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version seven. http://demongin.org |
Dream Theatre
Now with celebrity cameos!
Monday, 2008-04-14 | Dreams
| So say we all |
So I had two unusually/uncannily revelatory dreams this weekend. Allow me to share.
The first is a reflection of my recent anxiety about music and musical groups. I've recently taken up a new instrument and, sparing details, certain long-running bands to which I contribute are slowly (but steadily) dissolving.
In this first dream, I was basically kicking it, like I normally do, at the studio. I was working on whatever--computers or mending broken gear or general den-mothering--and Avril Lavigne happened to be hanging out. I was trying to convince her to start a new band with me.
When I had realized that that wasn't going to work--she just wasn't interested in abandoning current projects to focus on something new--I decided to try to convince her to make out with me. And she wasn't having any of that either.
Can you even imagine? Like, can I catch a fucking break? Obviously not.
In my second uncomfortably topical dream I found that I had been re-conscripted into academia. I believe that this was an expression of my anxiety regarding the sheer number of close friends of mine who are, for various yet similar reasons, returning to school.
In this dream I was in the first day of some kind of graduate level law seminar. The teacher was played by Battlestar's Mary McDonnell. Talk about typecasting: she was basically a wizened yet optimistic, compassionate yet fierce, progressive yet conservative elder statesman type figure who seemed radically unimpressed with the class yet professionally invested in sculpting the ragtag crew into a formidable squad of young lawyers. It didn't help that I hadn't done the reading. It helped less that I was, in my notorious arrogance, begging to be called upon to answer questions about that reading.
Dream-Tim, much like real Tim, clearly wasn't interested in making what you might traditionally think of as a "good" first impression on Professor Mary McDonnell. She would ask a question about the material, I would answer, quite honestly, that I hadn't done the reading and wasn't sure whether I was interested in the seminar. She would press the issue and I would respond in my customarily glib, confrontational manner. We went back and forth a few times. There was giggling from my peers and, in the end, she had made it abundantly clear to all involved that she was, in fact, the alpha male and would not suffer challenges to the established order gladly. Moreover, challenges to her authority would be dealt with swiftly, summarily and at the expense of their own reputation.
I was pwned.
Later in that same day, we found ourselves at an informal gathering. A party. The exchange was even more heated; I was still sore as hell about how she had showed me up in class. Sore as hell and about as effective in effecting any kind of revenge as a length of rope is in shooting billiard balls. She put me through the wringer again, this time for the benefit of my peers in an informal setting.
As the hours went on and the party's population thinned out, we found ourselves facing the sunrise together. She explained to me that she saw very little potential in me but was willing to work with me anyway so long as I was willing to "do the work". I explained that I, ultimately, was not willing to "do the work", that I was an inveterate dilettante and that I wasn't going to change and that, while I appreciated her efforts up to that point, I was beyond rescue and that she ought to direct her substantial talents elsewhere.
Having reached this understanding, she offered to buy me breakfast. I declined, on account of the late hour--I felt compelled to mention that it seemed that I just plain couldn't keep up with her in any respect--and she told me not to feel bad: very few people indeed had the endurance to keep up with her.
"But the fact that they can't keep up doesn't seem to stop them from trying, does it?" I wondered aloud.
"No," she said. "It never stopped me, either."
