Exploring Our Creative Dream World with Voice Actor Adam Smith

Hello creators,

In this episode, we have our next guest reader, performer, and voice actor, Adam Smith, who talks about the power of creative imagination from childhood to adulthood and reads us to sleep with the enchanting and addictive dreamscape of Celephais by H.P. Lovecraft.

Find out more about Adam and his work: www.adamsmithperformance.com

On another note, those of you who follow us on Instagram will have already seen that at the end of this year, Sleepless Creatives will be coming to an end.
 
It's been a hard decision to make after running the show for 5 years, but after our final episode in December 2026, I'll be stepping away to focus on a new and exciting project, Build Without Breaking, a performing arts interview series launching on October 12th.
Follow us on social media and all your streaming platforms to be one of the first listeners on launch day: @buildwithoutbreakingpod

All episodes of Sleepless Creatives will remain available after this year, so you'll never be without a good night's sleep.

Sweet Dreams,

Florence x

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Sleepless Creatives, a sleep podcast for performers and creators just like you. I'm your host, Florence. And coming up in this episode, we have another very special guest reader. Um, but before I go ahead and introduce them, I just want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has reached out to us on Instagram following our recent announcement. That at the end of this year in December, the Sleepless Creatives podcast will be winding down. The last episode will be our Christmas episode in December. And after that, all of the episodes will still be available everywhere for you to listen to. This is not a decision that I've taken lightly, um, but I will be stepping aside to focus on different projects. And that new project is a new podcast. It's a performing arts interview series called Build Without Breaking, where I sit down with industry professionals and we challenge all of the harmful norms that we're told to put up with in the performing arts industry, and we come up with new ways of working to replace them with. It is releasing on the 12th of October. So please do go and follow us on Instagram at BuildWithout Breaking Pod and go and subscribe on all of your listening platforms. You can go and listen to the trailer, which is out now. Thank you so much, everyone. Um, it has been quite a journey, and I've loved every minute of it. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to our next guest reader, which is the voice actor Adam Smith.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Hi everyone, I'm Adam Smith, vocal artist, performer, singer, and writer, and I'm thrilled to be here reading for you tonight. The short story I've chosen is Cellophai by H.P. Lovecraft, an ethereal tale that surprised and stuck with me since I first read it as a college student many years ago. Unlike Lovecraft's typical nightmare-filled offerings, Cela Fey offers something far more dreamlike. And as a young writer, I was stunned by the canvases and worlds that Lovecraft creates with the words here. It's resonated with me ever since as someone who's forever been captivated by my dreams, by my imaginings, and by the ache of nostalgia. In Cella Fey, we're reminded of the power of our imaginations, the possibilities of the fantastical, and the fleeting nature of both our childhood and our broader lives. It's a glorious mixture of hopefulness and melancholy that for me really reminds me of that time when I was at college, my younger years when life was still so full of mystery and dreaming. And I hope it helps you get lost in your own dreaming just as beautifully.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

So, take a minute to get cozy and comfortable and drift off.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

