"The Chinese author Lin Yutang wrote in 1937 that ‘our senses are the keenest in that moment’ when we are lying down, and added that ‘all good music should be listened to in the lying condition’. Our mental makeup and even the structure of our perception can change with a shift of posture. Responses that seemed perfectly natural a few minutes earlier, when we were standing upright or sitting, become inexplicable. Questions that were so important appear in a different light when we view them horizontally. Voices and even the ringing of a telephone might no longer reach us with the same urgency as when we were standing."