pWhen a lot of stuff has been going on and I#39;m tired, really tired, I have to go to bed early. Usually, that#39;s around 11:30, the normal shuteye time being closer to somewhere around 1:30 in the morning. What happens on these nights is that I have a ton of dreams. It#39;s almost like somebody is holding down the fast-forward button on my dream remote. I almost never remember any of the dreams, though I perceive that they all lasted about 30 seconds. It#39;s like my brain is trying to clear stuff out. In the morning, after the bewilderment fog clears, there#39;s a great sense of refreshment and clarity./p pRecently, I#39;ve been having those hyper-speed dreamscapes during the day. Thoughts flash through unabated. In the span of ten seconds, I can go through days, weeks, and years of remembrances and ideas (the ideas come not only from past reflections but from creative fragments that haven#39;t matured). Buddhists have a term for this: Monkey Mind./p pFor a musical simulation of this, just imagine The Carpenters. I was never a huge fan but have to admit that Karen#39;s voice was a pure gem. So think of all of those love songs and other singles. Now, think of them being played simultaneously. Not quite so soothing, eh?/p pWhen this isn#39;t going on, life can be temporarily suspended if I run into a creative notion. I#39;ll hear a piece of music or read a passage and become so enthralled that everything else drops away. It#39;s a pretty exhilarating experience. I know it#39;ll come back, but I sure do miss it. /p pAs 2008 passed into #39;09, I read a pile of those best-of articles. Lots of them mentioned Fleet Foxes. I gave them a try (MySpace, etc.) and just couldn#39;t see what the fuss was all about. It seemed like a rehash of late 1960s psychedelic folk. Album of the year? Wait, Pitchfork loves it…riiight./p pSo I#39;m up late one night, staring a hole through the TV (tuned to Current) and a show comes on called La Blogotheque. They have the Fleet Foxes singing in an abandoned gym. When they launched into quot;White Winter Hymnalquot; everything around me became suspended. Ah, what a glorious feeling, I really missed it./p pcenterobject width=400 height=342br/ param name=movie value=http://current.com/e/89517863/en_US/paramparam name=wmode value=transparent/paramparam name=allowfullscreen value=true/paramparam name=allowscriptaccess value=always/paramembed src=http://current.com/e/89517863/en_US type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=400 height=342 allowscriptaccess=always wmode=transparent/embed/object/center/p br