beautiful, funny, sad & true

These last few weeks sure have gotten away from me, at least as far as writing is concerned.   My time has been consumed with about a million different rehearsals with different groups, to prepare for the shows that are starting to happen now.  I also had a few out-of-town gigs (in addition to local ones) and an exciting recording and mixing project in the works, which hasn’t left much in the way of spare time.

Luckily, this story won’t take long, since it’s about a dream I had this morning that I don’t remember very well.  It was kinda dumb, overall—well, it was—but it did end with a funny conversation.  The dream was about international spies, which you’d think would make it inherently cool, but people spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the kinds of cars they drove (Mercedes and BMW) as opposed to those driven by the police (boring American cars).  It was as though I was watching a movie, rather than participating in the action, which is probably why it was so boring.  I’d love to be an international man of mystery, but I’ll need to get a passport first.

MainCharacterGuy had a sexy, blonde female sidekick who was twenty years his junior, and there were two other people in the dream, a man and a woman, who commented about her to each other.

“Why’s he with her?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Why’s he gotta pay her?”

“He pays her so she’ll fall in love with him.  He loves her cause—” and the second person chimed in to say, tautologically, “—he loves her.”

That’s when I woke up.

Incidentally, I haven’t forgotten that I owe you a story about hand jobs.  I’ve been trying to think of a way that I can tell it that won’t just be crass, but I’m not sure that’s gonna be possible, so I guess I’ll just keep it simple for once.

I can’t give a woman a hand job.  I mean, I CAN, but that’s not what it’s called, and I only found that out a week or so ago.  You see, I thought it was still called a hand job, whether it was done to a man or to a woman.  My friend thought it was hilarious that I used the term interchangeably that way, and he patiently explained it to me.  Turns out that the term ‘hand job’ is like ‘blow job’; it’s what a woman (or a man, for that matter) does to a man.  If a man (or a woman, for that matter) does the equivalent to a woman, then it’s called one of the million other terms that are floating around in our vernacular—which I will let you discover on your own, rather than listing them all here—but NOT a ‘hand job.’  You’re welcome.  I’m really glad we’ve had this discussion.

This calls for a new slogan.

BFS&T:  Now With 30% More Hand Jobs!

By way of a reward, here’s a hilarious video montage of all the references to hand jobs in the movie Rushmore. If you’ve never seen that movie, then see it.  If you haven’t, then this may be a bit of a spoiler, but I think you’ll find it entertaining.  It’s only a tiny bit of the overall story, and everything’s completely out of context, anyway.  All that being said, enjoy the video.

After all the heaviness lately, it’s time to get BFS&T back on track, and get some levity around here again.  Who among us doesn’t like levity?

I had a dream the other day in which I was having dinner with my Chinese-American girlfriend and her family.  She and her teenaged sister were both very Americanized, but her parents were not, and they spoke very little English.  We were spending the evening at an upscale Chinese restaurant in downtown Seattle, and a waitress was placing some miniature bowls on the table and making a rather elaborate show of gracefully spooning tiny ladels of seafood stew into each one.  We watched her closely, fascinated, and we each took turns sniffing the delicious stew and commenting on it as our respective bowls would appear at our places.

Somehow the subject of dopamine came up (you know, like it does), and I was trying to explain to my girlfriend’s dad about the various functionalities it has on the brain.  He was having a tough time understanding me, and I was having a tough time simplifying the terminology enough to get the ideas across, but we were both engaged in the conversation, and we were trying to communicate with each other as best we could.  At one point, I attempted to use the seafood stew as a visual aide, but even that was unsuccessful, so we finally agreed to just drop the subject of dopamine altogether and move on to something else.  “It’s really interesting, though,” I finished, a bit disappointed at having to give up on such a good topic.

Given the conversational choice between dopamine, politics, and religion, I’m gonna choose dopamine every time, even (and I daresay especially) on a dinner date with my girlfriend’s family, their tenuous grasp on the English language notwithstanding.

This morning I had a dream that I can’t seem to shake off.  It was a very long dream, with multiple sections, most of which aren’t worth sharing, but the disturbing part is one in which I’m playing cello with two musician acquaintances; we’ll call them L. and A., since those are their real first initials.  A. is also a cellist, and L. is a violinist, at least in the dream.  I don’t think L. really plays the violin, but she is an excellent and fairly well-known singer and songwriter around town.

So we’re sitting in a room in A.’s house, playing through a tricky piece of classical music.  It isn’t a piece I’m familiar with in real life, and I’m not exactly struggling with it, but I’m certainly not playing at my best, and we’re all aware of that fact.  A. is prepared to overlook it, but L. puts down her violin and glares at me.  “Would you get it together, please?” she asks, crossly.

