Friday, January 2, 2009

a few notes about an awesome dream.

3 Jan 09
Auckland, NZ, 8:31 AM
np: fridge hum, birdsong

I used to think I never dreamed because I could never remember them, bar one dream around 12 years old where I was flying over my hometown to the comic book store. Then I took a psychology class where we were forced to keep a dream journal, and I managed to remember three dreams that week. Which is about average these days, but I usually forget them instantly, even the awesome ones.

This morning, I remembered a particularly vivid fragment of my dream when I woke up, and started to try to piece everything together.


  • A rotund Michael Moore breaking down a door at a friend's house to retrieve a DVD of ROGER & ME.
  • Robyn Hitchcock performing a live, standup-bass only set at an intimate venue. The version of "Birds in Perspex" still glistens in my head.
  • Japanese saxophonist Kazutoki Umezu performing some conceptual piece that began with six bikini models playing unruly noises on bass saxophones while rolling onstage. Somehow, a tent materialized. I went in, and in the front of the tent (which was massively large) was a hostess who had a 42 Below drink on offer, after which a second drink was queued, after which I would go to the next room and sit with Kazutoki Umezu and ... something would happen. (At which point I woke up)


Dreams are awesome. This one would have been even more awesome if I hadn't spent half of it worrying about paying for parking.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you wake up to an alarm clock? I usually only remember dreams when I wake up naturally, either because I have to pee in the middle of the night or because I've actually slept enough (the latter still not being as often as it should be). Alarm clocks often wake us up in the wrong part of the sleep cycle, inhibiting dream recall. Or so goes my theory.

Do you remember any of the tunes from your dreams? If you do, they're royalty-free, so you should record them. I once had a mini tape recorder (which I believe you gave to me) near my bed, and I actually had a dream song that, as far as I can tell, was completely original. I was so psyched, I recorded what I could remember on tape, and later fleshed it out.

It has remained one of the most frustrating songs I've ever come up with, because it seemed so promising, and yet I've done nothing with it. I've done nothing with any of my song ideas, but that one really annoys me.

I think the Michael Moore dream was due to his telepathic mind control ability. He's probably coming out with a special edition DVD soon.

dd said...

Alarm clock on weekdays, not weekends and holidays. So, yeah, didn't have one to interrupt this dream. My current one is pretty gentle, though.

These tunes were only either copyrighted or skronking free association. Will keep an ear for royalty free dream songs, though, at least until DRM (dream rights management) shuts down my free dream music.

Your story reminds me of a favorite story: my friend Jason Tumlinson dreamt one night that he was taught how to play "Paint It, Black" by Ron Wood himself. He woke up, and remembered how it went. So he rushed to grab a guitar ...

... and it was completely wrong.

Ghost of the Machine said...

I have the opposite theory. If I wake up naturally, I usually don't remember anything. It's only when I'm woken during R.E.M. sleep by person or clock that I recall.