Song 7 of 26 - Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

The seventh of the 26 songs is called "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep". Scroll down below the following videos for the lyrics and a brief discussion of how this song ties into the project. A blog post which lists all 26 songs, including 1 video for each song can be found by clicking here.

This is a song about contemplating your own death, and the question that nearly everyone has an opinion on: does some part of me carry on after I die? This video shows me sitting at my old piano singing this song:

A direct link to this video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeClGTuhCy4

And here are the lyrics:

NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
music and lyrics (c) 2006 by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

Now I lay me down to sleep
To rest my weary head
If I should die in slumber deep
Remember what I said

It’s not the end of the world
It’s not the end of the dream
It’s just the end of a body
Not the end of a soul

So what am I so afraid of?
A little bit of sorrow?
It all continues flowing on
The past into tomorrow

Now I lay me down to sleep
My journey finally through
A list of things undone, unsaid
So much left to do

So what am I so afraid of?
The thought that this has ended?
Did I try my best to be
The person I intended?

It’s not the end of the world
It’s not the end of the dream
It’s just the end of a chapter
Turn the page and move on

Now I lay me down to sleep
To rest my weary head
If I should die in slumber deep
Remember what I said

We've already stacked a number of ideas on top of each other as we work from one song to the next. In Song 3, "Burn the Candle Brightly" we talked about that mysterious spark that each of us holds within us, and how that connects us to all life. Now, with this song "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" and the previous song "Connections", we are spending more time exploring that spark of awareness that becomes the "I" that Douglas Hofstadter is exploring in his wonderful book "I Am a Strange Loop", and thinking about how these ideas fit in with this new way of imagining the dimensions. Does Hofstadter's Strange Loop need a physical body to continue? Is it possible for there to be other patterns across space and time that carry on past death, or that what we think of as a "soul" can become a part of after death? I'm aware that some readers of my book are not comfortable with discussions of ghosts and spirit, which is fair enough because everyone is entitled to their own opinion on these matters. But even if we leave that spooky stuff aside for those people, there is still Minsky's "Society of Mind" which can be combined with the Richard Dawkins concept of memes to shows how our minds are created from a complex interlocking series of patterns and behaviors, beliefs and ideas. If we think of memes as something that can be transmitted across space and time without dilution, then some of those patterns that make up a person's consciousness are part of that same set of patterns that define a particular meme. Hence: the parts of our consciousness that are part of a meme system that exists across space and time gives us a way to see how it must be true that some parts of us carry on past death. Extrapolating that idea back to the "voices of conscience, gods and ancestors" is the other big leap that I make from this idea in song 5, "Automatic".

Some previous blog entries that relate to the ideas explored in this song:
The Universe as a Song
Boredom and Consciousness Part Two
Constructive Interference
Everything Fits Together in the Zero at the End
Your Sixth-Dimensional Self
Intuition
Death?
Remembering the Future


Next song: 8 of 26 - Big Bang to Entropy