The first time I had heard of the pianist Max Richter was through his show Sleep. Richter calls it “an experiment… a lullaby… a protest against our data-saturated lives”. Indeed, the show’s curious premise is of 8 hours of continuous playing by the pianist, and 8 hours of restful (or restless) slumber for the audience.
As the music continues into the night in a room with a lone piano and hundreds of makeshift beds, the pianist sends the audience into a transcendental state – neither awake or asleep, but at rest. The concept being that, as one drifts in and out of consciousness with the soft melodic peaks and troughs, one might become more in tune with the undulating nature of sleep itself.
Lacking the $190 to see Sleep live when Max Richter was recently in Auckland, I decided to recreate the experiment at home. With my Spotify set to Richter’s eponymous album – Sleep – I dozed off. Waking up periodically throughout the night – 1am, then 4am, each time I blinked open my eyes to a sharp sensory awareness. My brain wasn’t shrouded in mist and sleep, and I greeted the morning, when it finally arrived, with a calmness seldom experienced.
Try it, and let me know your thoughts?
Musings of a Leaf 