by Charlie Fabre
Why do any of us choose sleep? Because it’s a natural bodily function that we just can’t help succumbing to? We don’t really choose sleep, do we? It just happens, it has to happen.
Initially the idea came about because one of my favourite short stories is Sleep by the famed author Haruki Murakami and I just really liked the idea of reading more stories and poems about sleep. Sleeping is an odd thing, really, it’s a unified act because we all do it, and we all do it at relatively the same time, but you enter a deep space of your subconscious and everything that happens during those 8 or so hours of brain activity is completely gone once you wake up; it can’t be reached again.
There’s a lot of mysteries surrounding sleep. Where do we go when we sleep? Where do we go when we dream? Who do we become? I think this theme really allowed for a lot of thoughts on the self, as well as the conscious and subconscious thoughts and decisions we make. Sleeping is also synonymous to relaxing or even meditating – times when we slow life down and sit with the self and are able to reflect. Late night is when a lot of people have negative thoughts and we wondered what our writers could do with this notion. For a lot of people, sleeping is lonely, you may not be sharing a bed with someone. What is that like? Or maybe you are sharing a bed with someone and what is that like?
Of course, the theme had a lot of potential for our writers to explore dreamscapes and really get creative and experimental. Nightmares and monsters, the shadows that lurk in the dark. Anything too weird and too outlandish that you’ve been thinking or wanting to write about, this theme is the place for that; we want all the freaks to come out. Night time and in the dark, this is a great scene to explore trauma and insecurities and evoke a sense of gothic horror. Maybe death can become a character, the endless sleep, and therefore ghosts and spirits are invited to roam the halls. Maybe the dreamscapes bring us off to a place of memory and childhood, a moment of reminiscing and nostalgia.
But the coin has two faces: what about stories that feature no sleep at all? The insomniacs, those laying awake in the dead of night while the world is quiet because their bodies won’t allow them any peace. Regrets that fester, hauntings of the past. Or the insomniacs by choice – those people dancing in the clubs, their bones yearning for some rest but their hearts beating wildly. Those awake with their lovers, spilling secrets, mumbling their confessions into their pillows.
Sleeping is an intimate space and a vulnerable time so we expected to receive lots of pieces about these delicate emotions. Overall, this is a tender theme and a tender issue that comes after the quite loud and proud issue that is 02: Bodies. We’re really excited to share it all with you!
Pre-orders for issue 3 close Midnight Sunday 11th December. You can pre-order your copy here.
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