Authors: Alexandra Dantzer and Aleksandar Kecman

Lately sleep has been seen as ‘one of the great human affronts to the voraciousness of contemporary capitalism.’ (Crary, 2013). Exemplified in movements that focus on wellness and self-care, initiatives such as The Nap Ministry, celebration of inemuri or similar siesta like practices, the pleas for more sleep abound. Although all of these examples vary in their ideological underpinnings and propositions, one thing is certain, they all recognize the lack of sleep as a global problem. We need to rest and we need to rest ASAP!

1. DO NOT SLEEP - affirm life. Never let the death of sleep get to you.end

2. DO NOT SLEEP - care for thy neighbor. “In Mali if you have eaten and your neighbor hasn’t, you can’t sleep peacefully.”end

3. DO NOT SLEEP - there are oceans inside of you. Oceans of thoughts and feelings and whatnot. Do not sleep, but rather let yourself float through them, using your bed as your little boat, and letting the waves drown you from time to time.end

4. DO NOT SLEEP - stay vigilant. The sleepers are reliant on the wakeful vigilantly guarding their night. The sleepers let go of themselves and relinquish the reins to the wakefulness of others. In sleep we relinquish our commitment to others. Commit. end

5. DO NOT SLEEP - be grateful to thy loved ones. Sometimes they are the ones snoring and keeping you awake. Be grateful to them.end

6. DO NOT SLEEP - resist capitalism. There is value to be extracted from sleeping. Stay awake and inactive, observe the failure of extraction. Laugh at its face.end

7. DO NOT SLEEP - in the night between 9th and 10th of November in 1938 the event that took place is called Kristallnacht. Never let that happen again to anyone. Stay wakeful.end

8. DO NOT SLEEP - increase your reactivity. Sleep deprivation enhances the reactivity of your brain’s reward system. You will react more to both negative and positive stimuli. This might make you feel better, overall.end

9. DO NOT SLEEP - during the day your self is distributed to your work, to you family, friends, people you know, and to the events that happen. Only in the night can the self return to itself. Do not sleep, but cherish this time. Love thyself. Observe it and nurture it. Do not let the vultures of the day eat it.end

10. DO NOT SLEEP - sleep is resistance and insomnia is rebellion. Yevgeny Zamyatin would agree. Citizen D-503 couldn’t sleep, and the duty of the numbers is to sleep at night. Insomnia is a symptom of rebellion. The doctor said to citized D-503 “You are in a bad way, apparently you developed a soul.”end

11. DO NOT SLEEP - be full of wonder, as a child. When I was a child, my favourite superhero was Batman. He does not sleep. He fights crime. Therefore, I will not sleep (although I will not fight crime), because I am a child.end

12. DO NOT SLEEP - leave your mark. Winston Churchill, Marlene Dietrich, Thomas Edison, Vincent van Gogh and Mark Twain did stuff while others slept. Join their ranks.end

13. DO NOT SLEEP - this is God’s green Earth. This is the only known place where life exists. For the millions of light years around us there is nothing. Its dead. Only here can one be alive. Knowing this, how can one just go to sleep?end

14. DO NOT SLEEP - embrace the great unrest. Days replicate themselves, they are the workings of the empire. Nights are holding the keys. Your job is killing you. The end of the world is near. Gaza is being destroyed. The intel is gathered during the night.end

15. DO NOT SLEEP - because the world is on the brink of collapse (once again). If Iran responds, then Israel will respond, the Hezbollah will respond, then Hamas and Huti will respond, then USA will respond, then Russia and China will respond, then Ukraine and NATO will respond and it will all, inevitably, go to hell. They must know that we will not let them respond, that we are here, we do not sleep, but we are awake, watching their every move.end

16. DO NOT SLEEP - resist depression. “Sleep deprivation is a quick and efficient way to treat depression. It works 60 to 70 percent of the time—far better than existing drugs—but the mood boost usually lasts only until the patient falls asleep.” Never fall asleep.end

17. DO NOT SLEEP - because love. The person next to you might die at any time. Observe the rising and falling of their chest. Memorize the outline their body makes on the bed. They teach you about love sleeping as much as they do being awake. Watch, listen, smell and memorize.end

18. DO NOT SLEEP - for it is a cure for your feeling of inadequacy. You are not inadequate when all alone, in your room, not sleeping. Only then are you part of something bigger. You are a part of us. You belong. You are adequate.end

19. DO NOT SLEEP - because they will get you! There is a study that shows that something like 70 percent of all criminals get caught when they are asleep. You may not be a criminal. But they don’t know that. Don’t let them get you.end

Weave

Freighted with brokenness and surrender, sleep is not a tool of resistance deployed in a conflict; it is the birth pangs of conflict’s transformation. It is the shadow of catastrophe, its doppelganger, without which it cannot recede.

Haytham El Wardany

Objects are death, all object, whether tidy (everything in order) or untidy (no one will find me in the pile). Furniture immobilizes – nothing can happen. When we walk in the midst of plants and animals we are moving among living things, we are part of them. When we are packed in the midst of objects, our surroundings are dead and we are a part of them, nailed down by inertness between the planks of insomnia.

Marie Darrieussecq

Insomnia is existence as indeterminate endurance.

Alphonso Lingis

Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with posters advertising faraway places.

Fernando Pessoa

Suddenly, I remembered a story of Slava David’s about a certain New York girl who had hysterically chased him out after passionate lovemaking, because, you see, she couldn’t sleep with men, wasn’t used to it. Love is love, but sleep must be sterile, deep, calm.

Edvard Limonov