life in a day
There are two words in French for "day": jour and journée. When you look up the original Quebecois French version of the play a day, the title is une journée, making use of the latter word. This implies that every day in our lives is its own journey. Let´s take a closer at what happens in our bodies and minds during that journey. Your body goes through a lot during the 24 hours of a day. From one sunrise to the next, here is what's happening to your sleep, hunger, attention span and, yes, even your sex drive.
HOW DOES YOUR BODY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?
You might feel like your routine is out of whack during quarantine. And it's true, routines do affect our body clocks. Your 'body clock' is your circadian rhythm, as this diagram shows.
MORNING
When you wake up: When your alarm goes off, you're in what's called a hypnopompic state. You're groggy and disoriented, but this will go away within about ten minutes -- or for some people, a few hours. Your body temperature is low, but your blood pressure is quickly rising. Cortisol -- the stress hormone, and also the hormone responsible for waking us up -- is pumping through the bloodstream.
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An hour later: This is the best time to eat breakfast and enjoy your morning cup of coffee, as your cortisol levels have dipped by this time and you can reap more of coffee's benefits.
Mid-morning: This is when your mental state is peaking. According to the video, most people are at their sharpest between the two-and-a-half to four hours after waking up. But memory is affected as the day goes on: In the morning we forget an average of five facts, and in the afternoon it's more like fourteen.
AFTERNOON
Lunchtime: Your stomach can expand up to a whopping 2.5 pints to receive a meal, leading to a burst of energy.
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Mid-afternoon: Ever fallen victim to the afternoon slump? There's a reason for that. Although that spike of energy from your lunch was great at first, a spike of insulin that's thought to pull a little too much glucose from the blood afterward causes you to feel drowsy and probably craving a nap.
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Late afternoon: It may not be all that realistic for most of us to fit a workout in around 4:30 p.m., but according to AsapScience that's the best time to do it -- your core body temperatures are peaking and you may gain twenty percent more muscle strength.
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EVENING
Post-work: It's a good thing happy hour falls when it does, because the body becomes more tolerant to the effects of alcohol around 6 p.m. (Though it's important to note that drinking in moderation is key anytime.)
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Before bed: 11 p.m. is the most popular time for sexual activity, but this has more to do with our schedules than our bodies -- testosterone levels are actually lower in the evening and peak around 8 a.m., while semen quality is best in the afternoon.
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While you sleep: Your body goes through quite a few phases during sleep. Your pineal gland secretes melatonin, which signals the beginning of the sleep cycle. As you fall asleep your body experiences alpha waves, which lead to lower frequency theta brain waves, then longer delta waves and eventually REM sleep, which is when dreams are their most vivid and intense. REM sleep lasts an average of two hours a night.
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So, what happens next? You wake up and do it all again.
capitalism, rest, and the siesta song
In a day, some characters sleep better than others. Sleep majorly affects our emotions, so starting the play with 12-7 AM shows us how the characters set themselves up for the day ahead. There are four stages of sleep: “half awake” sleep, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM. A full sleep cycle takes between 90 and 110 minutes, so napping from 2-4 PM (aka. the Afternoon Siesta Song) would definitely give Nico, Alfonso, Harris, and Debs the active dreams and still-body typical of REM.
We can't forget the Afternoon Siesta Song! (my personal favorite part). Naps are proven to boost productivity and refresh us for the rest of the day. Naps more than 30 minutes in length allow the body to enter deep sleep. Waking up during this phase leaves us feeling sluggish, groggy, and wanting to sleep longer, which is why scientists recommend <30 minute “power naps” instead.
When the characters attempt to recharge with a nap, they sleep way beyond what sleep experts recommend, putting into a deep, dreamy sleep. Check out the lucid dreaming video below to learn more about the wild world of our subconscious. What does the Afternoon Siesta Song tell us about how the characters relate to each other? How is this the same or different from how they relate to each other when awake? To quote billie eilish:
The Mayo Clinic also warns that napping after 3 p.m. can interfere with nighttime sleep (*cough cough*). A study from the University of Pittsburgh found that after experiencing short, inefficient sleep at night, people would take a long nap the next day and experience poor sleep again later that same night- a vicious cycle.
Siestas and presenteeism:
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Traditional siestas can last for two hours or more to avoid the hottest hours of the day.
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The Spanish working day used to be split into two distinct parts: people would work from 9am until 2pm, stop for a two hour lunch break and return to work from 4pm until around 8pm.
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Far from the stereotype, Spanish workers factually put in more hours than any in Europe.
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The word siesta comes from the Latin sexta. The Romans stopped to eat and rest at the sixth hour of the day. If we bear in mind that they divided periods of light into 12 hours, then the sixth hour corresponds in Spain to the period between 1pm (in winter) and 3pm (in summer).
Sleeping While Awake | Scientific American:
During microsleep, the entire brain nods off so briefly that we often don’t notice it. Now research shows that individual neurons in the brain can slumber, too, especially when we are sleep-deprived.