In a dream, Caranis saw the city in the valley, and the sea coast beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour toward the distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a dream, it was also that he came by his name of Coranus, for when awake he was called by another name. Perhaps it was natural for him to dream a new name, for he was the last of his family, and alone among the indifferent millions of London. So there were not many to speak to him and remind him who he had been. His money and lands were gone, and he did not care for the ways of people about him, but preferred to dream and write of his dreams. What he wrote was laughed at by those to whom he shewed it, so that after a time he kept his writings to himself, and finally ceased to write. The more he withdrew from the world about him, the more wonderful became his dreams. And it would have been quite futile to try to describe them on paper. Whilst they strove to strip from life its embroidered robes of myth, and to shoe in naked ugliness the foul thing that is reality, Coranus sought for beauty alone, past the great oaks of the park, and along the long white road to the village. The village seemed very old, eaten away at the edge like the moon which had commenced to wane, and Coranus wondered whether the peaked roofs of the small houses hid sleep or death. In the streets were spears of long grass, and the window panes on either side were either broken or filmily staring. Coranus had not lingered, but had plodded on as though summoned toward some goal. He dared not disobey the summons for fear it might prove an illusion, like the urges and aspirations of waking life, which do not lead to any goal. Then he had been drawn down a lane that led off from the village street toward the channel cliffs, and had come to the end of things, to the precipice and the abyss, where all the village and all the world fell abruptly into the unechoing emptiness of infinity, and where even the sky ahead was empty and unlit by the crumbling moon and the peering stars. Faith had urged him on over the precipice and into the gulf where he had floated down, down, down, past dark, shapeless, undreamed dreams, faintly glowing spheres that may have been partly dream dreams, and laughing winged things that seemed to mock the dreamers of all the worlds. Then a rift seemed to open in the darkness before him, and he saw the city of the valley, glistening radiantly far, far below, with a background of sea and sky, and a snow capped mountain near the shore. Coranus had awaked the very moment he beheld the city, yet he knew from his brief glance that it was none other than Salafe, in the valley of Uth Nagai, beyond the Tenarian hills, where his spirit had dwelt all the eternity of an hour one summer afternoon very long ago, when he had slipped away from his nurse, and let the warm sea breeze lull him to sleep as he watched the clouds from the cliff near the village. He had protested then, when they had found him, waked him, and carried him home, for just as he was aroused he had been about to sail in a golden galley for those alluring regions where the sea meets the sky. And now he was equally resentful of awaking, for he had found his fabulous city after forty weary years. But three nights afterward, Caranus came again to Celephae. As before, he dreamed first of the village that was asleep or dead, and of the abyss down which one must float silently. Then the rift appeared again, and he beheld the glittering minarets of the city, and saw the graceful galleys riding at anchor in the blue harbour, and watched the ginkgo trees of Mount Aran swaying in the breeze. But this time he was not snatched away, and, like a winged being, settled gradually over a grassy hillside, till finally his feet rested gently on the turf. He had indeed come back to the valley of Uth Nagai, and the splendid city of Calafe. Down the hill, amid scented grasses and brilliant flowers, walked Caranis, over the bubbling Naraxa on the small wooden bridge, where he had carved his name so many years ago, and through the whispering grove to the great stone bridge by the city gate. All was as of old, nor were the marble walls discoloured, nor the polished bronze statues upon them tarnished. And Coranus saw that he need not tremble, lest the things he knew be vanished, for even the sentries on the ramparts were the same, and still as young as he remembered them. When he entered the city, past the bronze gates and over the onyx pavements, the merchants and camel drivers greeted him as if he had never been away. And it was the same at the turquoise temple of Nath Horhath, where the orchard wreathed priests told him that there is no time in Uth Nagai, but only perpetual youth. Then Coranus walked through the street of pillars to the seaward wall, where gathered the traders and sailors, and strange men from the regions where the sea meets the sky. There he stayed long, gazing out over the bright harbour, where the ripples sparkled beneath an unknown sun, and where rode lightly the galleys from far places over the water. And he gazed also upon Mount Aron, rising regily from the shore, its lower slopes green with swaying trees, and its white summit touching the sky. More than ever, Coranus wished to sail in a galley to the far places of which he had heard so many strange tales, and he sought again the captain, who had agreed to carry him so long ago. He found the man, Athib, sitting on the same chest of spices he had sat upon before, and Athib seemed not to realize that any time had passed. Then the two rowed to a galley in the harbour, and, giving orders to the oarsmen, commenced to sail out into the billowy Cerenerian sea that leads to the sky. For several days they glided undulatingly over the water, till finally they came to the horizon, where the sea meets the sky. Here the galley paused not at all, but floated easily in the blue of the sky among fleecy clouds tinted with rose. And far beneath the keel, Coranus could see strange lands and rivers and cities of surpassing beauty, spread indolently in the sunshine, which seemed never to lessen or disappear. At length, Atheb told him that their journey was near its end, and that they would soon enter the harbour of Suranean, the pink