Music of my dreams
Every night, I have vivid dreams and am able to remember them when I awaken. (There’s a term for having that ability: sleep disorder.) Usually, what I dream is related to what I was thinking about when I fall asleep. But for two nights in a row, I’ve dreamed that I’ve been making music with famous people, even though that hasn’t been on my mind at all.
On Thursday night, I dreamt that Paul McCartney and I were hanging around in my bedroom recording some songs. I should say, I’m not a particular fan of Mr. McCartney’s music. Yes, I like The Beatles. But I haven’t given his solo career much thought. I own two Beatles CDs, and that’s if you count the version of “Let It Be” that McCartney took it upon himself to revise a few years ago. (Theoretically, Ringo was consulted, but what was he going to say? Except for, “Thanks for the call.”) In my dream, Paul is playing guitar and I’m working the studio controls much as I think Brian Eno does: using his own instrument (the studio) to improve the song while co-writing it. In the alternate universes of my dreams, even when the people are familiar, the logic of the situation falters. So in this case, while I’m making music with Sir Paul, it gradually occurs to me that, hey, this guy was in the Beatles. (Whereas in our world, this would be our very first thought.) And since he was in the Beatles, maybe I might like to have my picture with them. And then I realize that if I can get my picture with Ringo, I’ll have my picture with half the Beatles. But then I realize that I don’t care if I have my picture with Ringo, and actually I don’t care if I have it with Paul, either. If John were still around, that would be good, or if I could get photographed with John and Paul, and all the while I’m thinking this I’m trying to get the song I’m doing with Paul McCartney, the most celebrated and successful songwriter of all time, to sound less… saccharine. Then I wake up.
The next night, I dreamt that my lamp grew taller. I woke up at 3:08 a.m. (yes, I always check the time) to see that my nightstand lamp, which ordinarily peaks at only about 18″ in height, is suddenly far far taller — the lampshade now towers four or five feet over my head. I realize this can’t be so, and that I’m still dreaming. So I sit up and look at it. And look at it. I really stare at it. Because I’m sure that at some point my vision will return to normal and the lamp will scale down to its correct size, because I know it cannot have grown while I’m asleep. But it never shrinks to respectability, no matter how hard I look at it, so I roll over and go back to sleep. This is unfortunately common for me: being awake, but still seeing what I was seeing in the dream. For 47 years, I saw some very unpleasant things, even while I was still awake. But hypnosis seems to have solved that; now the night terrors are gone, and while I don’t enjoy seeing things that can’t be there, at least now they’re less ominous.
When I gave up on the lamp returning to scale, and fell back asleep, I dreamt that the band Metallica had confused me for their bassist.
Much as with Mr. McCartney, Metallica is not a favorite of mine. I have no Metallica CDs. And I enjoy no Metallica music. If you like them, that’s fine with me. Enjoy. But I do not. My dislike for their music carries over into the dream, where the other three band members keep insisting I’m their bassist, and would I quit fooling around, because they’re getting ready to go on. I think they’re playing some bizarre practical joke, and I’m wondering why I’m even at their concert, which seems to be playing in a small basement club. No matter how hard I try to convince them that I’m not their bassist, and how could I be since I don’t know their songs and don’t even know the names of the people in the band who are insisting that I play with them, they keep walking me along backstage toward the band platform. Along the way we pass a mirror and they almost have me convinced that I must be their bassist, but I look into the mirror and I can see damn well that I’m him and not me. But when they look they see him, or at least that’s what they say. So finally I give up. I figure: “You know what? It’s playing bass and it’s Metallica. How hard could it be?” I was in a band once where the bass lines in one of our songs went like this: C, C, C-C-C. C, C, C-C-C. Even I could play that. And maybe, hey, I’ll get to participate in the hedonistic after party. So I say yeah, sure, hand it over, give me that bass guitar. I get the bass and I go out on stage and I start to try to play — and that’s when I notice that the strings are made out of cloth, like wide flat shoelaces. And now my bandmates are all staring at me because I’m not playing anything, and I’m not playing anything because the guitar won’t play anything. That’s when I woke up.
I’m not a morning person, and I never have been. Would you be, if every morning you woke up from something like this?