Hypnotic Bedtime Story - The Great Gatsby
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Hi, I'm Jessica Porter, and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Thank you, everybody, for being here. Thanks for listening to Sleep Magic, for leaving reviews and feedback and comments, reaching out to me on social media. I really appreciate it. I got something this week from someone named Allie Kay, who just had a baby.

And in her postpartum period, found Sleep Magic and says that it helped with migraines and sleep and all sorts of things. And she really recommends it to new parents. And it's so great when I hear that relaxation is helping people in just so many different circumstances. Like there's, I dare you to find a place where relaxation doesn't help.

Um, I know I just issued a dare, so I may get some response from that, but it really is work sort of everywhere. So thanks again for letting me know. If you are in a position to subscribe, please consider doing that. And if you can't subscribe, please just, uh, enjoy the show and help to support it in other ways. We really, really, um, need that and appreciate it. So thank you.

Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible. All right, tonight, The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925 and is the story of Nick Carraway, a young man who moves to Long Island and finds himself living next to a mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby, who is obsessed with reconnecting with his old flame, Daisy.

It is the story of America during the Prohibition, in the Jazz Age, which was a term popularized by Fitzgerald himself. It explores many themes, including class, hedonism, and the relaxing of social norms that changed the country in many ways. The story is loosely based on Fitzgerald's experiences.

or maybe not so loosely. He came from a middle-class family in St. Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University, where he mingled with a whole other world of privilege and wealth. He fell in love with a socialite named Ginevra King. You heard me. Ginevra. I haven't seen, is that name going to make a comeback? Please, pregnant couples, consider Ginevra.

But her family rejected him because he didn't have enough money and wasn't born into the right social circle. Heartbroken, Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton to join the army. He eventually met a Southern belle named Zelda, who would only marry him when his writing got some traction and paid some bills, and he ended up doing okay. During his short lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories.

Fitzgerald never knew that The Great Gatsby was a success, let alone called by some the great American novel. It was not a commercial or even a critical success in his lifetime. But today, it is our opportunity to look through a lens into another time, another world, where all our human issues and twists and vulnerabilities existed.

I love looking at our humanity through different lenses. One last thing before we start. I've received suggestions for other books to read on the podcast, and I really appreciate them. And I check them all out. But if you don't hear your suggestion, it's either because it's not yet in the public domain, or it has some sort of content or tone that isn't ideal for going to sleep to. You know what I mean?

Your favorite story may be so gripping that it won't generate the snores we're looking for. So I'm sorry about that. And all that said, please keep sending suggestions. Thank you. So tonight I'll be reading from The Great Gatsby, adapted slightly to help you fall asleep. As always, this is not so much about listening to the story, but letting my voice just take you on a ride into relaxation. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position.

And let's begin. Just allow your eyes to close easily and gently. And bring your awareness now to your breathing. And just let your awareness rest for a moment on your breath. Coming home to your breath feels safe, gentle, consistent. It's nice to take your awareness which has been out in the world all day, sometimes

you know, stressed, sometimes unsure, and just bring it home to the body, back home to the breath. Good. Now I'd like you to bring your awareness up into your eyelids, if you would, and just imagine that your eyelids are feeling heavy and sleepy, like you're just getting tired. Just pretend you're getting tired. Maybe you already are, but now we're just going to pretend by letting the eyelids get heavy

And as they get heavier and heavier, I'd like you to accept the suggestion that your eyelids are so relaxed that they simply will not open. And now I'd like you to test your eyelids to make sure they won't open by wiggling your eyebrows. Just give them a tug while your eyes remain closed. And you're just pretending now. It's okay. Good. Beautiful. Now this lovely heavy relaxation that you have around your eyes

This is the same quality of relaxation that you will soon have throughout your entire. So let's feel this relaxation in your eyelids now, this heaviness, this warm, delicious heaviness. I'd like you to imagine it moving down into your head, like a warm wave of relaxation passing back down into your brain.

and your head is feeling nice and heavy on the pillow. And the muscles of your face are beginning to let go as that heaviness around your eyes moves down your face, warming and softening the muscles of your face. And even your scalp is now feeling warm and heavy and relaxed as you imagine this warm wave of relaxation

lapping up against the beach of your mind. Just feel that warm wave of relaxation lapping up against the beach of your mind as all mental tension disappears. Good. And now that warm wave is moving down into your neck, the muscles of your neck becoming soft and heavy and relaxed. Your neck does so much work during the day

Now it's on vacation. As you imagine that warm wave moving down into your shoulders, just feel that warmth in your shoulders as the muscles of your shoulders begin to soften and relax. Your shoulders may have been tense most of the day unconsciously as they helped carry you and your responsibilities through the world. But now that you're in bed, now that you have permission

to let go of everything, even your own sense of self. As you move into the land of dreams and healing and unlimited possibility, the responsibilities you carry on those shoulders during the day, during the waking conscious hours, are all falling to the floor. Let them fall to the floor.

And you can pick any or all of them up in the morning, but for right now your only responsibility is to yourself and to this delicious, delicious letting go. Because when you sleep, you're free in a way that we're never free during the day. As that warm wave of relaxation moves down your arms, you can feel your arms becoming nice and warm and heavy.

As the wave rushes down into your hands, the palms of your hands are feeling warm, maybe even tingling. As you imagine those waves moving down into every single one of your fingers, like a wave hitting the beach. As that wave moves out of your fingers, your whole body goes deeper and deeper and deeper.

