Is that weird?

I sometimes have trouble staying asleep. I found that drinking less water later in the evening helps. Falling asleep is typically no a problem for me as long as I have some sort of white noise in the background.

I sometimes dabble in sounds from nature. I'm especially fond of my Spring Showers track. It's about an hour long and it's just plain rain shower audio. No chimes. No gongs. No flutes. Just rain. Of course, looking for this type of track can be surprisingly difficult to find. Recently, while searching for more environmental sounds (loons and wolves, anyone?) I came across some Native American chants. My Dad was fascinated with Native American culture for most of his life and passed his respect of their culture on to me.

When I visited Mt Rushmore several years ago I also visited the Crazy Horse Memorial. It blows Rushmore out of the water. Seriously. My most vivid memory of the place was when I walked into a rather large room where Native Americans were selling their wares. Native American war chants were playing on the speakers. It, frankly, freaked me out. I looked to one of the men quietly working on crafting jewelry and said "Man, that is truly terrifying!". He grinned an replied "It's supposed to be." Until that moment I had thought war chants were intended to gear natives up for battle. It had never occurred to me that the other purpose was to scare the hell out of their enemy. It only made me respect the culture more. Everything has a purpose. Everything has meaning.

Just imagine being a pioneer and hearing this late at night:



I'd run like effing hell. I can't find one that sounds quite like that I heard at the Memorial that day but the clip should give you a sense of it. I suppose they don't make many recordings of the terrifying stuff.

While driving through the Black Hills and out of the Crazy Horse Monument we listened to a CD I'd purchased. Here is a sampling:



I swore I could feel eyes on us as we drove away listening to this. Those mountains are filled with presence of those who came before us. I've never felt anything quite like it before or since.

Anyway, while searching for nighttime audio I came across some authentic sounding Native American chants. I recently downloaded these albums that I just love:

Sacred Dance - Pow Wows of the Native American Indians
Native American Chant

I find them oddly calming. They've helped me drift off to sleep for the past few weeks. When I mentioned this to a co-worker she just sighed and said "That's weird!" She may be right. I listen to it during the day and can't imagine how on earth I manage to fall to sleep listening to them, but it works. That's weird.

(P.S. Even more weird is that when I searched both YouTube and Rhapsody Music for these albums, Mormon ads popped up. I resent the sh!t out of that. Assh@les! Like Native Americans haven't suffered enough? Now they have to be targeted by Mormons? I wish they'd hold an unannounced battle cry competition in Salt Lake City.)