Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Eva Cassidy

The late Eva Cassidy was known for the emotional depth and honesty she brought to her music. Here, she performs the classic Autumn Leaves. I have to say, I've never heard this song sung like this, with such poignancy and tenderness. Ever since I found this video, I can't stop watching it.

Twilight Time

© Mark Rasmussen | Dreamstime.com

Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star.
~Lucy Maud Montgomery

I was hoping to write a lovely post this evening, all about twilight, that wonderful and mysterious transition from day to night. But I've fallen victim to the first virus of the fall, so I'm going to make this more about the images than the words.

I will note, however, that the fall equinox took place earlier this week. I think there's something about the lengthening shadows of autumn that make twilight more impressive. Often the light takes on a golden tone, which can be very beautiful.

© Aleksejs Kostins | Dreamstime.com

Photographers aren't the only ones who are enamoured by the fading light of day and the dawn of night. Painters have long used twilight to convey different moods.

Twilight (1820) Caspar David Friedrich

In the image above, a dark and brooding mood accompanies the coming of night, as captured by Dutch artist Caspar Friedrich.

Twilight (1875) George Innes

The twilight of American painter George Innes takes on a more pastoral feeling.

Twilight comes and goes quickly. Often we look outside and it's already dark, especially this time of year. Take some time and see if you can catch of glimpse of this every-day mystery, which beckons us to welcome the night as it comes.

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Jose Gonzalez

Singer-songwriter Jose Gonzalez provides the lullaby this week with his song Hints. His complex guitar work and low-key vocal style have earned him enough of a following that he has postponed pursuing his PhD in biochemistry to focus on his music. Seems like a good decision to me. Enjoy!

Diversions for Insomniacs - Samorost

Here's a curious game to help keep things interesting during any late-night, drowsy browsing you might be doing at your computer. Samorost 1 is essentially a puzzle game that gained popularity because of its unusual visuals and interesting music. Once you've mastered this game, try the sequel, Samorost 2. Good luck!

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Dead Can Dance

The changing seasons and the forces of nature are beautifully captured in this week's lullaby, which features images from the BBC's Planet Earth and the song Yulunga (Spirit Dance) from the group Dead Can Dance, whose distinctive style continues to occupy a unique place in contemporary music.

Dreamscapes - The Limits of our Dreams

© Leeloomultipass | Dreamstime.com

Our exploration of the dreamscape has come to an end, which is not to say that I won't revisit it at some time. After all these posts, it should be pretty obvious that I believe our dreams are a form of communication with our unconscious minds, which are willing to offer up information if we take the time to divine the meaning.

I used to regard this information as sacrosanct. Then, as sometimes happens, I came across something that challenged that idea. You might remember the Heaven's Gate cult - in 1997, a group of 39 people committed suicide over the course of three days, believing that they were ascending to "the level above human" and that their souls would be taken away in a spaceship. Director Sergio Myers made a film about this event, Heaven's Gate: The Day After. The entire film used to be up on YouTube; now, just the trailer is there. In the film, he interviews a surviving cult member, who says he was convinced to join the group because of a dream he had.

It's hard to think that someone's own unconscious mind would sell him out like that. How would he even know? Of course, this individual did survive the mass suicide, but still, if we can't trust information from our own dreams, where does that leave us?

I believe it leaves us in a place where we need to decide how much weight to give that deep part of ourselves. In a society where the influence of the unconscious is largely discounted, to discover that aspect of ourselves can be exciting and illuminating. But at the same time, those waves can be overwhelming, and it always comes back to finding the balance between the unconscious and conscious, contemplation and action, yin and yang.

Insufficient attention to the unconscious can keep us enslaved to old patterns we're not even aware of. Too much attention and we can find it hard to move forward. Our dreams may guide us, but in the end, our lives are ours to live.

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Los Kjarkas

From time to time, I like to include world music in the lullaby line-up. But I recently realized that I had neglected the entire continent of South America. So here is a wonderful video of Los Kjarkas, a Bolivian band, featuring their song Maria Amanecer. Los Kjarkas has been making music for more than 30 years, toured worldwide, founded two music schools and sold more records than any other band in South America. It's easy to understand the success - this is complex and beautiful music. Enjoy!

(About the quote at the end of the video - I don't speak Spanish, so I tried running it through a few online translation programs. There's a reason people make fun of these - it came out a garbled mess. I'm afraid you're on your own.)

Dreamscapes - Bridge

© Kris Vandereycken | Dreamstime.com
Image processed in Adobe Photoshop

Building bridges, burning bridges, crossing bridges - bridges provide not just a common metaphor for life, but for dreams as well. Bridges can hold positive connotations, such as uniting people and places, but they also have darker aspects, including gephyrophobia, or the fear of traveling over a bridge.

In dreams, a bridge will often represent some transition for the dreamer. How secure the dream bridge appears may indicate whether the path the dreamer is taking seems safe or fraught with peril. A dream bridge over water might mean the dreamer is dealing with emotions or the unconscious.

I've had more bridge dreams than I can count. They are all similar - I'm driving a car that is going up a very steep bridge, the kind you see near harbors that are built as high arches to allow ships to pass under them. The apex of the arch is so high, there are clouds at the top. In a related dream, I'm on a raised highway and need to take a ramp onto another highway, but the ramp is impossibly high, suspended in midair by nothing.

All of these dreams were scary, although I wouldn't call them nightmares. What was going on for so long in my waking life that I kept dreaming of driving into the clouds? The answer came when, after years of fairly heavy-duty spiritual questing, I walked away from my spiritual practice. I had concluded that it simply wasn't helping me. Shortly after, I had a dream that I drove down off a high bridge, back to solid ground. I ended up in a construction zone, but the feeling in the dream was one of relief. Time to come back to earth. Some type of work still needed to be done, but it wasn't going to happen up on the bridge to the sky.

I retain an interest in the spiritual, but no longer feel the need to beat myself up with ill-advised spiritual techniques. It's not very often that a construction zone looks so good.