Morning for the Living

Every night, going to bed is an ordeal for me. Not that I don't want to day to end, but I'm usually afraid it never will and I'll toss and turn, making a terrible a day into an even longer one. So I take pills, sometimes as many as a dozen at a time, combinations of various over-the-counter remedies and "hacks" of medications for other things, like blood pressure suppressors. In continental Europe the pharmacies will cheerfully sell you, over the counter, ten packs of twenties of knockout pills, as long as you look reasonably cheerful while purchasing them, I suppose.

I never know how I'm going to wake up in the morning; what sort of mood I'll be in: cheerful or melancholy; energetic or lethargic; irritable or sated with an irresistible urge to contribute enormous sums of cash to Amensty International. That's why I'm convinced that while sleeping I'm actual up and about in another world living a parallel life, and stuff happens to me there.

But there are some mornings that are just special, and sometimes you just wake up to them like unexpected presents laid at the bedside. Possibilites are infinite, the world is huge and wonderful and worth exploring, and there are all sorts of exciting things to do and nothing that has to get done or else. Physically, you're starting to think about breakfast. This is especially true when travelling; after all, when I'm at home, I don't really think about breakfast so much as have it, as I usually know what I'm going to have for breakfast; but in a foreign hotel bedroom the room service menu suddenly doesn't look quite as exorbitant as it did the night before.

One of the essentials of a good hotel is a CD player in the room (these days, sometimes an iPod dock in the room). There's a limited amont of time to get dressed (sleeping in the buff is a pleasant habit from my years of promiscuity), and these mornings absolutely call for music. I used to play it on my Walkman, then iPod, now on the reasonably good speakers of my Powerbook. But a few hotels have particularly good sound systems: the Peninsula in Honkong; Claridge's in London; at the Ritz in Paris the acoustic aren't outstanding but they managed to hide a car stereo console within a gilded Louis XVI table. In the past I used to burn a disc on the spot, but now I travel with a couple of compilations. One day I decided to "master" a defintive collection to commemorate what I caled a "Morning for the Living" (a pun on mourning for the dead, but no one gets it...yes, this is the point when you say Aaah!...)

The picture I used for the album cover really was taken very early on a very beautiful morning with a Powershot S1, a vastly underrated camera which is the Leica M6 of our time.

1. Because the Night, from the 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged album. Nothing like rock and roll to get the blood pumping.

2. No Ordinary Morning, by Chicane from his Behind the Sun album. Because.

3. I'm a Traveler, by Clem. Much effort was spent on my part to track down any more information about this artist. I found the song on an album called Correspondances, released by the RATP, the company that runs the Paris Metro. Apparently you can't just go and busk in the tunnels of the underground there; you have to audition for each line's Musical Director. At some point they released an album of the best of the music from the buskers, and this American girl was among them. Short of hoping to chance upon her in the Chatelet-Les Halles interchange, I've given up the search. The company's site makes no mention of the CD, and they aren't selling in stores.

4. Morning, by Karen Matheson, from the album Time to Fall. A morning song if there ever was one, although the title is misleading. Look under Celtic or Folk

5. The Rainbow Connection, performed by Sarah McLachlan from the album For the Kids.

6. Morning, also called Smile, from the film Modern Times by Charles Chaplin. He wrote it himself. It sounds melancholy at first, but if you have a mental reference to the moment in the film (when they decide to go on down the road together, and the film ends with them walking off intoa fade; cross-refernce, by the way, to the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

7. There She Goes, a cover by Sixpence None the Richer, when they apparently didn't know that the song was about heroin.

8. Nessun Dorma, from Turandot by Puccini, by Pavarotti of course. Who could sleep anyway if someone was singing at you like that? And who would want to sleep? There's a fresh new morning, washed and pressed, waiting for you to put it on.

Where you might find some real underground music