While you're listening to me tonight, you may be aware of some of the sounds going on around you, at least for a while. That's okay. From this moment on, no sound that you hear will bother you or disturb you in any way. In fact, because you are using your magic mind powerfully and magically, any sounds that you hear in your environment will actually take you deeper

and deeper into relaxation. So bring your awareness to those sounds now and let them take you deeper. Good. The only sound you need to pay any attention to is the sound of my voice. And the sound of my voice is also taking you deeper and deeper. And very soon, and it may have even happened already, the sound of my voice will become distant, almost

like I'm making no meaning anymore as you go on your journey tonight, floating off to wherever you need to go, which will feel so good. So let's imagine that warm wave of relaxation now moving down your back, down the back of your shoulders, into all those muscles in your upper back,

Now moving down your torso deep into the muscles of your lower back and buttocks. Allow your whole to just melt as you go deeper and deeper. And the relaxation moves down now into the front of your body like a mist of relaxation moving into your belly, up into your chest. Imagine now that mist of relaxation surrounding and supporting your heart.

as it simply holds your heart. And any emotional tension that may have built up today or in the last little while is evaporating. And you're just here now, feeling good. So let's imagine the wave of relaxation moving down your legs now. Like a rush of warm, relaxing water moving down your legs, making them feel warm and heavy.

As the wave moves down into your feet, the soles of your feet feeling tingly. As the little waves move each one into your toes, your toes feeling completely relaxed. There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his gardens, men and women came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne.

and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft into the waters at the edge of his garden, or taking in the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats glided over the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam.

On weekends, his Rolls Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays, eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day

with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday, five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York. Every Monday, these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen

which could extract the juice of 200 oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed 200 times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight, a troop of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables,

garnished with glistening hors d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall, a bar with a real brass rail was set up and stocked with gins and liquors.

and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his guests didn't know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived. No thin five-piece affair, but a whole pit full of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornetts and piccolos and low and high drums

The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs. The cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive. And already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors and hair bobbed in strange new ways and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing.

and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between people who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun

And now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath.

Already, there are wanderers, confident women who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable. Become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. I watch as one woman

in trembling opal, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush. The orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy. From the follies, the party has begun. I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house,

I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited. They went there. They got into automobiles, which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there, they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park.

Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all. Came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission. I had actually been invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin's egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer.

The honor would be entirely Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his, quote, little party that night. He had seen me several times and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it. Signed, J. Gatsby, in a majestic hand.

Dressed up in white flannels, I went over to his lawn a little after seven and wandered around, feeling lost among swirls and eddies of people I didn't know, though here and there was a face I'd noticed on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about, all well-dressed

all looking a little hungry and all talking low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something, bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were at least aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words.

in the right key. As soon as I arrived, I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table, the only place in the garden

where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone. It was then that Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden. Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone.

before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by. "Hello," I called, advancing toward her. "I thought you might be here," she responded absently as I came up. "I remembered you live next door to-" She held my hand impersonally as a promise that she'd take care of me in a minute and gave ear to two ladies in twin yellow dresses

who stopped at the foot of the steps. "Hello," they cried together. "Sorry you didn't win." That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before. "You don't know who we are," said one of the women in yellow. "But we met you here about a month ago." "You've dyed your hair since then," remarked Jordan. Just as I attempted to join in with the conversation, the women had moved casually on,

And Jordan's remark was addressed to the premature moon, produced, like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's basket, with Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine. We descended the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of drinks floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down at a table with the two ladies in yellow,

and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble. "Do you come to these parties often?" inquired Jordan of the woman beside her. "The last one was the one I met you at," answered the woman in a confident voice. She turned to her companion. "Wasn't it for you, Lucille?" "It was for Lucille, too." "I like to come," Lucille said. "I never care what I do.

So I always have a good time. When I was here last, I tore my gown on a chair and Mr. Gatsby asked me my name and address. Inside of a week, I got a package from Crorier's with a new evening gown in it. "Did you keep it?" asked Jordan. "Sure I did. I was gonna wear it tonight, but it was too big and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads.

Two hundred and sixty-five dollars. There's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that, said the other woman eagerly. He doesn't want any trouble with anybody. Who doesn't? I stated. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired, that there were whispers about him from those who had found Gatsby.

little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world. The first supper, there would be another one after midnight, was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party, who were spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were three married couples and Jordan's companion, a persistent undergraduate, obviously under the impression that, sooner or later,

Jordan was going to yield him up to her person to a greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling, this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside. East Egg condescending to West Egg and carefully on guard.

against its spectroscopic gaiety. "Let's get out," whispered Jordan after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half hour. "This is much too polite for me." We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host. "I had never met him," she said, and it was making me even more curious. The bar where we glanced first was crowded

But Gatsby was not there. She couldn't find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn't on the veranda. On a chance, we tried an important-looking door and walked into a high Gothic library, paneled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas. He wasn't in there. There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden,

Men waltzing, ladies backward in eternal, graceless circles. Superior couples holding each other fashionably and keeping in the corners. And a great number of women dancing individually or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased.

A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz. And between the numbers, people were doing stunts all over the garden, while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage twins, who turned out to be the women in yellow,

performed a dance to the guests, and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjo on the lawn. I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age.

I was enjoying myself now. The scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental, and profound. At a lull in the entertainment, the man looked at me and smiled. Your face is familiar, he said politely. Weren't you in the First Division during the war? Why, yes. I was in the 28th Infantry. I was in the 16th.

until June 1918. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before. We talked for a moment about some quaint little villages in France. Evidently he lived in this vicinity, for he told me he had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning. "Wanna go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound." "What time?" I asked. "Any time that suits you best," he replied.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around and smiled. "Having a good time now?" she inquired. "Much better." I turned again to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there." I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance. "And this man, Gatsby, sent over his chauffeur with an invitation."

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand. "I'm Gatsby," he said suddenly. "What?" I exclaimed, "Oh, I beg your pardon." "I thought you knew, old sport." "I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."