“Sorry,” I say.  “I’m still warming up.  I’ll improve, you’ll see.  Do you have any suggestions?”

“You always have questions about everything,” she snaps.  “Just play better.”

“Uhhh, okay,” I say, a little bit on the defensive now.  “I told you I’ll get better as I warm up.”

She ignores my response.  “What are you wearing?  A cube? Really?”

“What are you talking about?”  I look down to see that I’m wearing a perfectly good outfit of jeans, an orange crewneck sweater, and a black hoodie. “What’s a ‘cube’?”

She rolls her eyes, then turns back and launches into me.  “Why do people hire you? I thought you had a good reputation for playing drums, or piano, or something.“  She pauses, choosing her words for maximum damage.  “Do you really think we’re ever going to call you again? This is a total waste of our time.  And why do you dress that way?”

“What ‘way’?  I’m dressed fine.”

I’m angry now, and I decide that this has gone on long enough.  I gently place my cello on the floor, stand up and walk across the room to gather up my instrument cables, jacket, and cello case.  A. picks up my cello and holds it out in front of herself so she can inspect it.  I walk back toward her and crouch down to see what she’s looking at.  There are two metal clasps on either side of the back (cellos don’t really have clasps on the back) that are hanging loose.  I tell A., “I’ve never seen those before, but I’m guessing they’re supposed to be tightened, aren’t they?”  I reach over and tighten the one nearest me, and A. tightens the other one.  I notice out of the corner of my eye that L. is glaring at me with a look of disapproval.

Next, A. pulls out a long piece of white twine and starts to thread it through the back of the cello, making a square pattern that is raised about an inch above the back of the instrument.  “What’s that for?” I ask her, which makes L. scoff loudly from across the room.  A. finishes with the twine, and I take my cello over to the case and put it inside, avoiding L. as much as I can in the process.

The dream’s location changes, and the three of us are in A.’s yard.  She is walking across the lawn toward L. and me, and she says, “I carried your cello to your car for you.”

“Oh, thanks.”  I put my hand on the back of her shoulder.  “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind.  It was nice to play with you,” she says.

I don’t entirely believe her, but at least her attempt at platitudes is better than L.’s blatant hostility.  “Thanks, you too,” I tell her.  “See you around.”

L. stands and silently watches me grab my remaining things and walk across the grass toward the dirt road where my car is parked.  For some reason, it’s not my current car, which I also have in the dream, but my first car instead, an ancient blue Toyota station wagon.

I notice that it has a new dent on the driver’s side, where someone has attempted to pry the door open.  The back hatch is raised, thanks to A, and the car and its contents are covered in a thick layer of dust from when cars have driven past on the dirt road.  I throw my belongings in the back, slam the hatch and open the slightly mangled front door.  I brush the dust from the seats and steering wheel, sit down, start the car and drive aimlessly for a while, until I realize that I’ve left a small bag of cables and music gear at A.’s house.  I’m not at all excited to go back over there, but I need my things, so I turn around and head back, with a sense of dread and foreboding.

That’s the point at which I wake up, so you can imagine why I’m stuck feeling kind of blue today.

I had an interesting dream last night. . .I think you’ll agree.

I’m working for a foreign-aid organization that sends people and reporters to small towns in foreign countries that need. . .well. . .aid, whether it’s in the form of food, education, infrastructure, or a variety of other things.  I am with a group of about ten people, both aid workers and reporters, and we’ve been sent to Nicaragua to build a school and bring food to a tiny village in the middle of a rain forest.

In my rare moments of spare time, I am giving singing lessons to a very talented ten-year-old boy.  Our group is only in the village for a few days, however, so as soon as the school is completed, we have to say our goodbyes to the people of the village, pack up our battered cargo truck painted in yellow and camouflage, and drive away from the village.  The rest of the group is in the cab of the truck, and I’m riding in the back by myself, as we traverse the narrow, bumpy, muddy mountain switchbacks.  The back of the truck is open, like an army transport, so I can only see behind us, but I can hear what’s going on around us, and it isn’t pretty.  There are guns being fired into the air, and I can see dirty, desperate people from other villages emerging from the jungle and running along the road behind our truck.

