Preface: I’m afraid I approach journaling in much the same way as meditating – I know it’s productive and I should do it regularly …and yet somehow neglect consistently making time for it.
One part of a good journaling habit should include writing down your dreams as soon as you wake. So this is me trying to do that while explaining what a strange mind I live within… except, of course, this isn’t really journaling, which is something you do knowing no one will read it but yourself. This is …something else.
[yeah duh – it’s called blogging. -Ed.]
I often seem to wake up with earworms these days, usually songs from the 70’s.
See, I’ve been working on sleep hygiene this past year. One of the benefits of succeeding is that I’m getting more uninterrupted sleep. Consequently, I’m dreaming more …or at least remembering my dreams more. That makes for some unexpected entertainment.
The inside of my skull, as it turns out, is an even weirder place to be than I knew.
Some of my dreams are recurring. Apparently, that’s not unusual. But these days they’re sometimes serial. Like an ongoing story. Those are the coolest ones to remember upon waking because they come with this satisfying sense of continuity.
One series of dreams, including last night’s, begins with my wife and I having bought a new home.
That I dream about this is easily explained; we have been engaged in ongoing downsizing efforts with questionable success (we keep buying too much house and then want to downsize more or change locations within a year or two).
In the dream we’re in a new home and doing some renovating. This is bizarro world because only in my dreams (nightmares!) am I interested in being a DIY’er and doing my own renovating! The room is all white – unfinished, sanded drywall, drywall dust covering the floor, daylight filtered by white dust on the windows. Even our clothes’ are dusted white. What furniture and other boxy items still remain in the room are covered in white sheets (because, um, I guess that’s what you do when renovating?).
If you remember when MTV actually played music videos (before MTV killed the video star), it feels like one of those sets.
This is where the dream takes the outlandish twist that makes remembering these dreams so much fun.
Working with us on this home renovation are several long-haired dudes. As it turns out, they’re the band Blue Oyster Cult. As far as I know, I don’t think about BOC much these days. But that hasn’t stopped them from invading my slumber.
At some point in the dream, I realize there’s an additional person in the room. I have the sense this shadow person is famous, but I don’t recognize them. This too is easily explained; I’m kind of face blind and am never the guy who’d spot and then identify a celebrity in the wild. When I see someone – even someone familiar to me – in an unfamiliar context it always takes me a few ticks longer to recognize them than it probably should.
Some indeterminate moments later (time passing in dreams being what it is), the band members look to each other inquiringly, give mutual nods, and one of them asks the celebrity if they’re ready. After some apparent trepidation, sometimes a little cajoling or encouragement from the band, the VIP acquiesces and take hold of a mic stand that’s materialized for them. I notice the band members now have their instruments (apparently they were under the white sheets, along with the stacks of amps that are now visible?).
Moments later the familiar, slow building interlude to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” (album version!) begins. That famous BOC guitar riff ripples through my dream room. Then the guest singer begins to sing …but they’re always singing completely new words to the song. In this ongoing dream series, BOC has turned “Don’t Fear the Reaper” into an endlessly lengthening song, with the band (and apparently me and my wife) conveying to specially chosen celebrities the immortality of having been graced with the right to add to new verses to the “official” version of this classic rock anthem.
So much cooler than just doing a cover of someone’s song, yeah?
Then I wake up with an earworm that’s likely to last much of the day. Damn me if I can ever remember those new words that were added to this classic, though, alas.
“Then the door was open and the wind appeared
The candles blew then disappeared
The curtains flew then he appeared, saying don’t be afraid…”
Non-Dream Fun fact: You could go to Youtube and begin listening to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” covers and never finish. There are a lot of them. Many are quite excellent. And they’re being added faster than you can play them all the way through.*
* I just made that last bit up. …but it might actually be true! 😉
Sunning My Inner Lizard 