"why are we sleeping?"

This song, by 1960's psychedelic rock pioneers The Soft Machine, has been a favorite of mine for quite some time. It was written and sung in a narrated style by the ever-so enigmatic Kevin Ayers, a musical personality that I have been often fascinated by. The lyrics are informed by the philosopher Gurdjieff, a Russian philosophy that Ayers credited as an influence.




The lyrics to 'Why Are We Sleeping' are far from typical rock'n'roll subject matter. They carry a heavily esoteric and mysterious mood, existing in a sort of atypical reality (which is common for Ayers' work).

It begins with a blessing, it ends with a curse
Making life easy by making it worse
"My mask is my master", the trumpeter weeps
But his voice is so weak, as he speaks from his sleep

Saying: "Why, why, why... Why are we sleeping?"

People are watching, people who stare
Waiting for something that's already there
"Tomorrow I'll find it", the trumpeter screams
And remembers he's hungry, and drowns in his dreams

Saying: "Why, why, why... Why are we sleeping?"

My head is a nightclub with glasses and wine
The customers dancing or just making time
While Daevid is cursing, the customers scream
Now everyone's shouting, "Get out of my dream!"

Saying: "Why, why, why... Why are we sleeping?"

Gurdjieff's philosophy is one that urges one to take a path of self-enlightenment, which involves the metaphorical removal from the state of 'sleep'. According to Gurdjieff, "Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies." In this state of sleep we are not conscious, we exist as drones unthinkingly going throughout life, trapped by our own subjective perceptions. If we are able to 'wake up' and escape this state of mind, then we can better understand ourselves and reality.



The path to awakening was described by Gurdjieff as the Fouth Way. It was titled this because other teaches either stressed the importance of the mind, the body or emotions, where Gurdjieff beleived that enlightenment could only be achieved by simultaneously working with the three. Music was an important part of the 'awakening', because it combines the three. Gurdjieff wrote ballets accompanied by sacred dances that were designed to bring participants into a state of transcendence, exiting the realm of sleep and awakening them into a state of self enlightenment.

Gurjieff's philosophy of self enlightenment through the search for higher consciousness speaks to me. To 'awaken' (in my own possibly naive interpretation) is to escape the mundane and passive and reach a state of being that is less ignorant of it's surroundings, thus better understanding one's self through it's relation to the environment.