Fall asleep with Henrik

Sleepy… tonight I’m sitting with the strange feeling that I might still be me. I checked earlier. The mirror confirmed it. Henrik is still Henrik, at least for now.

This episode begins just after a live recording of the podcast. A small basement room in Stockholm filled with mattresses, tea, candy, quiet laughter, and a harp playing softly while people waited. Sixty or so humans gathered in a cozy little pocket of the world while I talked for an hour without knowing where the words would go.

And afterward… the car ride home.

I sit there in the dark street with rain on the roof and feel a quiet wave of sadness. Not dramatic. Just still. The kind that comes when you realize certain versions of your life have quietly ended. The version of me who used to celebrate all night after a show. The version of me who thought everything exciting was still ahead.

From there my mind drifts, as it tends to do. I think about getting older, about my daughter growing up, about subway rides long ago when I had the vague feeling that I was living the wrong life. I think about social media, AI, art, purpose, and why we humans seem so determined to shout at each other all the time.

Mostly I sit there, talking to you in the dark, wondering about the different arcs of a life. The party arc. The father arc. And maybe this one. The strange middle chapter where things are both over and just beginning.

Anyway… I’m glad you’re here, Sleepy.

It is what it is. What happens, happens. And right now, there’s nothing we can do about it. So let’s drift off together into the quiet.

Sleep Tight!

More about Henrik, click here: https://linktr.ee/Henrikstahl
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sleepy.

Tonight begins, as it often does, with nothing in particular. A welcome to new listeners. A quiet confession that this whole thing might be “content striving to be non-content.” And then, slowly, the mind wanders.

We drift through questions about what really matters. A conversation with Nina about our daughter. A small opera meeting about Händel’s Giulio Cesare that somehow opens a door to bigger things: emotions, revenge, love, and the strange scaffolding that holds human life together.

From there the path winds through an empty conference room in Stockholm, a moment of unexpected peace, the difficulty of weekends, and the odd fact that the future never actually arrives.

There are memories too. A father throwing a ball impossibly high into the sky. A small boy asking, again and again, “Are you dead?” The quiet shock of realizing that the giants of childhood eventually become two elderly people in another city.

Nothing is solved. Nothing is concluded. But for a while we travel backwards on the train of thoughts, watching the rails disappear behind us.

And maybe, somewhere along the way, you drift off to sleep.

Sleep Tight!

More about Henrik, click here: https://linktr.ee/Henrikstahl
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi Sleepy!
I start with my hands.

Not in a dramatic way. Just soap bubbles and warm water and suddenly the realization that these hands have been with me my whole life. They’ve touched thousands upon thousands of objects I don’t remember. Door handles, coffee mugs, faces, fish-shaped cutting boards that looked more like potatoes with fins.

We wander through Falun’s red dust under my childhood nails. Through my grandmother’s cool pianist hands. Through a teacher who showed me that whatever shape my hands made was a real shape. Through strangers on trams with secret model-airplane lives. Through involuntary sigh support groups. Through tinnitus and survival and the quiet miracle of getting used to things that once felt unbearable.

It’s an introspective, slightly philosophical, gently absurd journey to sleep. A meditation on touch, memory, apology, and the strange magic of saying sorry. You don’t have to follow any of it. Let it be background noise while you fall asleep. Let the words drift past like buses you don’t need to board.

It is what it is. What happens happens. And right now there’s nothing we can do about it.

So rest your hands. Let them be still. Let yourself drift off to sleep.

Sleep Tight!

More about Henrik, click here: https://linktr.ee/Henrikstahl
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi Sleepy. Tonight we float around in the sticky, beautiful weirdness of time. Physics time, dad-time, VHS-time, London-time. The kind of time where a star is a memory and a red light becomes a small moral philosophy.

I talk about my broken English, my inner critic, and the strange rebel that keeps turning the microphone on anyway. We visit Darth Vader as my first real encounter with the word “evil,” and how movies keep trying to protect us from confusion, even though confusion is where the good stuff lives.

Then it gets small and human. A bike lane in Stockhom. A furious policeman. A childhood horn-honk in Hawk Bay with Rune (or Sune). Being told off and how it can drop you into a cold well in half a second. Also: a stroller, a car horn, and the kind of accidental social crime you can’t apologize your way out of.

Drift off to sleep, Sleepy. Let the thoughts wobble and pass.
Sleep Tight!

More about Henrik, click here: https://linktr.ee/Henrikstahl
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome. This is a short introduction for those of you who just found the show. A lot of new Sleepys have arrived lately. I'm so glad you did, and if you have any questions or just want to say hi, just reach out to me on any social media or visit my website.

ABOUT FALL ASLEEP WITH HENRIK and HOW TO USE IT:
This is an improvised sleep podcast. I don’t prepare anything in advance. I sit down, press record, and start talking. English is my second language, so I wander. I search for words. I repeat myself. I follow thoughts that lead nowhere in particular.
The goal is simple: to give you company while you fall asleep.

You don’t have to listen closely. You can let my voice drift in and out of focus. I’m not here to fix you. I’m just here to talk, and keep you company.

If you are new here, start anywhere. There is no correct order. Each episode stands on its own.
It is what it is. What happens, happens. And right now, there’s nothing we can do about it.
I will stay here for about an hour.
You can rest.
If you don’t fall asleep, that’s fine. You don’t have to perform sleep here.

/Henrik
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.