1:35am
Dream –
The first half of the dream is gone but it was long and
outdoors…
I’m on a street corner. Nighttime. I walk across the street
into a small parking lot between two older, brick storefront, mid-block. I am
talking to someone who is telling me a story they heard from, “You know that
guy that lives out here who is a bit messed up but otherwise cool.” A white rental van starts up in the
space I (alone now) am standing in front of. There are two guys, 20s,
brown hair, typical looking, in the front seat looking suspicious, like they’ve just been caught
smoking pot or something. One talks to me and I hear them even though he
doesn’t look to be yelling and the windows are all rolled up. He was asking directions. I point how to get out of the lot the
back way, through a chain link fence.
As I watch them pull away, to my right, something moves. I
seem to know it’s the “messed up” street guy I was told about. He’s young, mid-late
20s. Blond and bearded, tall and looks clean. He’s pushing a weird sort of gondola
on wheels covered with an Army-green canvas. He says hello as if he knows me
and we walked out the driveway toward the sidewalk. When we get there we see
my friend Greg Bierman who is also going to the concert/rave/event (?). We go right on
the sidewalk and we are on Duarte Road, across the street from the back corner of
Hinshaw’s in West Arcadia. We stand at the traffic light talking about the concert.
Someone presses the crosswalk button and we wait. As we finally cross, “Messed Up Guy" leaves his gondola there at the corner. “No one will bother it.” We cross
the street and Greg is checking little address numbers on the glass doors of
Hinshaw’s and finds the right one. “This is where it is?” I say, surprised.
“Yeah, it’s in some kind of conference room.”
We walk inside. It is a pretty luxurious seeming room.
Everyone is dressed fairly nice and I see a lot of faces that I recognize. Back
East music scene people. I am, of course, naked but have a soft yet roughly
textured olive covered blanket, lightweight it seems but overflowing, wrapped
over my shoulders covering everything nicely except my chest hair. I feel sure
that someone will notice my odd raiment but no one does. My ex-wife, Lynn, looking basically like she does
today, has reserved a flat,
highly polished very low table. Japanese, on which we are to sit on little
cushion. I wonder if “Messed Up Guy" will sit with us and I wonder if he will
stink.
She is sitting just behind this table on a stool. To our
right is a guy standing at a tall soundboard. It is a young Joey Calderazzo (which is
weird since the group billed is Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette and others and Joey is
also a pianist). He speaks softy to the crowd, asking everyone to now be quiet and they take their
seats. I ask Lynn what the news is and she says, “Not good. Kidneys.”
The implication in the dream is that it is a diagnosis she just got back. I
decide to not tell her about my health. “No Ed?” I whisper instead and she shakes her
head side-to-side which makes sense for I know I was just with them somewhere and Ed was
going to be working at home that night. She steps off the stool, gives me a hug and comes around to
two of the places (cushions) facing the stage. I think, “Good, I didn’t want to
sit hunch-necked and backwards all night.”
As
the music softly starts, a light short acoustic piano figure is followed by a very
quiet woodwinds wash and then some bowed acoustic bass. Subtle and atmospheric sounds
with very little movement. People are sitting low, on the floor in front of us
and I wonder if I will be able to stay awake through this since I got no sleep
the night before. I consider asking her to poke me if I snore but it is too
quiet to talk and I’m sure she would poke me anyway. She turns and whispers, of
course, “Nice blanket.” Hahaha. That’s my girl.
In front of us is a not quite opaque curtain made of what
looks like soft roughly textured material pleated thickly like a theater
curtain. It is lit softly from in front and behind. The impression is that the
musicians are behind it playing. There are strongly lit big squares or perhaps projections of
rich color on the curtain. I somehow know that the piece of music is titled “Journey in Three Colors”. I
wonder if the screen will ever go up. I surmise that this could be Jarrett being elitist, or
pretentious or it could be some kind of sense-experiment where the colors are
controlling the music or vice-versa. I also consider that if we never
see musicians just a curtain, Lynn might bail, people may boo or start getting
rammy and chatty since the music is so soft and static. I’m very curious to see what happens. I realize that we are
more reclined than sitting up straight, our legs out before us. I hope I can
stay awake.
On the screen is what at first looks like a list of songs or
credits as if on an album cover but when I look at the left column, I realize it
is sort of like poetry that describes the color and action of the story while
mentioning what the instruments represent. It seems to be changing in real time
to the sounds being heard. Unfortunately, I can’t retain the opening lines of
the poem.
In the dream, I wake up and I am in another part of the room
looking in another direction, at a different more traditional stage set up.
I'm sitting in another group of chairs/stools with Greg and a woman
who is my date or someone I am dating who also happens to be there. The room
behind us is crowded. There is a stage in front of us, which seems off to the right and on a wall perpendicular to the previous stage. Singing in front of a royal blue rich
velvet, gold-trimmed curtain is Merle Haggard and to his left is a tall, balding guy playing a bass guitar.
Merle is holding a trumpet in his hand, fingering though not playing it. He is
singing the line from Emmylou Harris’s song <that I actually played in my
gig earlier yesterday>, “I was Feeling Single, Seeing Double / wound up in a
whole lotta trouble. / But today I’ll face the big fight / ‘cause I really had
a ball last night.” When he repeats the last line, he comes to the C#7 chord
and really emphasizes the trumpet as if meaning “Here’s the chord…pay attention,” towards the
bassist who misses the note but plays one that almost works. The song ends and I
hear him say top the bassist off mic, “That was that C#7 I warned you about.” The crowd
claps excitedly and Merle walks off the stage.
I see him walk out onto a balcony
off to the right of the stage. It’s like a high school gym balcony with tall wooden folding
bleachers filled with people standing and applauding. Merle is walking along the front with
a large entourage of people. At first I think he is going to sing from there
with a wireless mic but he is walking across the front of the balcony toward the
exit on the right. It must be break time.
From where I stand, somehow looking down
on him, though it seems like more of a close-up camera angle than what I should
be seeing from where I sit below, he is wearing HUGE light blue dungarees. So
are his entire entourage (about 7-8 guys). The POV I am seeing is only their
legs and you can’t see their shoes because the flare of the pant legs are so huge. Like
rapper/rave boy jeans. A couple of them are dragging behind them what look like fake big
ball and chains, like prison guys of old, coming out from under these huge pant
legs. The music being played to their exit is a big band version of Merle’s
famous prison song, “Mama Tried”.
I turn and Lynn is across the room getting up from
her seat. The seat next to her where I had been sitting is filled by someone I
don’t know and I feel bad for it seems I must have left her sitting there to go
say hello to someone between acts and fell asleep and never gone back.
I feel
horrible about it and literally wake up on the couch having fallen asleep at 7:30 last
night when I got home from town. I had laid down for a nap and set my cell phone alarm for 9pm. I remember
hitting the snooze key 5-6 times and I guess it finally gave up on me. I had
finally got up at 1:30am and had to jot this dream down before I lost it.
Now, I’ve some editing to do on my father’s new art book and need to watch this movie, MY IDIOT BROTHER that my
cousin lent me tonight and wants to get back back on his way to work at
8am today. I’m wide-awake, after 6 hours of dreaming.
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