Anyway, M also likes Metallica and the most fairytale-related song I could find was "Enter Sandman," a classic. We occasionally sung this song to the baby when he was smaller and he would knock out instantly when he heard it. I told you - that kid is more hardcore than you or I will ever be. He plays hard and sleeps even harder.
The Sandman is a mythological character in European folklore. As you're probably aware, he is said to put people to sleep and bring them good dreams by sprinkling dust in their eyes, which explains where morning eye crusties come from. The Sandman is most prominently seen in Northern European cultures, with the oldest stories having Scandinavian and Germanic origins. The German version was more hostile - he would throw his magical dust into the eyes of children who refused to sleep so hard that their eyes would fall out. He would then collect the eyes and feed them to his children. Pretty gross. The version that most people are familiar with most likely is based on a story by our old friend, Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote "Ole Lukoje." In this version, the Sandman just prevents the naughty children from having dreams at all, which doesn't sound too terrible.
Of course, everybody dreams at night. It's your mind processing the information into long-term memory or working out problems while you sleep. Unfortunately, you only remember dreams if you're woken up immediately after having one, which generally doesn't happen if your sleep is sufficiently restful. So...maybe it's a good thing if you don't remember your dreams? I wish I did more often, though. Sleep science always interested me during my psychology studies, especially the dream interpretation stuff. The Founding Fathers of Psychology, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, put a lot of weight on dream interpretation and incorporated it into their psychoanalytic methods. Today, dream interpretation is considered pseudoscience, at best, and a lot of the dream meanings you find out there are either loosely based on historical/cultural interpretations or completely made. However, I think it can be helpful to look up the symbology of things and see if they apply to your life in some way. Introspection is always a good thing, in my book.
Something's wrong, shut the light
Heavy thoughts tonight
And they aren't of Snow White
Dreams of war
Dreams of liars
Dreams of dragons fire
And of things that will bite, yeah
As I said, "Enter Sandman" is a classic. There's not much to the meaning - the lyrics recount the nightmares of childhood and combine it some awesome guitar riffs. The bridge features the prayer, "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep," which is a prayer my very Italian Catholic grandmother made us say before bed when we visited her. I always found it disturbing - "if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." What the fuck?! Yep, that's definitely something 10-year-old me wanted to be worrying about before I fell asleep. Shit, I was already thinking about dying during my waking hours, now I have to ask God to take my soul if I happen to die while I'm sleeping? Doesn't (s)he do that already, no questions asked? Coincidentally, when we stayed at her house, my sister and I always slept in a room that faced the backyard and I swear I could hear someone digging every night. I imagined it was the Grim Reaper digging our graves and if we looked outside to see what was making that sound, we would die. Yep, my imagination is very vivid and it's not all rainbows and uni-kitties.
"Enter Sandman" Video
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