A Time to Tell and Hear

The twilight hour and after is the finest time for tales

Early to Bed, Early to Rise

Before electric lights became common, and before cities were lit by gas lamps, there were only candles, lanterns bearing candles within, torches, fires, and oil lamps. The light from these flames is flickering and ‘warm’ in its color — that is, its wavelengths come well below 3000 Kelvin, in peach and amber and orange and red, and now and then a yellow.

As it happens, melatonin production is disturbed by the blue wavelengths we find at noon and in full day, but yellow and reddish wavelengths do not disturb it. Thus we can have light from fire, but still feel sleepy and drowse.

The light from these fires is sufficient to see broad things but makes close and fine details harder to make out. Yellow, amber, red light consist of longer, less energetic light; it is softer in appearance, which is why it is favored for glamour. The fine wrinkles and slight imperfections of the beloved object of desire are ‘smoothed out’ by warm lighting.

The people who live without the aid of artificial light stayed awake and doing chores after darkness fell, but not for very long. Instead they would often, we are told, go to sleep within an hour or two of sunset, sleep a few hours, wake in the middle watch of the night, stay up for an hour or so, then go back to bed for the second sleeping of the night. (This I have read in one news article recently, though I haven’t seen it repeated in other texts. Whether it is true or not, I am not sure.)

Candle-Spell

Drowsiness and the onset of sleep are hypnogogic states. Our brainwaves slip out of the more energetic, active, short-wave beta, into alpha waves, on the way to delta, and the deep, healing theta waves of deepest sleep. In the half-slumber of drowsiness, aided by the flickering of the flames, we find our imagination opening to other worlds, and we have glimpses of imagined past and future days, and even of Eartherea herself.

This is the best time to hear tales. This is the best time to tell them, too.

The world we live in fades with the gloaming. What lives and lurks ‘out there’ we can apprehend only through the sounds it makes, and what small flashing glimpses we may win of it. These are both more suggestive than informative, and when we take them in under a hypnogogic state, we make of them more, and other, than they are. Thus they can enter into our dreams, and the tales we tell and hear.

The end of the day’s toil also brings with it a sense of ease and relaxation, and this not only of the body. Our minds also settle and rest, at least when we feel secure within our shelter, warmed by the fire, the flamelight dancing on the walls. The walls we build within, against unwanted thoughts, and desires and fears that would trouble us, are weakened. Patches and threads of light shine through them, and small hints and glimmers of those fears and desires enter closer to our minds.

This is the time for tales to tell and hear.

This is the talespinner’s hour.

(Composed on keyboard Sunday, May 25, 2008)