Thursday, December 15, 2005

I'll Have the Combo Deal

Whether we like it or not, the morning is the time to ponder dreams of the night past. It may also be, for us non-morning types, the part of the day in which we are least capable of dealing with them.

Last night's dream found me at the Marlboro Music Festival (really School?) preparing some transcribed piece for a performance the next day; from this work whole pages, sections, appeared to be randomly missing; problems were cropping up all over the score in that crazy, dreamy, infinitely regressive fashion. In the midst of this chaos--of course--appears former significant other X, with whom things are "as they were": communal happiness, embracing, holding hands, and other activities over which one may pseudo-modestly draw a veil. Heedless of the need for rehearsal, we drive together, crazily, down a dangerous road to a surreal beachfront, more like a pool, where people are wading in cold clear water; a path leads out through a crowded comedy club to a hotel where X and I settle down for the night. In the middle of the night, but only moments later in the dream, I wake up in the hotel, alone. I search the beach (eerily lit, even at 3 AM) both for X and for the keys to the rental car which we used; I am distraught and stranded; but somehow I am magically transported to Marlboro in time for the doomed, unrehearsed performance. The dream (by some tradition of such dreams) ends with applause and my exhausted entrance on stage with music I do not recognize at all.

A musical anxiety dream would not bear mentioning. I have long learned to laugh at the whole genre (the contract for which one signs, invisibly, in blood, from the moment one begins to take music lessons "seriously.") It is, however, the first time I think I have had a COMBO performance-anxiety/lost-love dream (with some travel anxiety thrown in for good measure!); I have to respect the dastardly ingenuity of my subconscious. Anyone else out there in blogland had such a combo? And when a friend calls that morning and says "how are you?", how do you reply?

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