The road becomes so treacherous that we are forced to slow down drastically, until the group of running villagers catches up with us.  They attempt to jump into the back of the truck where I’m sitting, but I close the glass door on the back of the truck and lock it in an attempt to stop them.  Two of the men from our group climb out of the truck’s cab and hand a few bags of food to the villagers, and they thank us and let us go back on our way again.  We stop at two other villages along the road to drop off bags of food and pick up two older couples, also members of our organization, who are stationed elsewhere.   They climb up in the back of the truck, and I remove the iPod speakers from my ears so that we are able to talk.  I tell them what happened at the last stop, with the guns and everything, and they tell me, “It’s crazy to travel through the jungle without the protection of a glass door.  You just never know what these people are likely to do.”

The dream’s location changes, but we’re all still in the back of the van, which indicates that we have been driving for days on end, from Central America, through Mexico, and finally north through the United States all the way back to our home base in Portland.  Out the back of the van, we start to see signs, buildings and businesses that we all recognize, and we know we’re getting close.  Finally we arrive at our headquarters, and we climb out and stretch our weary bodies.  My girlfriend (C, a Portland friend in real life, but not my girlfriend) is there with the group of friends and family members who are greeting us as we arrive.   She runs over to me, and I give her a kiss and a huge hug, then I tell her I want to change out of my dirty traveling clothes and into some clean ones.  While I’m rummaging around in my suitcase, the leader of our group walks over and says hello.  He tells me, in his English accent, that I should get in contact with the boy I’d been tutoring, because he has suddenly become a very successful singer, and that I may be in a position to capitalize on this opportunity and make some money, for either our organization or for myself, at the very least.  Also, my boss says, the boy’s father is convinced that the boy will somehow become gay if he joins the music industry (despite his young age), and my boss is encouraging me to call the father and explain how ridiculous that idea is, and what the music industry is really like.  He tells me that he’ll get the family’s contact information and send it to me.  I thank him and agree to contact them as soon as I get back to work in a few days.

I wave to my boss, and to the other members of my team, and walk with my girlfriend in the direction of my car.  We are walking side by side, our outer arms holding one of my suitcases, and our inner arms around each other.

After a crazy fun evening (and, indeed, the entire week has been pretty over the top, both busy and fun), I had a ridiculously boring dream about being at my mom’s house loading the dishwasher before I went to work, so that when I got home three hours later, the dishes would be clean and waiting for us.

When I woke up, I thought that my subconscious must be trying to make up for my crazy waking life by providing really dull dreams, but when I went back to sleep, I discovered that was not the case.  I had an epic, three-hour dream that I’m not sure I’ll be able to stitch together into a coherent narrative, but it really was one of the longest dreams I’ve ever had.  You’ve been duly warned.

* * * * *

I’m visiting Brother’s family at his house, which in the dream is more like an art palace.  Its design resembles that of the Guggenheim museum inside, with multiple circular levels and rooms with no stairways between them, only floors that slope and curve around within the house.  The walls are painted dark brown, and there is orange and blue ultra-modern furniture everywhere, as well as very tasteful modern art.  It’s a bit like Guggenheim meets Dr. Seuss, but somehow it all works and looks very beautiful.

I find a piece of mushy chicken on the floor, and, thinking one of the kids must’ve dropped it, I pick it up and start looking for a wastebasket.  Sister-in-Law is trying to ask me something, and I’m trying to tell her that I’ll be there in a second, but she can’t seem to hear me.  She keeps having to shout from elsewhere within the house, “Are you there?  I’m asking you something!”  Brother is in the kitchen, so I ask him about a wastebasket, which he produces from under the sink.  Within the one large basket are three small bags, each for recycling or food or whatever.  I ask where to put the chicken, and he points vaguely toward a corner of the basket.  I deposit it where I think he means, but he grabs it and places it gently in a different bag.

The dream changes, and I’m walking in a sort of industrial park along the waterfront of Puget Sound south of Seattle.  I’m not there for any real reason, but I find myself intrigued by this large stone double door that appears to be the portal to a ship on the other side of it.  I stand in front of the door, and it opens.  I step forward into the lobby area of the ship.  The ceilings are very high, and the room is opulently but sparsely furnished, a bit like a hotel lobby.  The walls are the painted the faintest shade of pink, and there is a downward spiral staircase not far from the entrance.  I am greeted by a short man wearing a tight body suit and a black fencing mask so thick that his face isn’t visible through it at all.  He seems to be a security guard of some type.  He walks over and gruffly asks me my name.  I tell him, just after I take a bite of food, so my answer is garbled.  He understands me, though, and he says, “You didn’t even lie.”  He’s surprised that I give him my real name, which he somehow knows.  “Of course not,” I reply.  “Why should I lie?”

