pain as music (when almost asleep)

2 events, one last night, the other awhile ago,

i have a headache which has been on and off since yesterday afternoon, one of thoses "behind my left eye" headaches that i associate with the need to sleep.

i'm pretty sure that with alot of sleep it will go away. i haven't yet slept enough.

so last night the headache actually prevented me from sleeping, and it's been ages since i did any class A's & i don't have any ibuprofen next to my bed. (the obscure joy of waking up with a headache, self inflicted, and seeing a can of coke, a bagel, and a packet of ibuprofen, how organised i used to be).

so i was inbetween sleeping and waking for much of the night, and for much of that time i experienced this pain as being a musical note, a constant, musical note.

since i gave back a certain analogue keyboard to it's rightful owner on sunday, i've been listening to Sadie's Gone (the music i wrote with that keyboard and a piano once - see "journeys" - previous post) quite a bit.

That music was floating through my brain last night, with the beginning of every phrase somehow discordant with the music of my pain, very specific musical thoughts, as though i was playing the melodies, each melody out of tune with the pain, trying different melodies all night, trying to find a harmony that wouldn't come,.. in fact that is what kept me from sleeping, not the pain but the discord.

which reminds me today of a night perhaps three months ago, when i was lying in bed almost asleep, being kept from sleep by a constant pain in my leg.

i had hurt myself, either that same night or the night before, in my sleep, i'd banged my leg against the side of my bed, (whilst standing), - more on this phenomena later -

and in my almost sleep i could hear this pain in my leg as a seventh note, with the root note (of my chord) in my head, the third around my belly the fifth probably around my groin.

in music, particularly on the piano, (and it was a piano voicing of a chord, as distinct from a guitar voicing), the root (or 1st), 3rd (can be major or minor) & 5th, make up every basic chord there is. adding a seventh note gives a further level of harmony.

the pain in my leg gave a single note which was part of a chord. the pain in my head gave a single note that contributed to a discord.

i guess further experiments now would involve causing myself pain on various different parts of my anatomy and then trying to sleep...