (1907–1977), “One Night’s Dying,” in Night Country (1971)