Hypnagogic Startle

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Carrie Tulls from New York, New York.

Hi, Carrie. Where do you live in New York, New York?

I live in the East Village.

Well, what can we do for you, Carrie?

Oh, well, I was wondering, I was on a long road trip a couple weeks ago, and I was kind of like dozing off, and I thought there was a word for it. You know when your head falls down, and then you snap back up, and you wake up?

Yeah.

I think there’s a word for that, but I couldn’t think of it.

Yeah, there are several.

Oh.

And you think you’ve heard it before?

Yeah, it’s something like, I don’t know, like the snaps or something. I can’t really remember.

The snaps, that sounds sort of slang.

Yeah, it does sound like slang.

Yeah, so you’re sort of nodding off to sleep, and then you sort of do this total body hiccup, right?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

It’s kind of a rude awakening, right? But that’s not the term, right?

No.

Yeah. Okay, I can give you a term for this.

Oh, really?

It goes back to good old Greek and the Greek word for sleep. How about you are experiencing the hypnagogic startle?

Oh, nice.

Wow, that definitely wasn’t what I was thinking of.

That wake you up?

Yes, that did.

Yeah, it’s the hypnagogic startle or the hypnic jerk or the night jerk.

That’s what it was.

That’s the guy who bangs on your door when you’re asleep.

Something like that.

Yeah, but the hypno comes from the Greek word for sleep, and the agogic comes from a word that means to lead or drive, like a demagogue drives people to do things.

So hypnagogic startle is something that, I don’t know, are you involved in the arts at all?

A little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It seems like something that you hear artists talking about a lot, that hypnagogic state. Edgar Allan Poe talked about the fancies that only came to him in that state.

And I remember seeing this documentary once on Salvador Dali. He talked in that documentary about how the way he sleeps is he sits on the edge of a chair holding a spoon over a pie plate that’s on the floor. And he just kind of drifts off.

And then as soon as he drifts off enough that he lets go of the spoon and it drops to the pie plate and makes noise, then he wakes up.

Wow.

And that’s his way, supposedly.

Maybe he’s just being surreal.

I don’t know.

But that’s his way of getting efficient sleep, just getting into that hypnagogic state.

And then he’s done?

And then he’s through, yeah.

I could see how that might be a way of recording those weird things that you’re thinking when you’re slightly, you know, in that moment you’re kind of in.

I love that state, yeah.

And I believe, I’d have to look this up, but I’m pretty sure that the word for coming out of sleep, that drifting out, I think it’s hypnopompic. I would have to look it up, but I’m pretty sure.

Oh, well, that helps.

That solves my problem.

Right on.

So what are you going to do with that word?

I don’t know.

I guess next time I drift off to sleep, I’m just going to know what it’s called.

It’s called Sleepy Time.

Well, hey, listen, it was great talking with you.

You too.

Thanks for calling, Carrie.

Okay, bye.

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