Eating sleep, and burping

Further to The Sleep Eaters, in which four "increasingly disturbed" creatives have volunteered to be locked up. surveilled, and deprived of sleep, the "protocol" is now live. 

The subjects have been inside the controlled environment for 4 days now, and it's starting to get interesting. It's quite obvious at this point that they have lost all sense of what time or day it is, and the effects of the accumulating sleep debt are becoming more apparent. The project blog makes fascinating reading. The Subjects will be appearing during Adelaide Writers' Week which is sure to be entertaining.

Having my own very special relationship with sleep deprivation, I'm following along with great interest. I'm waiting to see if any of the subjects reach that point where dreams become untethered from their moorings, and start seeping into waking consciousness. It opens a very different kind of space in your creative process. Only last week, one of my dreams grew primitive legs and wriggled its way into my waking consciousness, where it has burrowed and started to metamorphose into a brilliantly detailed and intriguing story world.  

The Sleep Eaters

Recently I found this intriguing little snippet:

Writers and artists are experts at imagining and creating the lives and worlds of others – but what happens when the tables are turned and they themselves become The Subjects?Three writers/artists will join acclaimed, multi‐award winning author, Sean Williams, in a seven‐day experiment investigating the impact of disruptive sleep patterns on creativity.

Yes. It’s an invitation for a week confined to a controlled environment, without sleep.  With Sean Williams and a couple of other brave creatives for company in your sleep-deprived delirium.

I already have some experience in the crazy disembodied haze that is severe sleep deprivation, thanks to some very bad months with a constantly waking baby.  When the world starts to morph and twist around the edges on a daily basis, you know you need sleep.  This trippy experience awakened in me an ongoing curiosity about sleep, lack of sleep, and especially the twilight zones in between these states of consciousness.

I was very, very tempted to go along to the information session to find out more.   

There’s only one problem:  I already have enough trouble being asleep when it’s time to be asleep and awake when it’s time to open my eyes.  It leads to some pretty interesting dreams on the fringes of both of those states, which, creatively, isn’t a bad thing.  But I’m not sure I could withstand another episode of severe sleep deprivation.  It might break my internal snooze-button permanently.

I am, nonetheless, intensely curious about the project that Sean Williams has initiated.  Is he participating for personal or creative interest, or has he concocted the whole experiment, mad scientist-style, purely to observe the tripped-out paranoia of his co-participants as grist for his next dystopian novel?*  

I can think of a number of fictional scenarios that might rob the protagonists of their slumber, with harrowing consequences.  Did you know that it’s possible to die from lack of sleep alone? There is a rare condition called Fatal Familial Insomnia, in which a person becomes increasingly unable to sleep, at all provoking phobias and panic attacks.  Over months, these worsen into hallucinations, delirium, and eventually death.  Horrible.**

(There’s a story idea in all of this.  The words “Sleep Eaters” spring to mind).

If you’re fascinated by the sound of this experiment, as I am, bad luck. Applications have closed. 

For those of us who prefer to keep our circadian sensibilities intact, there will be a project website with a blog, and a panel presentation during AdelaideWriters’ Week next year. Keep an eye open for it.

The Laser Optometrist by Capt Gorgeous @ Flickr

*OK, so my imagination might be getting away from me there. When you check the project overview, it’s actually about storytelling in extreme environments.  Sounds benign enough.   It’s inviting applications … oh wait…  from people who are interested in “… themes of panopticon, loss of control, consent and ethics, surveillance and authoritarianism.” Yummy.  Deliciously creepy.  Dr Evil, eat your heart out. 

**Technically speaking, the not-sleeping is a symptom of the disease, not the cause of death.  But in the spirit of sci-fi, let's not allow a fact to get in the way of the story, shall we?