Henry Rollins: The Column! Sleep is the Cousin of Death

By Henry Rollins Thu., Oct. 27 2011 at 6:30 AM

As often as possible, I try to make the days eventful. I hit the street and wander around. Get some food, hit the gym and then somehow stagger off to the event. On so little sleep, all of these activities are wild.

The last several days have been an interesting blur. Standing in the rain at Occupy Wall Street was great. I listened to a lot of people, talked to a lot of protesters, a policeman and even a journalist from the New York Post. From there, uptown to the bookstore, live interview with Thurston Moore, meet all the people, walk 30 blocks uptown back to my room, pack, write, sleep a few hours and then off to the train station.

More cities, more people, more miles but not much sleep. Occupy Chicago, standing in front of the Bank of America building at LaSalle and Jackson, listening to people create a human bullhorn by repeating the voice of a single person, who recites their message, one line at a time. BofA employees nervously enter and exit the building as police line the other side of the street. In-store appearance, some sleep and then off to another airport.

I sit at a gate. Through one eye I watch a television monitor tuned to neutral CNN. On the screen, live in Ohio, a road sign flashes, "Warning: Exotic Animals. Stay in Vehicle." The owner of a private collection of lions, tigers, bears and other animals has turned them all loose. Men have been dispatched to kill the escapees. I think of Ted Nugent dry-humping his couch as he watches Ohio get turned into a high-value target-rich happy hunting ground.

Tears in his eyes because he can't be there to bring a Bengal tiger to the ground with one of his signature Whackmaster arrows. Coffee nearly shoots from my nostrils. Almost as if given a director's orders, a man comes over at that moment and tells me he liked my work in Sons of Anarchy. I am coughing, recovering from my Nuge vision and can barely speak. He says something I can't understand. I nod, shake his hand and go back to clearing the coffee from my lungs. This is how it goes.

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YEAH WAY

Wolf Eyes are the shit! Even Braxton loves them, but then again he's really into Tom Petty with equal zeal.

Henry, could you please write this thrillion-dollar book? -- A guide to bodybuilding that puts kids on the same program that intense Vietnam Vet teacher put you on when you were a kid. If you think that lifting improved your overall confidence and sense of well-being and at least tangentially put you on the path to success, why not share the process with other potentially puny proto-punks out there? Routines, nutrition, stretching and shit, pearls of wisdom, some tunes to pump you up for deadlifts that isn't the new Black Eyed Peas they've got blasting in the gym. You're rare in that you undertook a serious lifting program despite punk seeming to be anti-jock to the core; unfortunately the latent antagonism towards being in shape within whatever you might call the counter-culture leads to the cool people getting their asses stomped by the Jersey Shore dudes.Empower these kids, nobody teaches you how to lift weights unless you play sports, and they don't; we need Uncle Henry to whip the hooligans into decent shape for the circle pit.

Jennie Vasquez

Amen to that. I would take it a step further and say that a book like this would also help service members returning from war. Many are coming back to a world that doesn't understand them and are self medicating with drugs and alcohol. I think a book like the one you described could help those dealing with PTSD or physical injuries focus on becoming stronger physically which leads to becoming stronger mentally. These young people could really use his guidance.

Jennie Vasquez

Given the opportunity, I think many of us would trade sleep for more adventure.As the say goes "You can sleep when you are dead." On a similar but different note, kudos to first responders who always lack sleep in the time of an emergency. I imagine in Turkey, there are folks that haven't slept for days searching for survivors.