I get the feeling that this man is planning some sort of harm to me, so I make a slow movement to touch or remove his mask.  As soon as my finger touches it, the mask disappears and the man shrinks down to about eighteen inches tall.  He is all head and feet and arms, with a tiny body connecting everything.  He’s suddenly gone from being a threat to a joke, and I find myself trying to suppress laughter at the sight of this pathetic excuse for a watchdog.  He motions for me to follow him down the spiral staircase, and I do. When we walk to the bottom, there is a group of mobsters standing around in suits.  It seems that the man I encountered is either a scout for new members or a deterrent for nosy rubberneckers, or both.  I make a run for the stairway, and slide down the inner rail to the next lowest level, which is a Japanese store of some sort.

The room is square, and painted bright white.  The store is filled with Japanese toys and gifts and trinkets of all sizes and colors, and the shelves are piled high with clothes and art and DVD’s and posters.  There are large paintings on the walls, in vibrant reds and blacks and blues.  There are two employees working, and they both greet me in Japanese as I walk down the stairway into their store.  I wander through the aisles for a moment, but when I find another stairway, I step into it and walk down to a different level, which is a not-particularly-nice furniture and stereo equipment showroom.

I grab a stereo brochure from a little box near the base of the stairway, and I’m glancing at it when an older gentleman approaches me.  He’s a salesman, and he’s wearing an old-fashioned suit.  “What can I help you with?” he asks.  I look up from the brochure, a bit surprised, and I walk over to the tiny display of a few small stereo receivers.  I tell him I don’t need anything, and that I’m just there to look.  The man replies, “That’s just what I was hoping someone would come in today and say.”  I thank him, and go back to the stairway, which has a second downward offshoot, which I walk down.

I am surprised at the bottom of the stairs by a large group of mobsters and men wearing fencing masks.  These men all have guns, and they are actively out to get me.  They start shooting at me as soon as they see me, and I have to run away from them as fast as I can.  I run to a door, push it open, and find myself outside on the flat cement deck of the ship.  I look out at the waves on the water and think to myself, I forgot I was even on a ship.  My brain sure is doing a good job of remembering details. The men burst out the door behind me a moment later, guns blazing, and I run to the far edge of the ship’s deck.  I seem to have lost the men, and I take a moment to breathe.  I look up from my breathing to see that a few of my friends from real life (a Japanese aerialist and a group of martial artists) are there on the ship too.  They seem to be on the run from the same guys, so we agree to stick together.  “Did you guys go through the stores and everything too?” I ask them.  “I’d forgotten I was even on a boat at all.”

At this point, something happens and we get separated.  I find myself at the stairway with no one else in sight.  I grab hold of the rail, and I get whisked up the stairs at breakneck speed, around and around and around, until I am deposited on the pier outside the stone door at the entrance to the ship.  I decide I need to tell Brother about this, so the dream’s time and location changes.  It is now early evening, and I’m at my brother’s dark, small, three-bedroom, second-floor apartment.  We are sitting in the living room on the plush white sofa (all of the furniture is white), and I’m telling him about the crazy experiences I’ve just had.  While we’re talking, the door is open, and two attractive young women walk by on the apartment’s landing.  I say to Brother, in my best Butthead voice, “Hey, bay-beh.”  He laughs and rolls his eyes at me.  We get up and he shows me around his place.  I look into the bedrooms, expecting to find kids’ clothes and stuff, but the other rooms are furnished with double beds, and it’s clear that he has roommates, which I was unaware of.  “Who else lives here?”  I ask him, looking into one of the rooms.  One of the young women has appeared behind me.  She is wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball uniform, and has just gotten home from practice.  “I do,” she says, and smiles.  We talk for a minute, and then she tells me to get down on my hands and knees.  I do, and she sits down on my back as if I’m a horse.  She’s petite and not very heavy, so I crawl around with her for a while.  We crawl under tables and chairs, and we come to a coffee table that is lower than other things we’ve gone under.  “We’ll make it,” she says encouragingly.

“Okay,” I say, smiling, “but we’ll need to get low.”  She leans forward onto me, and I can feel her breath on my neck and cheek.  We try to pass under the coffee table, but we’re not quite low enough.  “Lower,” I say, and she flattens herself against my back and shoulder, leaning her head against mine and putting her arms around my chest.  We try again, and the table is still too low, but we decide that we like being that close, so she stays wrapped around me as I crawl slowly and deliberately across the living room, down the hallway, and to the bedroom where Brother is reading to the three kids.  Niece sees me, stands up, and walks over to the doorway to lean down and give me a hug.  Somehow I’m able to reach an arm up and hug Niece without dislodging my lovely passenger.

* * * * *

There were a couple of other scenes in the ship, and another Japanese component to the story, but those details are sadly eluding me at the moment.  If I do manage to remember them, I’ll be sure to add them later.