marble city of the clouds, which is built on that ethereal coast where the west wind flows into the sky. But as the highest of the city's carven towers came into sight, there was a sound somewhere in space, and Coranus awaked in his London garret. For many months after that, Coranus sought the marvellous city of Celefe and its skybound galleys in vain. And though his dreams carried him to many gorgeous and unheard of places, no one whom he met could tell him how to find Uth Nagai beyond the Tanarian hills. One night he went flying over dark mountains, where there were faint, lone campfires at great distances apart, and strange shaggy herds with tinkling bells on the leaders. And in the wildest part of this hilly country, so remote that few men could ever have seen it, he found a hideously ancient wall or causeway of stone zigzagging along the ridges and valleys, too gigantic ever to have risen by human hands, and of such a length that neither end of it could be seen. Beyond that wall, in the grey dawn, he came to a land of quaint gardens and cherry trees, and when the sun rose he beheld such beauty of red and white flowers, green foliage and lawns, white paths, diamond brooks, blue lakelets, carven bridges, and red roofed pagodas, that he for a moment forgot Celefe in sheer delight. But he remembered it again when he walked down a white path toward a red roofed pagoda, and would have questioned the people of that land about it, had he not found that there were no people there, but only birds and bees and butterflies. On another night, Coranus walked up a damp stone spiral stairway endlessly, and came to a tower window overlooking a mighty plain and river, lit by the full moon. And in the silent city that spread away from the river bank, he thought he beheld some feature or arrangement which he had known before. He would have descended, and asked the way to Uth Nagai, had not a fearsome aurora sputtered up from some remote place beyond the horizon, shoeing the ruin and antiquity of the city, and the stagnation of the Reedy River, and the death lying upon that land, as it had lain since King Kynarothalus came home from his conquests to find the vengeance of the gods. So Coranus sought fruitlessly for the marvellous city of Celepha and its galleys that sail to Saranion in the sky, meanwhile seeing many wonders, and once barely escaping from the high priest not to be described, which wears a yellow silken mask over its face, and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery on the cold desert plateau of Leng. In time, he grew so impatient of the bleak intervals of day that he began buying drugs in order to increase his periods of sleep. Hashish helped a great deal, and once sent him to a part of space where form does not exist, but where glowing gases study the secrets of existence. And a violet coloured gas told him that this part of space was outside what he had called infinity. The gas had not heard of planets and organisms before, but identified Coranus merely as one from the infinity where matter, energy, and gravitation exist. Coranus was now very anxious to return to minaret studded Celefe, and increased his doses of drugs. But eventually he had no more money left and could buy no drugs. Then, one summer day, he was turned out of his garret and wandered aimlessly through the streets, drifting over a bridge to a place where the houses grew thinner and thinner. And it was there that fulfillment came, and he met the cortage of knights come from Salafe to bear him thither forever. Handsome knights they were, astride Rowan horses and clad in shining armour, with tabards of cloth of gold curiously emblazoned. So numerous were they that Coranus almost mistook them for an army, but their leader told him they were sent in his honour, since it was he who had created Uth Nagai in his dreams, on which account he was now to be appointed its chief god forevermore. Then they gave Coranus a horse and placed him at the head of the cavalcade, and all rode majestically through the downs of Surrey, and onward toward the region where Coranus and his ancestors were born. It was very strange, but as the riders went on, they seemed to gallop back through time, for whenever they passed through a village in the twilight, they saw only such houses and villages as Chaucer or men before him might have seen, and sometimes they saw knights on horseback with small companies of retainers. When it grew dark, they travelled more swiftly, till soon they were flying uncannily, as if in the air. In the dim dawn they came upon the village which Coranus had seen alive in his childhood, and asleep or dead in his dreams. It was alive now, and early villagers curtsied as the horsemen clattered down the street and turned off into the lane that ends in the abyss of dream. Coranus had previously entered that abyss only at night, and wondered what it would look like by day. So he watched anxiously as the column approached its brink. Just as they galloped up the rising ground to the precipice, a golden glare came somewhere out of the east and hid all the landscapes in its effulgent draperies. The abyss was now a seething chaos of roseate and cerulean splendour, and invisible voices sang exultantly as the nightly entourage plunged over the edge and floated gracefully down, past glittering clouds and silvery coruscations. Endlessly down the horsemen floated, their chargers pouring the ether as if galloping over golden sands, and then the luminous vapours spread apart to reveal a greater brightness, the brightness of the city of Celephae, and the sea coast beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour, toward distant regions where the sea meets the sky. And Coranus reigned thereafter over Uth Nagai and all the neighbouring regions of Dream, and howled his court alternately in Celephae and in the cloud fashioned Saranian. He reigns there still, and will reign happily for ever, though below the cliffs at Innsmouth, the channel tides played mockingly with the body of a tramp, who had stumbled through the half deserted village at dawn, played mockingly, and casted upon the rocks by ivy covered Trevor Towers, where a notably fat and especially offensive millionaire brewer enjoys the purchased atmosphere of extinct nobility.