I just woke from a dream of the most epic and colorful proportions.  It took a long time to stitch together the details, but I hope I can convey the scale and beauty of it all.

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I’m walking on the street in what appears to be a smallish medieval English town.  A young woman walking in the opposite direction catches my eye, and after a few moments I decide to follow her and say something, so I turn around and head in her direction.  She turns down a narrow alley into a sort of marketplace that is teeming with people, and I lose her in the crowd.  As soon as I cross into the marketplace, I notice that I’m wearing different clothing, including a long, flowing robe and a multi-colored shirt underneath it.  Other people are dressed in a similarly elaborate fashion, but I seem to have the finest quality clothing.

Everyone’s clothing, while elaborate, is very much related to their job and social status.  The people selling their wares in the marketplace dress in a certain style, as do the customers and townspeople.  There is a film crew on the scene, and they too have their own distinctive style of clothing.  There are groups of teenage girls wearing garish clothing tinged with neon colors.  I’m the only one wearing a robe, however, and everyone seems to recognize me, as if I’m some sort of royalty.  This makes me very uncomfortable at first, and I try to protest, but then I decide to keep quiet and use the intimation of royalty to my advantage somehow, if I can, and to have some fun with it.

The film crew are filming the goings-on at the marketplace.  Nothing is staged or fictionalized; they are there to simply capture whatever happens, and on this particular day, they get very lucky indeed.

I see three friends of mine in the marketplace—J and B (longtime bandmates in real life), and S, a close female friend of many years—and I walk over to join them.  We start to explore the market, but a skirmish breaks out and we are separated.  The skirmish escalates and escalates until weapons are drawn.  They aren’t the usual weapons like guns or knives, either, but antiquated and homemade weapons, such as slingshots and catapults.

A handful of people come toward me and stand very close.  I can’t tell if they’re attempting to protect me or if they’re seeking protection for themselves by being near me.  Perhaps it’s both.  By this time, I’ve decided to play the role they seem to have cast me in.  A young man with his face painted like a fox tells me, somewhat nervously but determinedly, that he would very much like to meet me because he thinks I’m “perspicacious and very handsome.”  I laugh to myself, then shake his hand and say, “Thank you, brother.”

The fighting escalates again, and our little group is forced to dissipate.  I duck behind a low metal table that is used to prepare food.  A man with a gruesomely loose eyeball is standing by the table with a large stick in his right hand.  He’s not from our town, he’s from the small but fierce group of invaders who are attempting to take over the town by first conquering the market.  He raises his stick toward me, and tells me that he intends to take one of my eyes.  He looks me in the face for a long moment, and suddenly a look of recognition crosses his own countenance.  His expression changes, ever so slightly, and instead of hitting me with the stick, he hits the table.  Hard.  He hits it again and makes a strange hand gesture that tells me I should ‘play along’ with his little ruse.  The next time he slams the stick onto the table, I shout out as if in pain, so as to fool his cronies into thinking that he’s actually doing some damage to our side.  After a few more hits, he stops and motions for me to do the same.  I say to him, in a very deep and serious voice, “Brother, thank you.  You have done a very noble thing today.”  By way of a response, he scoffs and makes a sort of spitting motion with his head, which causes his loose eyeball to pop out and fly towards me.  I wish him good luck and bid him adieu.

An older gentleman appears just then, who also seems to recognize me, but not in the vaunted way everyone else does.  He seems to know me from my ‘normal’ life as a musician.  I greet him with a “Hello, brother,” and he shakes my hand warmly and genuinely.  An explosion happens very nearby, and the crowd scatters.  Panic and pandemonium prevail.  In the middle of the marketplace is a circular stage in the round, with a thick velvet curtain around it.  For some reason I decide that I’ll be safe if I can get there, so I run across the square to the stage, pull back the curtain a little, and crawl inside.  I find myself standing on a short wooden walkway, surrounded by velvet curtains, completely unable to see what’s happening outside.  I hear the sounds of fighting, but I feel very vulnerable in my hiding place.

The walkway I’m on suddenly begins to spin, and as it does, the curtain billows out enough that I can look for my various friends and acquaintances.  I see J and B (but not S), and jump off the metal walkway near where they’re sitting.  They and the people they’re sitting with appear to be high on something, and their little group is laughing hysterically, completely oblivious to the mayhem happening all around them.  I ask them if they’ve seen S, and J responds, “Oh. . .I thought she was with you!” which makes everyone else but me burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter.  I walk away in annoyance.

The fighting in the marketplace has reached its highest level of tension by now, and everyone is a state of utter panic.  Tables are turned over, there are fist fights and all manner of strange weapons and warfare are happening.  People are running through the market, beating up the vendors, and looting their booths.  Suddenly, two policemen from our town wearing black riot gear with the words ‘HAZARD TEAM’ emblazoned on the back appear out of nowhere and run into the middle of the meleé.  Everyone else stops, and we hear round after round of gunfire.  We realize that the presence of guns takes this skirmish to a whole new level, and we decide to get out of there.

Many other people and I run on the narrow cobblestone street that is the exit of the enclosed market area.  Just then, I see the old man sitting along the road by himself.  He appears to be begging for money and food.  I stop, hand him some money, and say to him, “Brother, you remember me.”  His face lights up in a gigantic smile, and I turn back to continue to run out of the market, waving over my shoulder to the old man as I leave.  As the group of us runs through the arch that designates the boundary of the market area, I take a look at the town for the first time.  It is one of the colorful and picturesque towns that I’ve ever encountered.  The beauty actually brings tears to my eyes.  I think to myself that I need to capture this scene somehow, and share it with other people.  I make broad painting motions with my arms, wishing I had a sketch pad so that I could draw the Tudor-style architecture and sloping rooflines of the village’s buildings, the entire sides of which were covered with brightly colored streamers and a myriad of tiny lights.  The town was having a celebration, and although I didn’t know what the occasion was, the town was mesmerizing to behold.  I also noticed that I was wearing my normal street clothes again, instead of the voluminous robe.

I kept walking and admiring the sights, but I soon found that the town got less and less beautiful the further I walked.  In fact, it started to look a bit like a movie set.  As I was entertaining that thought, a woman walked by and said something snide about me and the town, which brought my sense of diminishing wonder about the town to a swift end.

* * * * * *

Despite the fact that I was able to remember much more of this dream than I originally thought I would, there are a couple other scenes in the middle of it that are continuing to elude me.  There also was an actual ending scene.  If I do remember them, I’ll be sure to add them.